RG Motorsport has turned its attention to making the people’s car quicker, and their first official Golf6 GTi conversion is right on the money. With a bolt-on upgrade, the Randburg-based tuning, conversion and maintenance experts have unleashed the true potential of Wolfsburg’s hot hatch and endowed it with a 270 km/h potential.
Long-acknowledged as a BMW specialist, RGM has been working quietly on the Volkswagen four-cylinder turbo powerplant, using the Bridgestone Production Car championship for research and development. Golf 5 GTis tuned by RGM have won Class T of that series two years in a row, and in 2010 three of the first four cars in the class owed their combination of power and reliability to RGM.
And now a menu of performance upgrades for roadgoing Golf5 and 6 GTis is available, and customers can have anything from mild to wild.
“Modern tuning techniques are all about careful manipulation of the electronic control systems and this is evident even with showroom models, where we see different outputs from similar engines,” explains RGM’s managing member, Robin Green. “For example, it is clear that the latest generation 2.0-litre FSI engine is able to cope with much more than the 155 kW it is rated at in the current Golf6 GTi and through our motorsport programme we’ve established exactly how much stress this motor can handle.”
With Johannesburg car enthusiast Riaan Burger happy to provide his car – Untamed GP - as the development mule for an extreme road conversion, the project started by fitting an uprated KKK K04 turbo, which, while it looks very similar from the outside, has very different internals and it is designed to minimise lag, and run cooler.
As per the off-the-shelf Stage One package, there’s a full RGM stainless steel exhaust system, 63 mm in diameter, to expel burnt gases. The catalytic convertor has been removed in the interest of performance, and the entire system from the turbo onwards is new. The system is shaped and welded in-house and fitted with stainless steel silencers built to RGM’s specifications.
Feeding the right amount of clean air into the engine is critical and supply is filtered by a serviceable free-flow gauze filter. Fuel quantity and air volume is manipulated by the ubiquitous Unichip, which piggybacks on the standard ECU, ensuring the perfect mixture anywhere between idle and 7 000 rpm. Finally, the engine has been set up with the two maps, so as well as setting for 95 octane, a switch in the glovebox allows the settings on the Unichip to be optimised for a 95 and Torco mix (a proven race fuel concentrate) for maximum engine performance at increased boost pressure, without risk of detonation. Finally, intake air temperature on this car is lowered by an enlarged intercooler.
The end result is impressive, to say the least. Headline numbers on the RGM dynamometer, corrected to a flywheel rating at sea level, are 242kW and 405Nm. These figures represent improvements of 56% and 44% respectively over standard.
Getting it all onto the road was the next challenge and RGM has called on some respected product suppliers in the performance marketplace. A carbon metallic Spec clutch and lightweight flywheel feed torque through the ‘box and to a Quaife limited slip differential, ensuring maximum traction off the line. While not affecting performance, the customer also wisely opted for upgraded front brake pads and discs, and braided brake lines.
In this guise performance is pretty astonishing, a set of test numbers garnered at Gerotek with a VBOX datalogger making for some impressive reading (see separate data table).
With the car’s set-up optimised in terms of tyre pressures, the RGM-tweaked Golf recorded a best single run of 6.49 seconds to 100 km/h when unleashed on the Pretoria facility’s long straight, immediately thereafter managing a best of 6.68 in the opposite direction. Using an average of the two best runs in opposite directions (standard testing procedure) that works out to 6.58 seconds. Even more impressive is the car’s performance in an 800 metre standing start, comfortably breaking the 200 km/h mark in some 22 seconds.
At first light the conversion had already impressed with a 267.3 km/h run, a standard car recording 249 km/h on the same strip of road only minutes earlier.
“The beauty of this particular conversion is the holistic approach which was taken, and the results are spectacular,” says Green. “The customer’s brief was to supply a finished product that would create serious horsepower without compromising reliability or driveability, and we believe that we’ve achieved that objective.”
Burger agrees: “The conversion is everything I wanted it to be. In standard form it is really nice to drive and I didn’t want to sacrifice that. I use this car nearly every day and there aren’t any negatives. But when I’m in a hurry I put my foot down and it just accelerates and if that’s still not enough I can flick that switch in the glovebox…then it really is dynamite!”
The basic RGM Stage 1 Golf6 GTi upgrade (which utilises the standard turbine) comprises the full stainless steel de-cat exhaust system, serviceable high-flow air filter and Unichip Q mapped on the RGM dyno. This Stage One conversion produces 188 kW on the flywheel - 33 kW more than standard – and costs R13 550, including a six month, 20 000 km warranty.
STORY COURTESY OF ROADWORX
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