brillomaster

swap the rears for 245/40/18 and you'll be right as rain. It will affect the handling as a lower profile than normal will mean less compliance from the tyres over uneven roads, but you'll also have slightly less sidewall flex when turning in to corners, so the car will change direction marginally better. lower profile tyres will also affect the speedo, when the speedo reads 30mph, you'll actually be going 28.9 mph. however, the car will be a tiny bit quicker to accelerate as the lower tyre circumference will effectively change the final drive ratio. lastly, the zeds tcs is designed such that the rear wheels are rotating slower than the fronts (on standard size the rear wheels have a larger circumference). if you run identical tyres front and rear the car will think the rears are spinning faster than they should be, so might trigger the traction control.

Will, Ken, Phil and I will be going down to Keevil Airfield for a trackday with Motorsport events - as its the middle of winter demand is not likely to be great, hence why its only £99 for the day! Feel free to come join us - last trackday we had great fun trying to keep up with a 350z in our beemer!

ah, handling is easy enough to rectify - decent set of tyres and more a more track oriented brake set up is easy enough to do. but 8 second 0-100 is proper quick! especially for a car with room for two little'uns in the back!

mmmm number 69. TVR Cerbera 4.5 does the 0-100 sprint in 8 SECONDS! and will look and sound glorious whilst doing it.... i cant think of anything faster for the money, can pick one up for under £10k!

I love number 1. and number 1... not sure i agree with number 1 though...

that looks very nice indeed! prefer it without the cream bumper in my opinion, but keep the wheels as they are!

might it be the wrong time of year? the middle of winter isnt a brilliant time to be buying cars, especially sports coupes. saying that, your requirements seem perfectly reasonable to me, mine would have met all your requirements and was £200 underbudget, 2 years ago!

hmm, the comments on top gear are the same with every new series - there isnt going to be a drastic change back to the old ways, just accept that this is what topgear is now! i'll be honest, i thought it was alright. actually pretty good considering the last 4-5 series. Obviously not the best ever episode, but not the very worst either! still looking forwards to next week, although the review of the P1 wont have anything technical in it, it'll just be how its 'got enough grip to tear your skin off' and its got more 'torques' to 'power a small solar system' and that getting that much power from a modest engine is like 'strapping a jet engine to your nans mobility scooter' and so on... if you want actual car reviews, watch autocar or evo or any of the other online videos - if you want grown men larking about in cars and blowing stuff up, then watch top gear. and so what if you can see every gag coming and the script is wooden and the acting is terrible - thats the format for every action movie of the last decade! surely nobody expected anything else?

lol, anything that mentions the words 'shipping' or 'agent' can f**k right off when it comes to car sales!

depends on your use of the car - if its a beater/missile car/trackslag/driftbitch then yeah, duct tape FTW! if you repair it it will only get bashed up again. As long as its only cosmetic, its fine. our bmw track car is currently rocking front nearside wheelarch gaffer tape, and offside door mirror gaffer tape, its all good!

psssh... 7:30 is better than 9:30 - you want to get your moneys worth! besides, by the time you've waited to sign on, sat through the safety briefing and waited for two groups of sighting laps, you'll be itching to get out on track properly, by which time it'll be about 10am!

look for Buddyclub exhaust thats for sale - combine that with some decats and that willl be loud, but still sound awesome.

glad you got it sorted! i'd say the bottle goes to karlh, and a miniature to Neilp

ps you're unlikely to run the falkens to the cord - the circuit is very smooth, we didnt see much tyre wear at all. Unless of course you're going sideways at every corner

The width of the tyres wont make a difference to the size of the contact patch - thats just a function of the weight of the car and the tyre pressures - ie a 3300lbs car on tyre pressure of 33psi means a contact size of exactly 100 square inches - or 25 sq.in per tyre. regardless of the size of the tyre. what will change is the shape of the contact patch - a wider tyre will obviously have a wider contact patch, but be shorter front to back. this means more lateral grip, at the expense of longitudinal grip - ie braking and accelerating. Saying that, if you're zed is on standard brakes, you're likely to reach the limit of the brakes ability before you reach the limit of the tyres to brake, so that'll be ok. what you might struggle with is putting power down out of corners, of which there are quite a few tight ones at bedford. but conversely, there are some really decent fast corners where you need lateral grip - and since the falkens are nearing the end of their uesable life, i'd go for the Rotas

have a good one! have you driven it before, can be a bit greasy in the wet. As for wheel choice, the lighter RAYS will be more responsive on track, but personaly i'd take whichever wheels have the better tyres on... after all the only thing that connects your car to the road is 4 small contact patches where rubber meets tarmac - so you want those contact patches to be working as well as they can!

true but a ferrari developed 4.5 litre V8 in the 458 Italia puts out 562bhp, or 124.8 hp per litre what you need are engine components able to withstand a stratospheric rev limit (say, 9000rpm) combined with a high compression ratio and all airflow mods to get air in and out on time.... by ferrari logic the absolute max you could get from a 3.7 litre engine would be 462bhp, but to make that power there wouldnt be anything left of the original engine!

im not planning on going anywhere! my car is a keeper, as long as its just me and my girlfriend then i will stick with 2 seat sports coupes. i'm on 56k currently doing 8k a year, see no reason why i shouldnt get up to 100k in my zed, at which point it will likely be retired to track use

get in touch, at santa pod i believe they have wheels to rent as well as numerous tyres to burn through. ask them to hold a pair of drift 17s, and then use their tyre fitting services when you get there.

Mmmmm the want is strong with this one! but the GF wouldn be best pleased considering i just bought a Cobra exhaust! GLWTS - sure it wont hang around long (please can someone buy this to take the temptation away from me!)

Crikey, thats.... striking! I love the colour, and the rear wing looks very conventional (albeit ginormous!) However, the dive planes are more extreme than Poirot's moustache, and the bodywork behind the front wheels looks like a bad filler job, covered in tinfoil

my guess is its had a clutch at that mileage! would have needed a very sympathetic driver to get to that mileage on an original clutch in my opinion. the biting point is indeed quite high as standard - if it starts to go, it'll start slipping under full load in higher gears first. I dont think any car can pull away in third without a reasonable amount of clutch slip.

ah on a trackday you shouldnt wear out a good set of tyres, depends how much drifting you do - and if you do a lot of drifting you'd get black flagged anyways! i think a general rule is that 1 mile of track driving puts as much wear on a car as 10 miles of normal driving - so if you do 200 miles of track driving (one full day), that would be the equivalent of about 2000 miles road driving - most tyres can do 10-15k so you wouldnt wear them out in one day. drift day you're best off with a second set of wheels, and then the cheapest nastiest tyres that still hold air IMO! but as said, they have tyre vans with part worns which you can use, normally £10 a tyre. as for fuel, probably quite a lot... most people either go get fuel or top up from jerry cans during lunch, we normally use about £80 worth on a full day.

if you're worried about other drivers, and hitting something, maybe try an airfield day? simple track layouts, very little to hit, lots of space for other cars to get past - and the days are generally less busy anyways. And cheaper to start off with. airfields are more abrasive on tyres than proper circuits, but if tyre longevity is your thing, i wouldnt be doing trackdays, and certainly wouldnt be drifting (although you'd never drift on your road tyres, that would be ludicrously expensive considering you could kill a set of rears in 5 minutes whilst drifting) insurance is a tricky one - normal rule is insure what you cant afford to replace. i personally cannot afford to replace my zed outright - however, i also cannot afford insurance for trackday use, so we have an old BMW we use specifically for track work, and is not insured. you will find that using a zed on track is expensive - heavy powerful car, hard on brakes and tyres. if you drift it you'll be hard on the clutch and tyres, and cooling systems. however, that said, if you have a bit of cash, i'd fully recommend doing some track driving - its the most fun you can have with your clothes on, balancing right on the edge of grip and occasionally applying a quarter turn of opposite lock at 80 mph plus, its a lot cheaper than driving out to germany to legally drive at 130mph (back straight at bedford)

wow what a stunning motor, can see why this made it into the calendar, some of those photos are amazing. Best of luck with the sale, can't see this sticking around very long!