brillomaster

penny trick is simple, makes popping the boot a one handed operation. costs 6p. struts are affected by the cold, icy weather means the struts have no strength at all. better in the summer when it warms up. I got into the habit of holding the boot open with my head in the colder months

Had a fun drive yesterday... 5:30am, gentle snow falling, 370lbft of torque in the beemer, summer tyres. Just moderate acceleration is enough to get the tcs light blinking, let alone trying to corner. still, on the plus side nice to know that the stability systems are all working nicely, car is cutting power and braking individual wheels well before I've needed to deploy oversteer protocol. Really should get the new car on a trackday at some point!

its not really a story, I've had days when I've felt a bit squiffy after being a passenger in our track car. combination of heavy braking and high load cornering whilst in a hot stuffy car will do that to you. plus Sabine Schmitz is not just a racing driver, shes actually a racing instructor - several levels above where May and Hammond were. Out of the old presenters i'd say JC was comfortably the best driver, but with the new line up CE is a long way behind CH and SS.

yeah not the best day for the beemer. first a small problem, then a large one! might be the end of beemer number 3!

Get the ISR single exit if you want loud! and it'll be a bit different, most people want to keep the dual tips.

Have you got any video equipment Nic? would love to see how a supercharged 370z gets on round cadwell - you'll be blasting past most stuff like its standing still I suspect, and potentially could be pretty quick through the corners as well. Keep an eye on tyre pressures, if you can get any heat in them the pressures will shoot up, you'll need to drop them back down to recommended pressures otherwise grip levels will suffer. Also, unless you're feeling particularly brave i'd leave the TCS on and see how you get on. If you see the light flickering then think about what you're doing to make it come on and try and correct it so it doesn't come on in the same place the next lap. Equally think about what corrective action you'd need to take if the TCS was off - don't know how adept you are at controlling oversteer, and Cadwell probably isn't the place to experiment!

if you don't do trackdays and aren't in the habit of doing long alpine descents then i'd get standard discs and brembo pads, the brakes on a zed a perfectly capable for normal round use just as they are. If you're feeling flush, i'd change the brembo pads to EBC redstuff, but wouldn't consider anything other than standard discs unless I was doing trackdays.

hmmm lets see, im my years of doing trackdays I've seen two cars end up on their roof, plus a handful more that have had an encounter with the barrier. Plus there are numerous videos online of drivers who appear to be perfectly capable drivers dropping a wheel on the grass, losing control and having an expensive accident... and then theres our first track car, which we crashed into a barrier. Personally my philosophy is that the money I've spent on a track car I will never see back - it cost £800 and its done 6 trackdays now, so I only value the car at £200 anyways now. If I did track my £9k roadcar i'd definitely be getting insurance!

conversely, i think its my second favourite (after donington) the twisty bit under the trees is less good, but everything from barn to Mansfield is brilliant, a real rollercoaster. but fair play for doing your first trackday at cadwell park, in february! braver man than me lol. somewhere like snetterton or bedford would be good for the next one, better suited to heavier cars with a lot of power. you need somelight light and nimble round cadwell really. I might have to consider an insurer that offers a few trackdays come my renewal, i really want to see what my 335i is like round a track (i'm guessing a handful lol)

you're gonna love it! although you'll be going really really fast at some points, so build the speed up slowly! I sense a dedicated track car might be on the cards

I've said it before, autonomous driving would be great, the roads be so much better if everything was controlled by a computer rather than a human. so much easier to make progress if all cars kept a safe distance to the cars in front, and let people merge properly at traffic. It'll be great for people who do want to use it, and great for people who don't want to use it. unless of course they build in optional driving modes - they could have 'Honda jazz' driving mode, which is always drive 10mph under the speed limit, always stop at roundabouts and always enter roundabouts in the wrong lane. or alternatively 'bmw driver' mode where the gap to the car in front is always closed back to 3ft as quickly as possible, and headlights set to auto flash if the car in front is doing less than 10mph over the speed limit. Its enforced autonomous driving that i'm worried about - but that's a long way away, manufacturers are always keen to stress that the driver still has full control of the vehicle.

stay safe out there, zeds are not designed for cold weather!

cheeky bump, only 15 places left now. Weather at the moment is looking cold but dry, hopefully will be able to get heat in the tyres!

is that Tryfan and Llyn Ogwen?

Sad times. RIP Bowie is a legend.

the 'right' petrol station being unmanned 'pay at pump' style ones! for the sake of a £2 funnel i'll see how I get on with that - but thanks for the confirmation that the bottleneck is getting the petrol out of an unvented can!

ah ok, so I need a vented petrol can then... that 20L VP Racing one does look good, although slightly concerned that some petrol pumps don't let you fill things larger than 10litre plastic cans - I thought 20 litre cans were illegal in the UK now?

so, current method to refuel the track car at lunchtime is use 4 of these cans: screw the hose onto the can, stick the hose in the tank, upturn the can. problem is this takes aaaaages to deposit just 5 litres into the petrol tank. Question is, would it be quicker to use one of these as well: the thing im confused about, does it take ages to fill up because the air can't get out of the cars petrol tank fast enough, or because air cant get in the 5L petrol can i'm trying to fill it from, so it takes ages for the petrol to get out? I'm guessing that since you can fill a 60litre tank from a petrol pump in about a minute, that the slow part is getting the petrol out of the can, rather than getting it in the tank? much confused, any physics help appreciated!

christ on a bike, you'd seriously declare additional parking sensors on insurance? it wouldnt even remotely cross my mind to mention it, even come renewal time. if you do declare parking sensors, dont forget the stubby aerial, dust caps and those little blind spot mirrors, and of course let them know you run your tyres 2 psi over the manufacturers recommendation

I quite like anthracite wheels on black cars.

doesn't need to be legal to drive on circuit, just roadworthy! borrow a mates trailer!

We've booked the Dark Knight Rises onto the first trackday of 2016 - Snetterton next sunday! Its with Javelin Trackdays, still a few places left and its still pretty cheap if anyone fancies coming along. link here: http://www.javelintrackdays.co.uk/trackday/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.browse&category_id=1194itemid=11 This'll be our 4th time at Snetterton (though one of those times was cancelled due to fog) and its a great circuit - lots of brilliant fast corners, and two tricky braking whilst changing direction sections. Plus it'll be the first time we're there with decent tyres on, so hopefully it'll be dry so we can really take advantage. be great to test ourselves against some zeds if anyone fancies it?

probably the V10 engined M6, with a sports exhaust on. pretty sure that's all the car i'd ever need.

don't think the TCS will mind, the rears will be rotating comfortably slower than the fronts, so that's fine. however will look somewhat funny! how long until the rears need replacing, roughly? if its a long way away that would mean the rears still have a decent amount of tread left, so i'd flog them and buy a new set of 265/40s to match the fronts.

Get both tips, change them over every time the OCD kicks in.