brillomaster

yeah that comment was a bit laughable, if he was being backed into vettel then close the gap and overtake, its not like there isnt a ginormous DRS straight with a hairpin at the end or anything!

sorry, really dont see why someone would want a tax disc in their window... mine was binned the day it was no longer required. Also, have you heard the paper counterpart licence is to be scrapped soon? i think i'll burn mine, but i'll have to find it first... i've been using a copy of it for so long, have no idea where the original is, or if it even exists...

were you watching the same race dan? yes the usual culprits won, and the ferraris came second, but there was some great racing up and down the field, three way tussles and verstappen making lots of late lunges. and some fairly decent wheel to wheels stuff, plus a few drivers attempting and failing at drifting, or missing the pits actually stayed awake for the whole thing, which is rare for me... whats next, bahrain? looking forward to it already, a last years race was good, hopefully either seb or nico can find some pace to challenge lewis, but maybe another hot track will play into the ferraris favour.

not for £170 it seems! drop the price and i'm sure they'll shift, but over £40 each for a discontinued tyre that's 50% worn might be a little steep

maybe instead of having a 'spotted on ebay' subsection and a 'ebay finds' thread within that section, we should do away with the 'spotted on ebay' section, and then just have Brad's thread as a pinned thread at the top of the 'for sale' subsection, which everyone can contribute to? it does seem silly to have to scroll through the subsection AND scroll through Brad's thread...

haha im so glad you're asking all these questions now, will make our setup so much easier when we switch to federals next month! the new beemer currently has terrible understeer, we've got loads of camber on the front, but crap narrow tyres and no idea on the toe settings be very interested to hear how you get on once the toe and camber is adjusted. also an easy thing to try is tyre pressures - standard bmw tyre pressures have a ridiculously high rear, so maybe try something like 31psi front, 35psi rear when hot. but I suspect camber and toe angles will sort you out.

I've switched from ds2500s to ebc redstuffs on the front. the redstuffs are working out just fine for me - road use only, occasional spirited drive, but not generally hard on the brakes (save that for the track car, which runs yellowstuffs) no dust to speak of, and no squeal. the ds2500s used to squeal when they were cold, which was annoying. CS can get you a good price for EBC bits

possibly... problem is its an awful long way for my partner in crime, hence why we're generally to be found in the midlands (croft being the exception as its on the BTCC calendar and we haven't driven it yet)

Ah, the best thing a petrolhead can ever receive - new car parts! and they're important ones - the ability to stop! first up, full set of EBC Yellowstuff pads - have had great success with these on the old bmw 330ci, allows us to do several full speed laps of bedford (which has lots of large braking zones) without any fade, and braking as late as we dare - truely excellent braking. bearing in mind this is all on a budget, but for the money they really cant be faulted. Second important item - brake fluid. Again used Super blue before, and for the price (£11 per litre) its amazing stuff. when we first had the old BMW 328 with standard fluid, it would boil after 6 laps of hullavington and the pedal would go long - but with super blue in the lines boiling fluid has never been a problem since, in 18 trackdays now. even with standard lines the pedal feels rock solid. and onto discs - and yes, they're completely standard. well, budget is important, and these are £28 each on the rears. plus i have seen first hand the cracking on drilled discs, and dont really trust them. plus, at £28 a disc, it doesnt matter if we score them by getting more than 100% of the pad wear from the pads. have driven home with the brakes grinding metal on metal on more than one occasion! last item is a replacement throttle cable - those who drove the bmw at bedford will agree the throttle pedal was very stiff, and had quite a lot of stiction. hopefully a new cable, lubricate the pedal and clean the throttle butterfly will cure it - i found it very difficult to heel and toe with the pedal so stiff, which detracts greatly from the driving for me. and you might have noticed that the picture quality is pretty dire, which is because it was taken with this: Not a Go Pro, but a considerably cheaper clone. and photos arent its strong point, 'cos the lens is tiny! Its a Vivitar action cam, the cheapest that argos sell - £29.99! but it takes fairly decent video, and allows me to mount the camera externally without worrying that a £150 go pro will at some point go bouncing off into the scenery. Will be fabricating a window mount for it before the next trackday, looking forward to trying it out. Hopefully will get these parts fitted next weekend, and then onto the next trackday - havent decided on a date or venue yet, but Croft on 4th May looks a possibility.

SPOILER ALERT if you havent seen them yet! Wow that was some good racing. Race two was the highlight for me, excellent racing by flash and priaulx, but wouldnt expect anything less from previous champions. To be overtaken then retake the place half a lap later is something else, then closests finish i've ever seen i think. But Priaulx is definitely one to watch. Race three I was really hoping jack could make the move on neal, but even so probably better to take a solid second place rather than try and push past matt. would have looked very foolish had it not worked. must say the civics are looking strong in a straight line certainly, and surprised how well the passats were going - before plato binned it - what on earth happened there! looking forward to Donington in a fortnights time, especially since i've driven the circuit myself now!

glad to hear no issues! any pics or vids?

100/10 winning. /thread. nothing more manly than fertilizing the ladies. Congrats!

well, it takes a billionty pounds of thrust to get up to 1050mph in the first place, so when that thrust is switched off, its going to slow down pretty dramatically. also, the difference in speed between 1050 and 800mph is insignificant really... I suppose an 800mph crash might stop in 3 miles, wheras a 1050mph crash might need 4, but you're pretty fubared either way! seriously, watch the video... the simulation run that Andy does with the stunt plane is frankly redonkulouso, accelerating at 2.5G up to top speed, then decelerating again at 3G down to rest again.

great track is snetterton, on a day like today it should be awesome. hard to get summer weekend dates though, we have to go in winter normally.

made a salad, while a mate BBQ'd the meat. 1/10 fail

The £110 Hankooks on Black Circles seemed the ticket, but that's a lot per tyre if you think £110 a tyre is a lot, be thankful you don't drive around in a bog standard modern car with ginormous runflat wheels, which can easily be twice that. Hankook V12s are pretty decent, had them on the front of my zed for the past few years, no problems with levels of grip in dry or wet conditions, and still have plenty of tread despite having done 15,000 miles or so. i'd avoid Hankook S1 Evo2s, the grip is fine but the sidewalls seem quite soft, make the rear wobble around a bit more than the old Falkens did. i'd like someone to try the new bridgestone tyre (Potenza S001) on a zed, since the standard tyres have always been bridgestones and the sidewalls on bridgestones seem to be a bit stiffer which might suit the heavy zed with relatively tall 45 profile sidewalls. £105 for fronts and £114 for rears on tyreleader currently.

this is true, it starts to snowball. £3k looks good, but £4k looks better... and then milestone of hitting £5k in savings, that was good... next milestone is £10k in savings, and you can do a lot with £10k, house deposit, properly decent motor, etc. I start thinking that by May i'll have this much saved, and by August I could have this much saved, and that would be enough for this awesome car... but if I save until September i'll have even more saved, which would be enough for this even awesomer car... Problem with that is, i'm always living in the future... willing the days to go by faster so I can save more money and buy something bigger and better, whereas what I perhaps should do is live a bit more for the moment, enjoy each day as it is, rather than counting down the days to the next paycheck and then next instalment of savings!

Could probably be quite happy for a good 6 months if I were to lose my job tomorrow. plus car is all paid for, so could sell that and have another 6 months if necessary. Would like to keep a buffer, although considering blowing most of my savings on a new car - but then again if push came to shove, I could sell that new car and recoup a lot of the savings. I have no debt other than mortgage. as for selling zed and buying something more expensive, if you're confident in your job security and know you'd be able to save the money again, i'd say spend the cash - but leave yourself a small buffer just in case - in my case will leave £2000 in the bank in case the car I buy immediately needs new turbos for example!

Try a nice smooth flat dual carriageway, that should negate the effect of road camber.

What would you do if you had shitters on the front that look brand new?? Swap them to the rear, then doughnuts?

Wooot Plato and turkington combined! Going to be an unstoppable force methinks, assuming car is up to speed.

the cobra y pipe will mate straight up to the cobra exhaust, Shirley? and is towards the budget end of the spectrum?

^ Good luck with that!

remember most rwd cars are set up for mild understeer at the limit, and because staggered wheels look better. certainly on our bmw we want as much front tyre as possible to actually get a neutral stance through corners - we'll likely be running 18x8 wheels with 245/35 tyres front and rear. you can also affect the handling of a car a lot with camber and toe changes, having a car with really wide rear tyres will still oversteer if the toe and camber is out. conversely a square setup will still undertseer if the alignment is out, or the tyres are just bad!

official photos from the day are now online here, some great photos of all the cars. http://www.msvtphotography.com/?Action=_VC&id=177679402&ppwd=41606frd have to say, even though the beemer was an understeering pig in reality, it looks darn good in the photos, cornering flat and level. once we get some decent tyres it should be great