brillomaster

Me and Wendy are booked on to a trackday at Bedford Autodrome on 14th April if anyone fancies coming along? Its Good friday, so its a free day off for most people... Perfect opportunity to dust off the old track car after the winter and hone some driving skills. We're there in my trusty £650 bmw 328i, but we reckon we'd have no problem keeping up with a zed! cost is £199 for the day which is reasonable, its the full GT circuit so plenty of room to play and space for loads of cars on track should mean no queueing. full details here, with Javelin trackdays: http://www.javelintrackdays.co.uk/trackdays/index.php?route=product/product&path=62&product_id=272

saw three 350zs in the paddock, an ultra yellow, black and gunmetal? and the black one was out on track, kindly let us past. must have been some peeps on here, surely?

aww didnt know you were doing Oulton on the 11th! I was just there yesterday, managed to get a 90% dry day, good circuit! ridiculous amount of red flags though, basically one every ten minutes throughout the entire day.

way to get good responses to a thread, call 90% of your intended audience stupid... Hopefully some insurers will come along with the official verdict. On a related note, Dan, is there any modification that you wouldn't declare to an insurer? where do you draw the line?

NOOOOOOOO not Bill Paxton! that's a real shame. He was consistently awesome. Favourite role was a sleazy car salesman pretending to be a secret agent in True Lies. RIP.

oh yeah, can definitely see the progression with drifting... driving a FWD peugeot - unconscious incompetence - didnt know i even wanted to oversteer. got a RWD car, attempted a drift off a roundabout, spun it 180 degrees and mounted a kerb, realisation i'm pretty crap, and should improve - conscious incompetence went to gymkhana days, practiced, could hold a slide if i really concentrate - conscious competence rockingham trackday, pouring with rain, TCS off, gracefully powersliding at every corner while maintaining conversation with passenger - unconscious competence then i ran out of talent and hit a wall... back to conscious incompetence...

i hate karting, i'm crap at it. I thought I might be good having a lot of experience of trackdays, but spending 99% of the course on full throttle with just the very odd sharp dab of the brake does nothing for me - i'd much rather be dealing with gearchanges, extended braking zones, balancing throttle through corners, all that good stuff. And also, I love driving my beemers for this very reason... now that I've done a few trackdays (well, about 30 now) I feel I have a really good knowledge of how to extract (in my opinion) the maximum from the car, and its still really satisfying to drive it fast around a track. plus also, the limits in a beemer are so transparent you can hold it right on the edge of understeer or oversteer, or alternatively you can chuck it into a corner on the brakes and get the back out dead easy. that said, if anyone is reading this and feeling generous, i'd really like a drive in something with a bit more power now! i'd love a go in a track prepped M3 with twice the power that I have now and see how well my slow speed skills translate to an actually fast car, or a car that's actually set up to be sporty from the start, rather than a soft family saloon with a moderately large engine in.

Ford Raptor or Chevrolet Silverado? was gonna add Cadillac Escalade, but you said it needed off road ability... i'm guessing since eurotrips are on the cards, its wrong side drive - gotta be something big and 'murican!

give us another clue - how much did it cost you?

That's because the profile of the tyre is a percent of the width. For example, if you changed from a 200/70R14 to a 300/30R18 the speedo will only be 0.25% out. Width does nothing, alloy size and tyre profile do everything. I would have loved to see this on my wifes old Pug 206

willtheyfit.com standard zed sizes are 225/45/18 front, 255/45/18 rear. play around with wheel and tyre combos until you find the closest match. personally I suspect 245/40/18 and 275/40 18 will be ok.

i wouldn't wait until July to make sure it has enough oil in it though... check it this weekend, in the daylight, after the car has been sitting overnight. easiest to check when the engine is good and cold. once you've got a clear reading, add oil until you're at the max mark. a litre probably wont do it if you're currently sat below the minimum.

id say belts possibly need tightening... does the sound change pitch at all, either with engine revs or roadspeed?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/38772098 looks like this is it for Manor Racing. which isn't really surprising, how they lasted so long whilst being consistently last. on the other hand, has anyone read Chase Carey's assessment of the state of F1? his findings: â—¾The revenue system is skewed in favour of the already rich and powerful, to the extent that the smallest teams are struggling to survive and money is tight for about half the grid. â—¾There is a lack of competition on track. â—¾Television audience figures are dropping in many markets - although this is largely because of a switch to pay television, to make more money from TV rights deals. â—¾The longest-standing races are struggling to fund themselves and risk dropping off the calendar â—¾The decision-making process is not working properly. â—¾Some significant business and sporting decisions have been made for solely financial reasons, disregarding other important factors, such as their effects on the sporting side. â—¾An acceptance that F1 has lost some of its appeal, particularly a sense of edge and drama and as an extreme driver challenge. If Liberty Media can fix even a few of these issues it'll have a real improvement in the sport now that Bernie has finally gone. Very much looking forward to seeing how 2018 and 2019 seasons shape up.

welcome to the forum! quite a few of us do trackdays in various things, I personally will be up at Oulton Park on 4th March with my track prepped budget beemer

hmmm, since you're clearly made of money, please can I have £140 for some new tyres for my track car. thanks

I thought there was more under body down force, and less reliance on wings, which create dirty air for cars following? and also there is more mechanical grip from having wider tyres which should allow cars to follow closer through corners, and that the tyres are designed to be more durable so you don't have to constantly manage things? I'm hoping the new regs will mix things up a bit, but we'll know if we're going to get a good season after the first 3 races or so. on the plus side, the new cars look better. hopefully they sound a bit better too, but that's unlikely without an engine (sorry, power unit ) change.

well Bahrain is at a slightly more suitable time for European audiences... I wouldn't watch the Australian grand prix live unless I lived in Australia!

welcome along! if all its done is cruise the motorways with a light right foot then 32mpg is possible, though it probably wont last once you start enjoying it a bit more!

well the reasons I got rid of my zed, which I guess make up the dislikes: 1. starting to rust on all wheelarches, didn't want to pay £200 a corner to sort it out. 2. lack of an aux in, using a cassette adapter in this decade, seriously? 3. fuel economy when you're doing 15,000 miles a year and you have to fill up on superunleaded is pricey. 27mpg isn't brilliant. 4. road noise - get in something better built and roadnoise is greatly reduced. 5. lack of rear seats. mainly cos I disliked my wife's dad's car (chevy matiz 1.0)so much that I swapped my own car for a 4 seater so i'd never have to drive theirs again. now also swapped to a 4 door, 4 seater, so definitely never driving it again! but on the plus side, it looks great, it sounds great, and it drives very well indeed. particularly liked the gearbox and steering weight, once you get over the initial shock of how heavy all the controls are!

I'm likely going to get it done at Angel Tuning in Banbury, they did a great job on my 335i. not going to do the dpf, my motorway commute is 20 miles along the motorway and I quite regularly do longer trips than that, so not worried about a dpf clogging or anything. though I would say don't be expecting great mpg figures... i'm hovering around 36mpg at the mo which isn't great, but it'll climb to mid 40s on a long cruise.

that looks very nice indeed... I say that, cos I've only recently gone and bought one exactly the same only difference is my wheels are still silver. will be getting it remapped in the new year I suspect, haven't heard anyone say anything bad about a remap on a 330d.

problem is, what is 'right' keeps changing. it wont be too long before 'lol' is a word in its own right, kids these days are already using it as a verb 'I lolled' and yes, its almost entirely the internet's fault, in days gone by you'd have a secretary type your letters, now any old chump can spew garbage all over the internet!

pps its definitely 'a hotel'. and 'a hospital' and 'a historian' about the only exception for 'h' when its not an abbreviation is 'an hourglass'

I say xmas. if someone writes xmas, I read xmas. same with lol and even omg. I've even been known to say the word 'Omafffga' before now. ps constantly evolving grammar besides, whats the current correct pronounciation of 'schedule'? with a k sound, or a slurry mess that sounds like you've had a few too many whiskeys?