brillomaster

ah but it doesn't say anything about a cocktail of drugs, so im still safe taking my own special recipe - I call it 'benzococacannaketamphetamethametamorphodonorthine-pam' - its potent stuff!

I think it depends how its driven - trackdays, drifting or driving enthusiastically, you need to run 98 since the car will be redlined a lot more often. of course nowadays the cars are getting cheaper to buy, the mileages on the engines are getting higher and higher, and the use of the car is shifting to the younger buyer who might take it on track occasionally. I suspect we might start seeing a lot more engine failures in the future - after all, there will be several 1 careful owner cars with mileages approaching 100k that come up for sale and are bought by younger guys who do a trackday with it - and that hard use after years of driving around on 95 might trigger a failure.

that's pretty much correct - although I suspect its more a case of the front right reaches the limits of its grip sooner than the better front left, so the car can brake harder on one side, which causes the car to rotate. I wouldn't consider Kumho KU39s as being a bad tyre per say, just not as good as a continental. if the rest of the kumhos are serviceable, and the front right still has a reasonable amount of tread, i'd replace the continental with a kumho. if you replace the kumho with a continental (so 2 conti's on the front, 2 kumhos on the rear), it will encourage oversteer. ideally you want a consistent level of grip all around, for stable predictable handling.

turn the headlights on - every 2nd squirt of the windscreen washers should also trigger the headlight washers.

most definitely mismatched tyres! don't run different tyres on the same axle you crazy person! Only a fool would do that! (I jest, since we're running mismatched tyres all round on our track car, and its hilarious - completely different grip levels whether you're turning left or right, and every time we brake the car twitches and shimmys depending on which tyre is gripping the most at any given time. seriously, running mismatched tyres is a terrible idea.)

just had a quick read of this, seems every day is a school day! http://www.w8ji.com/rpm_limiters.htm personally i'd spend the money on decats and a straight through exhaust, and get your pops and bangs that way.

hmmmm... (goes off to look at secondhand caymans)

ross27, that looks spot on! tempted with something like that for the zed!

hahaha this is true, remarkable the number of boyracers on other forums who post pictures of their cars, ignorant of the fact there are also pictures of their naked ex girlfriends publicly viewable in their albums

do it... exhaust bypass valves are cool. for the full effect, the exhaust with valve closed should be nice and refined, good amount of silencers and resonators. then with bypass open, pretty much a straight through system with no silencing at all - it wont be a nice noise, but you want it to be LOUD! brbrbrbrbrbrrbbBRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPP

Pearoast! http://www.350z-uk.com/topic/94527-fwd-gt-r/ although give you your dues - your post has the more informative title!

get your bank on the case - should be able to get a planned overdraft of £1000 no problems which is probably the easiest way to get some funds, or the cheapest way would be to apply for a 0% credit card.

well admittedly its a Ferrari with 660bhp, so that's obviously good... but I have to say, I think her older sister the F458 is prettier!

there really isn't any point in buying secondhand cats or decats now, knowing full well you're going to get HFCs come MOT time - might as well just fork out for HFCs now. how are you looking on credit cards/overdraft situation?

but if the car is sitting there unused, then just taking it to the shops and back once would count as being the main driver, as over the period of insurance, that would be the majority of the driving ,apart from test drives. and you probably wouldn't even need to be a named driver to just move it around - my insurance allows me to drive someone else's car with their permission, as long as they have valid insurance for the vehicle.

Hmmm, its not exactly pretty... the front end has a very big gaping mouth look to it, and side vents for the intercoolers look very strange, and the rear bumper looks... dare I say it... a bit fat? however, 660bhp is a ridiculous amount of power! firstly, its hugely higher than the 458's figure of 562, and secondly, where do they go from there for a lightweight variant in the future? that's got to have around 700bhp, surely?

^ seems legit. presume a signed, blank cheque will suffice?

are there any other members of the family (wife, sister, etc) who you can gift the car to for a short period of time to reduce the initial outlay of insurance? since no one will be driving the car other than for test drives, who the named driver on the insurance isn't going to matter so much.

Nice, sounds like an epic trip! I love driving distances, when you look back and think of the things you do each day its incredible, each day seems impossibly long. we hired a car from Trieste a few months back and drove around the Slovenian alps and northern tip of Croatia - stunning countryside, Rovinj is an amazing place

good luck with it! always nice being headhunted, makes it a lot easier to get the role when the job comes to you!

this is probably an obvious one, but are you selling the zed and replacing it with something else? in which case just take out the full policy for the zed, and then swap the cars over once you've bought the replacement. if you're just selling the zed with no replacement, then i'd get on the phone to your insurer and explain the current situation - you might be able to do rolling monthly insurance or something, but if you don't ask you never know.

yeah its down 35mm the now but needs abot another 20 to sit right its already down 35mm? what size tyres are you running on the rear?

I thought it was a great episode! how they can get agreement from Nissan, Bentley and BMW to drive their top spec GT cars across the wilds of north Australia is beyond me. And the hillclimb in the quarry looked properly mental - that GTR was absolutely flying up the course. If Hammond really managed the time he did in the Bentley then he's a bit handy on the rough stuff as well. also liked their bit on the number plates - sarcasm at its absolute finest!

Hmmm, not exactly a looker is it! http://www.topgear.com/uk/car-news/nissan-gt-r-le-mans-car-2015-02-02 and I think saying its a FWD car is a bit naïve... yes, it has an ICE making 550bhp driving the front wheels, but it will also have some 700bhp of electric power driving the rear wheels, so I make that 4wd, with a predominantly rwd power bias. seems be the way that most top end time attack cars work. what seriously boggles my mind is the choice of wheel widths - top gear reports 14" fronts, but only 9" rears?!? that's only half an inch wider than the rears on a 350z, but has to put down 700bhp+!?! if they can make it work i'll be remarkably impressed. Its a radically different design for a racecar - with so much weight up front and hardly any at the rear is normally a recipe for understeer - perhaps that's why the front wheels are so wide, to try and get some grip!

Well that was an interesting day! despite weather forcasts saying the worst (overnight snow, then sleet, rain and snow throughout the day) and it being snowing I left leamington, by the time e got to snetterton it was green fields and light cloud, thank goodness. In the morning at least, the beemer was performing well - keeping up with quite a few more track oriented cars running suitable tyres and lots of camber, even on our mismatched part worns. wll be very interesting to see what the car is like on proper, matching trackday tyres! despite ambient temperatures being around 2 degrees, we did actually manage to get some warmth into the tyres and brakes by about 11am - the track was drying nicely so could put together some decent laps. Still had traction + stability controls on, but by lunchtime they were becoming more of a hindrance, so was going to turn traction control off in the afternoon. However, the weather had other ideas... about 1pm, the snow started... and got heavier. by 2pm, the previous green fields were completely white - it was also starting to settle off the racing line, so to start with the full course was on waved yellows - admittedely only the foolhardy few ventured out in the snow (us included - well, we'd paid our money, might as well get some driving in!) All the hard work to make a dry line in the morning wasted, the car was all over the place. I have to say, without traction and stability control, we would have been pirouetting off into the scenery at every corner, it was that bad. on the tighter left hand haipins, a dab of throttle anywhere in the corner would kick the back out, and anything other than a perfectly smooth arc on the steering would result in understeer. add to that when the snow melted and left lots of standing water around, aquaplaning at 80mph on the straights, and obviously ABS'ing in every braking zone - which often meant you missed the turn in point. As you can imagine, the stability light was flickering pretty much constantly, and it became a game of seeing how little intervention you could get from it - take a corner well and be suuuper smooth with the steering and throttle, and it might just blink on the exit. but get even slightly enthusiastic with any control and it would come down like an anvil. Cutting power and braking individual wheels, its really remarkable how well it works even in arctic conditions - and don't forget the technology is 15 years old now! makes you wonder how good modern systems are, would love to have had a go in something like a GTR with all systems on, see how that handles the snow! all in all, a really good day - managed 179 on track miles, despite the conditions, and did not spin once (put that down to 5% driver skill, 95% stability control!) car only had two small glitches - coolant needed a little top up, and the engine decided to run on 5 cylinders for a while - I think shortly before the tcs had had enough, and decided to stop sparking a cylinder to force us to come into the pits! Looking forward to the next trackday, hopefully mid February - and we're also safe in the knowledge that the conditions can't get any worse than they did on Saturday - cold, wet, snowy, running mismatched, 70% worn summer tyres!