Commander

For 9k you're better off going for a HR imho, GT3 only has the older engine and gearbox in it.

You need space, tools and time... Space to store it and to work on it. Ideally not the street as sometimes you just need to leave it half dismantled on axle stands while you wait for spares, have 'a life', etc. For me, this means it lives in my garage - measures about 5m x 5m. Tools. Lots of them. And money to buy more of them. I do all my own work bar tracking & alignment and you'll soon find out what you're missing when you start doing the more specialist jobs - wheel bearings, bushes, clutch, etc. Once you've had it 6-12months the rate of tool buying will decrease. Time to enjoy driving it, time to make a weekend away of a trip to a far flung track somewhere and time to fix it afterwards. Up to track day #4 or 5, I definitely spent more time fixing it than driving it. That investment is now paying dividends though and now it's much more reliable than it was. All in all though - I bloody love it. Yes it's an expensive time consuming money pit, but the experience of hooning around a track, slowly getting faster and faster, overtaking something else that 'should' be faster than you and even occasionally making mistakes, makes it all worth while.

265mm = 10.4 inches

Drift days are definitely on my agenda! I just need to chew through some more tyres first so I've got some I can take with me and not mind turning in to smoke! I'm hoping 2 sets of rears plus another set to go home on will be enough - right? Once I've got some rubber sorted I plan on going to a DWYB day over at Santa Pod.

Ah... No, the car's already very front heavy because all of the weight-savings so far have come from the rear 3/4s and next to nothing has come out of the engine bay - until now - so my hope is that this will balance things up a bit. There's still plenty of mass left to use for trail braking so the next big question really (after corner weighting and another alignment, both with 100kg of ballast in the driver's seat to allow for my slender figure, lol) is front aero... namely a big ol' splitter. I find flat-out / accelerating-hard corners scary. Some of that is undoubtedly based around my (lack of) experience, but some is the lack of steering feel (or at least, lack of steering feel compared to a corner I'm on neutral throttle for, or trail braking through). Strangely the worries in my head are understeer related, not oversteer related which I'm fine with! A decent front splitter (I'll DIY one) should give me a bit more front downforce which should lead to more front end grip and hopefully more feedback through the steering wheel. If I understand the aero physics properly, I think a splitter may also help a tiny smidge with my cooling problems as less air can escape under the car, forcing more of it to go over/around/through instead.

Nope. What makes you think it will increase?

Right then, I've got the radiator out and it's in surprisingly good nick. Air Con rad out, condenser out and compressor out. So far, the removed components weigh in at 11.3kg, plus whatever the fluid weighed? I still need to remove the compressor mounting bracket, pipes, wires, and all the stuff inside the cabin. I reckon I'll end up at around 14-16kg out by the time I'm done. Front end is still very disassembled so gonna put that back together a bit before I do the internal stuff... I've run out of Chinese trays :-/

So - air con de-gassed by a man in a garage, but getting it out is proving tricky. So far I've removed / loosened the bumper, crash bar, slam panel, lights, washer water reservoir, radiator and more wires than I can count, but it's still in there. I was hoping I could do it without removing the radiator and draining the coolant, but I'm not sure it's possible :-/

PS - Don't tell the Mrs I've been using the kitchen scales!

Yesterday I ripped out the Secondary Air Pump and blanked it off on the block. It's not needed for a track car as its only really there to protect the cats a bit when doing short runs - helps them warm up a bit quicker. Anyway, I ripped it out, blanked it off and re-programmed the ECU (in hex, lol) to avoid any errors cropping up. Took about an hour and 1.8kg saved from the front-right, which is the heaviest loaded corner on the car. Here's the hole where the SAP used to be; And here's the weight saving; Next up is air con removal - it's more weight at the front and front-right of the car, and it's fairly heavy - reports suggest up to 30lbs if removed entirely. The theory is that lighter is better, but also the air con rad sits in front of the main radiator, so by removing this I hope to free up a bit more airflow which should help with cooling a bit.

Didcot FTW.

I changed my zorst on my drive, like you're about to. My advice is that higher is better - I probably had about 450mm on my stands.

Hi Neil, need one of these for my track car. Can you confirm the dimensions of the cooler are, how many rows, what connectors it comes with, how much piping, etc? Cheers.

studs / bolts / spacers - all much cheaper than tyres / wheels... just do whatever you need to get the wheels / tyres in - if you need longer bolts (or whatever) then don't skimp - they're '"fairly" important in keeping you safe after all!

If you just want to eye it up, just use some big washers, but obviously don't drive it like that... at least then you'll know what 1,2,3,4,5 (etc) mm spacings look like, without spending ££ in Halfrauds.

Do you lot ever watch the news? What you're doing is openly running a cover-up, and stuff like that never ends well. Openness and honesty is almost always the best policy... This is neither. How can people trust the right decisions are being made for the right reasons if all the facts are hidden? I always thought this was supposed to be an open and friendly forum, but it seems this may only be the case when it suits the mods.

Nice to see another track day member doing their own spanner time... welcome!

Well it looks like anterior cruciate ligament, medial ligament and quadricep-to-patella ligaments have all taken a beating, though are probably not ripped out entirely. Off to see a specialist and have an MRI in the next month or so. Doc currently reckons it could 'just' take 6-12 months of physio to sort, or it could take surgery and 6-12 months of physio. Balls :-/ Who'd have thought rock climbing and track days were my 'safer' hobbies?!

Sounded nice! You drove past me as I was walking (limping, slowly!) up to the Shell garage.

this is the bracket and rail that was on the driver's side. The brackets are each held to the rail by two big spot welds and little else. I wanted to use this rail on the passenger side, but I'm going to have to get my welder out first because I'm not happy with that. The new brackets, that came with the car but were seemingly never fitted, fit perfectly and fix the seat / wheel offset problem nicely. Getting the rear left bolts in was a little fiddly because there's not much room to work, but a ratchet spanner and a few brain cells did the job perfectly.

One other thing that's been annoying me about the car is the driver's seat. It's a bucket that has been mounted to some butchered rails and as a result, the seating position is quite high, and not centred to the steering wheel. I remembered the car came with some spare brackets that looked brand new, so thought I'd have a look at fitting them. Took about an hour, but everything's a lot better now - seat's now about 3cm lower and 3cm to the left. It feels a much better place to be now.

One other thing that's been annoying me about the car is the driver's seat. It's a bucket that has been mounted to some butchered rails and as a result, the seating position is quite high, and not centred to the steering wheel. I remembered the car came with some spare brackets that looked brand new, so thought I'd have a look at fitting them. Took about an hour, but everything's a lot better now - seat's now about 3cm lower and 3cm to the left. It feels a much better place to be now.

No vids I'm afraid - I've done them in the past but never really watch them, and making them more interesting with the telemetry overlays costs too much. It sounds brilliant on full attack mode

There's a nice looking c63 AMG out front in Pangboune today - I know it's not quite a lambo, but that's the appeal - its vaguely affordable!

Other musings from the day... People who drive 'fast' cars but drive them less slowly than I'm going and don't move out of the way annoy the hell out of me - various Lotus and Atom drivers I'm looking at you. I swear there was only one Marshall with a blue flag, and nobody took any notice of it... Disappointing. The Caterfield crew were a good bunch though, so credit to them. Car needs a remap - the e36 m3 evo I went with pulls much harder and I'm not convinced it's just the weight difference. Once I've finished removing weight, corner weighting is definitely on the agenda. Current to do list; Siphon out a bit of brake fluid - bit too full Check oil Check SMG fluid Rotate wheels Take a tiiiiny bit of camber off the front Check brake disks and pads Investigate air con removal Investigate cooling improvements - oil and water Stop spending money on it - drive more!