Commander

Waahoooo! Wow, brilliant day at Abingdon today. New setup has improved things a lot, tyre wear is massively improved and understeer on long corners is reduced. front shocks are now on full hard and the rears need to come down a tad as running them on full hard makes the rear a little easier to upset than I'd like - a handful of clicks should do it. I'm going to drop te front camber a tiiiiny bit too, just to put the finishing touches to the tyre wear problem. The 595 RS-R bargain tyres continue to hold up well - they're not as outright grippy as others, but plenty grippy for me, hard wearing and nice and progressive. Had some good sessions, one of particular note with a Z4MC who was doing exactly the same lap times as me, and we only got to overtake each other when the one in front cocked something up. Brakes (Brembo 6-pots on CSL disks and RS29 pads) continue to be good - no fade, no boiling fluid. The SMG did play up at one point, but only because the previous owner has overfilled the system and I hadn't checked how full it was. Siphoned some out and all sorted. Cooling continues to be a problem for oil and water, so this will need some investment and more spanner time, but I don't have any specific plans yet. Car aside, most problems are really with me - the driver. I need to be a lot more consistent with my braking points and brake pressure if my style is to improve materially.

Anybody else down there today? I'll be down in my silver-gray e46 m3, most likely next to a blue e36 m3. Come say hello!

Disappointed you're not doing it in a Z!

Carbon intake would be lush if it wasn't held together with a DIY fibreglass repair and gaffer tape! I'm gonna play with the front toe softly softly - it turns in really well already and adding toe increases wear. There are quite a few people saying they happily run e46s with little/no toe so I'll see how Abingdon goes before I decide on anything.

Cooling is a bit of a problem at the moment - the last time I went out on track everything was quite a bit hotter than I'd have liked, so I needed to do something... Out came the air con condenser fan and associated mountain of plastic supports and shrouds. This should improve airflow to the radiator and oil cooler, but at the expense of the effectiveness of the air con condenser when stationary / going slowly. Both the air con and main radiators are Aluminium, but you can only see the aircon one from the front. The aluminium fins are corroding pretty badly on the air con rad so I can only assume the same for the main one too - it is 11years old after all. I'll get a new radiator bought and installed after Abingdon's out the way and hopefully that's my cooling problems sorted. Might rip out the air con too as its heavy and I need to get more weight out of the front to balance it up a bit more.

Mine are covered in it.. Gonna clean it tonight when things have cooled down.

Don't read anything in to the 'before' settings, I've dismantled most of the car so they're all over the place and don't really represent anything. I wanted -3 on the rear really but the guy reckoned that's all he could do. Not sure I agree given how adjustable those arms are, but it's still a lot more than the -1.5 (ish) it had on to begin with. I'll suck it and see at Abingdon on Friday and adjust as needs be. These settings seem to be in about the right ball park for an aggressive e46 m3 track day setup so I'm looking forward to seeing how they do... Just hope it's warm and dry on the day! The error codes seem to have remained clear too, so I assume I had a loose connector somewhere. I re-seated them all and it hasn't come back. Whoop - love a cheap fix. Saw a Silver/Grey DE when I was on my test drive too, out near Wallingford way.

It's been a while... The interior is now fairly well stripped out and a lot tidier than before, but there's still some work to do. I got the rear camber arms changed (what an absolute PITA! Had to drop the exhaust off, drop the diff, remove some under-trays, remove the M3-version of the W-brace, pull out the drive shafts and even with all that out the way it's still a fiddly job), airbags removed, NSR wheel bearing changed, lower-rear ball joints changed, oil & filter changed, brakes bled, sticky NSR caliper changed, and so on... Maxed out the camber on my front top mounts (which was also a PITA to do, because my top mounts add castor too, so to change the camber you have to drop the whole coilover / top mount assembly out of the suspension turret, adjust the top mount, re-assemble, and then measure. All of this now done, took the car for an alignment today and the bloody thing started stalling every time i came to a stop... ffs! Managed to get the alignment done, but now I've got some other errors to be looking in to - hopefully I can get them sorted by Friday for shakedown at Abingdon Airfield track day. I know you all love a picture or two, so... Fully Adjustable Rear Camber Arm; new error messages I need to fix - looks like fuel-pump but lots of people saying that's a red-herring and more likely to be a dirty MAF or some loose wiring Inside the car now it is (mostly) re-assembled New alignment settings The stupid top mount

Hello - That was me! Driving to work up in Oxford. Nice '70 - Nismo? Looked tidy whatever it was... SpoilerEnvy!

£30? Might as well spend that money on some tools and mod your own engine!

For my money, it'd be one of; Dodgy alternator Dodgy belt Dodgy Sensor / Dial Tried putting a multimeter on the battery and seeing what's really happening? Unlikely to be the battery I reckon. Any error codes?

Cooked my clutch fluid on the autobahns last year, but we were making full use of the de-restricted bits

Possibly, but driving style impacts this too. Now you kinda know what to look for (though we can't tell if you overheated the pads or the fluid based on your description) you should be able to feel it coming on sooner. Pad fade = it stinks awful, might get smoke too if you do a good job, but pedal still feels solid Boiled your fluid = long spongy pedal, feeling of no brakes (Take a second quick stab at the pedal and you'll feel it bite harder.) In both cases, the only short term cure is cooling. Longer term - buy disks and pads that stand up to the heat better, be gentler with your braking style, bleed your brake fluid. Brake fluid absorbs water, get your brakes hot enough and this boils to create steam, which is obviously a gas, which compresses differently to a liquid and that's why you get a long pedal and no brakes.

I have those same cats on my HR - good fit, sound nice and sailed through the MOT. GLWTS.

Didcot

Car is on Federal 595 RSRs at the moment - R888s are definately a grippier tyre, but I can't justify the cost at the moment, especially while I know my tyre wear pattern is fubar. I'm going to Abingdon on Friday 24th so I'm going to play around with tyre pressures, the new geometry and shock stiffness then and will report back. Thanks for all the suggestions guys. Rich

Current geo is BMW standard which isn't anywhere near good enough for track use and I'm wearing the outside edges of my tyres too much as a result. New geo will be -3 camber all round, 0 toe at the front and a smidgen of toe at the rear; I'm hoping this will improve things a lot, but only time will tell. Shocks are about 3/4 of the way to full stiff, which seems fine as bump handling and initial turn are good enough for now. Tempted to run full stiff but I think what you gain in initial turn in response, you lose later through more understeer? Again, I need to experiment a bit with this. Tyre pressures are 32psi hot. ARBs are the standard M3 ones and the bushes are fine. BMWs are known to understeer so already running a square setup. Ackerman geometry is unchanged from factory defaults. Suspension / shocks don't feel like they bottom out on any of the stops. Car corners fairly flat, and by the looks of it never lifts the inside wheel. Front/Rear balance of the car is something I had been considering, but have resigned that I can't do much about it. A lot of weight has been taken out of the car, and all of this weight loss is from the windowscreen and rearwards - no carpets anywhere, no airbags, no trims, most of the dash is cut away, lightweight bucket seats, etc. I've deliberately kept the (very heavy!) battery in the boot to keep 'some' weight over the rear and apparently the CSL boot lid I'm running does produce downforce, but no idea how much. All that said, it doesn't feel unbalanced at all and I've only had the rear come round unexpectedly on me once so far. For Keyser's comments; I get some dive, but it doesn't feel a ridiculous amount. Mid corner it feels a bit wallowly, but not skippy or bouncy... just understeery. No cage yet, but it's on the agenda.

I have a problem with understeer on my track car - initial turn in and general agility is great, but sustained corners lead to too much understeer. I'm going to dial in more camber because tyre wear is telling me I have nowhere near enough on the front and I already run more caster than standard. If this doesn't fix the problem though, next up is the springs. I'm currently running on 8 & 12 kg/mm springs that came with the BC BR shocks I'm running. If I stick with BC, the next step up in terms of shock stiffness is 14 & 20 kg/mm, but these rates are VERY stiff - race car stiff if my research is anything to go by. Does anybody have any views on this? The car is a stripped out e46 m3, it only gets used for track days, but I do have to drive it there and back.

lol - good point about the scots! They reckon they can 'only' retrieve 5-15% of it, but that's still a heck of a lot!

Your garage looks like this then?!

I was cutting the grass (aka, nettle-infested jungle) with an old petrol mower. The handle snapped so I dragged it to the garage, welded it back together, and dragged it back outside again. Fired her up, 2ft flames fired out the exhaust for a bit while the oil / petrol burnt off from my tipping it on its side to do the welding, finished mowing the grass (topless, for the ladies, lol) and then had a beer. I gave myself a 7/10 man-points rating for this; it needed more women, or blood, or cars, for it to get much higher... What did you do this weekend?

Haha, well remembered! Some of it has gone on holidays and on the M3, but I've still got about half left. I've never really had this much money 'going spare' before - in the past it has always been for house deposits, etc... but now I've got a decent house, two fast cars, etc... I don't know what to do with it?! Having good money in the bank is very reassuring, but I can't stop myself looking at E90 M3s, M5s, Caymans, 911s, Range Rovers, XKRs, etc... Keeping the cash seems the sensible thing to do, but I'm not sure it's the right thing to do, hence the question about what everybody else does... Spend or save?!

Not in absolute terms, but in terms of, if you lost your job, how long could you keep living the way you live now, before you had to start making compromises or selling stuff? I have about 4 months worth of after-tax salary saved up in cash, but I've no idea if this is good, bad, normal, etc? And as this is a car forum (and this is the real reason for the question) how much of that buffer would you eat in to if you wanted to sell your Z and buy something more expensive?

On a track day? Heat from driving will add 10-15 psi; I usually start at 20 psi (stone cold) and then monitor as the day goes on... Different tracks, driving styles, cars and weather conditions will mean that you gain a different amount of pressure increase from one day to the next.