Commander

Still fixing brakes, bearings, wiring, tracking, etc.... from the last outing Have fun!

Very sleek Is that boot shut? Looks half-open!

30k? Give or take a bit for miles, age and options?

Now we know you're not going to die, can we start mocking now? Did the car actually run over you? How did you get out from under it?? How did you explain this to your Mrs?!! (PS - Glad you're ok. Pretty lucky escape that. Be safe!)

I'm running CNT HFC on my HR... Dead easy to fit, no CEL, decent gains, cost less than Berks - doesn't get any better?! Had them for about 18 months iirc.

Scrap yard?!

Euro Car Parts? Motor Parts Direct?

Only a little? Gut the slag!!

Weight gains in the M3 are about 8kg if you do a good job apparently. 8kg seemed a lot when I started, but it's probably not far off the mark actually. More importantly, I just wanted to tidy things up a bit... Having the loom routed here there and everywhere doesn't look very good. "front carpet, doorcards, passenger airbag and glovebox" - All of this put together saves you about as much weight as ONE heated, electric, leather front seat. Why not do all of that AND put some cheapo bucket seats in? You'll save about 60-70kg in just one afternoon It will get a cage eventually, but not yet - I don't have the funds. My hope is that now I've removed loads of stuff, and once I've finished the wiring, stripping it down for a second or third time should be a lot easier.

Oh ****. Have you ever started a job not really realising how fiddly, complicated and time consuming it's going to be? Welcome to thinning out a wiring loom. I've never done this before, i can't find any idiot proof guides, and there aren't enough colours in the rainbow to distinguish between all of the wires in this bloody car! So... One hour in and I'm now much wiser than I was when i woke up this morning - The logic behind what wires will be in what bits of the loom and routing what way is 100% none-existant. Assume nothing. - Quadrouple-check everything before you cut anything. - REALLY CAREFULLY using a stanley knife to cut through the cable wrap is much easier than trying to unwrap the stuff - Patience is key. For anybody else that's considering this, I present to you, Commander's Wiring-Loom-Thinning Methodology. Prep (This assumes 'on-car' thinning) Rip all the crap out of your so you can access as much of the loom as possible. Method Find a wire that no longer plugs in to anything. Unbundle as much cable-wrap as you can. Pull out as much of the wire from the bundle as possible. Check wire isn't magically joined in the middle to several other bits - usually things you can't identify, and often with various colours of wired Pluck up neves to cut wire Repeat a few times. Try to turn car on - Car Starts? Hooray! - - Check various systems - lights, fans, etc. - Car doesn't start? "Oh ****!" - - Work out what you cut but shouldn't have, and fix it. Repeat as necessary. Thoughts When you realise you're out of your depth, just have a cuppa, look at the bigger picture and carry on. Do NOT give in to temptation (like stopping, or buying a replacement loom to fix the one you think you've just ruined). This is what happens when you fail to quadrouple-check everything, instead of getting a bit happy with the snippers... Oops. So that's 6 wires I need to find from about a hundred, then re-connect and test. Joy. The car still runs with surprisingly few things plugged in...

I got handy with my DIY and Trigonometry skills last night - front camber is currently -2, and looking at the state of the tyres it's not quite enough so I'll max-out the camber plates and see what I get. Hopefully -3 to -3.5 and I'll see how that goes. I'm still waiting for the brake refurb kit and rear wheel bearings to arrive, so I continued stripping out more weight. All passenger-side carpet is now out, along with the under-seat air vents, the lower 2/3s of the dash has been cut out, passenger side airbag and associated brackets out (surprisingly heavy!), centre console out, and quite a few more wires identified for removal. All totaled up, probably about 10kg out. I need to fabricate a little panel to go around the gearstick so I can keep some of the buttons - SMG adjuster, front windows, traction control, TPMS reset, etc. I don't have any fabrication tools, skills or experience so hopefully it'll turn out ok!

Bedford Autodrome - SEN Circuit Interesting day out yesterday... Conditions were clear, but temperatures were absolutely baltic. Took a mate in my E46, my Brother was there in his stripped out E36, and Brillo turned up to steal pax laps and compare notes on his 330Ci vs my M3 (both E46s). This was the first time I've really used the car in the dry and the results were... interesting. Clearly it's a quick car, it's a semi-stripped out M3, the interesting bit was comparing it to the E36 my brother was in. My car is a bit more powerful with slightly wider rubber and after-market brakes, shocks and springs. The 36 is a good 200kg lighter, with a cage, seam-welded, after-market springs (higher spring rate) and he's a more experienced driver than I am. The 46 keeps really flat through the corners - the 36 often lifts the inside wheel. We think this is because the 46 is still on an OEM anti-roll bar and the 36 is running a much stiffer after-market one... So when cornering, the 36's ARB is stronger than the spring on the inside of the corner which allows the ARB to lift the inside wheel off the floor when the outside gets compressed under hard cornering and braking. None of this matters a jot though, because the big lesson for me is that weight is king. The 36 accelerates, brakes and corners SO much harder than my 46 does (and we were running the same tyres and pressures). This means I'm going to have to finish stripping the easy bits from the interior (~5kg) and there's about another 10kg I can easily get out of the Engine bay before I have to get drastic and remove the air con to save another 10-15kg. After that it's after-market doors, lexan, angle-grinder, etc... which should net me another 50kg or so, if I spend enough :-/ While I'm thinking about tyres, this was my first time out on the Federal 595RS-Rs, and I liked them. This isn't to say that they're a particularly fast tyre, or even that grippy, but they're pretty cheap, didn't go off (and I was giving them hell), and they let you feel the car move around under you, which is what makes it interesting. I think I'm a fairly aggressive driver so they were taking some abuse and I reckon they've got another 2-3 days left in them. At half the price of R888s and with more feeling, I can't complain at that really. Another big difference is the geometry we're running - Despite having adjustable camber plates, the 46 is still on about -1.5 degrees camber while the 36 is on about -4 degrees. I've not had chance to check tyre wear yet to see if camber is a problem, but I expect if I increased my camber this would help with the understeer. Max the plates I have will do is about 3.5 degrees so I'm tempted to just whack them up to whatever full is and get the toe-in/out reset to zero some time later. I was using some of the day to play around with trail braking in to corners... it makes a huge difference. If you're old school and do 'brake-then-turn-then-straighten-then-power', the M will understeer as you get near the limits. If you trail-brake however, (so, brake later, and still be on the brakes for the first chunk of the corner too), the additional load you put on the fronts really helps bring the car round... and if you get off the brakes and back on the power soon enough, the additional speed carried through the corner is massive... This doesn't really help with the longer, sweepier corners though, that's where I think increasing the camber should help. Not everything was rosy though My car still has the oem rear calipers and the rear-left was sticking on. I could go out for about 7-8 laps without it being a problem, but after that the brakes were getting pretty spongy and having to take two stabs at the brake pedal when you're barreling along towards a propane tank isn't good! I think the longest stint was for about 20 mins, after that the car was just getting scary to drive. Also, and I'm not sure if this is related or not, but the rear-left (and possibly also rear-right) wheel bearing is totally shagged... The whole car shakes like you're driving over rumble-strips, which made the 2hr+ drive home a bit of a trudge. Brake caliper refurb kit and new rear-wheel bearings both now ordered, so that's me busy for a while as I'm told by everybody the rear bearings are a PITA to remove. The 36 faired slightly better, but the day ended with a cracked front-right brake disk. It was running some cheapo drilled disks and there are now two cracks in the disk, both starting at drill holes and extending to the inner and outer edges of the disk. So, a slightly sad note to end on, especially for Brillo (good to meet you by the way!) as he probably only got about 10 laps in... sorry! Next up is Mallory Park, if I can get the repairs done before all the slots sell out.

lol I couldn't even open my door the other day - the window wouldn't drop to allow the door to open... Plant pots around the front of the house are now littered with de-icer, much to my lady's annoyance!

The more the merrier... Bring a helmet!

lol - 1 minute!

Wouldn't surprise me if you could get 255s on if you had some adjustable front camber plates? Or if you're still on the stock ones, people swap the left and right ones over - gives you another degree or so somehow... plenty of threads about this on t'interweb... I think the serious M3s are running 265/275 up front, just need enough camber and wheels with the right offsets... The setup on 330ci can't be that different, can it? I'm planning on running 25PSI cold, so should end up around 30-ish PSI when hot... Hot might be hard to achieve with the weather forecast though, we'll see what happens. I'm not too proud to admit I'm a fairly inexperienced track day driver so I'll give you my views, but how much weight you give them is entirely your own risk! Always good to put faces to names so pop along by all means. It's looking a pretty busy day though - 62 cars signed up last time I looked! :-/

I've picked up a set of 4x Federal 595RSR tyres (255x35 R18) for silly cheap money, so these are on the car now. The M3 suffers from understeer a bit on track so instead of the traditional staggered setup with 225 at the front, I'm now running a square 255/35 setup, with the wheels on all four corners just being the M3's standard rear 18x10s. The tread pattern on the 595RSR is directional, so it means I can swap tyres front and back to help with the wear patterns. Since Bruntingthorpe I've also started taking more weight out of the car. The rear parcel shelf covers, sound insulation, speakers and wiring are all now gone, as is the headliner, some more wiring, most of the internal lights, the radio head unit, god handles, some random brackets I found not doing much and the glove-box are all now out. There is SO much wiring in the car, I can now understand how people say they got several kilos out when stripping. There are also loads of welded on brackets that are now not doing anything, so after I've got as much interior unbolted as I can, it'll be angle grinder time. The car will now be fairly front-heavy / rear-light, and with the increased tyre width at the front end I think handling could become interesting, but we'll see what happens. As the "build" progresses more weight will come out of the front (still got loads of wiring, trim, airbags & insulation to pull out in the cabin, plus more stuff under the bonnet I can pull out too) and some weight will go back in too (cage)... Hopefully this should balance the car up a bit more as I progress. (Air Con is staying in) Service items aside, I'm not spending any money on making it lighter yet as there are still plenty of things I can remove for free . When the time comes though, there will be cage going in (need to price up a T45 cage, lighter than CDS, I think?) and the doors will get swapped for CF/FG, which saves a whole heap of weight. Can't do the doors without the cage though as the replacements won't have any side impact protection in them. After that, it'll be time for lighter wheels - the OEM ones I'm using are about 23kg with the tyre... I should be able to get that down to about 18kg I think, which will be another 20kg of (rotational) mass gone. I'm toying with the idea of changing the ratio on the diff too. The M3 comes with a 3.6:1 diff, which tops out at 180-ish mph given enough straight tarmac. I won't really be using the car for max speed runs though, so if I put a 3.9:1 or a 4:1 diff in I'll get more acceleration lower down where I need it and sacrifice top speed, which will reduce to about 160-ish mph, which is still more than enough on a track day I reckon. Once I've got the car feeling vaguely decent and I've got a few more track days under my belt I'll book another driver training day too, or maybe go halves / thirds with an instructor at a track somewhere. I was really impressed with how much I improved with Gary Marsh a few months ago so I'm a big believer in training now. Photos to follow

Saw this on the TopGear site - that man has some pills!

Welcome! The buyer's guide is the place to start http://www.350z-uk.com/topic/22880-guide-for-new-memberspotential-buyers/

Hah, if it takes you all day you're doing it wrong! I reckon about 90mins start to finish for the first time, including getting tools out, etc...

It's dead easy - and taking off lots of bits to do it sound about right! See the how-to guides and you won't go wrong...

Hopefully they're trying to pass it.... otherwise it means they've had to run out and get more paper to print all your advisories on! Fair enough about the bookings. Hope you get the brakes sorted - getting a brake setup really nailed seems 50:50 black-magic and pure-luck in my experience... I can understand wanting to get it right though, takes a lot of confidence to brake late and weak or squidgy brakes don't help! A turbo'd MR2 must go like a proper pocket-rocket - what sort of BHP/Tonne does it kick out? And at the risk of taking your thread a bit O/T - do you use different Track Day tyres in Winter than Summer? Assuming dry for both, but track temps are obviously hugely different... or do you just have a dry tyre that you use regardless of track temp?

What's the result then?? And what track days you got booked this year?!

Anybody coming? £99, SEN Circuit.