Commander

Booked on to the Bedford Autodrome session (SEN Circuit) coming up on Sat 17th Jan - £99 - bargain! (Run by Javelin Trackdays) Anybody else coming?

My brother's running a 550bhp SC M3 and it's only about 0.25s quicker 0-62 than my 350bhp / ~150kg lighter M3. On the 0-100, 30-130, 0-150 (etc) times however - he absolutely slaughters me. I guess the gist is that more power is only really useful at the higher speeds. Low down you can't really get enough traction to make full use of it.

Sold.

Reserved for HarryJackson, pending payment.

Not so much resolutions, but aims... Propose to the GF / Future Mrs-Commander Do 9 trackdays in 12 months Get fitter / lose weight Sort out back garden

For Sale A set of brand new, unused and unopened HEL brake lines to fit 350z Brembo brakes. I originally bought them from a trader on here but now I've got a dedicated track car I don't feel the need to install them. They retail at about £80 but these beauties are yours for £60 delivered to mainland UK (or collect from Didcot and I'll knock a fiver off). A great little present for your Zed if Santa didn't bring the mods you were hoping for!

25 new spanners, 55pc half-inch socket set, 2 new axle stands and the bottom 'half' of the Halfords tool chest, to go with the top half I've already got... Woop! Tool-tastic

Both cars are SMG. The surfaces were damp in places and the concrete was wetter than the Tarmac; the rolling start round the corner definately resulted in higher speeds - the problem wasn't that we got to terminal velocity, it was that we ran out of runway. If we did standing starts the speed at the breaking point was 5-10 mph slower... Steering gets quite light above 150ish too - I can see why people invest in splitters, canards, etc. Also if you look at the braking chart, it's pretty straight but for a little lump at around 60 odd - I tried applying more pressure and the ABS kicked in so I eased off the pressure a bit and got back to full braking. Quite interesting seeing the difference ABS makes; and this is with the 'better' ABS from the CSL too. Human-controlled braking right at the limit is clearly better than ABS.

Bruntingthorpe Proving Ground 2miles of dead straight runway and another 2+ miles of taxiway - all to ourselves! Damp in places, but no puddles. Car on the left - E46 M3, MPSS, K-sport BBK, SC'd to ~550bhp, full factory interior still fitted as it's a daily driver Car on the right - E46 M3, R888, 6-pot PBMW fronts, remapped to ~350bhp, interior largely stripped out, bucket seats, etc. Track day car. Acceleration Results (Track day car, on the right) Distance() Time(s) @Speed(mph) 0-60' 02.6 33.2 0-1320' 13.9 106.5 (quarter mile - got some work to do before it's a 10second car! ) 0-2640' 21.4 130.9 (half mile) 0-5280' 33.9 153.6 (1 mile) Braking results (Track day car, on the right) Speed(mph) Time(s) Distance(ft) 60-0 02.9 108.3 100-0 04.5 303.5 G-force Min/Max (Track day car, on the right) Accel 0.68G Brake 1.20G Runway entry to flat out comparison Try clicking this - http://s567.photobucket.com/user/gsr4c/media/vmax-comparison-2.png.html 165mph to 0 chart Try clicking this... http://s567.photobuc...zero-1.png.html Edit: Sorry, Not sure what's going on with the graphs - forum/photobucket seems to be compressing them - the originals are readable I promise! Tried using JPG / PNG / BMP but it doesn't make any difference... Any tips?

Fronts are already updated, it's just the rears that are still OEM. Pretty sure the noise is just a pad rattling in the caliper a bit, so I'm not gonna worry about it. Took the M and we had the place to ourselves - got some interesting logs, stats and videos that I'll post up tomorrow... Brilliant day.

Well... The plot thickens. The sticky piston is now definately unstick, hooray!, but there's still a rubbing noise - gets quicker with speed and louder on cornering, so I think it's either a wheel bearing, or there's something rubbing... most likely a rear bearing starting to go I reckon.

Today I'm supposed to be going to Bruntingthorpe's 2 mile runway! I'm taking my track M3 and I'm going with my Brother in his SC'd (549bhp!) e46 m3 and some GPS data loggers so we can see the performance difference - vMax, 0-60, 0-100, 0-150, 30-130, braking performance with cold/hot pads, etc. it should be a good day, but.. I finally got round to changing the brakes yesterday after the wear alarm came on at Hullavington, and it didn't entirely go to plan! It turns out that one of the OS rear pads intermittently gets stuck on a bit, which wore the old pad excessively (all the way down to the metal!). The two sliders in the caliper are both fine (copper greased them anyway) its the piston - stuff as, er, a stiff thing! Tried exercising it a few times to no avail and even popping the piston out, cleaning it all up, re-seating the piston and bleeding the brakes doesn't seem to have helped. I'm going to go for another test drive this morning to see if it has magically fixed its self over night, fingers crossed! If it hasn't then it's either time for a BBK upgrade on all corners and sell on my front calipers to cover some of the costs, or I could see about getting another set of used OEM rears (only about £30 delivered, lol) and refurb them via that brake caliper specialist trader on here (sorry, can't remember their name). Either way that leaves me a problem for today... Passenger in the SC'd e46, take the Z, take the M anyway, or don't go at all... :-/

My old Defender 90 - they love to rust and in 18 months it cost me a clutch, alternator, steering box, radiator and a rain coat. I needed the coat for two reasons, first because the doors didn't seal properly, so rain got straight in. Second because in winter ice would form on the inside of the roof and when it finally got above zero in the cab, you'd get icy rain falling on you. It wasn't very secure either - I locked the keys in once - left them in the ignition - so I just unbolted the floor pan / driver footwell and reached in. Bloody loved that car actually.

You also have to remember to renew the SORN declaration every 12 months, but it doesn't sound like that'll be a problem for you.

If SORN you have to keep off the road, don't need tax or MOT, and insurance is up to you.

Sarnie will probably know, but in my experience, almost anything to do with house ownership needs a solicitor at some point!

Ah, probably a bust philange then.

^^^ Fair point - bearings are usually more of a grindy noise than a knock. Could be some nackered bushes, top mounts, drop links, broke a spring, etc?

I bought a pair off the Internet and fitted them myself - not too hard if you've got the tools - cost about £250 for the pair iirc.

17.1 miles they did... something like that anyway.

Can't imagine that a 645 will feel as tight / agile as an M / Z? And they're only 330bhp, but heavy too... so worse mpg and less sporty!?

^^^ What he said. They're having you on if you think it'll take a month to fix this.

A rebuilt SMG pump with warranty and fitted costs less than £800 these days, so about as expensive as when 2nd or 6th gear goes in a Zed. I find the steering fine - this is just horses for courses imho. M3s don't constantly get rated as something like 'best car in the world' for nothing... just buy one - you can always sell it again if you don't like it. E9X definitely the way forward though, but they're a lot more expensive...

Eugh! Does not driving the Z really save you much money? Surely you'd be better off selling it, then you can avoid the really big expenses like Tax, MOT, Insurance, Depreciation, etc? And you'd get instant capital for the house.

^^^ THIS - is my target for 2015 Did you do any writeups, etc? I guess its quite hard to achieve this?!