Commander

On a 350 HR you can disable the alarm by twisting the ignition key from off to position 2 and off again, three times. Get out, lock as usual and hear a quiet, high-pitched confirmation sound. 370 got anything similar?

TCS - Fancied turning it off for the challenge really - it seldom interrupted, but I knew it was there. That and I wanted to get the arse out round a corner or two and it was definitely interrupting there. Guess it's just my personality - I go rock climbing without ropes on occasion and ride horses (which are inherently dangerous) - driving with the TCS on at a track day seems like I'm cheating myself a bit, iyswim. The car's already got a decent set of brakes, springs, shocks, adjustable top-mounts, bucket seats, etc.. along with a geo setup that seems plenty good enough for me. I only struggled because I'm not good enough really, not consistent enough... and the conditions were atrocious. Regards SMG - I've always had manual cars before so fancied a change as much as anything - and if you get an Auto there's no chance a former owner has accidentally over-revved it at some point. The particular car I bought has already had the rear sub-frame repaired and reinforced and the SMG pump is still under warranty as that was repaired recently too. I'm considering chopping in the Z for an e90 m3 Saloon - how do you find it compared to a Z? Hopefully more practical, refined, civilised? Any drawbacks?

It was the M's first proper outing today, at Hullavington (j17 of the m4). Firstly, there was one Z there, a grey DE - sorry I didn't get to say hello. It was the M's first real outing with me, and it proved to be an interesting session. Ditching the R888s and using some Michelin Racing Full Wet tyres (off a Ginetta G50, apparently) was a good move - there was a LOT of standing water. So much in fact that the TCS was still flashing at 100mph in a straight line, and even the wets I had on were aqua planing at some points of the track, and in one of the braking zones. I'm not going to lie - I didn't turn the TCS off even once. I wanted to, but couldn't justify the risk in the conditions... Extremely wet! At some points you couldn't see anything at all, but spray, and trying to hit the braking point at about 115mph was getting tricky, though I managed it most of the time! Last week's session with Gary Marsh was put to good use and trail braking in to corners combined with a slow and incremental approach to each corner definitely works. I was feeling pretty chuffed with myself having only an e90 m3 being faster, and having just overtaken an Elise and a 911 (no idea what type, they all look the same to me) but then, about 30 laps in, disaster :-( E46 M3s have two flaws, rear sub-frame cracks and SMG pump failures. I looked down at the dash to see a bright orange warning light - oh **** - SMG - please let it keep working so I can finish the lap! I crawled back and finished the lap ok, parked up and called my brother - he's got an e46 too and has had SMG problems in the past so I was hoping he could help. Tried a few things but couldn't fix the system, so day over, time to drive home before it gets worse. On the way back, while contemplating how I'm gonna tell the g/f I need to spend £900 on a new SMG pump, I realised it wasn't an SMG error at all! lol. Knob! In my panic at seeing errors on the dash I hadn't spotted that really it was the brake-pad wear indicator light - the two lights are annoyingly similar! :-( Thank god for that - much easier to fix, and leaving early was still the right thing to have done... Phew! Brake-wear problems aside, still some good seat time and I learnt a lot about the car, and myself. It's still much better than I am, but mastery will come with practice I'm sure (or at least, I hope!) To do list now includes: Read the owners manual BRAKE PADS! Oil & Filter change. Bigger man bits (there was one fast and slightly off-camber left corner which scared me more than it should) More wet tyres Strip out more weight More track days! :-)

Am I the only person who just shoves their Z on a drive, doesn't use a cover and does drive it (almost) everyday, rain or shine? It's a modern, mass produced, jap car and as such, should be treated like any other normal car! It doesn't need a lullaby, a blanket or a cuddle at night, it doesn't need a week off between uses and it works perfectly well in wet, windy, foggy and even snowy weather. Stop wrapping your car in cotton wool (and weatherproof breathable covers from Halfords) and just go drive the bloody thing!

I'll be there in the M - anybody else going?

Don't shoot me, but I'm not sure it's his best work. It doesn't even sound good!

Managed to get Friday off work, so I'm going to the Hullavington Track Day (http://www.motorsport-events.co.uk/hullavington.php). Anybody else going?

No video :-( I do have a HD Camera, but I couldn't get it in to a decent mounting point... Guess I'll have to add 'roll cage' to my Xmas list! :-)

I spent my time yesterday at Abingdon Airfield with Gary Marsh (ARDS Grade S Instructor, Racing Driver & multiple-championship winner) and 5 members of the Porsche owners club in their 2x c2s, a c4s, a gts and Cayman S motors, with me in the M. The day started very wet and though I've not driven the car much yet, you can tell straight away that R888s and standing water don't go well together at high speed... Or anything about 70 really! The MPSS I have on the Z definitely win here. We got the day started with a few 'simple' exercises (I won't go in to the specifics - it'll spoil the surprise for you if you do a day yourself) so Gary can assess us and get a feel for the group. After agreeing that we're all shite, he spent time talking about how we should be doing it, why, the physics of it, etc. I knew all of the theory already, but I clearly wasn't putting it in to practise at all. After a few more cracks at the exercise with Gary in the car, everybody is improving and importantly, we know WHY we're improving and how to translate our new found skills on to a track. A Sprint or 'Time Attack' style setup was used to create a benchmark for us, a combination of different corners, speeds and obstacles to get round as fast as possible. Times were measured, but not disclosed yet. Lessons continued with high speed sweeping corners on a runway (where I managed to drop it and spun off at a fair old speed, left the runway and gauged four nice swirly marks 50m or so across the grass - love airfields - nothing to hit!), braking exercises, changes of technique, things to think about, ways to be analytical, and so on... We always reviewed every exercise, learned from each other's mistakes and kept the day really positive. Almost everybody spun off at some point but nobody did any damage, not even to egos, just lots of learning. Towards the end of the day the track had dried up a lot and we got to re-run the Sprint a couple of times to see how we'd improved... Suffice to say, we all improved a lot. I left the day with an increased awareness of what the car can do, an improved appreciation of what 'theory in practise' is really like, and a wish to learn more! If you've ever thought about driving faster, safer, better - go on a day like this - you WILL improve. Oh, I forgot, the sprint times... I did 43.8seconds, first place and a full 1.1s ahead of the next car. I won the morning's round as well. It's hard to say why I was so far ahead of the rest of the pack, but I think it was more to do with me as the driver than the car its self - down on power compared to the 400bhp GTS, but running R888s instead of MPSS / MPSS Cup II on the Porsches evened things up on the handling front, so after that I'd like to think it was 'just' driver skill that won it, but I'll never really know, and winning wasn't the aim of the day... Just a nice bonus.

No, I don't live in a little village or know any any villages who've lost their idiots, but my dogs certainly never barked at fireworks - sounds like they need better training!

Let me prefix what I'm about to say with, "i don't run my own business", but I am involved 'in' business. For me, it you want to be successful it's about identifying, and exploiting, a USP. You already know where you can't compete which is a very good start, but nailing down where you can compete will be what wins it. One thing that's also apparent from my mates who run companies is that you have to be flexible - I think you'd be daft if you were so specialist that you couldn't take on the more random bits of work that turn up every now and then. I've no idea about the industry you're in at all, but here's some random ideas; Mega-high end luxury / bespoke goods - an ex-gf's dad used to design mega-yachts for a living - cheapest one he ever did was about £50m or something daft. Anyway, you can bet a naval engineering company just outsources everything, so what about approaching companies like these and offering personalised embroidery on towels, the captain's jacket, champagne glasses, etc? Have you been able to identify who your competitors are, and who their customers are? If you don't have / can't find any competitors, you need to find out why. Is there just no money in it? If you do have competitors, go after their customers, compete on price to get people's attention in the first instance and build from there. What about supporting people who are in similar industries? I know a couple of people who make dresses, corsets and bras for a living - they certainly don't have anything like 12k to spend on a sewing machine, but quality does matter to them. Strike up a partnership by providing quality embroidered labels for the garments they make? Or what about teaming up with a a wedding-organiser? I bet chavvy / posh brides would pay a fortune for customised stuff? Do you have an ability to to turn things around quickly? Could you take on rush jobs of some kind (prototyping? one-off pieces?) and guarantee a good job in short time scales, for a price? Perhaps investigate who your local same-day couriers are and what their rates are like? You're on a car forum! Any interest from people wanting customised stuff? I'm sure there's a guy on here re-trimming steering wheels and seats - could he use your services? (though probably not for the diamonte bit - not on a steering wheel anyway!) What about people in motor-sport series, offer to stitch things on to race-suits and gloves using NOMEX thread? Could you provide complimentary services yourself? Logo design, supplying the t-shirts/mugs/whatever (in addition to their customisation), provide things in nice decorative packaging so they can be mailed out direct to the recipients? I'm struggling for specific ideas around possible USPs really, but in a very busy market place and with just you doing the work, I think you'll have to be intelligent about the work you tout for, but versatile enough to take on the work that lands in your lap. You're clearly already thinking along the right lines about what you can/can't do, I think you just need to keep thinking until you really KNOW where you can make money. What about just going round some potential businesses, pitch something you can do, and have a conversation about their wider needs? That's the kind of thing our sales guys do and it turns up all sorts of interesting sales leads for us. It's more about the wider conversation that the initial bit of business really - the more we know our customers, the better we can pitch other ideas at them in the future...

As bloody annoying as I'm sure my statement is about to be, I'm not sure you can claim for anything? No damage has been caused - or at least you haven't supplied any evidence of it? You haven't had to spent any money because of their actions or negligence? Taking time off work didn't cost you any loss of wages? What exactly do you want to claim for? The closest I think you could possibly get is compensation for breach of contract, but that assumes the roof-repair you mention at the start was contractual and obligatory on their part?

You've also got to consider if a blog is appropriate for your business / customers. If it's car detailing, people (well, me at least) like to hear about new products, demos, techniques, etc... and I blog is a good way to show off your wares. If you're an assassin, details about the Joe you killed last Tuesday probably won't do much for your reputation about keeping secrets... You need to make sure you engage with the industry you're targeting in the right way, or there's no point. This is true for some of the other things mentioned earlier around company pages on LinkedIn, Facebook, etc... These are likely fine if you're developing a business-to-consumer model, but I doubt they'd be as successful in a business-to-business model, where getting advertising in trade magazines, participating in trade-shows, etc.. might be more appropriate. Horses for courses and all that. As I don't know what business you're looking at the next bit may / may not be useful at all, but a few of my friends run small businesses and they've just about stopped advertising entirely, instead they've partnered up with a few other (much bigger) business that offer 'complimentary' services and between them they share the work, up-sell the attributes of the other companies in the partnership, etc...

Diesel then?

Don't think so.

Played a game called Planetarion years ago, I was 'commander' of 'rich world'. I'm too boring to bother inventing something new - probably 13 years ago now.

Welcome! Didcot for me..

If it aint broke, don't fix it. What makes you think it's on the way out? If it's just based on the mileage, then that doesn't mean anything really as different driving styles impact clutch lifespan hugely. Is it actually slipping? Making noises?

To be honest I haven't even checked what the pressures are, but dropping them a bit sounds a sensible idea. I can't wait to get it out on the track and see what it can really do; no doubt it's much more capable than I am!

That could have been so much worse!

I took the opportunity to take car car out for a drive today - needed a bit of a shake-down before I go to Abingdon on November 14th for a 'limit handling' course with Gary Marsh, especially as I've barely driven in since I bought it! :-( The route I took was one published on Pistonheads recently; http://www.pistonheads.com/news/default.asp?storyId=31057 If anybody lives near this, I'd say it's worth a crack. Not really 'one' route, but several stretches one after the other, interspersed with little villages every now and then. It's nothing compared to the euro trips I've done, but it's as good as any other I've come across around these parts... Took me about 2hours on a Sunday afternoon. I'm not familiar with the car yet, or the route, so in hindsight not the best choice for a shakedown, but the M did well nonetheless. The M's a bit like a Zed on steroids - a bit more powerful, a bit lighter, a bit more planted, and great turn-in behaviour, but all is not rosy. I struggled for feel with the r888s (apparently this is because they have stiffer side walls than MPSS?) so I was at quite a pedestrian pace on the corners. I also found the Traction Control and ABS both kick in quite early, but I should be able to sort this by reprogramming them with the CSL settings if I can get hold of the software. Still not totally happy with the seats either; they're better after I adjusted them, but still room for improvement. Might end up swapping the driver's seat out for something else with more lumbar support and wider shoulders. I also think having taken lots of weight out of the rear upsets the car a bit too, so I need to get more weight out of the front half to balance it up a bit. Still plenty of trim and carpet in the front of the car to rip out so I should be able to balance it up a bit, it's just a question of finding the time.

Fairly certain if you sign up to m3cutters and pay the joining fee (£10?) you get a Halfords 10% off card.

Scary stuff mate - the main thing is that you and your family are ok. There are some real horror stories about this kind of thing so I'm glad it wasn't worse. Hope they catch the scrote.

I earn a few grand a year more than my g/f, but the extra gets roped in to a share save scheme so we both come out with about the same every month. We both put the same money in to a joint account where all the mortgage and bills come from, and where we're slowly building up some savings as we each contribute more than it costs to run the house. When it comes to payday for the share save scheme, although I'm the one that saved all the money, it will be considered as joint funds and we'll both agree what to do with it. After all of that, we both then have our own savings that we can do whatever we like with.

I run a HR with a Milltek and HFCs, and I love it. Good sound on startup, no drone when cruising and a great noise when you open the throttle. The build-quality of the exhaust was good too - nice welds, perfect fit. Edit: PS - It's by no means 'loud' (not compared to others I've heard!), just 'nice'.