Commander

It's all about the CFM rating for me - compare what your tools need to the compressor's capabilities and decide from there... Bigger is almost always better!

Today I got started on stripping out some more weight - almost all of the carpet was still in the car and I could see it was a good inch thick in places, so should be some good weight saving... And more noise! :-) So, this is what I started with; Seats had to come out, and that's when I noticed the first problem... Whoever fitted the seats / rails had butchered one of the bolts, and now it's barely long enough to thread a nut on to it :-/ Getting the driver's seat out was easy enough, but the passenger seat was harder. Although it's on rails, there's no handle, so moving the seat involves putting your hands all the way under the seat and manually operating each catch. Pain in the ass! Seats out, but still couldn't get the carpet out - had to remove the fly-by-wire accelerator pedal. Easy when you know how, but I didnt! Gave up and had to refer to YouTube for a quick How To. Pedal out, and the carpet soon followed, along with the under-seat heating and some trim. The carpets are very thick; probably about 15kg pulled out I reckon, and still loads more to do. taking the carpet out of the drivers footwell, I also pulled out the left-foot rest, and pulling out a couple inches of polystyrene left my accelerator-foot in a hole, so I need to make up some boxes to put my feet back in the right place. That's all for now... Any suggestions on the seat bolt? And the best way of fabricating some kind of feet boxing?

Welcome. The clutch is noisy on this car. Have you looked at the clicky rear axle guides?

I've got an HR OEM Y-Pipe you can have for free if you collect it yourself... It's got 70k on it and the flexi's have taken some abuse, but no holes and free! South Oxfordshire.

I'm in IT, not Building, but we've had similar problems with our customers. We've now moved to a model where we quote on the job costing 'x' and don't even discuss days... It's a fixed scope for a fixed price. We obviously have a day-budget in the back of our minds, but the customer doesn't get to see it.

What's the dimensions of the wheels themselves please? 18s, but how wide and what offset? And would you consider splitting the wheels from the tyres?

Tubular Bells album cover is quite cool

Yep, so the tax man gets to tax the former AND new owners for the car on the month it's sold, money grabbing so and so's...

Moral issues aside, what's to stop my buying that one on ebay for £6, then taking it to the post office and cashing in the last few months on it?

I like a bit of everything - this has been on repeat today.

Well, the weekend has been and gone and I've not actually done anything on my to do list :-( The Mrs did go out for the day though, so I cracked on with tidying the garage so I can properly get the car in. This involved making some brackets to store the wheels on too as I don't have the floor space to waste on just piling them up on top of each other. And they look good on the wall :-)

No electronic valve on mine sadly!

Took the car for another drive last night, actually it's only the second time I've driven it, just as a bit of a shake down and to see what's what... interesting drive! Bad things; - Outside air temp gauge is bust, keeps flashing betweeen -40 and +50. Seems a common problem on the E46 range and I've got a new one on order for about £6. - TPMS alarm went off. TPMS is based on the ABS sensors and the tyre pressures (and sizes!) are all ok. Hopefully it isn't a bust ABS sensor. I've now found out what the reset procedure is so I'll try clearing it first and see what happens. If it's an ABS Sensor problem (though there are no ABS alarms on the dash) I'll need to do some research so I can find out which sensor it is. - The throw of the head lights is really short, so I need to work out how to adjust slightly Good things; - I managed to lower the seating position without getting my spanners out. It's got buckets so when I went to just take the padded seat out, I found the previous (much shorter than me) owner had packed a bunch of towels under there to boost up his seating position. Towels now removed, seat fully back, and steering wheel adjusted and it's a lot better, but I still need to get my tools out as it's not perfect yet. The seat is also off-centre which is a bit annoying. - It really does handle well! - The noisy zorst I mentioned in a previous post is because it's a 'Rogue Engineering Cross Pipe'. I tried recording it on my iPhone but it's too loud so it's all distorted. I'll wrap it in some socks or something and try again when I'm out in it next. To do; - Fix outside air temp - Identify TPMS problem, and fix - Check brakes, oil, water, etc and change / top-up as needs be - Adjust seat - Quieten the zorst - Enjoy!

Standard jack like that is too low IMHO - need one that can lift higher if you want to do anything under the car really. Fine for just changing wheels & brakes but if you were trying to change an exhaust you'd be stuffed. The trolley is fine, but only if you've got a really smooth floor to work on - wouldn't bother trying to use it on the road, for example.

I spent hours ringing around yesterday for insurance on my Track M3. Sky - expensive Admiral - wouldn't insure Richard Eggar - wouldn't insure FluxOnline - winners (about 40% cheaper than Sky)

From the third line of the very first post; "the rear sub-frame has already been done by BMW " Apologies yes I saw that, my question was "how does it look". Just because it's been done it doesn't mean it's in good order, some repairs are only done by the injection of resin in the cavities aka BMW and some dealers are far from competent . These sometimes don't hold and I would hate to think the stresses of track work could lead the OP into trouble. Thanks for the concern, but it was a full-on drop everything off, chop it out and start again job by BMW, and it wasn't all that long ago... Got a certificate and everything! Had a quick look to double check and it all seems fine. To be honest, the buckets are so narrow that I could probably drive it around a track quite comfortably without any seat belt on at all! I think I'll give the CG Lock a miss and just save up a few pennies for a half-cage and some nice 3" harnesses... and maybe some wider seats!

My old man has the 3.0 diesel XF S, great wafter and picks up speed very well in a straight line - if you want comfort and luxury, you wont go far wrong at all. It is MASSIVE though, so don't plan on taking it anywhere with small (or even average sized) car parking spots.

Best done from a computer, and sign up to PhotoBucket!

There's a HR for sale for that money! Swallow the additional tax bill and get that instead.

I'm hoping the 650+ bhp of my two cars outweighs the Beetle's flower power (though it's a great little, easy car to drive I must admit!) M3's a nice car, but I think the running costs are a bit higher than the Z, and if you want something decent, it'll cost decent HR money... I've always fancied one and from the little driving I've done so far, it's a more mature car of the two - nicer cab, less road noise, handles well, etc... It does look boring next to the Z tho!

m3 - tho admittedly some of your requirements may have to flex a bit to get it in budget / on spec

**10 man-points to WINKJ**

Aah, glad I'm not the only one here on team BMW! I was originally looking at something a lot cheaper than an M3, but I won some money on the lottery and got a promotion at work, so I figure, why not? The previous owner said he tried a square setup and it wasn't for him - preferred having some understeer apparently(?!) - so I've got a staggered setup currently. Or at least the R888s are staggered, I didn't check the slicks / wets if I'm honest. I was warned off doing that with the 5-points - something about risk of collapsing the seat and/or over-stressing the anchor bolts because of the angles involved. Given my record for hitting things I thought I'd play it safe for now. It probably will get caged, but not until I've done at least a half a dozen days in it and I'm sure it's something I want to keep doing. To be honest, I can live with terrorising cones for a bit. I've done Bedford, Donny and the 'ring as a driver and been a passenger at Brands as well. The undulation and camber changes make for some great driving, but I want to build up slowly before I even start thinking about paddock hill bend in the wet! I've got this Gary Marsh day coming up, might do a day with Andy Walsh as well... Some drive training and some seat time spent at nice flat / lots of run off places like Abingdon, Hullavington, Bedford, etc.. will hopefully see me feeling more confident in the car when it (or I) are close to the limits.

This was exactly my thinking about the cage. And I don't have to faff around ripping the dash out either. I'll see if I can get a recording of the zorst, but unless your speakers go up to 12, they won't be loud enough! pfff.... correct at the first guess! You're not allowed to play any more Andy Walsh - thanks Ekona, I'll look him up. Spot on about Donny, though it was complicated by a Scooby I was far too close to jamming on his anchors at a weird point (just as he was exiting the last left-hand curve), i left the track to the right, across the wet grass in my A048s, nearly t-boned him as he existed the old hair pin as I went across the track at 90degrees to it, then i proceeded to skip and spin across the gravel trap, hitting the tyre wall side on, just near the marshall's post, and writing the car off

At the weekend I picked up this little toy (the M3 that is, the Z is already my daily, and 10 points if you can guess what the black car is!?) 2004 E46 M3, SMG (I know, I know!...), partially stripped out, upgraded brakes (BMW 6 pots on huge CSL disks), BC BR coilovers, fibreglass boot, bucket seats, two other sets of wheels and tyres (it's on new R888s now, plus one set of slicks, plus another set of racing wets, all on 18s), a ridiculously loud exhaust. (offensively loud; the passenger / driver can't even shout over it at full chat), the rear sub-frame has already been done by BMW and the SMG pump, flywheel and clutch were all changed about 9 months ago along with the valve clearances being done. Oh, and it's already partially poly-bushed too, plus I've got a spare CSL-replica front bumber and some (not fitted) 5-point harnesses. I bought it off a guy on M3cutters, who also bought it off a guy on M3cutters. It's on about 110k miles but the service history is all there so I'm not worried about it, especially with the work that's already been done to it this year. Oh, and the paintwork is by no means great - a tiny bit of rust on a rear arch, and some pebble-dashing along the side from a gravel trap (or three!) All in, it cost me £8,750. So what's next? Aside from quietening the deafening exhaust (there's some kind of 'noisy valve' on it that's open; I need to close it to make it tolerable.) it doesn't really NEED much doing to it at the moment... it just needs driving. It drives really well, better than the Zed actually (which is stock, bar some HFCs & Milltek zorst) - not in terms of straight line performance, but the way it deals with lumps and bumps in the road, and the way it corners, is lovely. There are some things I need to do to it though; The seats (Cobra buckets) are a bit too narrow really and are not at all well positioned. The seat is on a slider but the angle and height of it is totally wrong, so that will need lowering and reclining a bit (the guy I bought it off was ~9 inches shorter than me). If changing the height / angle of the seats isn't enough, then I may very well be swapping them out for something a bit wider. (I'm just over 6ft 3 and weigh about 97kg, before you start with the fat jokes! :-p) The car doesn't have a cage fitted, so that also limits me to using the standard three-point seat belt from the factory. I'm umming and aaring about fitting a full / half / bolt-in / weld-in cage, but I've not made my mind up about that yet. I'm going to Abingdon in it on November 14th for a 'Limit Handling' day with Gary Marsh, which I'm quite looking forward to. I've already crashed cars at Donny (an Evo, off at Craners Curves, across the old hair pin and in to the tyres after the big gravel trap) and at the Nurburgring (a track-prep'd Suzuki Swift, under-steered off at the last corner) so having bought a hugely capable car, I'm going to invest in some driving training as I can't keep crashing cars... it's expensive and bad for my health! I'm not that bad a driver really, I just have trouble distinguishing between 99% committed and 101% committed! If anybody else can suggest some other track-driver training days, I'm all ears - pretty sure I won't turn in to Lewis Hamilton after just one day, sadly, so I'd like to do a few - money well spent I hope. Any body going on any track days this year? I was just looking at Hullavington Airfield as it's not that far away from me (and has lots of run off!) - anybody ever been?