Commander

Keep the Zed. You can use performance any day of the week, but you will seldom really 'use' the 86's handling... So really you're just getting a slower car. :-(

Paste your desired new signature here, somebody might be able to suggest something...

Jack it up and turn it on, if it's blowing you'll be able to feel the gas escaping - just run your hand down it - even small blows are usually quite obvious. Just don't burn yourself, and remember to use axle stands.

Agreed, and just so we're clear, I don't want this to become a finger-pointing exercise in this particular incident; I posted it as much to raise awareness as anything else. I have a number of mates and family who ride bikes and while I personally think they're death traps, bikers are always in the news and hearing people's views is interesting. It's quite heartening to hear people talking about defensive riding attitudes, for example.

I found this, and wondered what people's opinions are? http://www.suffolk.police.uk/newsandevents/newsstories/2014/september/hardhittingvideolaunched.aspx My view is that both drivers were at fault, but I'm not entirely convinced the car driver should have been prosecuted, although obviously this one article can't possible contain all the facts and opinions and it doesn't say to what extent the car driver was prosecuted, so I'll happily be corrected if needs be. I've been caught out by motorcycles a few times, I tend to find them fairly invisible, especially when they drive in a way very different to everything else on the road - huge rates of acceleration, filtering between lanes of traffic, often wearing lots of black / no hi-vis, etc. I know there are at least a few bikers on here so I'd be interested in your opinions too.

Thanks GMb - More pics to come. Yes SuperStu - totally agree! I was trying to convince the guys they just weren't trying hard enough, but I'm not sure they believed me. BulletMagnet - I *really* hated that car park - sorry about your skirts, but I'm kinda glad I wasn't the only one!

And a few more piccies... Turns out the Lotus' front wheel arches weren't actually fixed with anything. Cable ties to the rescue. Strasbourg Cathedral The offending 40Amp fuse. "Dat Ass" ? (Sorry, not very down the with the kids) Bug splats everywhere - this Zed gets driven Must... Not... Buy... Spacers!!! ~1000BHP in this photo. Nice bit of greenery

They were great little cars really - pretty low top end, but very well set up, very agile and they make a good noise for a small capacity 4-pot. I was half-tempted to buy the whole car from them and keep it as a tracker, but LHD and getting it back from Germany would have been a real ball ache. I was on for about a 10:30 lap I reckon, but it ended up more like 25 minutes by the time the marshalls had done their thing... oops! Edit: This is how you're supposed to do it! (Same car as me, but about 90 seconds a lap faster)

On the lap I binned it. There are some 'after' photos somewhere too, but I'm still waiting for the rest of the guys to upload things.

The Plan Saturday - 24Hr Ferry from Portsmouth to Santander Sunday - Santander to Biescas via Pamplona - Lots of twisty roads and nice scenery https://mapsengine.g...78.kkLSnHuMuQMk Monday - Biescas to Fornells de la Muntanya via N260, and a quick detour to Andorra - Lots and lots of twisty roads and very nice scenary https://mapsengine.g...78.kuJHzd0bTYZs Tuesday - Fornells de la Muntanya to Nice - nice start to the day, then slog along m-way to Nice. Visit Monaco in the evening. https://mapsengine.g...78.kG8fEsnCmEug Wednesday - Nice to Saint Etienna de Cuines via Route Napoleon https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=znkYi6G2lv-A.kLG9ZrODYxqA Thursday - Saint Etienna de Cuines to Fiesch via so many awesome mountain passes I'm not going to list them! https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zn-M1lT-xp78.k2ZuRFXjxirM Friday - Fiesch to Strasbourg via even more mountain passes https://mapsengine.g...78.k0zk922uNfFk Saturday - Strasbourg to the Nurburgring via a couple of German national parks https://mapsengine.g...-A.kEQVnhZzLC1Y Sunday - Ring Taxi, Suzuki Swift Rental, EuroTunnel, Home, Sleeeeeep Commander's Log Day 0 It's the night before departure, I've got the sh**s, I've been sick, I can't find my frigging locking wheel nut, the prospect of an 0430 alarm is not filling me with joy, and I'm seriously considering not going. Day 1 Hit the road at 5am after a lemsip breakfast, still not knowing if the Lotus is even ready, or if I'm really up to driving. The Milltek cat-back exhaust I fitted a couple of days earlier had better still be attached to the car, though I'm not really 100% given that it has barely had a 5 minute test drive since fitting. The drive down to Winchester Tesco was uneventful and I met up with the M3 first, followed shortly by the A3, and finally a REALLY LOUD RX8 and a beautiful blue Elise, freshly painted with a 220-ish BHP Honda engine and gearbox dropped in. He didn't leave the garage until about 1am, and now he's here for a road-trip across Europe. The Elise gets my money as a contender for 'first breakdown'. We convey it from Winchester to the port and board without too much faff, though my Zed (on standard springs and wheels) did scrap the zorst when boarding the boat. After some quick Google-based 350z-uk searching, I find out how to disable the alarm (key in, switch on/off three times, key out, then lock) so the motion of the boat doesn't upset it while we're sailing. Brilliant. We've got a cabin, the lemsip and other drugs are working a treat and the freshair sitting out on the helipad while we sail out around the Isle of Wight is doing me some good. I'm glad I came along after all. I spoke to soon. We've barely sailed past Bournemouth and the boat's engine is FUBAR. Needs a new fuel pump and it'll take 9 hours to fix. NINE HOURS!!! We anchored off Bournemouth and started waiting. We managed to have enough 3G/4G coverage from shore to watch the F1 Qualifying, but it quickly became a very boring boat to be on. Day 2 It's 4am and I've been up and down to the bog with the sh*ts all night. I can't stand it any longer and I pop an Imodium. It seemed a good idea at the time, but it took 6 days for it to wear off; I won't go in to the details. Watched the F1 race, in French, and what is there to say. Rosberg's a t**t. We arrived in to port 9 hours late and drove in to Spain. The delay meant the plans for our first day of driving were ruined and the b-road bonanza out of Santander was turned in to a dual-carriageway dawdle. We rolled in to the hotel at about 2330hrs and frankly, just wanted to sleep. At least it was a quality establishment. Day 3 Snoring is an evil affliction. I got very little sleep. I won't name and shame, but they drove a German car. Up, showered, had a cracking breakfast, and we're off to start our way down Spain's famous N-260 road. If you ever get the chance, do it. Brilliant stretch of road and the driving rivals anything the Alps has to offer - excellent tarmac, very light traffic, warm, and lovely scenery. We weren't long in to the day though, when we hit our first problem. Those of you that read last year's write up may remember a similar photo from the Swiss alps - but which car has broken down this time? The M3, of course. He'd reported an error on his dash yesterday, well today this turned in to a total failure of the SMG (gearbox) leaving him with no gears. This problem happened last year and it took us about 8 hours to fix. This time we came prepared with the right tools and spares and we had it fixed in about 20 minutes. The same 40Amp fuse that blew in the Alps last year, had just blown in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Fortunately he had a spare and after some ****-taking, we were on our way again. The N-260 just gets better and better the further east you go - the driving is great, the landscape is great, I may have to put it down as my best road in Europe. Towards the end of the day I'd pulled away from the convoy in some very twisty sections (the M3 driver is the fastest really, but he was stuck behind the RX8) to find this bad boy lurking around a corner... thank god for ABS! It didn't seem best pleased that I was on "its" road, but I squeezed past and we all made it to the hotel in one piece. The yellow-stuff pads I'm running are struggling a bit with fading, and 'that' cooked brakes smell, but it is about 32 degrees outside and I'm giving them a VERY hard time, so at this point I'm hoping they'll do better as things cool down a bit. We rock up at the hotel in one piece, with a cracking view down the mountain and some much needed ice cold beers. Oops, did I say we ALL got to the hotel in one piece? The Lotus, back from a full re-spray on the day we left, wasn't entirely in one piece. After a questionable overtake of an RV, he 'grazed' some Armco with his lovely new paint... ouch! It wasn't that it was a particularly 'bad' overtake, just that we'd all noticed he didn't really seem to position his car on the road very well - always a bit too far to the left... So when he overtook the particularly wide RV on a particularly narrow bit of road lined with armco, well, it was never going to end well. Day 4 Breakfast was an epic fest of cured meats and smoked cheese - cracking food - though not what my semi-immodium'd guts really needed I suspect. We had a fairly early start as this was 'slog day'. A brilliant start as we finish the N-260 eastwards, followed by a long motorway slog from the north-east of Spain, over to Nice. The N-260 continued to amaze and we were more or less straight back in to the twisties, a brilliant mix of hair-pins, 90 degree bends, camber changes, deep gorges, rivers, bridges, and flowing sections - fantastico - I really can't say enough positive things about the N-260. We crossed the border in to France and it just got better - the road had recently been re-surfaced with what was effectively sand-paper... so much grip! This was the first really fast, really long, down-hill section and the Yellow Stuff's were cooked before I got even 1/2 way down. Perhaps that set of £3k Carbon Lorraine brakes on the M3 really were worth the money after all! After a stop in a very pretty little village for a round of espressos and to swap stories about exactly how much grip that road had, it was time to enter 'slog mode' and make our way over to Nice. We've since concluded that French motorway drivers are the worst drivers in the world. Particularly those in red VW Golfs. Nice was a mixed bag for me if I'm honest... Great town (city?) right on the Med, lots of culture, people, yachts, restaurants, etc... in theory a great place to stop, but as it turns out, Nice HATES cars. Especially cars like the Zed. Nice is a maze of one-way systems, traffic lights and horrific under-ground parking. We ended up in a car park called 'Mozart', a fairly new looking lump but it's REALLY not designed for cars as low as the Zed - and mine's still standard height. 4 floors down I had to park, so that's 4 lots of very painful, brand-new-Milltek-scraping ups and downs. Very ouch. Very unimpressed. I checked out the damage and it's 'only' the flexi sections that have taken some abuse, the rest looks fine fortunately. Parking aside though, lovely place. Day 5 Route Napolean day. The drive out of Nice was about as traumatic as the drive in, with awful car park, the one way systems and traffic lights everywhere, but once we escaped, wow. Climbing up the hillside away from Nice takes you through some lovely villages and the views out over the coast are brilliant, though there aren't many places to stop for photos unfortunately. As I write this, if I'm honest, I'm struggling to remember any really great bits of this drive. It was all "fine", but really, it doesn't compare at all to the Spanish roads before it, or the Alpine routes after it. The only realy surprise was just how fast a white diesel Megane can be when there's a local driving it who doesn't like being over taken, and who knows the roads far better than we do. He got overtaken anyway, but still, Route Napolean was a bit disappointing in retrospect. We essentially stopped at a truck stop for the night. It wasn't pretty and the food was crap, but some french kid was chuffed to bits with all our cars in the car park, especially 'the blue ferrari'. I don't think anybody had the heart to correct him. Day 6 / 7 / 8 It all gets a bit blurry here, but Alpine passes FTW. Having done Stelvio last year (which is pretty crap, by the way), we wanted to tick off some more, so we did Col De La Madeline, La Roserie, Grand St Bernard, Gran San Bernardo, Furka, Grimsel, Susten, Nufenen and Col Du Galibier. The latter being where these photos are from; We finished day 7 in Strasbourg - brilliant old town and I'd recommend it to anybody that's after some culture, nice beer / coffee / food, etc. There are also some pretty decent stretches of de-restricted auto-bahn between Strasbourg and the Nurburgring. I wasn't daft enough to try to take a photo and we're supposed to be sensible, but lets just say there really wasn't very much speedo left for the needle to consume. Also, Ferrari F12s are FAST! They will leave a Zed for dead. We finished day 8 in Nurburg. What a brilliant place. You can stand anywhere in town and hear all sorts of v6/8/10/12 monsters tearing about the ring and gp circuit - the hills were alive with the sound of petrol heads, and I loved it! We ate at the famous 'Piston Klause' restaurant that I gather is owned by Sabine Schmidt. If you ever go, order the steak. It comes out on a hot rock and you cook it yourself. They're not shy with the portions either - brilliant. Day 9 was 'ring day. Up at the crack of dawn to pick up our 'Stage 2' Suzuki Swift Sports (gutted, caged, R888s, bucket seats, harnesses, ohlins, decent pads and fluids, different zorst). The 'ring is nothing like what you see on your playstation/xbox at all. We all drove a couple of laps and considering our lack of ring experience, we weren't doing a bad job of annoying the odd 911 or M3 driver, though the ring-taxi M5s and one particular GTR driver were really shifting. I thought I was done for the day with two laps under my belt but Mr Audi suggested I take him for one last lap. It was drying out nicely and I was putting together a decent lap until the very last corner. A little too much speed, a little off-line, some unexpected dampness, an off-camber corner before the start/finish straight and you can see where this is going... :-( Understeered wide on the last corner at a fairly decent speed, hit the armco side-on, and pulled over somewhere while the marshalls inspected the damage to the track. Fortunately no damage to the armco and I was able to drive the car back to R4R, however there was significant damage to my wallet. The minimum excess on the car is €3500, so I had to cover the lot. Fortunately I've got the cash to cover this (just!), but let this be a lesson to you all! The other lesson is that you can argue the toss a bit - Mr M3 (my brother) managed to get about €300 knocked off to get us down to this price. Every little helps, I guess. After this it was basiaclly a long-slog back home through Holland, Belgium and France, through the E* and back home for about midnight. Brilliant trip, I'll be doing it again next year, although some driver training mods will be happening in the not too distant future - telling the Mrs I'd dropped £2k was even more painful than the bang its self!

Missed several updates, now we're at the 'ring. Ate a steak on a rock at Sabine Schmidt's Piston Klause restaurant. We pick up some rental cars tomorrow AM and have Ring Taxis booked too. Too scared to take my Zed on the ring, especially as the Yellow Stuff pads I have on it are too easily cooked (much smellyness on the mountain passes) and will need upgrading to something better. The autobahns are as good this year as they were last year, tho my clutch was struggling with heat soak on the faster (160ish) stretches so I'll need to look at that when I get back.

Update #2 A sleepless night of having the sh**s and we're now about 3hrs away from port and 8 hours behind schedule. Driving Day1's plans have been cut short and instead of 6-7hrs of b-roads, we're doing 4.5hrs of motorway instead, should get in to the hotel at around 2300hrs. Feeling very rough and running late isn't the best start to the trip, but then if everything went to plan, it'd be boring! Next update in a couple of days after we've taken in some of the Pyrenees.

Update #1 The Lotus got collected at about 2am, from Essex and the driver lives in Reading. Looks a beauty but it has had zero running in time. Alarm went off at 0440hrs after a night of having the sh**s. Not good. Got to Portsmouth ok, but the Ferry left an hour late. 3hrs in to the crossing and the ferry's engine has developed a 'technical problem'. Current ETA to fix is 9hrs, which puts our driving-day-1 plans in to dissaray as our 11am arrival in to port is now an 8pm arrival, followed by a 4-5hr drive...

I'm running a milltek cat back system + HFCs - sounds nice, 'oem+', and dead easy to install. Next day delivery from Road Runner Motorsport on ebay too.

You can have my y-pipe and centre pipe for free if you collect from Didcot. I've got two back boxes as well, but they both blow :-(

what volts do you get when; engine off? engine idling? full acceleration? You should have 12v with engine off, and about 14v with engine running. Sounds like an alternator problem to me at the moment.

Stelvio in the dry, how boring! We stayed in Trafoi (at the bottom) so we went down it at about 11pm at night - pitch black with the rain coming in sideways. We then went up again the following day at about 8am and it was covered in snow (in August!).

Cheers chaps. We did a lot of the famous passes last year so looking forward to adding to that tally this time round, and hopefully finding some less-famous ones in Spain too... 48hrs until we leave!

To wrap this up, Milltek Cat Back Stainless Steel exhaust bought from Roadrunner Motorsport for about £880, delivered next day and decent customer service on the phone. Working on my own, it took 4hrs to get tools out, jack it up, rip the old zorst off, have some tea, fit the new zorst, test drive it and tidy up. It's a nice bit of kit, dead easy to fit, the welds all look good, and it uses all the same hangers as the oem exhaust.. Couldn't be simpler. The noise is good and 'OEM+' probably is the best description for it. No drone when cruising, and just a little louder when under load. It actually sounds like a v6 now!

Cheers SteveM, I'll take a look tonight, always keen on cramming in more interesting routes.

Hah, Ekona, RickyZ, don't worry, both drivers are getting suitable amounts of pre-departure banter about their car decisions. The lotus re-spray happened a few weeks ago so the paint should be fully hardened by now, but even so I think the paint will still get ruined and mechanically it's obviously a risk with the bedding in time being the drive from Essex to Reading just one day before departure! Top Gear rules are likely to be enforced if anybody causes too many problems en-route!

We go on Saturday! Can't wait... Wahooo! A quick update on things... My zorst has been causing problems so a new cat-back Milltek is now sitting in my garage - it arrived today and I plan on fitting it tonight. The Lotus, which got sent in for a new engine (Swap Rover for Honda V-Tec), new Gearbox, new suspension, new tyres, new exhaust, re-map, full re-spray etc.. isn't actually finished yet. It 'should' be ready on Friday (2 weeks late), but if it isn't then we're not sure what his plan B is yet... If it does make it though, it'll be pretty rapid! The M3 driver has just bought a supercharger kit which should see him at about 550BHP, but fortunately it won't be fitted until next year's trip so he'll have to make do with 360-ish BHP for now. (Phew!) The RX8 is now running a free-flowing zorst, with de-cat... pops and Bangs galore! Still got all the torque of a tired elastic band though

My garage is identical to that and I've got all sorts of crap spread out up there. Seems solid enough with 100kg of me strolling around on the boards too.

Hah - they were robbed! I got the same thing off ebay for 99p!!