BobbyZ

I thought my Z had all the optional extras but it has never handled my meat... Now there's an upgrade I'd pay for.

How much does the sound deadening weigh? Just curious, because the car is obviously compromised (assuming not track only) if you take that out, so I wouldn't want to do it. The rest of the things you mention surely add up to about 20kg max. My point was (and is) that to lose 100kg, I think you'd have to remove / replace an awful lot of parts, and that means a very compromised car and / or huge expenditure.

You make it sound so easy...

Nah, I think the removal of the rev limiter on the DE sounds more fun

Should I bring the popcorn, guys?

I got quoted £402 the other week by Scott at Abbey.

Sounds like the sort of job that I convince myself I can do, and which I should definitely be able to do, but something always goes wrong and I end up throwing a tantrum.

I've certainly known lots of people who've fallen into the habit of a few drinks every evening, and been completely in denial that it's a problem (or even in denial about how much they're drinking).

I tend to go through periods of not boozing, and yeah it does feel good - I think a lot of people don't realise how dependent they are on it. I also agree about the pressure to drink, and it is pretty annoying. I guess because most social occasions centre around drinking, it's seen as antisocial to not drink.

In all seriousness, it's there to protect your engine. As Dan says, you need a lot of uprated parts before you can raise the rev limit. The mapping also wouldn't cater for higher engine speeds, so even if it stayed in one piece you wouldn't get any more power.

Do it. I bet the power output at 10,000rpm is off the hook!

Chris, have you still got the black tuner nuts going?

Is it possible to get these for a facelift model?

Never seen it before he got off bloody lightly, that's for sure!

On a slightly more serious note than my last post, I actually think that the spread of torque is very good on my HR. It's true that the gearing is on the long side, but I've never felt that the engine feels overcome by it. Of course, if you've come from a fast turbo (which I seem to remember you have) then you won't get the same punch as the turbo kicks in, and it's also true that I'd welcome more power across the whole rev range, but that's life...

Buy a diesel

I'm not sure why you included Radcliffe in that list - there's a good reason why people question her after the whole Sunday Times affair. British people do seem to have a strong tendency to believe in British sporting heroes unquestioningly though (not sure if it's the same in other countries).

I agree with most of what you said - I don't think it is counter to my point that governments have a good idea of what goes on. Re speculation, I used the example of Lance Armstrong because there was certainly enough evidence out there: http://nyvelocity.com/articles/interviews/michael-ashenden/

Well for example in the case of Lance Armstrong, it was well known that he doped before the official investigation ever started. Cycling in general was well known to be dirty. Either the politicians, law enforcement organisations etc. were blind or they didn't care, otherwise something would have been done about it. It's only when someone exposes a scandal that everyone acts like it's a huge deal, as is the case here. I don't believe it's any different with other sports then cycling - I just don't buy that none of the ruling elite have any clue what goes on in professional sports. They're just not motivated to clean it up.

I would say the most governments are aware of what goes on to an extent at least, but turn a blind eye because sport is good for the economy.

True, but there's also the conflict of interest in governing bodies policing their own sports to consider.

Not exactly... if it was left to the governing bodies, almost everyone would stay undetected (or at least unpunished). It takes things like investigative journalism or a whistleblower to uncover things like this, as happened with Lance Armstrong. It nearly happened recently with Paula Radcliffe too, except her and the IAAF wriggled their way out of a proper investigation (as Armstrong did numerous times).

or there's another reason... Hence the wink

Given that she gave the rest of the field a bit of a spanking (including Chernova in 3rd), I guess it should be safe to assume that the drugs don't actually work

What LRF4N said.