Chesterfield

I did get a loaner - its one of the sales guys Ibiza's. Which is quite handy, as the only other car they have for that guy is a pre registered car that they want to keep the miles down on. So the only way they can acheive that is by getting mine sorted sharpish, so they can have this one back. Im not holding out hope that they find anything any time soon, electrical faults are usually a pig from what limited experience I have. So finding the cause of whats caused several circuits and devices to all go at once is not going to be straight forward. Strange you should mention replacement car Tim, my friends also had an Altea, it arrived with the engine check light on, and after a week they couldnt resolve it - so they ended up having a new car ordered.

That would be me dragging myself out of the kart oh and before we got the hang of one person holding the kart while the other two switched places, I may have inadvertantly stood on the accelerator and planted myself straight back in the seat again

Well, as predicted, Ill not be geting my Altea FR back any time soon. Last night on the way over to karting, it decided to blow a few fuses and render a few other electrical systems useless. Took it to the dealership this morning, and advised what the issue was. Havent heard peep all day, so I call now and get told the story. "we replaced the blown fuses, and after 5 minutes the central door locking fuse blew again". "So we replaced it again, and it did it again". "it may be that there is an underlying problem that needs further investigating". NO SH*T SHERLOCK. At least three seperate cicuits went, central locking, rear windows, and cigarette lighter - 2 30 amp circuits and a 20 amp. Then the onboard diagnostics decides the drivers door is open all the time and the electric mirrors pack in too. Im no auto electrician, but I think given that description, even I would predict there was an underlying problem and it wasnt just a fluke that several circuits broke at the same time. Im guessing they spent 10 minutes replaceing the fuses, (twice ) then spent the rest of the day scratching their arses. Anyone taking bets on how long it takes to resolve - and how many new dents and scratches Ill have on it when I get it back?

Anyone any experience of this? It just appears that the majority of delivery companies in the UK are utter crap. In my experience while the shipping is great on the US side, it just falls to bits when it gets to the UK. My parts shipped on the 13th, arrived JFK 14th, landed at London Heathrow on the 15th. Then promptly became lost. I called the place in Hethrow after a few days, they eventually found them in Leeds. So the went past me from Heathrow to Leeds. Called Leeds, they found them and eventually got the duty ammount for me, which I promptly paid. Said they would be delivered Thursday (yesterday). Never arrived. Called today and they confirmed that they should have been delivered Thursday, so dont know why I havent got them - then they inform me that they had subcontracted the deliveries out the last few days, so perhaps thats why they havent arrived. They said they would call me back to advise... Still waiting for that call. God knows what condition these bits will be in when they arrive, if they ever do, but to say Im a little unimpressed with the UK side of the delivery would be an understatement. Dry EDIT: Called them as I decided waiting for them to call me would be somewhat a waste of time. It appears as though the delivery guy was given instructions of what Items to load onto the van for delivery Thursday, he forgot to put them on the van. Quite why nobody picked this up until I chased them is another story. Apparently they will now be here Tuesday. Its not as if Im fitting them straight away, its just a little anoying when goods can travel the best part of 6000 miles in three days, and then take another 14 to do 130 miles up the M1.

I think he meant second best lap on a team basis. Just noted that my brothers fastest lap was actually quicker than mine too - bummer.

Im guessing its had a little bit more work done than that - I may be wrong, but I highly doubt its got anything resembling a VQ35 under there

Ive given it a quick go, its pretty good. The physics arent as good as Forza, but the graphics are on a par if not better in my opinion. The dirt racing looks mighty good, and probably just as good as that dirt racing game on the PS3.

Fixed it for ya. Note lap 47 for kart 4 Thats when I went ploughing.

Its not my decision to make, we are all equal on the team. We are discussing options though so should be able to advise soon.

No not really, there were some good karters but I didnt see any punches thrown when people were spun off etc.

Our team finished 5th out of 9, Jonathans team finished first. I think our teams lack of success can be partly blamed on my pork pie intake some years ago, and my experiment with the karts off road capabilities at one point during the race

Just a quick note to say thanks a bunch for the invite Jonathan. Tracy, my brother and myself had a cracking time. Very well organised and a cracking track too. Im still kicking myself that I didnt take the new camera though. Sorry about mine and my brothers lap times Beavis, we had to give yo some work to do! After reviewing the lap times for all cars over all laps, my claim to fame is the longest lap time of the entire event, even longer than most of the driver change/pitt laps! It was however the most spectacular "off" of the evening though I think. Full speed into turn 1 For a brief moment I did have visions of dissapearing over the bank. Still, it gave them an excuse to use the radio controled function to slow all the cars on the track down. We must do it again

Its true. Maybe they arent all going home to wash their pants, but there will be a number returning home that day from an extended holiday.

On those figures, that requires about 450 paying members. Even with all the good will in the world and a single site for the 350Z, I doubt a 350z specific site would ever acheive that number of paying members. Also not to put too finer point on it, as the 350Z starts to become owned by those who have never paid for access to a forum, ie. local cruise sites etc, then the number ow owners willing to fork out a membership fee for a club will continue to dwindle. Thats where the Z club is different, as it caters for all Z's, including marques that are perhaps owned by a generation that is more used to the aspect of paying car clubs, and as it caters for all models of Z car, it covers all bases. As various Z car models age, they fall away from "niche" markets and straight into the "Z club" audience. Having seen a copy of the magazine, there is a great deal of effort that goes into it. Its also great that they involve other clubs allowing meets to be shared, cross posting in order to gain as many Z owners at the venues as possible. Brilliant for everyone and a real owner focused attitude. There is no reason why we cannot look to produce an online magazine or newsletter, people can write articles, and if there is a budding publisher in our midst, they could put it together and it can be hosted for members to view each quarter.

The big brake kit on the GM car in the link I posted looks excellent behind the wheels. The disk fills the rim perfectly.

Post tidied.

The black ones need to be more powerful in order to shift the extra weight in bolt on parts that the owners put on to try and get half the attention a yellow one does.

Yeah the meta tags on the gallery pages instruct no following by robots.

Currently on the hosting side everything is ok. Although we have had issues in the past (frantically looking for wood to touch) we seem to be past those. The issue that we may come across, is that due to the site being hosted in the US, if we do require assistance, the time difference often hinders progress on an faults, also scheduled mainainance of the server is planned around US time zones, so while they schedule work for 1-am to 3am, that often hits us early to mid morning. Though as I say, things appear to be fine at the moment. Because of how busy the site is becoming, we do require a LOT of active conections to an SQL database in order for the site to function correctly. If Google spiders the site, these connections can rise dramatically, resulting in what appears to be an outage if the server is not configured to allow the number of connections the site requires. (this was a problem with the first host). Weare good for just under another year as far as hosting goes, as it has just been recently paid again, once we need to revisit this, or we outgrow the usage e are paying for, then we may need to consider other options, or pay for an extension/increase.

There will be lots of people taking a weeks holiday next week, using the bank holiday to form part of the week. They may well be returning on the Sunday to get the washing etc sorted and have a day at home before returning to work. I would predict higher than average traffic on that Sunday. May be wrong, but thats my guess.

Im helping the brother in law move on Saturday, but will be going down late afternoon early evening to stay over. Im not on any of the track time sessions, but thought Id turn up for the whole day non the less, get a few photos of you lot for the album, so big smiles all day!

Nah - choptop already has them, and Im about to get a kerbed alloy repaired. The missus needs to prove she isnt going to kerb any more before sticking anything like that on!

Steve, thanks for your comments. At present there is no way for members to donate to the running of the club. As you can appreciate, our whole ethos has been to remain 100% free for the members of the site. We have chosen that path in order for there to be no barriers to full interaction with every other owner on the site, and every event taking place on the site. Putting in place any kind of "voluntary contribution" option seems almost to be going against that primary objective above. Of course though, there will always be those (like yourself) that very generously want to give something to the club, and the idea has been discussed several times between all the team, though no clear way has ever come out of the discussions. There are other methods of funding the club being discussed - but I must stress that these are NOT taking place because we cant afford to keep it going in its current state. It is to improve what we already offer. We are not going anywhere, and we are NOT going to charge members - ever. What we can say is that any items we sell through the club (currently only stickers) we do make a small profit on (or very small in the case of small items), which all goes back into either the costs for the server alongside the money donated by the team, or purchasing more stickers. We will never, ever make a profit from members. If as we hope to in the near future we offer other items for sale, the same will apply. So perhaps the best way for members to contribute would be to purchase any items they like from the range we hope to offer, at least that way you get something tangible for your kind donations as well as supporting the community. Again, thanks for the comments Steve, its great to know that we are doing well enough to warrant such generosity. Another thing that we have discussed is that if we ever did accept donations, then the "accounts" would be publicly available to members, so they could see exactly where the money was going. Its a discussion we have been having for some time amongst the team, and please feel free to PM any of us with any input you feel could help.

I do Any particular hotel?