Commander

Nothing too extravagant - breakfast in bed and the whole down on one knee bit. Fortunately she said yes so as we both had the day off work, I've whisked her away in the Z to Bath for a night in a hotel with pre-ordered champagne, flowers and chocolates waiting for us.

Well chuffed!

https://www.youtube....h?v=0KM4y_JsvPc

Oops!

Scratch that - just spec'd one up at £36k - bargain!

So much want!

How much we talking for one of these?

32! Jesus... lol Cheers Steel Lynx

What is setting out?!

BOC will rent you a large bottle of CO2 for around £8 a month I believe, refill charge isn't much either.

 

Don't even need to rent on a contract now

 

I used to do that but now you pay a deposit on a bottle keep it as long as you want, get it refilled when you want and they give you the deposit back when you return the bottle

 

Sweet! URL?

Forget that - found a BOC outlet down the road from me.

BOC will rent you a large bottle of CO2 for around £8 a month I believe, refill charge isn't much either.

 

Don't even need to rent on a contract now

 

I used to do that but now you pay a deposit on a bottle keep it as long as you want, get it refilled when you want and they give you the deposit back when you return the bottle

Sweet! URL?

Abingdon / Reading / Oxford.. maybe i'm looking in the wrong places, but nothing's jumped out at me yet

Cheers chaps, plenty to be going at here!

Keep practising and go on a college evening course

I have already looked in to this and there aren't any not unless I have 6 weeks spare and want to learn to stick weld an oil rig or something daft...

Hello,

i am a maintenance engineer and do loads of welding, MIG, TIG ,ARC and once in a blue moon gas.

 

Are you definitely using gasless mig wire?

Looks like a gas mig with no gas on that's all.

As gasless MIIGs rely on flux in the wire to keep out the oxygen, rather than a separate gas shroud,used in gas MIGs, it maybe that you have the wrong wire.

 

With thin stuff like car body work, you want very low amps, and try spot tacking and fill in between to minimise distortion.

 

If your welder will take gas as well, it's better to use gas, an Argon/CO2 mix is best such as Cougar 5

It is better at keeping out the oxygen and also cools the weld

 

Setting the MIG is 60% of the battle, 20% practise, 20% ability

If you know someone who can weld ask them to come and show you a few things

 

Other than that, College is a great idea, good old You tube for tips

As already said slight weave, weld away from yourself as you can see where you are going, a decent mask also helps especially as you get a bit older and your eyesight aint what it used to be!

Rust is an insulator so clean as much off before you start. It'll burn off, but can be hard to strike

 

Well ventilated area as there are some nasty things in stainless and galvanised coatings especially. Galv also spits like hell

Cover your arms and don't wear a v neck t shirt because you'll get terrible sun burn on exposed skin and V neck T shirts are for girls, not blokes!

 

I tend to hold the end of a nod down mask as I was brought up on hand helds and it steadies my hand, but whatever feels comfortable

I have a guy who works for me uses both hands on the torch, works for him

I also like plenty of background light

 

Practise with different wire feeds and currents and metal thicknesses, the more practise the better you'll get, it's not rocket science, just touchy feely

The thinner the metal the quicker you need to move the torch as well

Start on thick stuff and work your way down as you get the hang of it

After a few weeks you'll be welding Kit Kat wrappers back together!

Once you can join two bits of soggy bog paper upside down, you've cracked it

 

Ideally you want to blend the two pieces of metal together, the wire should just replace the vaporised metal, not stick it together

You want good penetration (Don't we all), so you want to see the weld just coming through the back

If you can get the pieces flat or an inverted V, that makes things easier, up welding and upside down welding is much harder.

 

Keep your tips clean(Oooooh Matron) and replace regularly, the right size for your wire.

Keep your wire dry and rust free too if it's kept in a shed or garage

 

There are some good cheap MIGs out there now, there's no reason why you can't get some ok results at home

As with most things the more bucks you have the better the bit of kit you'll get

500 notes buys an alright TIG for home use or a great MIG.

TIGS are the boys on body work, but a cheap MIG is an ok start and you will be able to get it to work for you

Forget ally welding, you'll get nowhere with a cheap MIG and that stuff

I'm using some SIP Flux Cored 0.8mm wire I picked up from Halfords and with the polarity reversed on my MIG for gasless welding. The welder will take gas, but I'm too tight to buy some - especially as those little disposable bottles seem quite expensive and the last one I had was spent in about a minute... Maybe I need a better regulator or something - any idea what sort of gas flow rate, pressure it's supposed to use? :-/ I've got some plain 0.8mm mild steel wire too, but it just seems to make big mounds on top of the metal rather than penetrating in to it so I've set that aside to practise on another time.

For these thin bits I'm running it at really low-power and slow feed rates. I was playing around with the settings to see what's what (cos I really do have no experience!) and it seems pretty sensitive really - fiddle around too much and all sorts of stuff goes wrong - loads of splatter, arc seems to go on/off really fast, blow through, weld piles up on top, etc... I guess it's just experience, so hopefully I'll get there with more practise time... plenty of scrap metal in my garage to be going at!

That bit of welding above was done horizontally and vertically - fancied a challenge horizontal welding was certainly the easier of the two. I've got an autodimming mask which seems ok and I use both hands on the handle of the welder - seems more stable to me.

Welding Kit kat wrappers? You're showing your age - they're plastic these days!

I'm not getting in to Ally welding with the MIG, just steel for now...

I bought a Clarke 90 gasless mig welder a few years ago and aside from welding up a trolley for it from 3.5mm angle iron, I've not used it.

I've got aspirations of fixing up an old car of some type (it's early days!) so figure I should sort my welding skills out... Here's my very first effort on some 0.5mm steel that I cut up and tried to weld back together. Blew through it a few times, some I was able to fix, others I made worse! :-)

I know butt joints like this aren't the easiest place to start, but if anybody has any tips I'll gladly take them!

HR started in 2007 and has 'better' interior, engine, gearbox and exterior. Higher tax bracket. Fewer mods available compared to the DE.

(I have a HR.)

Wahey! Well done.

What job did you get then?

I'm not allowed to go - Sarah has decreed I have to go and be social

Mallory Park

Never been before, I didn't get enough sleep the night before (excited about the track day, worried about the car repairs I'd done), and slightly concerned that they'd sold 60 spaces for a track that's only 1.3miles long... It wasn't looking great if I'm honest.

You can forget about all of those worries though, the car was A1 and Mallory Park is brilliant! There are really only five corners and you use your brakes three times a lap, but every corner is different - usually some weird combination of camber change, multiple apexs, and/or changes in undulation. It's a bit like a mini Donnington really, and I will definitely be going back. The only weird thing about Mallory is that the paddock is inside the circuit and there's no real escape road - they just close the circuit every now and then for a minute so people can escape. Petrol on site was £1.55 / liter, quite expensive, but the food and cafe were decent enough, there's loads of places to spectate from and the staff were nice. Big thanks to the marshals, as ever.

Here are some gash notes I made about the track...

We did the standard '3 sighting laps and then in', before transferring to Open Pit. I got a little carried away on my first stint and did half a tank of petrol in one go, having just brimmed it at the on-site petrol station. I probably did about 35 laps in that one go based on the fuel usage, but I'm not really sure.

Here's a comparison of some laps on my second stint from Harry's lap timer - the best was a 56.4, but for most of those laps I was stuck behind either a 996 GT3 or one of the many Caterfields that were knocking around. I averaged about 58seconds a lap, which is plenty consistent enough for me.

I need to find about 6 seconds a lap if I want to be competitive in a race series, which should be fairly easily do-able, especially with practice, weight reduction, cage, springs, brakes, etc... and bigger balls!

After the changes I've made to the car since my last track day at Abingdon (air con out, more sound-proofing out, lighter wheels, upgraded tyres from 255 595RSRs to 265 Cups), I wanted to see what difference it all made.

Engine cooling is much improved, with the needle sticking nicely at the half way point regardless of how hot the weather got, how hard I drove it or how much traffic I was slip-streaming behind. Happy days!

Grip levels on the Cups are another level, and they just don't go off at all. Brilliant tyres. I went out on 23PSI cold and they did take a couple of laps to warm up, but bloody hell they're good. Perhaps a bit too good really, because the increased grip levels exposed the next problems on the car - springs and brakes. On the 595RSRs I can make the ABS kick in at around 85-ish mph if I really want to, but on the Cups it won't kick in until about 70 (no, I don't rely on ABS on track, it's just used for an easily understandable reference here). I'm already running brembo 6-pots with Pagid RS29 pads / RDB 600 fluid - there wasn't a hint of fade ever, I think I'm just asking too much of them now. There's not much more weight to get out of the car, so I need to see what my options are - grippier disk/pad combo, or upgrade calipers? Not sure... The other thing that the new tyres exposed was the springs... Trail braking in to the first big long right hander (and the second one after that as well actually), the front right compresses waaaay to much for my liking. Don't get me wrong, it was enough to get round the corner faster than the guy in the 996 GT3, but still, I can feel it happening and I can't help but wonder if stiffer springs would keep all four wheels better connected to the black stuff. This wasn't really a problem on the 595RSRs because they're not as grippy so the forces acting on the car are less.

All-in-all, a brilliant day out... watch this space for updates on brakes, springs, etc!

Where to start?...

At the last track day (Abingdon) I discovered / realised a few things, but the main one was cooling. The coolant temps were getting well above 100 so something needed to be done - air con removal. The air-con rad and fans sit in front of the engine radiator, so the hope was that by removing the air con bits, the car would stay cooler. So I ripped out all the air con and went for a test drive a few days before the Mallory Park track day was due. Fail. Balls! Smoke everywhere and coolant leaking in to the cab. After much faff, heater-matrix and fan assembly all removed. Time for another test drive. Fail. More balls, and the track day is now 'tomorrow'. Some time plugged in to the diagnostics, on google, and trying to think things through and I realise that when I put the intake plenum back on, I made a mistake and some jubilee clips were obstructing the throttle actuator. So, dismantle the whole intake assembly (which is a lot harder on an e46 m3 than a HR 350z), re-do all the clips, job's a good'un. Finished just after 10pm, the night before Mallory Park.

2210hrs and its FINALLY working. Will update on the details over the weekend - need a kip!

It's too hard to re-write everything, so coolant saga is here...

http://forums.m3cutters.co.uk/showthread.php?t=128545

I'm recruiting people at the moment and although I don't ask that question, I'd probably prefer Answer A. It shows that you've got some get-up-and-go about you and it lets me know I've got to pull my finger out if I want you.

If you gave me answer B, I'd probably think you were a bit lazy, unless you accompanied it with some BS about how you really want to work for my specific company above all others because of [some very good reasons, not just pay/holiday/etc]

The Cups are on, but, it's forecasting rain for Friday, so may end up putting the RSRs on and shoving the Cups in the boot... we'll see.

Need to fix the bugger first again anyway!

Car re-assembled and track day booked at Mallory for Friday.

I bought some Cups on Team Dynamic Pro Race 1.2 18x9 wheels and got them fitted too.

'Just' went out for a quick test drive and found a problem :-( Engine Coolant was leaking in to the cab and turning in to smoke which promptly filled te cab! Scary stuff. Got the car back home, but not fixed the fault yet. I think I must have dislodged the hot water feed to the heat exchanger which is located in the cab. Getting access to fix it is going to be a pain in the ass! :-/

Ah that's true - its changed from 'book early price' to 'spaces' but hasn't gone red yet, so that's a good sign.

 

how were you getting on with the 595RSRs so far? you must have done a few days on them now?

I've done two days on them now, 255/35/18 square, both dry days and both driven fairly hard I suppose... down to about 50% wear - rotating the wheels front-to-back helps keep the wear even, and mixing-up the clockwise / anti-clockwise tracks helps too (because you can't swap them left / right). I was hoping to have done a lot more but the ligaments in my knee are still a bit fubar after my accident. They provide fair levels of grip and consistency considering the price. They don't like being over-inflated though. I forgot to drop the pressures on my first outing and soon had to come in because they were losing grip... 39PSI after a cool down lap, oops! To manage this I started going out on 20psi cold and coming in at 34psi after a slow cool down lap - much better. I should probably have gone out even lower really - 18psi maybe - but they're really dodgy when the pressures are low and there's no temperature in them... you have to give them a few laps to warm up.

I'll keep an eye on it - Javelin usually flag up when there's less than 10 spaces left.

Not sure about the tyres though - I do still have the 595RSRs, but just picked up a set of 265 Cups as well Might bring both to compare..

I'm off to Mallory Park this Friday. Assuming my knee and the car come back in one piece, I'll be booking on to Donny... Hopefully see you down there!

Not sure about Berks, but my CNTs certainly have them already, and I don't have any problems.