Stutopia

Welcome along.

Can’t make it, but BR is brilliant, enjoy!

A flat chest?

What a stunner, welcome along.

What’s the best thing about winter? Not the snow, nope, not even Christmas, yeah you guessed it, it’s the annual forum calendar. Which means this is the start of the annual calender photo hunt. In 2018 it’d be nice to keep the seasonal theme going, with the occasional autumnal snap or a snowy scene mixed in with the spring and summer sunshiiiiners. Last year’s Halloween number, up on your walls right now, is a cast iron classic seasonal example. To give everyone the best chance at getting an image in one of the calendars, we will take submissions straight away. The club calendar runs Feb to Feb so there's still time to shoot your winning image, all you got to do is get out there with your Zed and your camera. It goes without saying that we can't make this work without members photos, please submit your images, all you need to do is follow the rules below: All pictures must be landscape aspect ratio (ideally 6x4). Amateur pictures only, unless you are the professional photographer. No watermarks. High Resolution images only (usually at least a few MBs in size), this is imperative for printing. A maximum of four photos submitted per member. If you've only got one or two, that's fine too. Please don’t submit photos that have been featured in previous Calendars, these should be 2017 shots. Entries MUST meet the rules or face rejection. Winning photos will be chosen by the Team, there is no forum vote, this keeps it a nice surprise when you get to open the envelope after the inevitable Christmas hangover. There is no need to register your interest for buying calendars just yet, we'll post that up once details emerge, this is just to start submissions early and hopefully inspire you to get out and take some photos. Please PM me for my email address, so you can send me your Zed photos. If if you’d like to register your interest to buy a calendar, please check out https://www.350z-uk.com/topic/118891-club-calendar-2018-feeler-thread/ Thanks in advance. The Team.

I’d very much like to try and get something set up for us with you next year for more tuition days and possibly at a trackday too

Let us know how much you love the tyres, shame about the OEM wheels, they're rather smart.

I am fairly confident that I can say we had a superb day, mainly a day of spinning, cone battering, with an occasional drift in there too. Certainly no shortage of fun. I’m also a bit more respectful of the skills of the regular drifters, particularly anyone who can do it in a clockwise direction!

Nice write up Dan. I put some time on the CAT Drifting tuition day on these yesterday. Having previously enjoyed oversteering with them on the steering pad at Millbrook in heavy rain, I was impressed at how much more abuse I had to give them in the dry to break free. Much more aggressive inputs to oversteer and downright idiotic provocation to generate (several) full on spins. Feedback from the fans in the stand was that they’re quite chirpy at understeer.

Nice choice, might finally tame that back end

Nice work mate, looks OEM+ At least with the repainting you can do the scratches on the gear surround section at the same time, nice consistent finish all over.

I’m feeling Dr Leather wipes at the minute, they clean well and smell manly, but they’re more maintenance than repair. I’ve heard some retailers use shoe polish, but never braved it myself. If you want to really give it ago, there’s kits out there like https://www.furnitureclinic.co.uk/How_To_Restore_A_Leather_Car_Interior

Approved as it’s free.

Looks mint, nice install. Keep us posted.

I didn’t think there was a Nismo RS except the 380?

You’ve changed Andy, you won’t be happy when it’s all in one piece, nothing to work on

Glad it’s finally sorted for you mate. Shame you missed the big chance to get one in black!

When the paint shop did mine, he strongly suggested I go matt lacquer, he was dead right, even then it still reflected a bit off the windscreen in high sun.

What’s Glaco and do you have any pictures doing whatever it does? PS - don’t forget to get right into the wheel arches inner ‘lip’ if you’re going deep on this, they hold mud for fun.

Do we have any members near to Gary who can do an intervention on this?!?

After giving the bonnet a full third stage (105 on a polishing pad) of a projected 4 stages, I was hoping the dull 3000 grit sanding marks would transform into a gloss surface, ready for a final 4th stage of Menz SF on a finessing pad to make a mirror surface. Well, you know what they say about best laid plans... Stage 3 left me with some nice gloss (as hoped for) and some rather unsavoury deep scratches (not hoped for). Many of these deep scratches I know weren't there before I started, they came during the 1200 grit hand sanding stage. Somewhat disappointed, but not disheartened (who gets it right first time?) I decided to isolate these and have another go at them. So I taped up and went in again with the 1200 grit by hand, leaving me a nice dull square. I'd chucked out the first 3000 grit sanding pad, having ripped it on a edge, so I had to do some surgery on my remaining one. Making it more or less fit the interface pad. Before (1200) on the left and after (3000) on the right. Since playing with the 3000 grit pads last time I'd read that when using them on a sander a typical speed might be 1200rpm, which I'e been way over, so this time I slowed it down and reduced the pressure. This worked better. It goes without saying that it's night and day between the two, the strip light can be clearly seen on the right but is lost on the left. It's amazing how the paint can be brought back from this kind of damage, not once, but twice. I'd love to have had a Paint Depth Gauge to know how much was coming off at each stage. Sadly, after moving on to one pass at stage 3, the deep scratches will still present. You can clearly see below the well defined corner where the masking was for the hand sanding. I could have gone back to the 3000 grit for more goes, but I wanted to see what the 105 could do if pushed. After another few passes with 105 Here you can see what happens if you get a bit impatient and lean on the DA with everything you've got, a truckload of dusting Another round, getting better. Now we're getting somewhere, Round 4 - at this rate I'l be looking for a decision on points, not the knockout I'd hoped for. The MF towel shows where the edge of the masked area was before, it's no longer visible to the camera. Initially I'd planned to do a full 4th stage on the whole bonnet with Mens SF and a finessing pad, but looking at the chunks of missing paint and dents and deep scratches, there seemed little point (I now wish I'd got a bonnet in better shape). Instead I tried to find a small section which was all paint and no chips, to see what could be done with a focused effort. I ended up with this tiny section. I could have taken this approach right from the start, working a small section to death, but I wanted to try many products side my side for comparison and I wanted the most amount of time with the DA to get used to it's weight, movement and handling over ridges and panel curves. This meant that by the end of my experimenting, (15 hours or so in total) I was concentrating on the paint and not so much on the DA itself. After stage 4, I finally got to what I was hoping for, that nice mirror finish that black paint has lurking under the surface. This represents the last of the work I can (be bothered) to do to this panel, there's no point taking it any further, it's a waste of product and time. My next go will be on a relative/friends shed, or another scrap panel, but I'll be careful to get one with fully intact paint - not blemish free, but not with gouges either. This bonnet cost me a cool tenner, which is less than the bottle of 105 What have I learnt? If you want to learn, when someone experienced tells you to get a scrap panel to play with - this is excellent advice, do it. When you get told that only a total banana can do damage with a DA, it's true, but it's also nice to know first hand just how over the top aggressive you can be, see above. Hand sanding didn't really work for me, it's impossible for me to be consistent with it - I'd want 1500 grit discs and a dedicated sander to do it again. Megs 105 is very impressive, it can really shift defects. Dust means too fast or too much pressure. Hand speed is apparently more important than the amount of downward force I can apply. Slow passes can really mow down peaks. So far, I like oily polishes (Menz), they can be worked forever. Less product is more product (excluding pad priming). Buy more microfibre towels. Anyone who can get black paint close to 100% defect free deserves respect!

That sounds puuuurrrrrrrrrfect for a big cat.

Excuse my ignorance, but I thought the E Type had a fan shaped exhaust?

I do like a 70 in proper black, gorgeous.

Not sure about the colour...