G1en

Right then, after the zed today binned me into the gravel and tyre wall for the second time i need to get to bottom of why its happening. When i slammed on the brakes at around 65mph (on rev limiter in 2nd) the abs light and car skidding light came on and the brakes lock up sending me straight on to certain death (ish) Traction control is always off as its during hillclimbing/sprints. Any ideas whats happening. When i restart the car all lights come on (TC, ABS, Skid car (SC?) and stay on then go off when i pull away.

Welcome along

Did you find out the what the issue is?

I too have a red neck and face. The sun literally came out for 5 minutes? great turnout by us again. Big thanks to everyone involved I must have missed the warning sign at the entrance “caution firing range” as i kept hearing gun shots all day???

Japfest Silverstone & Prep Back home from another great Japfest day and first of all a big thank you to Andy and everyone involved in organising. Got to chat to lots of members as well as having a look round the usual mix of japans finest motoring icons. Sadly did not get the chance to watch any of the drifting as i stopped to help someone from the stand in a 350 who had broken down mid track session. Unfortunately we could not get him back running so had to call the AA. Hopefully he got home at a reasonable hour. I did get a poster signed by Bizz though (350 v8 drifter) for Masons bedroom, he might be 18 months old but never too young to start his petrolhead adventure. Anyways, rewind a week and I wanted to get the Zed looking its best for Japfest so booked in with the boss aka wife to let me have 4 hrs last Saturday and 4hrs yesterday to give the car some much needed TLC. If only I knew someone who sold detailing stuff locally.... but alas, i dont so had to take the strenuous 8mt walk to my wax and shine store aka utility room and raid that (again) I will quickly run through the process and products used. It was by no means a professional job but I am happy with the overall result from the time invested and it fit in well with all the other zeds on the stand today! Day 1: step 1 - spray wheels with carchem citrus degreaser diluted approx 1:10 and agitate with hogs hair brush including barrels of alloys then rinse. Wheels have already been coated in gtechniq C5 which makes cleaning much quicker and easy. Step 2 - using one of scotches finest brillo pads and some more citrus cleaner, scrub into tyres. Take note with this, if you get a “brown” lather then you will need to rinse and repeat until the suds are the normal white and most of the oils and dirt have been worked from the sidewalls. I only needed one pass as the tyres were relatively clean and had been previously coated. Step 3 - Fallout remover. You may think the wheels are now clean as i did but always remember to decontaminate them as you will be suprised how much fallout can build up. As i mainly use the car in anger now and the brakes take some abuse, i sprayed carchem revolt onto the wheels and left for a few minutes which resulted in this: Step 4 - Pre Rinse of car and blast off any chunks of dirt and get into the arches and give the underside a blast best as possible with karcher k4 i use. Step 5 - Snow Foam. I mixed some more citrus cleaner in with some dedicated carchem snowfoam into the lance as it would help both clean the car and strip it of previously applied wax/sealants. Then rinsed. Step 6 - 2 Bucket Wash. I used some random shampoo i had in the garage as i didn't need it to do anything other than lubricate for the wash mitt and it did have a lovely orange sent. Yes i know i need some grit guards, might even start selling them soon... Step 7 - Claying. As i had clayed the car twice in the previous 12 months i opted this time for Bilt Hambers “soft” clay which turned out to be a good choice as it was very cold and even the soft stuff took some working to make it plyable with the added benefit of not being too aggressive on the paintwork. Lubricated with some very watered down carchem clay lubricant. (You only actually need water with BH clays) but again the bubblegum scented clay lube won me over. Step 8 - DA Polisher. Then out came the DA for a one step polish on the Zed using a Lake Country Orange light cutting pad and Scholl S17 compound which is a good all rounder to give a moderate amount of cut and nice finish. If i had more time i would have used the S3 for the couple of deep marks and the S40 for the finishing but time is not my friend at this stage of my life so the one pass it had to be. One thing you can save time on when “correcting” paint is you dont have to buff off any claying residue as such, the polish sorts all that out: The paint came up quite well taking into account the polish is 3 years old and i was rushing. Reflection shot: So day one finished and car looking good: Day 2 step 9 - Clean Glass. Quick spray with carchem clarity glass cleaner and gtechniq mf5 glass cloth, then buffed with MF1 microfibre. Step 10 - Panel Wipe. Sprayed onto microfibres then every panel wiped so to remove all polishing residues and any other contaminants. Its at this stage you find out how good/bad your paintwork actually is. I still had minor marks and light scratches in a couple of spots but it was too late to start worrying now and overall i would say it was sitting at 7/10 Step 11 - Ceramic Coating. Now to do it “properly” you would do a base layer in one form of ceramic for scratch protection and a top layer in a different product for gloss/hydrophobicity. I did not have the time or patience for both so I used the gtechniq Exo V4 top coat which you can use on its own and gtechniq say do 2 coats if using it as a stand alone product, so i did, and it still has some anti swirl protection properties with it, just not as much as using a dedicated base layer ceramic. Another thing to note with these products is the car has to be dry when applying and kept dry for around 10-12 hours after. I checked apple weather which said 0% chance of rain yesterday, I then checked my eyes and the sky which was telling me something different. I decided to play it safe and move into the garage which had 3 drawbacks. I only had around a foot of space all way round the car, the lighting isnt the best and due to drawback 1 it meant i had to manipulate my body into positions it didnt want to go so my back and neck is killing me. My workspace below: Never the less, off we go and 10 mins after starting their is hailstones coming down outside, thank the lord of my eyeballs i ignored the iphone weather forecast. 1st coat done and this is the bottle: I had used slightly more than half but coat 2 goes on much faster as your not concentrating on making sure you get every last spot so it worked out i had the exact right amount in the 30ml bottle. Leave to fully cure overnight. Step 12 - Exhaust. Used some metal polish and a foam pad to clean up the back box and exhaust tips, something many people overlook as its mainly hidden beneath the car but it came up really well. Step 13 - Tyre Dressing. Some gtechniq T1 tyres dressing was applied with a sponge applicator then buffed with a microfibre. Gtechniq say to use one coat for a satin finish or 2 coates for a glossy wet look finish. Step 14 - turn up at a show and admire your own and everyone else's hard work and pride of joys.

I will meet you guys at LFE coming down from Leeds.

Welcome along

Welcome along

https://youtu.be/ITkapLKeZTU try this bud

welcome along. I have same car, agree with above, you can see the swirls in the pics, the black paint is nigh on impossible to stay scratch/swirl free but I gave mine a good going over with the DA to get rid of 95% of the marks then you can protect it with a wax/sealant or proper coating if you have time/money/facilities.

Quick Update: Just finished first Harewood hillclimb event of the season, finishing 5th from 23 entered in Class 1C. It was a mixed bag of feelings, I knew when I rocked up at 7am to frost it was not going to be quick times on the Nankangs and things never warmed up as the day went on. My starts as per usual were abysmal BUT some of the other sectors despite the ice cold tyres were relatively quick and I even managed a PB in one sector on the final run. Each run had problems of some capacity though meaning my quickest time of 66.6 was actually 4 tenths slower than my best on the practice day the previous month in very similar conditions. Never the less as I said, they were some positives to take away as well as the frustration. One was the fact that the car is now feels very neutral mid corner and much of the understeer has disappear with the front camber being increase to almost -3 BUT the rear tweaking from -2 to -1 has not helped the getaways at all and I half filled the fuel tank today to try and get more weight over the rear but to no avail. I just think the Zed really needs warm tyres and warm track temps to start quick as the weight distribution is not quite there or my technique (to which I have tried many ) is S***e. Being best part of a second down within 50 yards is asking a lot to make up! If you have never been to a sprint/hillclimb event, get yourself down, if you don't want to risk the car, there is plenty of action to see and every type of car you can imagine from the relatively common clio sport to the exotic supercars and single seaters. Below is just a selection of cars I was competing against today. Its modified production class so basically road legal production cars with road legal tyres (from a set list) and an MOT but some modifications are allowed (that's a hot topic it seems at the minute as the Blue Book of regs is very grey in lots of areas) The Wax and Shine Machine: The Beautiful Porsche 911 GT3 RS next me An Aston Martin V8 Vantage: An old school Porsche 911: A Turbo Volvo 940: An the one that always seems to get the most attention, the 40 year old Talbot Sunbeam (still mixing it with the big boys) Video below shows my best run of the day although almost losing it at what is called Orchard and subsequently sliding wide onto the grass meant I finished half a second behind the said Talbot above and narrowly missed out on a top 4 prize, anyway, onwards and upwards to the next events. Just booked Japfest last week as well before the cut-off so will see many of you there, can't say my Zed will be reaching for anyones attention after the bumps and scrapes its had but I will do my best to try and at least make it look like I sell detailing stuff!

Fiat punto 3rd gen 2005-2018

I can’t process infinity. Can we work on the assumption the universe is flat?

Maybe, or it maybe just half the thickness of the “skin” of the universe in comparative terms.

Ah but if you expanded the Earth to the size of the universe, that 12 mile hole would be the distance from Earth to Jupiter. * may or may not be factually correct?

Excellent job, love it

I will be there, see you tomorrow

Can someone add me to the list please

Welcome

Welcome along, think the wings are same for all models.

Welcome along

Welcome along

Welcome along. Rob has organised a meet and drive for start of April if of interest. Look in local meets north west section.

I get that the premium brands will have something cutting edge but at 80k its out of reach for 90% (conservative estimate) of the population and if your saying that will then lose half its value in a few years (like lots of other cars i agree) then it makes it even less of a proposition. Yes they can do 0-60 in 5 seconds but most weigh 2 tons plus so will be binned into a hedge at the first corner when the over exuberant owner with little skill (again 90%) shows it off on a country lane. And if your saying we are about as good as we can get battery wise and 300 miles wont be improved upon much then its still half of most business deisels as i bet most company car drivers will charge in work time and at work cost rather than at home resulting in more initial cost for the company and lost work time. I have nothing against EVs as a whole and one day in the not too distant future i will have one but your crusade @gangzoom to force them onto everyone winds some people up. Just take the blinkers off your electric high horse and try to see things from the jockeys point of view. You know, the small insignificant guy that rides a real horse with all the pros and cons it brings. Lots of us would just rather drive something we can feel* and hear* rather than an iphone with wheels. To see the opposite point I DO accept that many like to have the latest iphone and that ultimately it looks like the EV will prevail and succeed. What the car makers need to do is give the masses a great choice and value and let them decide as one thing we know from the past and Brexit, people hate being told what to do.

Cant say I pay much attention, just when i was searching for a cheap daily that had to be less than 5 year old for work, (and cheap) i googled fastest depreciating cars and the leaf was on every list (along with various Fiats and the pug 308/508) I got a 15 plate 308 for under 6k with 70k miles (20k list price new) A quick autotrader search shows you can get 15 plate leafs (with much much lower milage) for under 10k and i think they had a 25k list price new, still a big hit in the wallet for anyone im sure you will agree. My concern is that EV cars will replicate the mobile phone recent era. So honda/ford/vw whoever launch a 100 mile range car then 2/3 years later update it with a 200 mile version with better tech and options for not much more (due to battery tech and scale of production) which sees the previous generation prices plummit and no one wants them. Then another 2 years down line and its now a 400 mile range and self driving meaning the previous gen 2 model suffers the same fate and so on until it gets to a point like now with iphones whereas the “new” model released is only marginally better than the last and there is not as much demand or people wont pay the extra so keeping used prices high. It then finds a level cycle like we have had with combustion cars for so long until the next phase comes along, like flying cars, and the process starts again.