G1en

Thats because you have an A and D in your name, very high risk as they also appear in the word “accident”

Is there a universal list of what classes as a modification?

I am guessing many cars on the road have non oem wheels but probably only a small percentage have actually declared them. Its seems daft that non standard wheels makes you potentially more of a risk but your allowed to put budget ditchfinder linglong tyres on no problem.

likewise, the same with car stereos and the list goes on.

Do stickers/graphics class as a mod and effect the premium? (God i hope not)

Also why does my premium go up (with current insurer) with mods but they will only replace with oem parts, surely if someone is paying a premium they should expect to get the premium part replaced?

Next Vid, no action just me ranting at the clutch and RAC

@Coz@TORQEN ordered the torqen csc earlier today as having more clutch problems, can you send out asap please as its a race against time to get car sorted for this weekend. 
many thanks

Video 4 from Harewood Yesterday:

Episode 3 brings us right upto present. This is last weekends events at Loton Park Hillclimb.

Next Video I have put together in double quick time, yes I know when you watch it, there is no footage of me actually contact washing the car but it was done and a quick detailer used before final shots.

First update 2022 …

As i have just purchased a new PC and Go-pro I thought i would document my highs and lows throughout the season.

I have decided to enter the connaught speed championship this year alongside the regular harewood championship. The connaught events are all over the country so will be a great experience for me and a steep learning curve. 
 

This first video gives a brief introduction to sprinting/hillclimbing with footage from the recent practice day at harewood. 
 

Now as i have a full time job, life and 2 kids to try and not kill daily, All the footage will be one take, no prep and minimum editing on the pc, mainly because i don’t know what i am doing anyhow. So with that in mind, i make no apologies for taking 30 minutes of your life you will never get back, but in the lottery odds chances that you don’t mind the content then give it a follow as there will be semi regular updates every couple of weeks (if the car and myself make it through in one piece)

Cheers, just ordered the wilwood master and some more rbf fluid from you. Will get that done and see how it goes.

So today was practice day getting ready for sprint/hillclimb season. All was going well until i went to change down to second and it would not go into gear, lifted my left foot to try again and clutch was stuck to floor. My first thoughts were cooked fluid (again) but the fluid looks fine, last changed poss 18-24 months back but i do syphon out and replace the reservoir every couple of months. Only ever use motol RBF top spec stuff. 
after being towed to paddock and leaving car to cool down for 2 hours i could select gears when ignition was off and the clutch pedal had come back but i could not select any gear when i started the car. Left it another hour, same thing so stuck it in 1st with engine off, started car with clutch down and it bumped off, then i could select all gears again, drove it home fine. 
so i am trying to figure out the problem as i dont want it happening again, especially if im at an event miles away from home. 
i already have the uprated xtreme clutch and CSC kit, braided lines, and i have heat wrapped everything i can under the car as i have had this problem twice before, is it the master cylinder? as thats the only thing i havent replaced, or something else? The car was hot but it was only about 7 degrees external and i was only doing a second consecutive run which makes me think the fluid shouldn’t have been close to boiling. 
is there anything i can try before replacing parts or should i just get a master cylinder and new fluid and try that?

final point, reservoir stayed at maximum, no fluid loss, if anything it was slightly higher than max after clutch went to floor (which may mean master is gone) or just normal expansion at temp.

Bath time and track wheels and tyres on ready for season starting next week.

Really like that colour/livery, seats look superb as well. Sure you will enjoy it, i bet you were torn between that and a nissan leaf though. Tough decisions in life.

Main points are: every option is selectable/unselectable in the software so if you have just had the car mapped it will prob be the tuner has not selected it or deselected it by mistake. Second point is all the arc features only work when oil/engine is at a certain temperature to protect the car, so it wont work from cold or if too hot. 
If its worked before and your car is upto temp, not sure why it would just stop working, only thing i can think of is throttle position sensor might have gone faulty as you have to be at something like 95% throttle for it to work so if reading/voltage is slightly off that may be cause?

Could you use a fuel additive/ octane booster? You could probably pick some up locally at car parts stores.

This is a guess but my bet is its for wiring looms for LHD cars so not used on RHD models as they will run down drivers side. 

Wheels are back from the powder coaters. Another big thankyou to RAW wheels at York. Highly recommended and very reasonable priced. These cost me £54 wheel inc a repair in one of them. Here is a pic of one below. Gonna get them coated with Gtechniq C5 next week then will await MSA tyre list for next year before deciding what rubber to put on them. I think the colour is Ruby Red with a satin lacquer. There are tons of colours to choose from then you decide if you want matt/satin/gloss finish. I went with satin as thats what the previous gold finish was. Matt is too dull to fit in with the ibisu black paint. Gloss is too much bling as its not a show car so satin is a happy medium for me. 

I didn't realise it would post the Harewood pictures so this will be a text rich update.

To summerise June meetings onwards at Harewood it basically went something like damp, wet, wet, damp, cloudy, dry, dry so less than ideal for me and the Zed but there was the odd dry run thrown in where you kinda had one chance to set a good time and in the main, I managed it. so i will quickly run through my finishing positions:

06th June - 2nd (64.84)

03rd July - 4th (69.68)

07th August - 2nd (65.66)

08th August - 2nd (64.84)

29th August - 2nd (64.65)

18th Sept - 3rd (64.61)

19th Sept - 3rd (64.72)

I did do a 64.4 in practice on the 18th which was mighty frustrating as i realy thought i could better it and get into a holy grail 63 second run. I do thinks its do-able because of 2 points, 1- when i put my best sector times together i get a low 63, now i'm not blasee enough to think i'll get that but a tength slower in every sector still puts me at a high 63, and point 2, the car felt realy good, the best it ever has back in July/august when i made the few tweaks to the roll bars, camber, pads etc.. but i was understeering badly this weekend (18/19th) the track and tyres were hot and i was gunning it so i put this down to over exuberence but i was also hearing a slight knocking noise when turning, so as i was putting my newly refurbed winter wheels on, i checked the drop links, to my suprise (or not) both fronts were very loose, in fact the passenger side had 10mm of thread through the roll bar hole before the nut, now i don't know how they have come so loose but it certainly explains both the knocking and lack of cornering grip for the last few days, i would go as far to say, with 10mm of travel i bet the antiroll bar was almost non existent in functionality, the rear wasn't much better either, one side was tight the other loose, no wonder i was ploughing over marker posts and getting failed runs left, right and centre. But at least its all tightened back now and something i can keep an eye on in future. Its another win for the forum though as its a common problem reported on numerous threads.

So where did i finish in the Championship?, I hear you ask, well out of nearly 200 entrants, I achieved my goal of getting into the top 10, finishing in 6th spot with fellow 1C rival Terry a place behind me in 7th. Although never threatening the 1C record consistantly finishing in the 64 seconds earned enough points to keep me in the top 10, 7 rounds from 10 count so luckily the 2 low points from the monsoon days could be discounted. I was also (and Terry) greatly helped by the fact that the class below us 1B had a man possessed in a Honda s2000 literally breaking records with every run meaning the rest of the class were scoring less and less points (as its a countback points system from the class record) as our record is still to be broken, our points are consistant, if that makes any sense?? Unfortunately said possessed spirit is thinking of supercharging his S2000 and moving up into 1C which means I will have little hope of a top 10 finish next year so may have to try something else, I do love the Zed though and it doesnt miss a beat no matter what you throw at it. It seems to egg me on the more i push it.

What next? I have just dropped my  SSR wheels off at the powder coaters to be refurbed again, no spoilers though, i will keep you guessing and update later in year. When i bought the new pads from Demontweeks I also bought a full service kit which i will do before the MOT in November, I got new gearbox oil as it was last done when i bought the car 5 years ago, new diff oil as the kaaz diff has to have replaced every year, and new Fuchs engine oil and oil filter. I will need new tyres for the wheels as the extremes "may" be banned next year so may have to go back to the nankang AR1's but all the hillclimbing fraternity are holding their breath as the extremes are probably used by at least half the field now due to them being around half to a second quicker in most conditions. Do i boost the Zed? Do i buy another car and try a different class? Do i do a different or additional championship? will have to have a think, the Zed is going nowhere though, thats for sure. 

I would like to get to a couple of shows next year, this year, they have always coincided with racing and i have been reluctant as its not in the best of display stand caliber at the minute but i know most wouldn't be bothered by this and it will be great to see some fellow owners again. hopefully next year...

Its about time I updated this, if only for @Kieran O'Quick if no-one else.

So I will start by providing you all with a Rays refurb montage. The standard silver rays in conjunction with kerb rash, bubbling, corroding, scratches and all were not looking their best so sometime over the summer i had a couple of days off, or maybe it was the weekend or maybe i just told the wife to do one and i was going in the garage. (on reflection it defo was not the last one) I decided to give the wheels a DIY refurb. I had bought a cheap alloy wheel repair kit from Halfords because its a different type of filler for wheels apparently, one with metal bits in i'll have you know, and some E-Tech alloy spray paint & laquer off of E-Bay. I started by sanding down the alloys with 100 grit i think to attack the corroded and pitted areas which quickly turned into the whole wheel. I then scuffed over the faces with some finer grade stuff, lets go for 800 grit, might have been 400, I tend to rub my finger over it and "feel" for the right courseness, its one of my many particular sets of skills that i use when someone i know is in danger. Anyway moving on, this is what it looked like part way through:

I then, once i was happy i had a corrosion free, fairly smooth finish set about washing and decontaminating them. Maybe i should have done this first i hear you ask? But my thought process was if i'm sanding plenty of laquer and/or paint/primer off surely this gets rid of anything sat on top be it muck/iron/salt/ketchup/and even the orange powder from cheesy watsits that will stick to anything. So realy all the fallout remover was cleaning up was the face and spokes, but it still got rid of a decent amount:

Now i'm thinking what your thinking, that looks like before the sanding stage... Maybe it was, I honestly can't remember as its 2/3 months later, anyhow, it does prove I did both sand and decontaminate, If you do this to your own wheels, Ill let you decide what comes first. One thing I can catagorically state for certain is i put the paint on in the correct order, Primer first, then colour coat, then Laquer, I would stress to everyone it's imperitive you do them in that order! So at this stage i realised that I had no need for the £15 wheel filler as the small amounts of kerb rash sanded out and blended in with the rest of the rim on each wheel and only a perfectionist would tell close up. With that little win, I went onto the primer, again as this is certainly no tutorial but for the 3 people reading this who might want to try this at home, the primer was a special one that can be used on bare metal and alloy, can't remember the name and can't be arsed googleing it but its also sold at Halfords. Its just come to me, etch primer, so not that special but different to other primers obviously. Anyhow heres the aftershot of 2 coats of primer, I masked the tyres up as it would have been a chew to remove them. Another small win was the PS4 tyres have a nice bead/groove that you can tuck the masking tape into and still leave the full rim of the wheel showing for paint, Other tyres may have this, you will have to check with your current provider or subscription service to see if they offer this VIP feature. I hear Linglongs do also offer this feature as they are constantly heading into kerbs resulting in kerbrash and dents.

Onto the Main Paint, and I had 2 cans of satin Gold and 2 cans of Satin Laquer. I thought this would be enough for 4 wheels but it wasn't realy. It was enough for a light first coat and one full second coat but the barrells definately needed another coat, I focused on getting the faces presentable as obviously thats what you look at. (unless your a rear kind of guy, and i'm not knocking that, but you'll be dissapointed with these) joking aside, it does need another can for anybody else doing this but they still came up decent. Laquer was the same story, 2 cans did 2 coats but realy could have done with a third. This was how they looked at the end.

I then purchassed a bottle of the excellent C5 wheel armour and gave them a coat of that, left to cure for 2/3 months (not strictly nessacerry but I have only just fitted them to the car today for winter) so its had a while to solidify and hears how the car looks with them on, please with the result for the outlay of around £60 but it also show off the shocking offset of the standard wheels especially on the rear.

So Moving on... although this was also sometime over the summer so it could quite easily be moving backwards, I needed some new pads as the Carbonne Lorraines were coming to the end of their life. They had served me well over last couple of years, excellent stopping power but the big negative is massive amounts of dust/fallout that if not tackled straight after use can melt its way onto your wheels and i ended up scratching it off on several occasions. So what to go for, well as i mainly do sprints and spirited driving I didn't need a hardcore track pad but also needed something better than stock. So to much dissaproval i'm sure i went for a cheap option of EBC Yellowstuff Pads At around £110 for fronts and £80 for rears they are on a par with most "OEM type" options but promise that extra bite and temperature control of an occasional track pad. I have to say after a few months and hillclimbs using them they suit me perfectly. Time will tell how long they last but they're good from cold, little dust (compared to my CL6 pads) no squeaks and not overheated yet, although I don't do more than 4/5 heavy brakings in a row. low to medium brake pressure, I would say they are identical to the Carbonne Lorraines, its only when your planting your foot that they might lack the outright friction of a race pad and probably outright heat managment. 

I then decided with the wheels off and as it was summer (did we get a summer this year?) to stiffen up the anti-roll bars so I was on the softest setting on the Eibachs at both front and rear which is recommended for wet handling but as there was achance we might get a dry day or 2 during July & August I put the front to stiff and rear up a notch to medium. Very easy to do for anyone who hasn't done it before, all you need is a 14mm and 17mm spanner and your away. Actually thats incorrect, you need to have adjustable anti-roll bars and droplinks for a start, and other droplinks may need different size spanners and you need to jack up the front or rear (in the centre) so their is no preload on them, but apart from that its straight forward, pic below:

Next up the Harewood hillclimb report for second half of the season and final results

I hope your as excited to read it as i will be writing it, i know....... the tension.... its like waiting for the dentist to start his drill. kill me now...

Its the covid price. I have spoke to so many people recently that have had a car a couple of years and have just sold it for more than they paid (all manner of cars) that being said, does seem way OTT but like everything in life, its value is what someone is willing to pay for it. 

I have done a fair amount of geo setup on the zed. The factory caster is around 8deg, which is way over “most road cars” that run around 4. With my eibach adjustable camber arms (top arms) they allow for changing the caster by around 1 deg each way, i have had to reduce mine slightly to get back in spec. I struggle to think how changing top arms for others designed for a 350z can take 8deg off. I havent seen the moog ones but they will prob be handed. Are you sure they are on the correct side?

the other thing to check is toe, if you have a fair amount of toe out, it will make the car wonder off line (but does help turn in/cornering ) like you have experienced. I have never run toe out on rear so unsure if that would effect self centring even if front is ok. You really need to get a full geo/alignment done and see what the numbers are before second guessing. 

It will be the pumps that have gone. 2 seperate pumps for front/back washers that are next to each other connected to reservoir bottle on drivers side. Mine both packed in at same time, seems highly unlikely but others have had same thing. The headlight washers are operated by pump on opposite side and these hardly ever fail. Luckily you can get the pumps cheap. Blueprint ones are about £20 each, oem are around £40-50 i think. 
Got mine from clarke motorsport

Sorry, won’t be able to make it on 29th as i have a hillclimb event booked. Not had any correspondence yet though or ticket from organisers. 

I did for my 2008 uk zed and it still came up with this. Unfortunately for me i am after some cheap rear discs as my pads are eating through rear discs (branded aftermarket) like cake but they have not made the same error with rear discs so just passing this on for anyone in need of replacement front discs. As you say it may be too good to be true but as you can collect them buyers can always check the size when they pick up from store. 

Not sure Alex, when you click on fitment details it shows this

For anyone wanting some “oem type” front discs i think eurocarparts may have made a mistake or want rid of a load, they come up way cheaper than the other front/rear disc options, they are brembo fitment and with current discount code applied are just £42 pair. See screenshot below. Collect from your local store as well.