Ekona

Can anyone lend me £8500 until my house sells, please?

Some will read this as showing off. Some will read this as car geekery in the extreme. Some will read this as a story of someone who dared to live their motoring dream. There’s nothing I can really do for the first two, but for the last group I hope you appreciate these words. I’ll get straight to the figures first, get them out of the way. Invoice cost of the car was £62K. Finance was £933pcm with a GFV of £27K. My first service was a major one at £1200. Second one was a minor at £867. I’ve done two sets of rear tyres at £700 for the pair fitted, and a pair of fronts at £550 fitted. Fuel is sitting at 28mpg average, but I’ve seen 40mpg on a light cruise and 8mpg on track. The exhaust and sport mode retrofit was £3K. Insurance is roughly £700 a year. VED is £500. I extended the warranty once, at a cost of £1100. The Center Gravity geo cost me £300. Oil changes are around £100 including OEM filter parts and 9L of oil. She uses roughly 1L of oil every couple of thousand miles, normal for a DFI 911 engine. I’ve done 25K miles, so that’s a fair amount of the black stuff. I’ve spent hundreds of pounds on detailing stuff, not least of all £120 for a tub of Swissvax Zuffenhousen wax. I’ve also had two condensers replaced, one in warranty and one outside at the cost of £630. Ignoring the cost of the car itself, overall its cost me about the same as my 350Z did. What I’ve saved on mods I’ve spent on maintenance. Worth every penny? Yes. I have no hesitation in saying that. Owning a 911 has totally changed what I now view sports car ownership to be. Coming from a history of convertibles, this was my first ever coupe, and I’d never really appreciated the difference to dynamics that having a roof can have. The fact it’s just so pretty from every angle doesn’t hurt at all. I’d always had cars you could mod, cars that pretty much always needed modifying to get them to where a keen driver would want them, as opposed to Joe Bloggs off the street. Not so with the 911: It’s stunning right out of the box. Sure, you could add various bits like rose-jointed suspension or high flow cats, but really the package is so incredibly well engineered that you’re gaining increases in single digit percentages. For some it’s worth it, for me I never felt the urge on this like I did with previous cars. In terms of the drive, I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: No-one gets into their first 911 and understands the handling straight away. For me, it took a year, and I only had the supreme confidence of being able to hang the back end out on the final drive four years later at Bedford. Yes, the chassis is wonderful, but it still feels unnatural with the pendulum effect going on. That’s such a boon when exiting corners though, as the ability to get the power down before you’ve touched the apex is sublime. Getting the nose to settle is a challenge, and it’s one that many people wouldn’t be happy with, but if you’re committed to improving your skills then the rewards are like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Better than an Elise? It’s bang up there, for me. The brand, the history, the racing. Again, you either love it or you don’t. For every typical Porsche driver who cares little for the engineering, there’s two that are so passionate about it that they have Stuttgart dripping from their veins. Fortunately I found fellow owners to be of the latter type, and being able to banter with like-minded individuals makes the ownership a special experience. Of course, being able to buy/beg/blag trips to corporate driving events and visits to factories and race meets is all part of the charm, as there’s just such a huge performance ethos throughout the brand you can’t help but get swept up in it. Going to the launches of the new models was always a great evening, with free nibbles and champagne, but in the company of race drivers (Josh Webster at the Macan launch) and race cars (a 935 and the LMP1 prototype) made it more than just a posh lads jolly. Truth is, I’m as much a Porsche fan as I am of other essentials, like air or water. Sadly my ownership has now ended, but my passion will never die. I will get another one at some point, purely because I have to. Not want, not need, but have to.

Purple car with red seats? And he's paying a premium for that awful colour combination? Each to their own.

PC on the desk was wrong. The RTA1988 clearly says: My highlighting.

Lucky man. Although, they probably wouldn't have been able to find you guilty: As long as the insurer can confirm that cover was in place for that vehicle (and it's the vehicle you insure remember, not the plate) and for that person at that point in time, then they would've been unable to prosecute successfully for no insurance. No difference than if they've written down the wrong VRM by accident, and instead of AB08 CDE it says AB08 CDF instead, you'd still be insured. 6pts and the fine isn't such a big worry, it's the IN10 on your licence that's going to cripple you for getting insurance in the future!

Probably a good idea to say that I do mean lag, and not threshold. They don't always go hand in hand! My own turbo on the MR2 has a relatively low threshold, and is mapped so that the boost increases the further up the rev range you go. Starts at wastegate, then up to 8psi, then 10psi at the top end. Gives a real rush of power throughout, and also it means that it's not having to wait until 10psi is made all the way down when the compressor is barely spinning.

Oh god I remember that, awful thing! On a related note, I saw my first curved TVs up and running yesterday. In a completely black room I'm sure they're great, but if you have any light reflection at all then it creates the most distracting images on the screen. Honest, it was giving me a headache just viewing them for a few minutes. Seems like more of a gimmick just for the sake of it than a useful bit of kit I'd like to upgrade to.

If only nine people have actually complained to Apple, then that's all they can report. No doubting there's more, but if people will complaint to the internet first...!

No, it's in addition to. Couple that with the front under brace and the two rear ones (not shown, I assume they're still available) and you willbe astounded at the transformation to the car.

Hideous.

You could always just buy a normal pan and add the baffles yourself, easy enough job to do. Do you get the extremes in G force in drifting that you do on track? I appreciate you're sliding a lot, but once the car has settled force will be minimum. Transitions are supposed to be smooth (I think, please correct me here!), so G force changes again shouldn't be massive. Usually people get pickup problems when they buy a regular car, then chuck stiff suspension and super sticky tyres on, then go tracking. With slippy tyres in drifting, I would imagine you'd be miles from trouble.

Reviews out today, 8s and 9s so far, very promising Just need to finish AC4 before next week now!

As your first time tracking the Zed, I wouldnt. You'll learn more about the car on tyres that allow the car to move around more. Plus, stickier tyres mean more speed, which means you put more heat into the brakes, which are the weakest point of a standard Zed

DO NOT CHANGE THE COOLANT!!! Seriously, it'll be absolutely fine. Who on earth gave you that nugget of advice? If it's a cool day, you can probably safely run 20mins at a time, but if you were super hard on your brakes then you might not even manage 5 mins. It's all about being sensible, and listening to what the car is telling you.

What speeds?

Pulling away in 3rd is not the way to test a clutch: No wonder it stunk afterwards! Put it in 4th at 30mph and floor it, that's the way to test for slippage. Standard car will be absolutely fine, just check its mechanically sound. With just a fortnight to go, now isn't the time to be making any changes really.

Beautiful Very jealous fella, please keep us updated with how you get on with it.

My 6+ case came today, so I now know how utterly moronic I'll look using it as a phone.

Until you can plug your charger lead in either way up, I'm saying they are :p

I can only go off my own experience, which was changing an air to air intercooled system to a water to air one, which involved removed about a metre of pipework. Throttle response was massively increased, even on a small system like that. You're not just pushing along what's in the pipe, you're compressing it. To compress it means that you have to add more into the same size space, which if the pump (turbo) size doesn't change then it must take longer. Whilst a rear mounted turbo may well be acceptable for people coming from big turbos who are used to having large boost thresholds, they're just not for me. Each to their own though, as always What's that middle car? That looks amazing!

S Line AND 19" wheels? I hope you have a good chiropractor Congrats matey, I love the look of the A5 so will be very interested to see how you get on with it

97 is absolutely fine, so you can take it to the red line as often as you want. Any damage will have been done by the previous owner.

Nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

No argument there! Regarding Apple making a non-standard lead, you do realise that it's actually superior to mUSB? Try putting an mUSB cable in your phone in the dark: It's 50/50 as to which way round it goes, so invariably there's some fumbling. With the Lightning connector, it makes no difference which makes life a lot easier. Lightning also supports a higher power capacity than mUSB (12w to 9w). USB Type C isn't ready yet, and will require that everyone buys new adaptors and accessories et al, so the exact same criticisms can be labelled at that then.

I wouldn't say sitting down is heavy handed though.... Depends on how they're sitting. We have no idea what trade they work in, what trousers, was anything else in the pocket, did the damage actually occur during use etc. I agree, it's not great, but context is everything.