Ekona

It's a four-pot diesel. It sounds like a bag of nails. A decat would make it sound more like a bag of nails. Couldn't care how much extra power it put out, I wouldn't want that clattery chatter amplified any more than was possible.

I wouldn't even mention the 452s in the same breath as the 050As, never mind the PSS. None of the 911 guys running PSS have complained about road noise, and a lot of them have come from the 050As and the noisier Pirelli PZeros. It's not something that would concern me, put it that way.

Ooh, I missed this first time round... Decat? On a diesel? Does it not sound enough like a tractor for you then?!

Depends on who has the bigger willy.

There were a couple of race-spec mk1s there today too, and it was both depressing and exhilarating to watch the ease they blew past me as technically they're exactly the same car so I shouldn't be that much slower (!), but then it was also good to know that eventually mine will be that quick too!

If the BMW stops for a Burger King, maybe. I know which is the quicker (and more expensive) car, but I know which I'd rather drive for a hoon.

So today was the first track day in the MX-5, and I thought I'd put a few thoughts down about it. The day was at Bedford and it was the long 3.8 mile GT layout, and given that the MX-5 had just a measly 130bhp from the factory you may well expect it to be somewhat underpowered on a long layout like that. Well, you'd be absolutely correct! That's not to say it wasn't immense fun, because it really really was. Bear in mind that this is a 124,000 mile car, on stock brakes with the original springs and dampers and the worst possible tyres you can get, and you kinda realise that it's never going to be a lap record setter. Once you get past that, and adjust your driving style to suit, it becomes a huge challenge and a huge grin-producer at the same time. You absolutely must be smooth with it, as while the chassis is very forgiving, because it takes so long to get any meaningful speed out of it you can't afford to shed any more speed in the braking zones than you have to. That's the real challenge, and I was keeping some S1 Elises and 996 Carreras pretty honest through the twisty parts. Under braking and in a straight line they left me for dead, pretty much as expected, but the transition between turn in to getting back on the power was closer than I had thought it might be. On crappy tyres too, remember... Speaking of the tyres, which are Event no-name 185/60/14s, they're horrendous. A bit of water and they're everywhere, sidewalls so floppy you could poke one and watch it wobble for hours, and tyre roar like a lion being raped by a hippo. That said, were they actually any worse than something like the T1R or 452 on track? No, surprisingly they weren't. They actually held up better to the heat than the T1Rs did, and that was very surprising. Perhaps I've mis-judged these pikey-spec tyres, and you might as well just buy the cheapest you can if you're looking to save a few quid rather than settle for a middle ground. Whilst I'd love to get a set of R888s on it for the next track day, I have other areas that this bargain bucket car needs money spending on it first. That would be the suspension then. I've never actually ran a car with knackered suspension before, but I suspect it the definition would look something like this: On the road it's crashy and banging, seemingly over damped and under-sprung, but on a racetrack smooth surface there is so much bodyroll that I needed elbow pads to stop grazing my arm on the left handers. It's awful! Well, for 120K+ miles I guess it's amazing that none of the dampers are leaking or the springs cracked, but at the same time they're clearly well past their best. This really needs doing before the next trackday for sure. Interestingly, the part I expected to be the weakest, the brakes, held up the best. The brake fluid is a horrible colour and clearly needs changing, and the discs and pads aren't too far from destruction, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that they got significantly better as the day wore on and I got more confident with using them. They never ran out of feel, and the fluid never boiled, but the stopping power increased markedly so it just goes to show that sometimes a bit of a workout on the brakes can do wonders for them if they've not been used in anger for a while. Considering I bought this car a couple of months ago for £900 and have done nothing to it apart from the tyres and changing a very dead aux belt, you could forgive the MX-5 for giving up the ghost at the first lap and screaming "Enough!" whilst p*ssing all it's fluids everywhere. Instead it came alive and showed me that while it's clearly far from the track machine I'd like to make it, it's still perfectly capable of driving 3 hours to and from track and doing 135 very hard miles on one tankful of fuel and putting a bloody great smile on your face at the same time. I'd perhaps forgotten just how much fun trackdays can be when you're not travelling at Warp 10 everwhere, but this rust bucket of a '5 has certainly shown me the error of my ways. As an aside, my brother took his Cayman R out for it's first track outing today, and we both swapped cars throughout the day. He was far smoother in the MX-5 than he was in his, and whilst I was outrageously quick in the CR and it's clearly a purpose-built trackday monster, I found myself wanting to drive my car more. I'm not for one moment suggesting that the '5 is better than the CR in any way, as it's clearly inferior, but it wasn't just me who found that fastest is not always funnest. And yes, that's clearly a word.

I have no idea where to start here, I really don't.

Have a great day today guys, it really does fly past so quickly though

Given how far ahead in the league WH were above everyone else bar two clubs, they deserve to be in the final. We'll be there next year, thanks to the magic that it Neil Warnock

Unless you suck out all the air beforehand, you'll not notice any effect on the road. On track you'll notice more stable pressures, but not by much. The biggest difference I found when using it was that the tyres didn't drop pressure over time as quickly as they normally do: I'm talking months of stable pressure when cold. If you can find it somewhere cheap then give it a go, else don't bother. I don't any more.

That car is hideous as it stands, so whatever you do to it can only improve it!

I quite liked the HC, at least on the first 17 threads I saw it on.

Yay, another thread about a Hyundai!

Even without the reciept, it will be in their system somewhere. Find out that way, I would.

It really irks me when car companies keep making these fantastic cars silly money and in limited numbers. Drop this out there for £50K and it'll sell by the bucketload: GT-R performance in a family-friendly shell, what's not to like?

I'll just use my crystal ball to see the problem, hang on... OOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm... OOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm... OOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm... Ah yes, it's all becoming clear now! It's a P-3436754390/AKM error to do with the guffinsprocket mixing incorrectly with the discombobulator. Easy to fix.

Walshy (Andy Walsh) is the man to go for, ex-F1 test driver, mad as a box of very Welsh frogs, will teach you things you didn't know were possible (including how to defeat the brake distribution on the Zed without pulling fuses!). Top guy, can't recommend him enough. www.carlimits.com

Needs new brakes, they look tiny now. Otherwise, I quite like them.

German eBay or NMDE

http://www.foxsports.com.au/rugby/world ... 6231849755 I'm sure there's a point to that link and some random kind of relation it has to my post, but I'm struggling to see what it is. Cumulative TV figures for the RWC last year: 4 billion. http://www.rwc2011.irb.com/destinationn ... 36054.html Cumulative TV figures for the FWC in 2010: 26 billion. http://www.goal.com/en/news/1863/world- ... ly-is-the-

They're both great games and both have their upsides and downsides, I'm just glad that as a fan of both I can enjoy them for what they are

And football is the re-eduction for muptards who follow rugby

Mainly because rugby fans are secretly jealous of how much TV time and money football has, and they'd love it if their sport was even a quarter as popular as the beautiful game. They'll never admit it though, of course.

Other way round more like, as it's at the Etihad. I reckon we'll be looking at a dull 0-0 for 80mins, and then City will chuck the kitchen sink at them for the final 10. Hoping for a decent game, but I suspect we'll all be disappointed.