Robertio

It's not just you, I got the renewal quote in for my Clio Williams: 2 years ago: £229 last year it was off the road so the scoob was insured: £435 switched cover back to the Clio during the year and got cash back renewal in yesterday: £810 They're having a laugh. Have checked around and just under £300 seems to be the best. A 31% increase in two years when nothing has changed other than my no claims is now up to 15 years.

IMHO a set of Nokian WR is all you need on a scoob in Scotland - I run out of ground clearance before I run out of traction on them. Previously I had out and out snow tyres (even had holes for fitting studs) which were great up to 8-9 degrees, but once you got to that temp and were driving at normal speeds performance dropped big time. The WR's are good up to 15deg (or so) and then start to tail off so are a much better option for our winters. If I sell my scoob before winter then I'll have a set of really rough standard 16's with one winter old WRs available - unfortuantely they are too big for the Williams so I'll have to buy a new set for it.

I gathered that would be you I'm fairly sure I've seen your car around a few times. The guy in the blue scoob didn't look up when I walked past so I figured he wasn't from these parts and left him to his solitude.

The Wagon was I - pesky fuel light came on as I was heading to Halfords to get fluids and filter to service my Clio so had to stick a few litres of v-power in.

Hi Sal, I figured you'd given up on the move north, how many years have you been planning it for now?

Sorry, I should have said TA practice starts at 11. Unless your copy is different to the one on their web site? In which case do let me know and I'll check with KH. http://www.timeattack.co.uk/index.php/cale...rd-2-knockhill/ Time Attack practice starts at 11. The drifting practice starts at 10, but I have as much interest in drifting as I do in crochet(sp?)

Practice starts at 11am so that will be my intended arrival time - very civilised this being a normal spectator

Not a direct comparison as I've had Tein on my RX and BC on a scooby, but: Tein Flex - brutally firm. On the road you have to push beyond what feels like their comfort zone before they work. Driving the car up to the point where it feels like it wants to throw itself into a field they are horrible, the car bounces around, feels unsettled and generally as uncomfortable as possible. Driving around town it felt as if the whole chassis was flexing through potholes, rather than the suspension. However, if you push beyond what feels like maximum-attack something magical happens and they start working. The crests and potholes you were crashing through 5mph ago are now smoothed out. I broke so many parts on my car because of these - under WOT over a crest the rear wheels would hop off the ground, crunch back down sending a shock of over 400lb/ft through the drivetrain/transmission. Not diff friendly. Tein Super Street - Much more compliant than Flex. Still much firmer than factory, but nothing too extreme. I've found that they seem to be mismatched front to rear with the car doing an impersonation of Elise style roll-oversteer. BC - Feel much the same as factory suspension on minor imperfections - slightly firmer, but much less than SS. You can drive an every day car around on them and if you stick to decently surfaced roads they are fine. My problem with them comes down to coilovers in general - seriously limited travel. On a rock hard set of coilovers you never run out of travel as they don't absorb anything, so the fact it is limited doesn't really affect things. However, the BC's are soft so the limited travel is an issue. You drive into a pothole and the wheel drops, runs out of travel, leaving you on 3 wheels, a wheel on the opposite side drops into one as well, the first wheel hits the far side and a large thunk is sent through the car. More than once I've had one side of the car come off the road entirely on our high quality tarmac. If they could give an extra inch of spring (the car would be undriveable if dropped to the lowest setting on them, so no reason this is not feasible) it would be possible to adjust the damping to a level where I suspect they would be good on an everyday road car. As things stand though they cannot match the everyday usability of the factory setup.

LOL, no chance, nothing is Good luck with it. I don't know anyone running one at present, I seem to remember Ant had occasional problems with his ( was upwards of 5 years ago so can't remember what) and James swapped from one to a dog box (he keeps on breaking that instead).

I ran them on my RX-7 all year round. Brilliant in the dry, when damp they are fine when no standing water. In standing water they are terrible - point steering wheel in a straight line and hold on. In snow/ice they are horrific - sideways at 5mph on a frosty roundabout that you wouldn't think twice about on normal tyres and in an inch of snow it took me many minutes to get up the hill heading south out of Inverness, using all of both lanes to keep the car moving. If you have a powerful car that only goes out on dry days they are great, otherwise I'd be inclined to go with somewhat more tread. Normal tyres would light up at 65mph in 3rd gear, with R888s it would chirp through 2nd and 3rd was all grip in the dry, though I did have it start to spin the tyres at 140 in 4th in the damp (a touch concerning ).

Have yet to get the picts off my camera, but as I took my cheapo snowboarding camera with me I imagine I'll just have a collection of blurry objects. I was somewhat disappointed this year, it looked like most of the cars were running mud tyres - in the sections we watched my snow tyre shod wagon would have put in a more than respectable display.

Nope, you could get the Prodrive kit on older cars. It took me a little while to track down a web site with the details on early cars, would probably have been quicker going upstairs and digging through my old copies of Performance Car, but more difficult to link to so here you go: http://www.iwoc.co.uk/prodrive1.html

I run Nokian WRs and run out of ground clearance long before there is any requirement for chains, highly recommended. I got the tyres from mytyres and had them fitted by the ever reliable JD tyres in Cumbernauld Village. Once you've had a set of winter tyres you never go back

It really depends on the kit you go for. I had a one from the cheaper end of their range on one of my old cars for a few years IIRC all it needed was a threaded hole for the nozzle (a few mins with a bit of aluminium pipe, a drill and a tap & die set) power (couple of bits of wire) and a vacuum feed (t-piece and short bit of hose) along with some water source. If you had the bits and tools laying around then an hour would be plenty of time to fit it. Trying to run two smaller nozzles and getting them to atomise correctly was much more time consuming. FWIW I lost power on my car running it, didn't matter whether running methanol, water or a mixture the power was always down compared to not running it, but ran it anyway as a safety measure. I can't remember the numbers (was a few years back) but it was something like just under 400@wheels with and just over without, the car had upwards of 100 dyno runs in the process so all we could put it down to was the fact the turbos were already maxed out (they simply could not give any more boost, only heat). Temps were not massively improved by running it either - saw bigger drops by running a 25 or 50 shot of nitrous.

Best bet for snow related road updates is the Winter Highland forum. Bit late now, but we went to the Lecht on Sunday instead as the choo choo wasn't running at Cairngorm. Was glad we left the FWD car at Carrbridge and just took my car through, wouldn't have fancied some of the stretches without snow tyres. The main roads were all fine, but anything off the beaten track was interesting trying to shuffle through villages with 2' of snow making the road little more than a single lane stopped you getting bored. Watching people try to get their cars in/out of there drives in Inverness was equally entertaining, strangely most were not doing too well in a foot of snow. Wasn't too bad when all snow, but when you had 8" of white stuff ontop of slush anything on normal tyres was having huge problems - not helped by traction control deciding to help Hugely disappointed last night - returning home to find there is practically no snow down here was most upsetting

Fitting half decent winter tyres will make much more difference than any diff tweaking. A standard '98 turbo can go WOT through 2nd in 6" of snow on Nokians, my only concern in snow is lack of ground clearance

Not my taste, but I wonder if his parents would adopt me? When I was 19 I got to borrow my parents diesel Sierra from time to time, no way I could afford the insurance on any car back then, never mind something like that. To be fair I would have killed myself in a week driving anything that quick

Depends what you plan on using the car for: Sprint tracks & back road summer drives - some form of Caterfield Mostly road with occasional track day - early Boxster S Sitting on AA trucks - an RX-7 (actually very good as quick road cars, but would never recommend taking one on track as engines become consumables) All year round road use that doesn't mean you have to worry about being locked up if caught - Clio Williams Cruising road car - TVR Griffith

I'll be there in my RX-7 Now if only the heads, cam, injectors and solid mounts would turn up I might have time to fit them and map the car before the event...

Fingers crossed for tomorrow John, will be keeping up-to-date on the timing website. Good to hear the Solaris is good, mind you it should be - cheap it is not

It's reassuring to know the officers are out there as my last letter from the Chief Inspector said that my expectations regarding the enquiries they make to trace the owners of vehicles (that have been broken into, damaged and attempted to be stolen) are unrealistic. For some reason I thought that maybe they might have spoken to my neighbour, or if really adventurous contacted the organisers of TOTB as my car was still covered in competitor stickers. Alas no, they get a 3rd party to uplift the vehicle, classify it as abandoned (with broken door locks, ignition barrel, etc) just outside the registered keepers house, so no crime record. I was even advised they would have done forensics if they had known someone tried to steal the car. The owner then has to pay hundreds of pounds to get their car back, absolute genius. It's good to know their resources are being put to good use a couple of miles along the road. Of all the crimes I, my immediate family, or friends have reported there has been a 0% conviction rate, maybe one day that will change (just have to hope the next time the criminal tries a u-turn ).

There isn't a safe value. The knock value is car dependent - my old car would accept pretty much any map without raising a knock value, a mate's car raises stupid knock values at cruise. When first mapping a car with a PFC I stick on a really safe map so I know there is no chance of any knock values being caused by det. You can then use this as a guideline base knock value and set the warning based on an educated guess above this value. It's not just the value that should concern, but when it occurs and the warning cannot take this into account. If you see values in the 20-30 range at cruise and light boost then get worried if it shows 70 under full throttle at high rpm. If the car shows 70 at cruise and drops to 20-30 under WOT then there is little to worry about (assuming someone who knows what they are doing has mapped the car). In the first example a warning at 45 would be suitable, where as the second would have this feature switched off (or set to something like 90). If the knock warning goes off all the time then the driver will get used to it and ignore it, so no point having it at all.

A PC680 is not an icle wee one John - I have a 545 in the RX I do only get 3 shots at starting the 5.7l V8 on it before the battery is dead Personally I wouldn't recommend anything less than a redtop 35, or equivalent on a genuine road car. With a track/race car you are generally going to be starting it within walking distance of a car with a proper battery and jump leads, not a luxury you always have in a road car. The 545 has upset me more than once this year with it's (lack of) cranking power, am giving serious consideration to wiring in a second battery for next year that I can use on the road (and remove leaving just the 545 on track). No one can make a guarantee about being able to start a particular after 2-3 weeks as it depends on the car in question. I had an EnerSys in my old RX that would start the car after it had been sitting for 6 months as there was no alarm/tracker causing a constant drain (really rated that battery, possibly my best mod on the car). Like wise my current RX can start off the 545 after 3 weeks of sitting as there is no drain/bad earthing. On the other hand both my scoobs have had Clifford alarms with Trackers and have wiped out full size batteries inside 2 weeks, the Williams gets about 3 months before the factory power sapping features drain the factory battery. Pretty much all of the race orientated batteries have tiny screw fittings, rather than full sized lumps to clip your wiring onto. As such you have to trim the factory wiring back and put on new fittings. It is possible to get adapters that screw into the small batteries allowing you to use the factory connectors, but I can't remember where I saw these (have a vague recollection they were not cheap and, at the time, only available from the US).

The real question is: How close to John's lap record did he get?

Thanks, spoke with him today and they wont do it as it is an RX-7 and apparently the screens are hard enough to get out when they are broken, never mind trying to keep it in one piece. Pointed me in the direction of the RAC as they have a different method of cutting the screen out, but they will charge me more than the paint for my respray cost. Might give it a go myself at the weekend, and hope I don't make an expensive mistake