Greetings

Don't want to start a new topic, how is he doing? I've looked thorugh his FB page but info on his condition is scarce.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzcsArJYYfs

Well that's because 1 hour is too long I use a rice cooker so can't help but I doubt you need more than 20 minutes in boiling water, probably a lot less.

I've had to hire an IT specialist from the US to tackle some problems I'm having with a website. His hourly fee is ridiculous and I literally feel like something is chewing away at my wallet. On the plus side he's quick and bloody competent but still I feel incredibly uncomfortable.

Well, it's official, my dentist has confirmed he'll be lending me this beast for a week around Wednesday. Remains the best car I've driven in my life and my only dream car. Hoping to buy it off him in the spring. I'm so f**king excited it's unreal. Already put aside 400 quid for fuel

Onboard from a few days ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp9SwjH9_RE

Great looking car. My mate has those ACS wheels on his E39, very pretty indeed. Only thing I'm disliking is the rear spoiler, an E46 M3 / E39 M5 style lip would look much nicer. Not sold on the carbon lips on the front bumper too but I guess they look good from some angles. Enoy it!

Wouldn't be too sure about that, we often hit 1.4G in corners, no way a car this high off the ground without ARB's will handle better. Yeah, aware of that But on gravel that's a good thing since I've got sticky tyres on the rear and almost wooden tyres on the front So the only way to go round a corner quickly is slightly sideways, preferably without opposite lock. Anyway, disconnecting the front bar was a brilliant idea, worked like a charm yesterday. Car is just mildly dirty, other than that everything apart from the exhaust is still in one piece. Might post a vid later on. We've decided not to go there anymore for at least a few weeks because it's getting a bit too dangerous. The better we know the stage, the more risky it becomes especially on the straights. I'm absolutely positive that the stage we found is WRC material, it's absolutely amazing.

Fixed, ordered new Lemforder top mounts. AST dealer confirmed that my ARB's are probably too stiff hence the cracks. Either way I'll be demanding a replacement, this is too high end a kit for these bits to crack like that. Noticed I still have a drifting mod in that car which increases the turn angle No ARB for now. Powerflex bushes and new wishbones mean no more clonks coming from the front end. Anyway. I'm off to the woods shortly, hoping that the lack of an ARB will help ease stress on the front suspension.

So much stuff to do today and I've got vertigo. Almost fell over a few times, it's so annoying.

Yes, you need to remove the cranks first. Using an impact wrench to tighten the freewheel before installing the cranks will give you a much higher chance of installing the bashring in the correct place. It'll very often rotate while the freewheel tightens during the first few seconds of riding, if you don't account for that rotation when positioning the bash you might end up with it being in the wrong position.

Price is a joke but an interesting bike none the less.

The term is rallysprint, I'm not sure what it is by definition exactly. It has elements of autocross in it to make certain otherwise uneventful areas of the course more interesting. The stages are usually anywhere between 4 and 7 miles long. This for instance would be an extremely rough event by our standards and also a very long and demanding one since you have to memorize a 6 mile long stage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR9fz_L3qdo I really think that in the before mentioned track/rally terms, this is much closer to track than rally hence the car is set up the way it is. edit: I've given this some thought and my conclusion is that the car is too stiff. If the ARB mounts have cracked then something is not right. I'm not going to change the spring rates, instead I'm going to fit a weaker ARB and see what difference that makes.

It hasn't crossed my mind. I'm really happy with the spring rates. What you're saying is true to some extent - the car is too stiff for some of the surfaces I drive on, especially the latest outing at night where we drove on unpaved roads. But for the majority of events I take part in the suspension feels perfect and judging by vids it performs very well. The matter of stiffness is very much up for debate because I could be completely wrong. I'll bring it up next time I have a talk with other M3 drivers. The statement in bold is something I completely agree with here. It's more of a track car than a rally car. But then, the vast majority of events I take part in have the surface of an average B road. Some are held on tracks and are completely smooth. I'm pretty sure the damage caused here originated on those surfaces and the rough stuff from last week just killed some parts which were already in bad condition. I strongly disagree that M3's are for smooth surfaces only. There are quite a few M3's over here which take part in national rally championships - admittedly they have Reiger or Proflex suspension and will never outrun a 4x4. But such an upgrade applies to all cars - if you want to be competitive you have to change the suspension no matter what you drive. I just don't have the right kit for bumpy roads but then I rarely drive on such roads. The problem with Subarus is that they're slow. I have yet to be beaten by one and have been quicker than works cars on a number of occasions. Evos are a different story but the cost of running one is massive and personally I hate 4 wheel drive. For now I cannot imagine driving anything other than a RWD car purely because it's extremely fun. To sum up I'm sure you're right in some respects, in others you don't have the full picture or you have a wrong picture of what I do. This is not surprising considering I rarely go into any detail on here regarding the events I take part in. But you two have certainly made some valid points. About stiffness, the first 4 seconds show the most bumpy surface of any comps I took part in 2013. I could be wrong but I think the suspension behaves perfectly. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkbBM8kgMg0 Also found another bit of damage:

Wondered what the cause of a dislocated front wheel was. Found out today and was a bit shocked: Almost got a nervous breakdown today. Everything in that car is falling apart and it doesn't matter that I use the best parts I can afford and service it every 50-150 miles. f**k this shit.

I wonder how well he'll do in WRC. Cool to see the big guys doing on board vids too.

Only around the house. The engine needs tuning, it's running very badly now. It's got SU carbs and my dad is absolutely brilliant with them so that's not going to be a problem. He couldn't do it before the journey due to lack of tools. Lots of mishaps on the way, the carbs came loose, air filters started falling off and oil started leaking from the rocker cover, covering the engine bay in a thin film of oil. The car has a new engine and someone probably didn't torque the bolts right. I hated one thing during the short ~300m drive - the accelerator pedal is not level with the brake and clutch, it's much deeper in. So when I wanted to go from the throttle onto the brake my foot slid under the pedal and not onto it Will look into it, my dad isn't bothered but it's worth checking. First thing tomorrow I'm jacking it up and checking whether it has an LSD.

Well my dad is back from the UK in his newly purchased Amazon 123GT (with a flat on the rear ). I urged him not to do the 1000+ mile journey in one go since he's 76 years old but he did it anyway. This is his old Volvo And the current one: Got tonnes of Wall's pork sausages, HP sauce, Bovril and Salt&Vinegar chips. Going off my diet for the time being.

I wouldn't sacrifice well seated spokes for the opportunity to remove some dirt. It probably makes no difference in practice but it's mechanically unsound if you catch my drift.

This is incredibly well made/thought out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvLaTupw-hk

Like Adam said. Just make sure you tape the new rim in the correct position: - spoke hole offset in the correct direction - valve stem hole in the same place I think that if you use the valve stem as a reference you needn't worry about spoke offset but I'd double check that. When you swap the spokes over don't tighten them too much (2 rotations will be fine). After you finish, carry on like with any wheel build. It's really easy, you'll get the hang of it instantly.

It's ok to use old spokes (when length is not an issue) so long as you don't de-lace the whole wheel. Changing a rim is easy, you tape it to the old wheel and start moving spokes over one by one, one side at a time.

Onboard from Friday night: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZtCV-oNPGA Could have been miles quicker but unfortunately we didn't know where we were going, just that there are no sharp corners.

To be honest the widest wheels I've ever used were 9.5" and I managed to get 260 section slicks onto them so not sure why you'd want 11j? Unless you want them for appearance. Can't help with spring ratios, sorry. I don't even know what spring rates I have currently, would recommend them though. On a different note, just came back from a long ride with a friend. We covered around 100 miles there and back to get to an epic wood with some of the best roads I've seen in my life. The roads have a loose surface, are mostly smooth, completely empty and there are lots of corners with changes of elevation. The surface is a bright colour so visibility is very good. After about 20 minutes in the woods I noticed the front wheels were no longer where they used to be. Probably tore a bush to shreds but it's not that obvious yet. There was easily an inch of play each way. Going to order some Powerflex bushes because this is silly. The current ones lasted about 200 miles and they're original BMW parts. Still managed to continue so long as the surface wasn't too bumpy. Anyway, in terms of "illegal" motorsport this is the most fun I've had in my life. Even wondering whether not to sell the Daihatsu because this is so much better. Incidentally, this is the Subaru I posted about last week when it's owner decided to carry on driving despite an open bonnet during a night competition. Ended up with quite a lot of damage because he drove straight into some obstacles. It's getting almost as tatty as his old M3. Got some onboards which I'll edit and upload tomorrow, surprisingly the visibility is pretty good.

Hoping to take the M3 on a dyno tomorrow. VANOS is at least half dead, we found 2 out of 4 solenoids to be inactive and also 3 valve error codes within the module. Costs a bit to fix but actually I'm really happy because the car is already quick and it might regain even 40-50bhp. Will find out tomorrow how down on power it is if all goes well. This in connection with at least 50kgs of weight saving could give a dramatic increase in performance for the upcoming season.