Greetings

I dislike the big ones because they're cumbersome but it's amazing how much work a tool like that will do for you making it seem effortless at the same time since it doesn't transfer much torque onto your wrist. By far my favourite tool ever. They're not cheap but worth every single penny.

Just some more pics and I'll shut up. Managed to get the rain wheels on today, they have a very small ET so had to reduce camber on the front, also installed some firmer springs on the rear and dropped the back end. Geometry wise it's roughly where I want it to be, hopefully I'll get this bloody AST kit the upcoming week, if not at least the car is ready for the next comp.

I guess that many of us who work on mechanisms (cars/bikes/etc) have their favourite tools, perhaps those which just make life so much easier or can be used in many different ways. For me these are: 1. Hitachi impact wrench, 200Nm of electric goodness in a compact tool. 2. Chain wrench, can even work as a spring compressor: 3. Mole grips, obviously.

So I got these bolts, result - 1 TR freewheel dismantled with ease, SL freewheel... nope. This method transfers a *LOT* of torque, it took a lot of strength to get these bolts broken, and even then the threads in the plate are fine, so it's a 30 second job to get them replaced. I'm wondering if using an impact wrench won't help. Will try shortly. Edit: bad idea, broke instantly and the tip of the bolt is now embedded in the freewheel Tightened from the other end:

They're just 18", tyres are pretty wide though, measured them at 260 (250 claimed) front and rear. Going to have unreal grip, however the most challenging thing about that is actually knowing you have it and using it. BTW, got sent this, 00:50 is the interesting part.

Cheers Bit self centred, but:

f**k. YEAH. Camera went flat. waiting for it to charge and going to find a nice place before the sunset to take more pics.

Got those DIN915 bolts, will post an update when I get them installed. They're rated at class 14 roughly but then this tiny head needs to transfer around 1200N onto the freewheel each. I've got 2 freewheels currently which won't budge so this will be a good test.

How do you dismantle these freewheels? I've found some DIN915 bolts with class ~14 hardness, going to get some now: This is probably my best shot currently.

After a few months of use, I find dismantling Echo freewheels becomes more and more difficult, up to the stage where it's nigh on impossible. This is my current setup: I use 2.5mm drills which break under torque. Since the margin of error is no more than 0.05mm, I have not yet managed to get all 4 bolts in the right place so I can only use 2 at a time (some freewheels only have 2 holes anyway). I'm wondering if there's something else I can use instead of drills? Or perhaps there's a completely different approach? No hammer and screwdriver please. I have a Park Tool SPA-3 freewheel tool but that's just useless for anything other than new freewheels. They have a bloody strong interface though, wish I could get something similar for my tool. Furthermore, could heating up an SL freewheel affect the properties of the titanium centre bit? TR freewheels are fine with heat.

Drift cars can be weird, this one is by far the weirdest one I've seen yet. It's a BMW 5 series in case you can't tell. In car news, collected the wheels from the paint shop, they look absolutely epic. Need to wait till tomorrow to get the tyres on. I'm genuinely excited about fitting these to the car

All the effort is starting to pay off. Should get the white wheels on tomorrow, can't wait. Hoping the suspension will arrive shortly (no news about that) because I really don't want to spend time adjusting the piece of crap that's currently in the car. The minimum ride height with those shot springs on the rear is beyond ridiculous.

Had a bit of spare time today so worked on the M3 again. It seems to be endless, every time I get something done to a better standard something else that needs doing starts to show. This has been going on for a month now. I hope I don't crash this on my next comp which is in 10 days. And as f**king usual when I need perfect weather, there is some and suddenly a storm starts to brew. It's getting so annoying I actually ended up jumping and shouting today when a big downpour came WITH NO VISIBLE CLOUDS above me. Painted the top half of the front wing and also the strut bar but that was a shoddy job. It was orange/black/bare metal/rust before. Horrid. Also wanted to apply some paint protection, started cleaning the car to get it ready for a coat of Cquartz. Then found that the bonnet and roof in places have some odd marks, like water stains but they're embedded in the paint. Claying didn't remove them. So I polished them out but that didn't work either, it just made it a bit better. Any idea what this might be? The unevenness is just fibreglass. After polish: Obviously, as I put the Cquartz coat on, a storm came along. Not sure what to do now, I wiped it down after about 30 minutes but the bonnet already had quite a lot of droplets on it. And this is how it always ends, under a big tree... Oh and managed to source the black plastic bit under the bumper. Took me ages to find one, turned out my mate had about 3. Also ordered a pair of rain tyres so will now have a complete set, 250mm Dunlop racing slicks, 240 Yokohama racing slicks, rain and dry set will be on newly powder coated black wheels and white wheels. Couldn't decide which colour to go with so chose both. White should work better when it's dry while black will look good in the rain when dirty? AST suspension should be arriving this week hopefully. That marks the end of imminent upgrades, next is a fully carbon fibre roof and a dogbox, probably in the winter. Was going to do some mods to the engine but I'm a bit apprehensive about that. My friends run theirs @ 350bhp with just better breathing and exhaust, plus a VANOS delete and standalone. But they've ALL experienced electronic issues of some sort.

About to take a sleeping pill which is usually extremely fun.

You need to get used to it, they're not going to change. There have been episodes a lot worse in that respect, this one wasn't too bad. A bit meh, but glad to see it back, at least there's something to look forward to every Sunday with The Simpsons, South Park and Family Guy temporarily off air.

My friend is slowly finishing his Opel, can't wait. It's a single seater with a soon to be supercharged K20 engine in the back. 600+bhp/tonne anyone? Annoyingly, I'll almost certainly be given the chance to drive it as with all of his cars so far and annoyingly, like always before I won't be able to reach the pedals. But this time I'm going to find a way around that.

I was recently wondering what you're up to, glad to see a video again. Great riding as always.

Found two promising sets of 2012 barely used slick tyres for 500 quid. Just need my friend to verify that this is what I need and I should have my tyre problems sorted for the upcoming few months.

I wonder when Danny Mac will take part in one of their challenges.

Surely everyone has some tunes which they enjoy but feel embarrassed about at the same time. For me it's got to be Aqua, can't think of any others at the moment :$

Thanks a lot Adam! You've cleared quite a few things up for me, although I'm not sure how some of that would apply over here. While in the video you can clearly see the friendly atmosphere - mostly emanating from you greeting your competitors after a successful overtake - I'm not sure the same would apply my end where the entry level is the national cup, and there are no smaller events taking place. I'd absolutely LOVE to do an amateur race in that Mazda, looks like a properly fun car and like you say it's slow which can only be a good thing.

Looks like a lot of fun that! I'm thinking about racing myself but can't justify buying a slow car just to take part in a few events each year. M3 is way too quick whereas that MX5 looks just right. It must be nice to race against competitors in the same car too and the track looks properly fun. What kind of tyres do you use on these events? Competition ones or normal DOT E? What happened in 6:40 in the 1st video? And finally, are there any rules about overtaking? On the rare occasion that I watch a race, I'm surprised at how drivers are overtaken - when are you allowed to keep your line regardless of what's going on around you and when must you back off and let someone overtake you? I find racing terrifying for this and many other reasons, unfortunately it's something I'll have to do sooner or later. More questions. When you're going round the track and about to overtake someone, do you start to focus on the manoeuvre itself or are you just trying to go round corners as quickly as possible at the same time trying not to hit whoever you're about to overtake? I can imagine you can't concentrate too hard on your competitor else you'll go off the track? Same goes for someone sitting on your arse, do you let him past or forget he's there? Furthermore, what happens under hard braking when you're sitting on someone's tail? Surely you don't have the reactions to start braking as soon as you see his stop lights, by that time you'll have smashed straight into him. How does that work? And what about quick corners in the same situation? You have someone obstructing your view and so close he could hit you any moment, unless the both of you take the corner in exactly the same way. This is what I'll be faced with sooner or later, it's terrifying.

Some pics from a race weekend. I went there specifically to listen to a Zonda only to find that it broke down after the formation lap...

Koxx have made a trademark out of the lack of warranty. Clever.