October 2014 - "If it wasn't for bad luck - I would have no luck at all...."

So life continues :-( business deals have slowed and usual bad luck is back!

Jogger just ran into the A8 at a junction - he was OK. How do you not see a big green A8??? Got home and he has dented the front wing!!!!! Arggggggghhhhhhhhhhh

Took the rear coil overs off the Élan for a rebuild at Avo. Found this so will need to have a plate welded in. Good news though Avo rebuilt them for £72 in total inc postage and turned them round in 2 days! Also one of the headlamp motors has failed - I already have a rebuild kit.

It could be flexed with your fingers - no wonder the backend felt a bit light!!! This was a job for a welder!!! Fortunately, the three sides of the "pillar" were solid.

So template of the area was made up in cardboard and then transferred to steel and then welded into place.

Then the refurbished shocks were refitted ( £72 from AVO including return postage - pretty good) Elan is handling much better now :-)

Headlight motor will be repaired at the same time.

However, this exercise showed up how worn the rear tyres were ......two new tyres were needed.

Sourced from Nick at MOT Motorsport and to be fitted on my visit to Anglesey  for the Race of Remembrance. All OK apart from the driving rain.

Continuing the saga of bad luck and my ineptitude at repairing cars.........................
Needed a new drivers seat belt as the old one was not retracting properly. How hard can that be? F**kin hard is the answer ..... Drivers seat out, trim from drivers and rear door out carpet pulled up, battery disconnected. Cracked head more times than I care to remember ...... Eventually job done ......

Well my journey to the Ring, Germany was eventful!!!

On the Monday morning I was packing the car (E36 M3) onto the trailer and thought I don't need the road wheels and tyres. So I put some track wheels on and in the process of doing so I noticed a gap in one of the new brake pads where there should have been material!!!! it had de-laminated and half the pad was missing!!!



So I phoned the supplier who had a spare set - but they were in Solihul......no chance as I had to get on the road. So he put them in the post for me.

A friend came up with a set of EBC Reds - not the best pads but beggars cannot be choosers and I could pick them up on the way to the ferry. Excellent.

With the trailer hooked up the rear of the A8 was much lower than the old black one? Moving the car back on the trailer improved this but caused fishtailing at speed Hmmmm! Will need to look at this

 The journey to Germany was as usual - boring and monotonous. Had a fabulous time while I was there and did more than 25 laps over the two days.

Th journey back was not so good. I got to Ghent in Belguim - having suffered the traffic chaos that is the Brussels Ring Road..............

When there was an almighty bang and bits of metal bounced off the road and under the car! WTF

I pulled to a layby at the side of the E40 - jacked the car up and took the wheel off the offside rear................spring snapped in three places

Called the ADAC recovery services and my nightmare began............

 So after four people separately checked the car, trailer, car on trailer, weights, dimensions etc.............you guessed it they sent the wrong sized truck!! Doh!

So another hour passed and the right truck turned up and took the whole thing to a storage area.

First thought was to rent a van/4X4 but Belgium in the first two weeks of August is closed............. and they have no vehicles with towbars?

Anyway there were also no rental cars in order to get home - I had a trackday/wedding at Goodwood the next day and if you remember I (for the 1st time ever) left the road wheels for the M3 at home - Doh!

So I waited at the storage facility from 430pm............................until it closed at 7pm. Then I waited outside for another hour. Then I got a cab into Ghent to get something to eat - thankfully it had stopped raining.

So at 930pm that evening they called me to say they had found a rental car at Brussels airport - a 105 euro cab ride away!

So I get a cab to the airport - pick up the hire car - Citroen C3 Picasso - weird looking thing - but went well. Got to the ferry port - could not use my return ticket so had to buy another return £155! get home at 3am.

I then got up at 7am and pulled the Lotus out of the garage to use it at Goodwood. My daughter was coming along and she called to say she was leaving - she lives in Newbury. So I said I was just leaving and would be just a few minutes behind her....................

She got there in 46 mins - I took nearly three hours..........traffic on M3 - she missed all of it.

Good trackday and wedding.

First time I have hit both apexes at the chicane :-)
Back to Ghent on Monday - set off at 3am. Meanwhile I had got a message saying car was in garage.

 this is getting boring now................

"if it wasn't for bad luck I wouldn't have any luck at all..............."

so paraphrasing:-

car not in garage still in storage - no garage identified

I had the spare springs with me to be fitted - no garage would fit them.........

found one that would - so we all moved to there

car fixed by 530pm - booked on 7pm ferry - A8 even lower at the back

terrible weather missed the 7pm - queue meant I could not get on ferry until 10pm

10pm left Dunkirk and there was an immediate medical emergency - no doctors on board back to port - disembark the emergency and back to sea .......2.5 hours lost - got home at 430am..............

Still need to get to Paris on business now.........but that is another story

I then got very busy with work and cars had to take a back seat. Paris, London, Glasgow, Paris, Paris and Glasgow...............you get the picture.


The old A8 had just passed the 284,000 mark and was beginning to show it's age and mileage, doors misaligned/dropping, seats tired, gearbox clunky but it was the steering problem which was getting worse and worse. This is where for no reason it looses all PAS - usually in a car park, sometimes going round corners

The cost of the new rack/column was not the issue (alone) but the labour in doing the job and to a car that was not worth much anyway. However, I still needed a tow car for my track car and the A8 did that in Spades.

Andrew in Linlithgow in Scotland on the A8 forum had a green one for spares or repair and had done a lot of good work on it and from the description it sounded a good base.

So I bought it blind and on good faith and organised for it to be transported to a Mate's garage in West Yorkshire.

The plan was to fix the driveshaft/gearbox problem and swap all the bits fro the black one to the green one thus creating one good tow car for not a lot of money - or as I thought maybe break even :-) given the price of Aluminum scrap.

 Well the car arrived at Gaz & Stan's and the transport guy refused to cross the bridge into the estate where the workshop was - so they had to tow it across - bit of a faff but they managed it.

Discovered the bumper that was loosely fitted was badly damaged - not sure if this was in transit or whatever, but we had a good bumper on the black one so no worries. Also windscreen was cracked and had a big stone chip on the passenger side - buying blind you don't see theses things. He ho we had a good one on the black one.

So next up was to drop the black one of at the workshop for the "transfer" to begin. Got some quotes which said that Aluminum was £600 a ton and if there was 1.5 tons on it in the A8 that could be £900! sounds promising :-)

Also four brand new 18" alloys with good tyres all round with 6mm of tread, recaro seats, solar panel, lights etc it seemed to make sense and my plan seemed to have some substance.

So the black one was stripped down to remove the none aluminum parts.















sadly the screen broke getting it out

Here is the bad part - one you have done all of this over many hours of labour it is only 480kgs which translates into £240 plus £100 for the steel parts.

My plan was falling apart   

So I sold a load of bits and pieces from the black one and I am now down about £1,200! but I still have a number of bits that might sell which might improve the situation.

So onto the green one - they sort out the drive shaft issue (black one swap) - good. We put the brake disks and pads from the black one on and I keep the new ones which came with the green ones as spares. Fitted the tow bar and electrics from the black one along with the harder/stronger towing springs.

Put it in for MOT and it fails on front suspension arms which was surprising as Andrew said he replaced those, so that gets sorted relatively cheaply.

However, it has a blown head gasket! New set of gaskets £700 NO! Replacement engine from A8spares £360 better. But with removal and refitting this will be expensive................So no car and £1200 down.

Think about it for a day or so and Gaz says he used a product called Steelseal on a Rover K series and it cured it, but you would not be taking the head off in the future as it will be welded on. this was not a problem for me.

So we tried it and Gaz followed the instructions - plugs out in sequence and cycle them...............it worked :-) so £40 and a bit of labour and it seems to have cured it. Phew.

So the final snag list was headlights need to be replaced out of the black one, fit the HID's, fix the rear lights, brake pad warning sensor, cruise control, new driver seat belt, windscreen and regas the air con.

So now all on the snag list is sorted apart from cruise and the seat belt (it works but just wont rewind cleanly) Put a message into A8spares for a seat belt and a brake switch.

Getting to like it now and off to Germany (Nurburgring) on Monday towing a trailer with track car.

will post some pics of the green one up later once it has had a good clean and polish.

would I do it again..............let me think about it..........NO not worth the aggravation.

---

All ready for its trip to the Ring 

 

 

In March I got an invite to come along and help the Stroke Foundation at Castle Coombe by giving pax laps in the M3 round Castle Coombe. The weather was not very good or warm - bloody cold in fact. I foolishly thought I could get some heat in the 888 tyres and fitted them to the car! Going very steady at Quarry - it was like driving on ice - I pirouetted off the track and onto the grass - no damage (apart from my pride) - I even struggled to get off the grass. Yikes - so I went back in and fitted the road wheels and tyres.

My kids were coming later with the Wet wheels and tyres - so if the weather continued to get wetter I would put those on. Guess what it got wetter - so I did.

First time I had driven the E36 with Wets - sorry the first time I have driven with wets. I had a set with the E30 M3 but never used them - I just used to carry them around like a lucky  charm.

Fantastic in the wet - I was having great fun driving round everyone.

There were some great cars there including a Ferrari 250 and he was giving pax laps!!!!

Absolutely stunning - even more by taking it out on track given the value of this car!

There were some other unusual cars there also..............

My son was standing on the embankment at Castle as I was going round a Gallardo in the Wet :-) And a guy said to his mate "look at that a 20 year old BMW going by a Lamborghini" my son had to tell them it was his old man and he was on wets.

A good day and hopefully the charity benefited as well.

Well - 8 months since I have updated this! :-(

Sorry life has been too hectic with work, cars and relationships......

Got the Elan back and had it on the road for only a couple of months when the MOT ran out - failed MOT with NS suspension arm! £450 from Lotus and £400 from Lotus suppliers. So looking for a good 2nd hand one and Elan will be Sorn-ed for the moment :-(

Oh! and it needed a new radiator as the old one was bust and leaking :-( Fortunately I had a new radiator in the garage...............or so I thought? After searching the entire garage I could not find it?

After a few days I had a memory of putting the rad on top of racking in the garage of our last house...and I had left the racking there...mmmmmm. So I texted the new owners to ask if they could look on top of the racking - and there it was.

Fitting it was another painful, frustrating, episode in the full upside down Lotus position - working on your back through a letterbox of an opening between the engine and the front bumper. Then once your hands are in place with the tools to undo the bolts you cannot see them (the bolts) Arghhhhh

It took three weekends as my patience was usually exhausted after a couple of hours.

I then was offered a Lower TCA from an LEC member. Fully prepped, rust proofed, new ball joint for £90 so I took up the offer and drove down to Bristol to pick it up.

Got the garage to fit it and MOT the Elan and then it was taxed and put on the road - hurray :-)

So what do you do- it's still winter - you take it for a blast and get it dirty :-)

Then clean it before you put it back in the garage.

Both my kids love the Elan and Louisa borrowed it for a day in the country - Pete (son in law) thinks it's too noisy - Peco sport exhaust :-)

Then there was the Lotus Festival at Brands Hatch - Louisa and I went along on one of the days - along with thousands of other Loti

Louisa got to drive the Elan on track during the parade lap at lunchtime. Here are some pics of the day.

 

Went for a blast in the Elan on Friday 27th - to pick up a sway bar for the A8 for towing. Got to near Milton Keynes and could not select a gear :-( - thought cables have gone.

Sat in a BP Garage while ADAC/AA sorted out the recovery and hire car. Left home at 1pm got home at 9pm :-(

First time the Lotus has let me down in over 7 years of ownership.

Garage called - the cables are OK :-) the problem is the gearbox and clutch are F**ked :-(

Sourced a 2nd hand gearbox at a reasonable price and getting it delivered to the garage in Northampton in the next few days. Just got to find a clutch kit - SJSportscars are closed and can not ship until the 6th Jan!!!

Will update with progress over the next couple of days.

December 2013 - too long between updates :-(

Work is just chaotic so struggling to update the blog. :-(

So since April I have done a number of track days in the BMW M3 and the Lotus Elan:-

1. Lotus Club day at Castle Coombe
2. Lotus day at Goodwood
3. Northloop day at Goodwood
4. DN days at Spa and The Ring
5. Charity Day at Castle Coombe

The Lotus Club day was quiet again - I don't know if they will be doing it next year - too few cars.So few of the club members venture on to the track with their cars :-(

My Daughter,Louisa, loves to come along as she is a Petrolhead like her Dad. She is a good passenger as long as the circuit is flat - she does not like elevation - like Cadwell Park.

She loves to pax with other cars and this year it was a supercharged Exige and a race prepared Elise.

Lotus Day at Goodwood - only 49 cars but they had to be all Lotus, but they did allow VX220's :-)

A good day well run and nobody tripped the noise meters - so we all got lots of laps in :-)

Forgot the camera so no pics or vids.

Northloop day at Goodwood - this was superb and we all had a lot of fun here is a vid with Louisa as Pax.

One of the highlights of this is a plane coming into land across the track.!!!

Lots of friends were on this trackday and it was good to meetup with them all. this time Louisa and Marc came along.

Some pictures:-

Quite a few friends came in their MX5's 

Next up was the DN - Destination Nurburgring days at the Ring  this was a 2 day trackday in the Eifel region of Germany with the BMW M3.

As you might have noticed in past blogs the Ring is my favourite place on the planet. The track is the longest most challenging one in the world, but we all love it. 

DN is a collection of many 000's of Petrolheads and about 200 of them come on the DN trackdays. These are very well run and the people on them tend to be experienced so the days run smoothly with few incidents.

We got some variable weather but this was typical for the Eifel region - snow, sun, cloud, rain :-) but in the main it was dry.

Couple of guys drove over in their C and D types through all sorts of weather and then blasted them round the Ring - fairplay and much respect.

It was a fantastic event and James and I did some follow/chase on video sessions - with him in his 968CS. One of them ended quite dramatically at Adenaur Forst - see the video.

https://vimeo.com/72337957

This was on a fastidiously maintained car so just never know - fortunately I was behind and got James to pull off as soon as possible - saved the engine. He was unaware of the problem and could easily have carried on for a couple of miles and lunched the engine.................

Funnily enough the guy in the white focus RS/ST? - Oli - sorted it out for James later that evening. I hooked up the trailer to the trusty A8 and went and got James and the Porsche from Breidshied bridge car park and took him round to Oli's workshop.

This is a fantastic shot by Andy - Frozenspeed of the famous Karrousel showing the full downforce effect of the banked curve.

two generations of M3 in the one Pic - E36 on the Karrusell and E92 in it :-)

Following Sam in his Schirminator E46 M3 into Wipperman - he is getting really quick in that car :-)

Great event and cannot wait until DN10 in July 2013.

Next up was a Charity day at Castle Coombe for the Stroke Foundation - this was a very wet and cold day. I tried the orange wheels with the R888's but even with careful smooth driving and judicious use of the throttle I spun at Druids!!! so I changed to the Black wheels with the full racing Wets - chalk and cheese...

Some very interesting cars there on the day ........................drool :-)

 Now that is a V12 with character - sounds lovely as well and the guy was giving pax laps for charity!!!

The Aston V12 is lovely but the modern take on an engine all covered up does not have the "presence" of the old Ferrari Colombo engine.