[ home ]

Shakedown

Quite what possessed us to think that a trackday at the end of November would be a good idea in an open car is beyond me right now. Maybe it was the need to shakedown the car post re-assembly? Maybe the price? Who knows, but when you wake up in the morning, it's -4 degrees and, unbeknownst to us, one of the last clear days before an absolute deluge of snow, I had to question our sanity.

Still, as we said on the day, this was more about proving the car than anything else so we gritted our teeth and pushed on.

so very cold

How cold? Well I could last about 5 laps before I had to come in as my fingertips had got so cold they were burning. After lunch when it'd risen to -2, Colin managed about 8 laps before he had to come in and even he called it a day. The wind-chill in the car was pretty much unbearable.

I had already given in before lunch. Generally because I was also getting brave and had a fairly large moment. It was just about starting to get drivable, but it was still an exercise in buttock clenchage. You could get the wets moderately warm at the back, but you just couldn't push hard enough to get any temperature into the fronts at all, making it understeer badly. Still, rather worryingly, the data shows us regularly topping 120 mph. God this thing is so stable at speed.

sod this, we're off!

Anyhow, the car, that's what this was all about. The clutch is better than ever and working perfectly. The new brakes (pads) have a little more travel so we'll probably have to bleed them again. The seat sort of works and needs a little more adjustment. The rear view camera works, but it's so unnatural to look down to see it, we're probably going to shift that. The repacked exhaust and trackday silencer hits the advertised 98db no bother. We're well impressed with that. Generally speaking it's ready for 2011 and we're pretty damned chuffed.

We're also so very happy to be back in the warm!

[ page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 ]
[ back ]