Yandards

Decided to try some LED bulbs over the weekend, so ordered them and they arrived today. Went for some dash clock illumination ones in green (the ones in the back of clocks, not the ones that you remove the front to get at), combined brake/rear light red LED units and finally a set of LED sidelight bulbs. Also bought a pair of Osraam nightbreaker H3 main beam bulbs, not tested these yet as I will try them on the run into work in the morning but they quote a 90% improvement in light, 35m in range and 10% whiter light (whatever that is..) The new LED sidelights bulbs are bloody excellent as the pics attached show, no more brown light when you are using the sidelights. New rear brake/light LED units have a load of LEDs all over them, getting a much more even rear light illumination now with the added bonus of not having to worry about the filaments rupturing, if an LED goes the rest of the unit still works. Best bit is all of these are plug and go, no mucking around with resistors or anything else to get them working, as they are LEDs I would expect much longer life and they are so much more durable than normal bulbs with the added bonus of very low operating temperature. The H3 Osraams also came with a nice little motion sensitive LED light unit as a freebie, it's got a magnet as an optional attachment so that comes in very handy. LEDs and H3s from here

No need to, the aircon radiator for the G60 is bigger than a VR one at 675mm wide, an increase of over a third from the stock item.

Yeah 700 Euros is a lot but that is in reserve for the future, it's more a question of me being picky about the new spare charger not being as good as I would like, it will still work but I can't see the point of going through all that hassle for something that is not as good as it could be. Yes to standard Digi (for the moment at least) and I do have a Gunsons gas analyser and timing light which is enough to get it to work fairly closely to spec. It will need setting up properly for CO on a more accurate piece of kit in the longer term though.

After a good few months of driving around with the charge cooler fitted I can report on the oil temps, slightly higher. But, and this is a big but, I can't recommend one enough much more consistant power delivery (within the limits of digifant anyway) and less problems with heavy traffic heat soak. Looking at fitting an air con radiator instead, hopefully that will help as the Germans and Americans never seem to report silly oil temp problems.

Blimey, it must have been a while since I could last be bothered to do anything car wise.. typical that I get the motivation again now it's bloody freeezing cold :epicfail: Anyway, after a slight issue with the 'test' charger (took a small lump out of the scroll whilst trying to remove the woodruff key on the mainshaft for the balance weight) I managed to source a replacement charger from ebay off a 81k G60 that had already been rebuilt once for the princely sum of £175 delivered - which was nice.. Finally got around to stripping it today to see if was ok, my original plan was to strip it, send the casing to BBM in the states for their CNC milling porting process and then down to G-Werks for a rebuild. After looking at the charger it's not as good as I would like; so instead it's off to G-Werks for a stage 5. There is some fairly heavy grit damage on the scroll and some on the casing, it will still work but is not as tidy as I would like, so I can't justify getting it CNC'd. Luckily Bar-Tek are now selling scrolls with 0km on them for 700 euros so the charger that I broke is fixable as well as being in exceptional condition so I will still be using that one in the longer run for the BBM process. Need to have a fiddle with a couple of bits whilst the charger is off for rebuild but with a bit of luck I should have all the parts I need to put the car back together completely by the time it returns, then it's just a case of sorting the rough ECU settings up (timing, idle screw and CO). It's only been 4 years in the making, hopefully it will be worthwhile and I won't be disappointed, although I do expect to have to spend some money (more of it :? ) on new brake and suspension parts as the car has been parked up for over 2 years.

Red Bull does indeed appear to 'give you wings..'

Sorry for the late update, back on the usual day shift today. Apologies for the 1st corner, couldn't see my braking point as the circuit was covered in cars! Didn't manage to save the reply either as I was trying to write the results down, this is also why the 1st page results are a bit blank, if someone could upload the reply to their storefront then I can download it and get the times sorted out. A couple of quick pre-race races are always good for a laugh and people are a lot more relaxed; as has already been said we are at the mercy of TG schedules so this week was always going to be tight. Penultimate race before the Chrimbo break this weekend, Mugello club.

Er, :epicfail: in terms of getting oil temp down. Massive success in terms of getting a more consistant inlet charge temperature though. It does seem to make the car less dependant on ambient air temp for proper acceleration, so I can recommend it for that at least. I am heading towards an air con radiator fitment to get the oil temp down to a sensible level, the Americans and Germans don't seem to suffer the same oil temps as we get and that's the only difference. I also think a decent aftermarket engine managment setup will remove the vagueness that is Digifant, it just can't deal with fuel delivery in a NA mk 2 Golf 8v so adding the charger means it's less consistant. I think the Adaptronic one should allow me to retain ISV safety function and knock control as well as having all the joys of either existing narrow band O2 or wideband, throttle pot and a novelty optional output for all engine functions on a screen in car.

You could just remove the two bits of long rubber that seal the scuttle area to help airflow a little.

I think Prodical Son had some of those sticky 'memory' thermometers under his bonnet for while checking out charger and inlet casings temps. I guess the next question is where abouts under the hood? Obviously the exhuast manifold area is 'bloody hotTM, but the air and gear box areas will be 'less bloody hot'. I still think that with a proper bumper to rear subframe undertray fitted that airflow through the bay would improve a great deal - it's just another project on the list!

I think there might be a bug on that track for penalty detection - I have had one on the start of a new lap running down the start finish straight. We all need to be on time this weekend as Top Gear starts at 20:30, although at 1:35 per lap 10 laps is less than 15 minutes racing.

Get VAG stuff, I don't know about the TT rear axle bushes but I suspect they wont fit! I think you may have confused the front rear wishbone bush that can be fitted with an R32/TT one. But the point remains, go for all genuine VW stuff, it just lasts a lot longer and fits properly.

Standard rear beam bushes and keep all the others factory VAG aside from the rear doughnut bush on the front wishbone; fit an R32 bush to that instead. If you consider how long the OE stuff has lasted and the car still drives fairly well then just refit the OE stuff again. Problem with polybushes is that the lack of movement means that anything but a track car ends up wearing the metal it's fitted too - the rear doughnut bush hole in the wishbone is a prime example, it ends up oval (and it need to flex to allow the caster/camber to work correctly.) The big issue is do it all at once, if you change the odd bush here and there then you only end up wearing the new bush out faster due to wear in the rest of the set-up. A complete rebush ensures it all wears evenly and will last another 10 years. Depending how low you run the coilovers this will accelerate wear on the suspension bushes, well worth considering the Koni TA option with H&R springs if you want a drop of 40mm and an improvement in handling without overly compromising ride quality.

Junkie!? I ain't no junkie!!! :D :epicfail:

Ah BT, quality or not. I did have to mess around with the ports on my 2nd generation Orange hub thingy, I would much prefer to use kit of my own choice, but that's only really an option on cable. Quality pics Junkie, come on the rest of you get some photos up!

Well finally finshed year 6, some 1000 miles covered during year 6 so its a long one! Despite that I have only completed some 28.1% of the game, you need to complete every event to get the 'All Gold' acheivement so there is some serious racing to be done yet, in total I have spent 36 and a half hours driving to get to this point although some of that has been online CF racing.

New video up, it's only short but quite good. Front page race results and league table updated too. , will be in HD when it's finished processing on YouTube.

Good race and some tight overtakes going on, sorry to see you drop out Jamin, it's bloody annoying. Results: 1. Yandards 8:45.734, 35:36.155 2. Swiftkid 8:49.555, 35:53.397 3. Alex_G60 8:58.578, 36:15.064 4. Kris 8:49.139, 36:17.067 5. 3Corsa 9:10.712, 37:25.111 6. Mattski 9:23.550, 38:39.270 7. Ebby 9:48 (Results screen went before I wrote the rest down, will get it off the replay) 8. Jamin DNF - connection drop One quick picture (need to delete some from storefront) and a video will be coming tomorrow but only short one, it will have some slow motion action though :dorky:

Think my current ring time is 8:56, but that was with faults and need to do some more practice, I agree this is going to be hard track to race on but then if we just did easy circuits it would all get a bit dull. This race is going to be about 35-40 mins long (4 laps at around 9 mins a lap) so it's more about consistancy than some of the tracks. I think we stick with 400 PI, 425 gives you just a few too many options to play with so 400 keeps the tune more focused, also the more you open up the tuning options the more likely it is that someone will just produce a monster that destroys everyone else. Might try some numbers on my car to see how it looks, although being the only yellow one it stands out a mile off anyway!

There are a few bugs like that, for some reason the PI limit does not always seem to work but it only crops up in the career (single player) mode of the game.

That is not going to happen, if I could take the video straight off the xbox onto my PC then I would do more, it's just the upload and download rubbish. The only reason I have the time to do it now is I am off work for a week! Jamin, the video should be available straight away on the Forza website but you need to log into the site with your MSN passport(top right corner) to get the video option to show up, you only get 24 hours before they delete it and only you can see it/download it. I didn't get the timing quite right on this one, some of the cuts are too jumpy between sequences. The reason it's mostly Jamin's car is that you got a better view of all the cars and it's easier and quicker to encode 30 secs of the replay camera with it's different angles than it is to keep switching angles and cars. is it possible to download the replay from the store front? I don't know, you can view it as many times as you like there as I won't take it off until I run out of room.

No, he said the bearings, they are about £30 plus some new conrod bolts and if you are feeling brave you can do them on the drive, just drop the sump and you are looking at the crank complete with conrods and bearings. You might as well do the crank bearings as well but you will need to be careful not to pull the pistons out of the bores or you will need a ring compression tool.

That is not going to happen, if I could take the video straight off the xbox onto my PC then I would do more, it's just the upload and download rubbish. The only reason I have the time to do it now is I am off work for a week! Jamin, the video should be available straight away on the Forza website but you need to log into the site with your MSN passport(top right corner) to get the video option to show up, you only get 24 hours before they delete it and only you can see it/download it. I didn't get the timing quite right on this one, some of the cuts are too jumpy between sequences. The reason it's mostly Jamin's car is that you got a better view of all the cars and it's easier and quicker to encode 30 secs of the replay camera with it's different angles than it is to keep switching angles and cars.

Video on Silverstone now on this page and page 1

You have to upload the video file to the FM3 server go to your my forza page on the forza 3 home page, then download the single video clip (within 24 hours) and then finally upload the next one from the xbox. Takes about 30 mins to upload a 30 second clip for me at 50MB.