steve_16v

I went today for the 3rd year in a row and it was excellent as always, shame the Corrado stand only had three cars there but I had a good nose around them all and they were all beauties! And no pictures do that Speed 12 above justice, it's just got so much presence it's unreal, car of the show for me There was a lovely 6r4 on show with the metro/austin club

My car was insured by Kwik-fit last year and you got a free MOT test and oil service with it, can't say I had any trouble with them. The car passed without any advisories and not long after when I had it in for service at a specialist garage they confirmed there was nothing wrong with it. Actually that's not all strictly true, they did wrongly fail it on the reverse bulb being out because the tester hadn't engaged reverse gear properly. In their defense though, the gearbox doesn't always engage reverse gear properly, I know when it happens but someone who's not driven it wouldn't know. I think they do vary wildly across the country though, some branches are probably best avoided whilst others are perfectly fine. I was ripped off from the Exeter branch years ago but haven't had any trouble from the Preston one.

Have to admit, I did think it was a hoax when they said both of them broke, shame, they were (and still are) two of my favourite cars ever, the F40 looked immense going sideways :)

It's purplemonkey79 Don't really play much anymore but had a quick look at the recent updates and seen they're stopping people gifting cars worth over 1m. Had a look on the net to see why and it seems there's a way of getting cars for free, if you copy your GT5 save file to a USB flash drive, start GT then send someone a car, you can then exit GT, copy your save from the flash drive back to the PS3 and hey presto you still have the car in your garage and your friend still gets the car. Essentially it's copying them. Give it a try and see if it works, ideally before the 3rd of March as that's when they're stopping people sending expensive cars

Saw a blue 'L' reg (think it was a vr) driving out of Preston about 1ish, had a space saver on the rear

I think Alex will have been referring to the generic discs from GSF (which are pretty crap), those Brembo Max will be fine. They're not really what you'd call an upgrade but should be at least as good as OEM. If your existing discs are in good condition at the moment there's not much point changing them though (unless you're fitting bigger ones), the pads are where you'll notice the most difference. Also, if it's still on the original hoses they'll want changing by now, ideally with braided ones.

Had to change the settings a fair bit for the b-spec mode, my ai driver kept ruining his rear tyres after 4 laps and spinning out on the twisty tracks and on Daytona would get in front then drop to last place in the last two laps ... bastrd! Managed to win it with the aid of this guide, the same settings also work well for a-spec http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/941103-gran-turismo-5/57796526 Sadly they're not prize cars, you have to buy them from the used car dealership, they're pretty rare though, I've only seen them once and couldn't afford them at the time. The Toyota 7 race car can beat them easy enough when you tune the engine up, you'll get that for winning 'Like the Wind' in b-spec Another good thing about b-spec is you get given a red bull X2010 when you reach level 35 :)

Yeah no worries, there's no rush. Just takes practice to drive without the aids, I use the pad as well and once you get used to it you'll drive much faster without them. Doing the AMG driving academy at the moment and tried using the ASM in the wet race but found it slowing me down too much to get better than bronze, turned it off and comfortably got silver :) There are exceptions though, I always leave ABS on 1, and set TCS to 1 in 300BHP+ 2wd cars. With the top spec racecars (X1, F1 & LM) I use TCS 6 and 'skid recovery force' on, otherwise you just can't control them with a pad. Oh yeah I've got a Mercedes 190 Evo 2 going spare if anyone wants it, never realised you got one as a prize car when I bought it, it's never been driven since it had an engine rebuild and chassis overhaul.

Sent you the Ferrari earlier pal, not sure if it keeps the settings but if the max speed is set to 140odd mph then it's how I set it up for Monaco. It's a challenge but it's a fun one, there's room for mistakes to be made in the race

I did but didn't have the Jag at the time so used the Toyota 7 to win it, my b-spec driver struggled even with that, he was ok around grand valley but really struggled to overtake round Monaco. It's one of those that you're better off leaving til they're a higher level. Well rado-steve is borrowing the Toyota 7 so you're left with the Ferrari, I just had a crack at it myself and won both races with it. Monaco was ruddy close though, had to adjust the transmission, suspension, aero & LSD to win it, even then I had a Chapparal up my chuff for the last two laps and had a heck of a battle staying in front, was like Senna vs Mansell years ago! It's great fun to drive though, I turn the aids off except traction control and ABS left on 1 it's a feisty old thing, beautifuly balanced though. You could always turbo it as well. One thing with those historical races I noticed, the starting grid is random so if you get the Chapparals near the front exit the race and load it again, if they get in first place they'll just disappear into the horizon, but the AI struggles with traffic so if you can get a few slower cars between you and them it's easy enough to win.

Good stuff, I did the Laguna Seca 200 miles the other day, used a Red Bull X1, 90 laps averaging 53s per lap doesn't take long! Sent you a FR on PSN btw This my garage now if anyone wants to trade stuff http://www.mygranturismo.net/9735 I'm after both Chapparals, RS200 rally car, Suzuki Escudo Pikes Peak, Lotus Carlton, Maclaren F1 GTR race car, Jag XJ220 LM and XJR-9 LM

Oh yeah I said I'd lend you one of mine, what's your PSN ID? I need to add you as a friend first (mine's purplemonkey79). Wouldn't worry about that, rado-steve tried it with the chrome jag but it doesn't have a manufactured date so the game doesn't recognise it as a pre 1970's motor :( I'll lend you one of my other early racecars, you can only send one car a day though and I said I'd lend Peebee one first so it won't be til tomorrow. Let me know if either of you has a preference, got three cars capable of winning the historic races, Toyota 7 race car, Jag XJ13 and Ferrari 330 P4.

I can lend you one of mine but not til tomorrow (you can only send one car per day it seems), although if you're on facebook you can get one in about 5 mins from the link I posted on the last page. It really is dead easy, all you do is install the Sony GT5 app, play one game and at the end of it challenge some randoms to beat your score, you then get a free PSN code that gives you a free XJ13 race car (20m from the dealership) The game itself consists of watching a rally car go round a 2 min course and taking pictures of it along the way, your score doesn't even matter

Yeah I think that's the word I was looking for :) Probably makes a few tenths difference a lap but just looks weird (to me anyway)

Good comparison that, have to say I prefer the look of F1 cars without the big aero piece that connects the top air intake to the rear spoiler, absolutely no idea what the technical name for it is but the cars look much cleaner without it

you can borrow mine if you still need one, keep it as long as you like, there's nothing I need it for now (just sent a friend request)

Just got a free Jaguar XJ13 Chrome Line from the Sony GT5 facebook app, essentially it's a regular XJ13 with slightly more power, a bit less weight, chrome slug trails and GT5 decals on the doors (it looks more tasteful than you might imagine). There's a guide on this page, only takes a few minutes and you get a car capable of winning the historic races for free 8) The codes you get aren't linked to your PS3 ID so if you're not on facebook you could always get someone else to do it for you. http://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=135391 Also noticed you can backup your save game to a usb drive now, handy for buying cars and trying them out, if you don't like it simply reload the save game and get your money back :)

Both of them turned up in the used car dealership you just have to keep checking it, I've been after the Mercedes 190 Evo 2 DTM car for ages, saw it early on when I couldn't afford it and haven't seen it since As VR6 says the Vettel challenge appears when you get to level 30 in a-spec or b-spec, I'm up to level 29 in a-spec and can't imagine getting much higher, it takes forever to level up now, the only races that pay enough xp are the endurance races and I can't be bothered doing the longer ones. 24hrs of the ring can feck right off! The Indy 500 wasn't too bad though (got the XJ13 for that), neither was the 60-laps of grand valley

To be fair they were all prize cars except the bentley (4m), T16 (2m), P330 (20m) and F2007 (12.5m). Money's not much of a problem once you get far enough, you can earn a lot from the seasonal events and in b-spec you can get about 1m per hour with next to no interaction in the dreamcar championship. Then there's the 'like the wind' race in a-spec which pays about 100K for 4mins work. I've also got my b-spec drivers doing endurance races whenever I'm asleep or at work Oh and I bought an RS4 and tuned it up to 600hp if you still fancy racing them Monzablau

Finally got to the Red Bull X1 Challenge yesterday, that thing is utterly ridiculous, F1 cars seem slow now :shock: Should be a good challenge though, first time I managed a clean lap I was 20 seconds off the bronze time, to get gold you need to beat Sebastien Vettel's time. I've got 15 years experience playing games, he's only the quickest racing driver in the world at the moment, should be easy enough :lol: Anyhow, thought I'd show off some of the better cars I've got hold of now. Anyone saving up for the Ferrari F1 cars should know you can only use it in practice mode or in races against other Ferrari F1's, in other words it's useless, I found this out the hard way :(

Bloody nice car that :salute: been out in a standard 996 turbo which was absolutely breathtaking, can't imagine how awesome a tuned one is :D

Signed The price of fuel really does take the p1ss nowadays, can't imagine much coming from this but it certainly can't hurt

That's true but pretty much any cable you get nowadays is v1.3, either way, a v1.0 cable has enough bandwidth for any mainstream device (including ps3's and blue-ray). Why spend more money on the off chance you'll buy something years down the line that needs v1.4. That's the placebo effect, there is no way better quality components can make any difference whatsoever to a digital signal. It's not like an analogue signal which can be improved with expansive cabling. The data goes in as a stream of 1's and 0's and comes out as 1's and 0's, there's nothing an expensive cable can do to make them better 1's or 0's. If it was losing this data you'd see pixellation or loss of picture (if you've ever seen digital tv or sky when the signal is weak you'll know what I mean). Let's say you had an expensive digital camera and wanted to hook it up to a pc to download the pictures from it, do you think a £100 USB lead with gold plated connectors would make the pictures any better than if you'd connected it with a cheap lead? The only thing that looks better with an expensive cable is the cable itself.

A couple of people I've raced against have added me as friends, don't see any harm in it tbh, if they turn out to be nutters you can just block them. Feel free to add me as well. If you're after an hdmi lead just buy whatever's cheapest, 'premium' hdmi leads are nothing but a big scam, the signal is digital so a lead either works or it doesn't. The salesman I bought my tv from in Comet tried selling me a £30 2m lead with it's own cleaning kit as he thought that was ideal for a ps3, would have told him to **** off if he hadn't done me a good deal on the tv. Got one for less than £2 delivered from amazon and it does the job perfectly well. I'm up for that, don't know what others prefer but I tend to race with all the aids turned off except traction control and ABS, makes it more interesting