Be Excellent To Each Other

Well, it is! Compared to a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

He certainly has a way of making the extortionate running costs of his cars sound reasonable.

...ManMaths(tm)

Yup, we all do it.
(Nice wheels btw Gaz. You're a man who loves his big Beemers!)

Right, so what happened this weekend then?

4 Pumas met up at the channel tunnel on Thursday morning, we all exchanged "gifts", which included fluffy dice, headlight eyelashes, "rude girl" "Powered by dust" and "fairy" stickers. Along with some lovely panda face door handle stickers.

Puma 1:
Grim... and Nase.

Cherry bomb exhaust and kickin stereo, complete with sub in the boot.

Puma 2:
Suki and Prub.

Cherry bomb exhaust, strut braces, lovely white wheels

Puma 3:
Trooper and Toad

Bumblebee aerial addon, PA system with sirens and animal sounds.

Puma 4:
Fitch and Files.

Cherry bomb exhaust, stupid amount of rally stickers.

A quick jaunt across the tunnel and a 300 mile drive to Adenau. No dramas, a bit of larking about on the motorways, a bit of traffic, all cars made it fine. 5 countries in one day...
Next day was the ring. Got up reasonably early and the ring was closed due to mist, we had to wait about 30 minutes, but were soon underway. Each car did 2 laps, once with each driver. The only issue was that my puma decided that braking was so old fashioned, and they gave up after 3 minutes. While I was heading into a tight right bend, with a GT3 overtaking me... That was amusing... Took it easy for a few minutes and the brakes came back, and were fine for the rest of the trip.
Then we went to a viewing position, and while we were there, the track was closed due to an accident, so we buggered off for lunch (currywurst and pomme fritte, lunch fans).
Headed back to the track when it opened, and we all went out again. Just as the last of us were coming in, the track got closed again due to another accident. Another 30 minuteish wait and it was open again, for the final run of the day. While we were out we passed 2 more accidents...

All good fun, 4 laps done, all cars still alive

A few beers in the evening and then the drive back the next day. Bit of traffic, no real problems. One of the pumas had the brake lights stick on for a few minutes, and another one popped a plug lead and ran on 3 cylinders till it was replaced.
All home safe and sound

Bloody great fun, everyone should give it a go once in their life. The Ring itself is way hillier than I ever expected, and the afternoon laps were crazy. Really busy and you spent all your time looking in your mirror and indicating right, but it was still great fun.

A few vids and photos:

You can see us about 2:45 in:


and about 4 minutes in on this one:


Short compilation of stuff:


Sped up run to the ring:

... Awesome!

Bored? Watch me doing my last lap of the ring, which is basically just a car show of exciting things overtaking me.



Still bored? Watch my mate doing the same thing.

Did you find that getting out of other people's way meant you spent most of it out of position for corners?

Very much so, and sometimes you were going far too fast to be hugging the inside of the track

Aye. The morning laps were better though.

It's weird how slow it looks in the video, I can assure you it doesn't feel like that in the car

One interesting point about the ring, currently UK cars are uninsured while you are on it. There is a precedent case that has just gone through that challenges that, so it looks like that is changing and insurance companies have to pay out if you have valid european third party cover and can't chase you for the costs, but until that is confirmed the insurance companies will chase you for all costs for any incident, which is nice of them.
All the German cars on the ring have valid insurance and are covered, as the German insurance companies actually abide by the european regulations, that combined with them knowing the circuit means they will crush you time wise. We all got overtaken at considerable speed by a Volvo 740 GL Estate with German plates

I once drove an Audi R8 at one of those 'experience' things. I was doing upwards of 140mph and braking was terrifying.

The video: Dull as fuck. Might as well be a granny in a shopping trolley. Perspective, innt?

Yeah, watching back videos of my car on Curborough sprint course and other tracks (both inside and outside of the car) make it look as dull as all hell. Lack of field of view, perhaps?

I found that putting a camera behind you on a roll bar, so you can see the wheel and the driver makes a huge difference in the feeling of speed.

Awesome!

Brilliant!

Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn

Excellent. Are you going to sell the Pumas (Pumii?) now or keep them for a return trip?

Anyone want to buy a puma?

Yours is the yellow one, right?

Paging Jem to the thread...

Funnily enough I wrote a reply saying EXACTLY that and then I remembered the Very Big Life Decision I made this morning that prevents me from purchasing anything for the foreseeable future so I didn't post it.

How much are you selling it for, Troops? Maybe I can buy it for Jem as an anniversary present

The blue one has a better stereo.

And, like, 1/3 of the milage, but give a fuck, it's got a better stereo.

The yellow one has a PA system and you can make it moo like a cow.

We're going to try and flog all four as a comedy road trip package listing on ebay first, I think
But if that doesn't work, we'll be flogging ours for £500.

I'll give you £300 for it.

Sold. When do you want to pick it up?

Ford Ka list of woes:

2 large thumps from front right wheel
abs light on
check engine light on
battery light on intermittently
speedo dies regularly
fuel gauge goes to zero with speedo.

faulty earth I think is causing this. The thumps could be a bizarre abs self test I guess.

£300 puma sounds nice...

It sounds very nice. Although for £300 I'm taking the stereo back out and not bothering to MOT it.

It's all yours.

Mine is faster.

When stationary, turning the steering wheel of the Ka makes a loud CRUNK! noise from under the bonnet

Steering rack or cv joint?

2 snapped coils springs
failed emissions - suspect cat
abs light on
passenger door does not open from outside

Ouch

Time to buy a Puma.

Heh. Yeah.

Get a puma

Is it not somewhat undrivable with the two broken springs?

Did they let you take it home again?

It is sat in the garage and he is pricing the job up...

I think k it is the cat which will be painful, and the abs Light.

Sweepstake!

£160 parts, £300 labour (I'm assuming the ABS fault is a sensor).

I think 200 parts, 250 labour.

Or 90% of a puma...

Wait - is it a Ford garage?

No. Independent place that does up minis and beetles.

You'd best wait and see what happens in the Puma's MOT next week.

My obd2 readers says it is a sensor fault. P500 Code

Springs and fitting £140
plugs, oil and air filter should see it through emissions £120
passenger door £60

They will trace the abs thing.

It needed new oil and plugs and filters anyway.

School me on butt connectors and crimping when it comes to car wiring, guys.

I've got a Dension Gateway MP3 jobbie to plug into the 650. It requires a 12V feed, so I'm basically wanting to come off the power supply for the CD Changer for this.

Rather than using Scotchloks (the results of which I've seen in the dashboard of my Celica when everything started going crazy with the electricals until I got a guy to fix it) I figured I'd chop the power connector for the CDC off, then join it back together with a butt connector for both the 12V and GND wires, with the ones for the Dension coming out of one end.

This is a sound idea, right? It seemed to work OK other than there not being much room for manoeuvre within the car itself so I ended up pulling the crimps out while trying to wrestle the CDC's power connector back into the unit.

I might try again tomorrow evening but see if I can remove the glovebox to give me more room, but if butt crimping (lolzors) is no good, what's the alternative?

Chocolate block connectors?

I seem to recall doing something similar to this with my dad when we were installing a new stereo (with subs and amped 6x9s) and an alarm on my Fiesta (my second car, bought it off my mum).

Was a bit fiddly with some of the shorter wires but once done, it worked well enough.

Sounds like a daft question, but would speaker wire (stranded core) be suitable for extending the wires coming off the power connector that I've removed? (which are also stranded core, and look like speaker wire to me)

I assume it'd be fine given that it looks like what's already in the power connector, but if speaker wire is going to be unsuitable for carrying power I don't want to cause any problems...

Not much room at the car side to wrestle them in, and would probably foul the CDC at the rear when I try and reinstall it.

It's certainly not ideal, but as long as the draw won't be too high, speaker wire will be fine. What are you connecting to it?

Electrical wire is so cheap you should probably just go an pick up a few meters, but unless you're wiring in a high-power head unit or your lights or something it should be okay.

It'll be powering the CD changer in the car, as well as the Dension Gateway unit that I've bought. Both should be fairly low loads, although in theory the Dension can charge USB devices so that might put it into high-draw levels?

Will nip into Maplin at lunchtime and see if I can get them to sell me some suitable wire.