Be Excellent To Each Other

I think it covers the insane taxation you have to pay on cars in Singapore

I did wonder!

This. My boss out there paid close to 30k for a Suzuki swift. You do basically get the tax back when you sell it on though (i think)

I am going to Johor next week, want me to put in a good word with the locals for you?

So, we've been G's mother's old car. Renault Sport Clio 172. Owned since new, 66k miles, and in very good nick for an 18 year old car.

You'll have a lot of fun in that. Great little cars.

I had a black one, back in the day!
An absolute giant killer, I lurrrrved it loads. Absolute cracking little hot hatch.

I did my PalmerSport track day yesterday. Hard to articulate just how much fun it was really - I was sporting a shit-eating grin for the entire day. Still am.

It was really professional with a wrist-based device that you scanned in on each car that gave you live lap timings, so as one half of the group was out the other could watch and follow the timings as they happened. The instructors had endless reserves of patience and I actually learned quite a bit from them, but you do feel like you're learning to drive for the first time where everything comes at you at once.

In ascending order of awesomeness the events were

Off Roading - boring shite hitting tennis balls and driving on rails - dead slow. I just kept thinking about how much I wasn't Grim... but then how he wouldn't fit in any of the other cars. SO NYER - came 72nd out of 75 on that. GRIPPED, SORTED.

BMW M4 GTP - came at the end of the day after two really light cars so seemed dead heavy and cumbersome and the instructor was a bit shite.

Ariel Atom - good fun but the first car of the day so you're getting used to things at that point - span it twice.

Karts - only because I won my heat

Renault Clio Cup - Front wheel drive, grippy as fuck, actually a lot of fun to drive. Best bit, however, was seeing who stalled it pulling off - the hooligan levels of revs required to get it moving without stalling it was insane.

Caterham - no traction control and a course designed to make you slide around like fuck. Utterly grin-inducing and I was actually laughing as I headed towards a tyre wall sideways to the point where even the instructor watching was shaking his head and laughing when I got out. Pedals are the size of stamps so I caught the accelerator and brake at the same time a few times. Revving to 4000rpm and shooting off at the lights like a missile is a feeling that can't be replicated.

Palmer JP-LM - super light, super grippy and the most beautiful noise. The instructor was just telling me to smash the power constantly but my first go and that just led to a few spins but the sheer sensation of speed and throwing a car round corners was unmatched except for..

Formula 3000 - you're in there, on your own, hunched into a tiny cockpit basically feeling like Lewis Hamilton with nobody to tell you when to brake or what gear to be in. The apprehension as you're let loose in the thing on your own is pretty intense but when you throw it round a corner and it just sticks to the road you really do feel like a God. I came 15th out of 75 for that one despite spinning it a couple of times. It's really hard work though and I've a new found respect for F1 drivers and their levels of fitness. I ache all over today.

You may now laugh at how much I don't stick my foot down - because fear



Only minor complaint would be despite internal comms on the helmets you only hear about 25% of what the instructors are telling you once the engine starts screaming.

Well jel.

Sounds excellent, glad you had a good clear day for it.

Looks great, I've always wanted to do one of those. Incredibly pricy though?

I thankfully didn't pay so couldn't tell you - a newly retired, rich uncle paid for 15 of us to go.

Looking on the website it looks like about £1,000 per person for the day. So yeah - pretty pricey.

I was genuinely sat there thinking - I am so shit at this - Grim... would smash, it whilst laughing manically.

Then 3 minutes later I was sat in a Caterham thinking - there's no way you wouldn't have been able to press any of those pedals independantly without significant foot surgery. Which made me feel sort of better about about my own inadequacy.

The 6'3 member of our team just caught his feet on the pedals constantly in the Caterham.

Should have given me a ring, I was only five miles away.

To be honest, I'd probably be bored too (if I paid attention to what I was being told to do), off roading is about ridiculous hills and rivers and stuff. A good rule of thumb is "can I do the entire thing at tickover", which you can at 99% of off-road sites.

£170 for a fucking battery, plus £50 for an hour of mechanic time as the battery needs registering and coding to the car once it's been fitted, if you can believe that.

NOTHING'S FUCKING CHEAP ON AN AUDI S4.

The old battery was fucked though, it's hardly been able to start the car for the last few days.

Just leaving this here

Batteries don't last forever. The old battery was bust, it has now been replaced with a new one. Which was expensive.

But yes I agree with the astonishing amusement value of both old cheap cars, and more modern pricier cars, being vulnerable to not starting because of a flat battery.

I suppose it's a good thing to be overcharged on a battery.

Whilst I doff my cap to your splendid pun, price-wise £220 for a new battery, fitted and coded is actually a perfectly respectable amount to pay, and certainly less than a main Audi dealer would want.

(I'm not saying it isn't a ridiculous price in and of itself, for a replacement battery on a modern Audi, you're going to get gouged.)

In simple terms you can't just put 'a new battery' in, it has to be an Audi-compliant battery, and the battery has to be coded to the car using a unique serial number. Without doing that the car won't 'accept' the new battery and will refuse to acknowledge one has been installed, and will continue to operate in power save mode and constantly moan about having a fucked battery in it.

So to replace a battery in my car you have to (a) Get an Audi approved battery with the serial number on it and (b) Code the battery to the car using a VAGINA-COM or similar, at which point the car accepts that a new battery has been installed, restores full functionality to all systems, and stops moaning all the time about the terrible state of its battery.

Modern technology eh?

Sounds like a printer cartridge model, to me.

Indeed. By all accounts you can try to dodge the official route by using cheaper alternatives, same as you can with third-party printer cartridges. However, whilst I don't mind risking 'grey market' solutions with a £150 printer, I'm somewhat less inclined to do so with a substantially pricier car, there are plenty of stories out there of folks trying to save a few quid on batteries and being left with badly behaving Audis afterwards.

I was under no illusions when I bought the S4 that it was going to be an expensive fucker to run and maintain, so I'll just roll with the punches when it comes to nonsense like £220 batteries.

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Ahhh right, the new battery has totally fixed this.

...

That's odd.

Done my first oil and filter change today, pretty chuffed with myself.

Had to nip out for a 19mm socket as the ones I had only went up to 15mm.

The gloves I bought were too small, only 96 more pairs to use though.

Auto Glynn engine cleaner is superb at getting oil stains off Indian stone drives.

Next week, the wife's RAV4. Looks easier if anything.

While I was underneath I spotted a hole on either side of the exhaust pipe, just in front of the cat.

Ohohoho, title

If RAV4 oil filters are anything like the ones on my Celica, it'll be glued on so tightly that you'll need He-Man to even just start unscrewing the damned thing.

Get yourself a good chain filter wrench