Just a quick update on the flex a's. I met up with Will300 and Keithos last night. Keith gave me a ride in his car with hsd coilovers on dropped about 30mm which are very, very firm and let you feel every imperfection on the road but pretty much eliminate body roll so give quite a nice track biased ride. Will's car is still on standard suspension and his thoughts agreed with what I'd thought may be the case; the flex a's actually ride better than oem and that's with it dropped 50mm.
I really can't fault the flex a's at all - riding better than oem, dropped 50mm and set half way from full stiff. I'm on track next month so I'll add some thoughts on how they cope there and whether the excellent street ride is at the cost of on track performance or not.
A great day at Brands finishing second by 0.16s but more importantly getting really settled with the car now. Thanks for the help and support from Daniel and Chris at the weekend,and Debs for putting up with my race head moods.
Took it out on it's first 'proper spirited drive' yesterday.
We met up with the Piston-heads forum group at Thetford and then convoyed to Stowmarket along some awesome back roads. We then drove a coastal road to Aldeburgh for some fish and chips! Around 70 cars turned up for the day!
All the way it was an absolute blast! On the B-Roads with momentum it just flys! It was catching me out at just how quick it accelerates out of corners! I'm glad I've got good brakes and a good pad compound!
I was behind an Audi RS4, BMW M3, EVO 8 and an RX7. Keeping up was no problem. Corners, straight lines and the likes were just perfect! This charger really makes for an awesome 'spirited driving' car! Staying in the 4 - 7k range on a back road is so much fun. A gear higher usually in corners makes it easier and a bit more usable out of corners. Fully controllable on the throttle, surge of power when you get on the throttle between corners and then plenty of torque out of corners to not need to shift down to 2nd. At one point I had an M3 behind me and wasn't holding him up at all.
Usually would have been a massive problem up front with those sort of cars!
All day I was getting compliments on how well it drove and how awesome it sounds! Few guys behind actually pulled over and complimented how great it sounded. On lift off there's a really nice burble and the odd pop apparently. One guy behind me has got some video which he's sorting out and will send to me.
Lifting off at around 7.5k rpm and you get the awesome recirc sound. Like your traditional Blow Off sound but a little more subtle and longer, and it's not super chavy which is nice, from the outside you can just hear that something is going on and the sound of Darth Vader breathing.
Out of roundabouts and B-Roads the Power to Weight is now identical to an E46 BMW M3. On the B-Roads I didn't really find anything out of league.
If you love reving your car out and using all the power of the rev range then the HKS Centrifugal is definitely worth thinking about! It still gives the sense of having to work the car and wind it up. But you just have a hell of a lot more power all of the time. It just keeps reving and reving! No way to really explain it unless you drive it. But imagine the stock car with just more power everywhere!
One of the best things I've done to the car!
Fuel wise, yesterdays run, driving it very hard 95% of the time. Full throttle blasts between most corners. I averaged 27mpg. Nothing to bad! Average I'm now getting 33mpg. Which is 2 mpg down on what I used to get. Not really a noticeable difference! And since i've had the charger fitted i've not really been economical with it! I should think I can get it up to around 35mpg again with a lighter right foot.
Qu1nt reacted to Deacon in Nige's Wide Body Project
Qu1nt got a reaction from adam in Reverse Camera Plug and Play Kit - £75