Tom B

I'm struggling to see your argument here? I base my opinion on evidence shown through many many trials and tests of winter tyres. - They work and that can't be denied.  Quite ignorant of you to think that because you don't need them, no one else does. 
 
Edit - In reply the the salesmans dream comment, my winter tyres cost £400 which you may view as an unnecessary purchase. 
Far less than the £4.5k you've just spent on a Turbo that I view as unnecessary purchase. 
 
Different perspectives that's all. 

Treated the car to a plate as it seemed appropriate 😁

Car came back from the bodyshop today, having had the front bumper resprayed and the boot holes filled in.
 

I'm going for dinner.
Neither point helpful to thread...

I've got a valved system on my Mini @Keethos and it sounds like something your after! - A remote control opens a valve that bypasses the silencers so it's just a straight pipe for hooning purposes! It can be closed off and directed through silencers again at the push of a button! - Not sure how much an exhaust place would charge to fit though! 

Big thanks to @Mike@TD.co.uk and Nick at TD today who fitted my Perrin shifter bush, stoptech centric discs, ferodo dot 5.1 brake fluid, project mu hc800+ pads, Hel brake lines (that turned up yesterday!), swapped the cobra non resonated cat back for the stock cat back, mapped the car to suit the JDL manifold and sorted out the undertray where the manifold was catching a little when cold.
Brakes are still bedding in so I'll reserve judgement on them at the moment.
The Perrin shifter bush seems a very worthwhile mod. Combined with the mtec springs, anarchy motive weighted shift knob and whiteline shift bushing the gear shift is really nice now.
With the stock cat back back on (so JDL catted manifold, overpipe and stock second cat back) the car is now properly quiet although it has a nice rise in volume once past about 4/4.5k rpm and when booting it. 
Power and torque figures were probably about what you'd expect considering these cars always seem to produce less than the Toyota quoted figures and the two cats and stock cat back (I'll upload a copy of the dyno tomorrow). The driving experience is definitely improved though. Now, on the motorway, a slight flex of your right foot in 6th actually makes a genuine and noticeable difference rather than needing a downshift. The dyno plot also shows a noticeable increase in both power and torque once past about 5k rpm which should be nice for on track use. I'm not a 100% what I'll do on the catback front - I may well just change the stock tailpipes for something more to my preference and leave it as is. If I decide more noise would be nice I may get a custom non resonated centre pipe made up, as combined, with the stock back box, I think it'd work pretty well for giving just a touch more noise.

Yeah that's one Jeff! You get the best of both worlds! Chuffed with mine. 

Maybe one of these?
http://www.fi-exhaust.com/product/toyota/86.html
 

So update, last Friday, I visited John Ashley Exhausts in Walsall to see what they could do in terms of quietening down the car.  I was hoping they could modify the Berk HFC since it probably won't do much for me but sadly they said there really wasn't much room there to play with and most of the noise is due to the design and size of the back box.  Not only that, but the resonated pipe itself could have been bigger, so that is what we did, we chopped out the resonated section of the mid pipe and welded in a slightly shorter but offset oval shaped silencer since there was a fair amount of space through the tunnel underneath the prop-shaft which ultimately meant more volume to dampen the sound down by.
Good news, it work, it lowered the volume of the car considerably....bad news....maybe a lil too quiet  I think it is currently slightly quieter than it was before the manifold which means I shouldn't have any issues now getting on track (will double check at the Midland meet in a couple of weeks hopefully)....then again I might have gone partially deaf so only the sound meter will tell   But to be fair, it was similar to how I was when I went from non-res to resonated, I was saddened by the drop in noise, but when I went resonated, I eventually grew to love the sound that the car made then so I'm sure can get on with the sound/volume of it now.  But it is a shame especially since it sounded so good, the pops and crackles (though it does still pop slightly but you can't always hear it), the loud barks when you blipped the throttle and most of all, the lift off from high revs....sounded soooo good.
Now you tend to hear the engine and the manifold more than the exhaust itself which leads me to my main issue, the little sound the exhaust does actually make for some reason now rattles more, very raspy like which I'm not a fan of at all.  This I don't really want to get used to so I may look into getting a new Cat back system at some point, I might even go back to John Ashley to see if they'd make a custom one to give better flow (they recommend Y pipes at the back with individual silencers rather than a big back box) while having it sound exactly how I'd like it to.
Another part of me is a little disappointed that it's managed to quieten the car down so much as my back up plan was to turbo the car to help reduce the noise level....now I don't "need" to turbo it anymore 

That looks savage @Mark-in-Stoke ! 

Hi Everyone
I recently came across a website which contains several tutorial explaining the fundamentals track driving. There are 20 tutorial's which explain the basic's of cornering, braking, vision, grip limit, etc and a couple of other guides. Having done the CAT Driver training a couple of years ago this was a good recap for me, and will hopefully help everyone else. The tutorial's are definitely worth a read.
There is also a video for each tutorial, however not all of these worked for me. 
Driver's University: All Tutorial's
If you CBA to read all the tutorial's but are new to track days, I'd definitely recommend you have a read of their guide.
Track Day Guide: The definitive guide to track days
 
Here's one of their video's on how to drift a road car, in an 86 no less.
Thanks for looking
Will

New manifold went on today. It sounds awesome but is a little loud. Think it'll need quietening a bit for track.

It's a coated, unequal length, catted jdl manifold.
 

Please keep me in mind for the coilovers when they are taken off! Very interested in them
Thanks
Jake

Had this 1.2 turbo manual for a drive-about yesterday.  Felt very nippy for a 1.2 and roadholding and steering were surprisingly good. 10 secs to 60 but it seemed livelier (not run in properly either) Visibility from the back seats was also a lot better than expected. One of these may be on the shopping list to replace the Legacy!

 

 

 
 
 

Here are some quick photo's of Ross's car from today's mini meet. It's was just a shame about the weather, atleast we found somewhere under cover.

Well, it's saturday, so I guess it's time for that update.
Most of you will already know, my car has been with @Mike@TD.co.uk for the past week having a turbo installed. I went for the stage 1 kit with a UEL manifold, as well as a fresh MoT, service, alignment and a few other little things.
Admittedly, I only have around 4 hours in the car so far (driving from Manchester to Chester, then down to South Wales) but on initial impressions I am hugely impressed. The car made 272hp and 231lb/ft or torque FYI. 
We all know the headlines and major advantages of forced induction, but there are a few things that stood out for me.
Firstly, I managed 35mpg on my drive home, including 30 minutes of stop start traffic and plenty of accelerations to get used to the extra power. I would have to assume I would have got less on the stock car if I had driven like that.
Secondly, the car is so quiet! I have no cats currently (will likely change soon) and a non-resonated exhaust, and the car is almost silent on tick over, and when cruising. That's not to say that it doesn't make some noise however. The screamer pipe is massively loud, as is the flutter on lift off, sounds insane. I'll get a video made soon, so you can all hear it as I'm sure plenty are looking forward to.
Finally, the ease in which I can now drive the car is incredible. Even in 6th gear on the motorway, stuck in traffic, there is never any need to drop a gear. There is a truck load of torque from the moment the turbo starts to spool. It's by far my favourite change dynamically.
I would like to give a massive thanks to Mike, not only for the turbo install, but all the little things too. The car was far more enjoyable to drive on the way back thanks to his work on my suspension setup and alignment, he also fixed my front splitter and it seems he fitted my bumper properly, as it was poorly aligned.
i would 100% recommend Mike and this package to anyone looking to go FI, and am looking forward to having more work done in the future.
Pictures etc. will follow, was pitch black when I got home.

It's sort of inbetween the standard feel and having the spring completely removed. I didn't like it with no spring in there, the MTEC one is just right! - I really struggled fitting mine though, very fiddly I found!

It's sort of inbetween the standard feel and having the spring completely removed. I didn't like it with no spring in there, the MTEC one is just right! - I really struggled fitting mine though, very fiddly I found!

It makes the shifter a lot 'Tighter' if that makes sense. I've got the clutch spring and shift springs and they make things a lot nicer when shifting. 

Long story short, I managed to total my black 86 on the way to TSS last august and have been gutted ever since. Today I bought a beautiful white one from a lovely chap up in Manchester. I couldn't be more pleased....happy days 😎

A quick update, car is still running strong and we're mostly using 5psi currently with the current weather we've got. We've also got the catalogue of SPL arms waiting to be installed onto our car, which will be happening hopefully very shortly now that we have this installed and operating  
 

 
3D 4 Wheel Alignment system, flush mounted alignment scissor lift with front turnplates and rear skid plates. Complete with jacking beam and also scissor, within a scissor which makes lifting our particular car up much easier than our 2 posters  
 
 

 
Quick shot of the rear camber arms from SPL, quality really is excellent. Looking forward to getting everything installed  Pricing will be confirmed and added online once we've test fitted the set.
 
Thanks
 
Mike

Well I've decided exactly what my plan is with this car which means the F56 Mini is going.  I decided I just don't need 3 cars so the F56 was the one to go.  The funds from the F56 sale will give me a very healthy pot of funds to get straight into this car.  Until that is sold, the 86 has ended up keeping the garage company.  
Before it was tucked away in the garage I gave it a good clean:
Untitled by James Baker, on Flickr
Untitled by James Baker, on Flickr
Untitled by James Baker, on Flickr
Untitled by James Baker, on Flickr
I decided to pull off the front number plate holder as I remember there being some sort of holes under there that I will get filled when the front bumper gets resprayed to fix a little bit of damage from a pheasant strike.
Before:
Untitled by James Baker, on Flickr 
After, looks so much better without a plate:
Untitled by James Baker, on Flickr
I think im going to paint that front lip under the centre grill like I did on my old 86, gives that front end a more aggressive look, here is a quick photoshop:
Untitled by James Baker, on Flickr
I also want to pull out some of those grey interior plastic trims and get them painted up satin or gloss black.  All small things for now until the F56 sells.  

Charlie being the perfectionist that he is ended up starting the manifold from scratch but it's all tacked up now and just needs polishing up and welding.

Sent from my ONE E1003 using Tapatalk

Got some pictures through from Charlie at CGR, system is done and looks great 
   
Manifold is being worked on, have images of it being half done but may aswell wait until it's complete  
 

Winter tyres have saved my car twice - once from the lady not driving to the conditions and being on unsuitable tyres I detailed above and once when I hit a patch of black ice. The winter tyres didn't stop me sliding on the black ice but they did allow me to regain traction and safely negotiate the bend the ice was on with no harm to me or the car (apart from a somewhat increased heart rate for me anyway!) The same couldn't be said for the two cars following me - the first of which hit the (high) kerb hard enough to give the front passenger side wheel some considerable negative camber and the second hit the first car. These two incidents alone make winter tyres a no brainier for me as the money and hassle they saved me far outweigh the costs and hassle associated with having them.
Chosen well there doesn't need to be any noticeable detriment to try weather performance and there are other benefits such as reduced wear, etc too. I used the Nokian WRA3 tyres for my CAT DT day in the summer on one of the hottest days we had (32 degrees). They held up to high speed breaking, the high speed bowl (hitting speeds of nearly 130mph), fast laps of the handling circuit and the first 3 sessions of the final gymkhana before finally falling off the cliff in terms of grip on the final session and earning me the 'sliddy chocolate'. However, in these conditions, and with the way they were being used, I wouldn't have been surprised to find a summer tyre had also given up at this point.
Winter and summer tyre likes and dislikes are always very subjective - I know Ross likes the Veredstein Sessantas which I thought were mediocre at best and lots of people really rate the continental cs5 but I, and I know a few others, haven't really got on with them on this platform.
It does seem from reading back through this thread that those of us who favour winter tyres have shared our views as to why they've been good (for us), offered info on the tyres we've tried, etc whereas some of the winter tyres naysayers / those who've never tried them have suggested they're pointless or made out like you're a gullible idiot to use them or want to try them with a lot of personal opinion being made out to be fact.
A shame that what could be a useful sharing of experience has turned into that imho.