Do fun2drive
Rent a JDM legend from Omoren
Driving is stupidly easy over there, nobody does the speed limit, just watch out for speed cameras
Motorway is expensive as you have tolls
Do touges and mountain passes
If you are going for 2 weeks take around £2k spending money
Jetlag will hit hard
If you are going through dubai check laws and customs as they are super strict
Just a general thought, do people fancy another meeting before the years out, perhaps using xmas as an excuse?
There's been a few successful meetings in both Birmingham and Essex so maybe something between somewhere like Oxford or Northampton.
If there's enough interest I'll volunteer to find somewhere and book a table.
Let me know your thoughts guys, just an idea
It's been a few months since the last update, but my latest addition to my car is a set of AP Racing 4 Pot calipers with 330mm grooved discs. How this came about was in part due to a recent track day I did at Oulton Park. Whilst attempting the 'Island bend 100mph challenge', it became brutally apparent that stopping in time for Shell Oils Hairpin was a growing concern. I've been running stock brakes with Project Mu HC800 pads. These are actually pretty good, having a really nice level of feel to them, but I was murdering them on track. Now, I'm not the last of the late brakers, but I really like to trail brake which requires a consistent and good feel from the brakes and they do actually need to work. I was finding that after two or three laps they were really struggling and well, not sounding that good. All said and done I felt I was going over the limit for what was achievable with a stock setup.
I admit there was big part of me thinking just how good the car would be if I had brakes that could take a bit more heat and provide a greater level of consistency whilst on the track. I'd also noted when sprinting that I felt like I was just killing the brakes. Whilst it's only one flyer of a lap, you tend to brake later to try and save a few hundredths of a second absolutely anywhere you can.
So, I went away and had a think about it. The only thing really that was putting me off, was the price. They seemed to come out at £2K+ which is a lot of money. I thought about the cheaper alternatives, like K-Sport with their seemingly over engineered 8 pot setup. Willwood also do a 4 Pot setup for around £1K. But again whilst I've heard nothing bad about Willwood, racing teams don't tend to use them. I didn't consider shite like D2 and all that, but still I was put off by K-Sport being a sub-premium brand and well it came down to the AP's and Brembos but they were even more expensive. It was only after posing the question to the forum that got the link to Reyland Motors who did an AP 4 pot setup with their supplied discs. This brought the price down to a far more appealing £1500. Still a lot of money and yes it is. But my thinking with my car is that I'm careful about how I modify it and when I do it, I only want to do it once. I don't want to mess around endlessly swopping parts and inevitably wasting money in the process. I admit, though, I'm quite good at talking myself into stuff.
There were a few options on the Reyland site, see; http://www.reyland.co.uk/subaru-impreza/ what with for another £250 you can have AP discs to really go for it, or for £150 you can having floating discs which expand more freely than a fixed disc to the bell. But having considered my usage, I felt that it was key to get the AP 4 pots and well I can always upgrade to a floating disc setup or go full AP on the discs in the future should I wish. Something to note, you have to call Reyland using a phone, you can't order online, so it was slightly unsettling to hand over £1500 on my card with no email confirmation or anything! It's what we used to do, but it's feels odd after years of just clicking the mouse and getting your order details instantly.
I naturally chose Toyota RRG Macclesfield to do the work and I knew the Master himself, Gary would be doing the work and I knew he'd really enjoy doing it. Stuff like this matters.
Here's what the calipers looked like out of the box:
Image 17-11-2017 at 22.02 by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
Discs wrapped up:
IMG_5049 by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
The kit came with braided brake lines, all bolts needed, CNC aluminium mounting bracket to fit the calipers to the hubs and Ferodo DS 2500 pads which are a street/track type pad:
IMG_5049 by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
Gary got on with the install. Richard commented that one of the mounting brackets didn't have it's thread tapped properly. No problem though, Gary got out his tap and die and sorted it. It's for reasons like this I use RRG Macc. Gary sent me pics on Facebook of progress:
23621988_1774765709209175_2878800822716104916_n by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
Here's the caliper mounted with the disc. Looking good. I went for black calipers as they were cheaper than red and wouldn't clash with my red wheels:
23621988_1774765709209175_2878800822716104916_n by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
Setup on the car when I picked it up. Note the colour of the discs.
IMG_5049 by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
Richard kindly lent me his 2017 Clubsport GT86. It hasn't been leant to anyone else before which was noted when they were doing the loan car agreement!
It's interesting to drive the newer version in stock form to compare to mine.
IMG_5049 by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
I was really interested to what the car felt like on the drive home, but it was in rush hour traffic, so no heavy braking at all. It felt good, pedal pressure is a little reduced, though I was recalibrating myself after driving the demonstrator which felt different from my brakes did and were a bit more grabby on initial bite than my previous Project Mu's. I decided to after rush hour had subsided to bed the brakes in. I took the car out on a national speed limit dual carriageway and started to heat the brakes by braking firmly at around 60mph and repeated this around 15 times. The instructions say to use 50% of the braking power and repeat 25-30 times. Seems like quite a lot. I then moved onto increasing my speed and braking harder and harder another 20 times or so. It's definitely not an efficient way to drive! I did this until I could smell the brakes and then I knew I was done. The brakes felt a bit glassy when I started but I could really feel them starting to bite greatly improving the stopping of the car once I'd done 20 runs or so.
I stopped at the local Shell and as you can see the discs have gone a bit blue. This shows that the pad material has transferred to the disc and increases the friction.
IMG_5057 by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
I've driven the car for work today covering about 50 miles which is pretty average for a day. No real hard braking. I've noticed that initial bite when cold is better than the Project Mu's, but probably similar to what the demonstrator GT86 I had felt like. Except the progression was better which made it very easy to modulate. I'm really interested in how much feel I will get out when on the track and how repeatable it will be. Certainly in town driving there is no fuss, the brakes work well but just feel a bit 'stronger' than stock brakes.
The real test will come when I'm out on track at Oulton Park on the 9th December. I am rather looking forward to it.
Been following the 86 since it was a concept on Gran Tourismo, still have Toyota brochures from 2012! I was waiting for a "sti" turbo model to come out but that's never gonna happen, so here I am
I've been on the hunt for about a month since my old diesel dog daily started playing up.
Im pretty fussy, I'm after a clean, low miles, 3 year old, 1 owner, 86, with a fully black interior. If you know of one please let me know!
Depending on what I pay for the car, depends on how soon I can make my first mods.
I'll be replacing the standard spoiler with the Japanese TRD version immediately haha. Depending on the colour, I'll be plasti-dipping or wrapping it to something more my taste. And the last things I'd do while in warranty, is unequal mani, panel filter, remap.
Maybe headunit and speaker/sub upgrade too.
Long term plans would be a turbo conversion and wheels. And then just enjoy the car for what it is
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