andyelcomb

Ah, yes, I suppose so. Not your best Tony!

Nor me.

Great stuff! Have you picked up one of the mounted tyres - they are incredibly light. I'm a little surprised that they even need balance weights as you would have thought that with the precision levels that they work to the rims and tyres would be dynamically perfectly balanced individually.

There has to be a design flaw with modern springs, doesn't there? I don't ever remember having to replace broken springs up until the '90s but doesn't the current trend for few, widely spaced, coils and a tightly wound top (and sometimes, bottom) coil to sit in its mount mean that the spring has to move up and down that much more and hence prone to fracture from fatigue? I've had to replace broken front springs on a Subaru Legacy, MK3 Golf GTi, and MX5s within the last few years but have never had to before that. Anyone got any knowledge / info in this respect? (Hoping for a detailed and highly interesting explanation on spring dynamics from Sagitar)

I think I'd try and contact a local MX5 owner and see if you can try to swap to their wheels to fully eliminate if it is your rims or tyres. Certainly if you have gone REALLY budget then you might find one is distorting at speed and load which wouldn't necessarily show on the balancing rig. Should the shudder still persist, then I'd have a close look at the driveshafts - a very slightly bent one, or sticky CV joint could easily give these symptoms.

http://www.africarecordrun.com/map.html#ybm I've been following the record attempt at the fastest drive from Cape Town to London with great interest. Philip Young is the main chap behind the London to Cape Town Rally that I did January last year so he certainly knows what the roads are like in Africa. However they have managed to get the border opened between Sudan & Egypt just for themselves and over the weekend they drove across Libya to Tunisia despite Libya currently being a no-go area. Snow in Italy & the Alps slowed them a bit but they've made great time to catch up and are currently waiting to get on the shuttle at Calais. Just look at what they are doing it in though!

Excellent! That's right up my street.

If they all say they won't repair it and there's lots of life in the tyre do it yourself with one of the cold DIY plugs. I certainly would as it's only technically off the tread. Worth a try.

Of course we are all assuming that they have come off a road car - was that the case Tony? Was the car driven to you with them on or were they loose? I would expect to see tyres like that if they have been finished off for fun at a drift meeting or tarmac autotest or similar - indeed I have done just that. Of course I didn't take them on the road - that would be too risky if it was wet / damp and the consequences of a pull from Mr P would be dramatic.

Just watched the brilliant Flight Club programme with James May and the glider flight to Lundy. It has truly warmed the cockles of this 55yr old boy's heart. The use of modern technology - ie GPS controlling the rudder to land pretty much smack on the runway on a little island like that is great stuff. Bloomin' marvellous!

I'll bet everyone seeing that snorted gently and nodded sagely...

Although it says that its within tolerance, surely having 1 degree more negative camber on the front left (and 1/2 degree more negative camber on the left rear) is going to cause some amount of pull?

Fair enough - I don't know anything about bikes and their classes in motorsport. Always happy to learn though.

Because its in a class which forbids wheelie bard That's a strange rule considering its a safety item as well as a performance item and the bikes are highly specialised machines that with their long wheelbases would be almost undriveable on the road, so are hardly road legal.

Why wasn't it using wheelie bars? Simple and cheap and would have saved that.

Quite so Sagitar, was thinking along the same lines myself. Initially I thought that the gyroscope would only kick in whilst at rest, but I would imagine it would be difficult to spin it up and slow it fast enough to avoid rather strange effects. Then I considered the flywheel(s) could be kept upright to allow lean and swivelled over to provide the low speed / stationary stability, but you must still get a very weird twisting effect in doing that.

I'm afraid as soon as I started to get the "Oh my god" repetitions I turned it off. It's not just the female driver that was a retard... (sorry Steve-O I nearly tarred you with the same brush!)

PMSL! Armwrestling too!

It does help that it is nice powder snow rather than the heavy, sticky stodgy snow that we mostly get, but impressive all the same.

Don't take this the wrong way, but three pages on and nearly three months later, after numerous suggestions from various people, you still haven't had the basic battery test done and now you are saying you'll take it in to Lexus to sort. Begs the question - why ask on here? The vast majority of electrical problems stem from poor connections and dodgy batteries, so do the basics first - get that aspect eliminated before looking anything more obscure / expensive / unlikely.

Ok, not four wheels, but two... enjoy and gasp...

It was landing and overshot the end of the runway. Didn't appear to brake.

It can be a bit tricky remembering the layout but they do have pointer cones on the ground to help a bit. That's all part of the challenge. The car is still on your fast road settings from when WIM adjusted it and I bought a set of very lightly worn Toyos from you in Sept 2010. However I did help it to be a bit more oversteery by having 195/50/15 Toyos on the front and semi-slick 185/60/14 Goodyears on the back. But that was nothing compared to what the poor car went through today - double driven at MoD Woodbridge on a Targa Rally which was long driving tests, mostly in 2nd gear but odd snatches of 3rd, and LOTS of 1st gear hairpins and turns. Utterly brilliant fun and apart from getting down to the canvas on one of the Goodyears the car never missed a beat.

Just to say STOP clearly isn't sufficient. Put a sign up to say "Oi! Heads up! You're about to cross a live runway - look around before proceeding!" Or words to that effect. Still won't stop certain muppets though - you know the ones, those that manage to get hit by trains on level crossings. To55ers the lot of them. Right now I'm looking out of a window into a car park at work and watching the most unbelievable incompetence as someone tries to turn their car round. I know exactly what they are going to be like on the road and no amount of signs outside and bleeps and warnings inside the car is going to stop them trundling around creating mayhem all around them and they will be completely oblivious...