Mankee

I know someone in Ipswich...

As well as swinging the calipers up so that the bleed nipple is at the highest point, you can also gently tap the caliper body to coax pockets of air out. With the standard Sierra rear calipers, this is another reason to get rid of those horrible solid brake pipes attached to the sliding caliper; what were they thinking?

What's the state of your cooling system, Chris? In other words, what layout do you use, stat temperature, fan switching etc. During mapping at Emerald in January, the ECU was reading around the early to mid-90s and that didn't worry John at all. According to the gauge (not that far out from the ECU sender), it runs cooler when on track and in motion, although the coolant in the water rail can heatsoak quickly after switching off because of heat from the primaries.

Blue plug is crank sensor and the black plug is the coil pack.

Just mention the shiny purple colour of the Quantums and I bet she'll fall for that one.

I have one of those Longacre panoramic race mirrors and love it. Just about able to see into the future with it. Probably overkill for road use though.

No probs, Bri. Now replied. You got it, Andrew.

I'm happy with my new-to-me Nitrons, so I've pulled my old Bilstein M100s/M1s apart to sell the bits separately. They are certainly not for polishers, but have served me well on the circuits for several years. First up is the set of adjustable platforms. They have a few battle scars but work perfectly well. They are the older version of the ones on Caterham Parts here, where you can use normal C-spanners to wind them up and down. Note that the rear set have the full compliment of 2.25" and 1.9" ID locking rings, but I had the front set of 1.9" rings machined flat so that I could run the car lower. £SOLD Next, I've got two sets of conical spring caps, as I used 2.25" ID springs front and rear. These ones here. One pair was kindly donated to me by Elie Boone a few years back, so I will do the same. £SOLD Springs, I have two pairs, both 150lb linears and 2.25" ID. One pair has a free length of 200mm or about 8" and the other 230mm or about 9". Think the shorter pair came from Grubbster. £SOLD Pair of rear post-96 length M100 dampers. These are 475mm between the centres of the bolts. I had them fitted to my pre-96 chassis, so the upper damper eyelets are from my original dampers because they are slightly narrower by a few millimetres with the earlier chassis. Easy to swap with your existing eyelets or change the eyelet bushes or see below. £SOLD Pair of front post-96 length M100/M1 dampers. One of these was obviously replaced at some point before I got hold of the set. These are 355mm eye-to-eye so are narrow track post-96 or I ran them inverted with 2.25" ID springs on my pre-96 widetrack. The damper mounting I've had to butcher to thin down by a few millimetres to fit my chassis brackets. You could replace these with 36mm bushes from Caterham Parts (if they have stock)/Redline/Bilstein. The eyelets are standard post-96 width and easily removed. £SOLD The two different width bushes on Caterham Parts are here and here. Photos of all the bits are on my Dropbox here. If you want the lot, I'll cut you a deal!

Two in stock on Caterham Parts apparently: http://caterhamparts.co.uk/product.php?id_product=258 There's even two kits of pipes in stock. Just add a temperature probe if required, foam for the cam cover, fixing brackets and you are done.

Where are you based, Roger?

That's a result. It does look like a normal EU2 36-way Econoseal plug. That Motec must be worth a few quid if you wanted to sell it and nail an Emerald in there.

I used Simon's and Dave's tape measure methods (cheers lads) when I fitted the Nitrons a few weeks ago. And when I borrowed some scales to check it, it was 49.96%/50.04% across the diagonals. I'm no driving legend so I would never have noticed that 0.04% deviation. And it all gets knocked around when you start carrying passengers and have different fuel loads anyway.

Are you basically looking to change the ECU completely? You will need to speak to your favoured mapper to see what sort of ECU they are familar with, otherwise you could end up paying for them to learn how to program something different. Obvious choice is an Emerald; if it's EU2 (which I think an SLR is), it will plug straight in; even if it's EU3, you can buy ready-made bridge looms or make your own; manufacturer support is awesome; community support is equally awesome; tonnes of people have one (or more); they work perfectly fine for our simple K-series engines (I am a huge fan of Emerald)

These apparently have programmable auto-off features: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/251855329150 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/141817300935

No probs! I managed to last until 4.30pm when I got kicked off again. The Decibel Slayer had had enough of being bashed at the bottom of Paddock Hill and deposited itself into the gravel at the end of the start/finish on the next lap, which was rather amusing! I need a long-term solution though. If you want to try out a Decibel Slayer and Sevens and Classics aren't able to lend you one, let me know and I'll post mine down to you for a play.

I don't think you'll be disappointed with either Si. I've just put on a set of used non-Meteor (sorry Simon! I promise I'll get you to spruce them up at some point in the future) NTR1s to replace Bilstein M1s and after testing them out at Brands GP they are really, really good. I've been out on the road in an R400 with Quantum One-Zeros and they too were amazing. Think they had the digressive valving option. How deep are your pockets?

Also spotted at Brands last Monday, chatting about our noisy cars during lunch. Nice to meet you!

Great result, Les! I need another silencer adding to my Powerspeed system.

You can hook up the Emerald to a laptop and see what the revs from the diagnostics data are like compared to the tacho and ACES lights. The Emerald also has a tacho signal multiplier function, if your tacho and shift lights take their feed from the ECU and not a coil.

Oddly, my mate also trolleyed his Type 9 recently, with a similar fault. It got stuck in 4th early in the morning, behaved OK-ish later on and then eventually failed towards the end of the day. Still had drive, but the box made some nasty noises and 4th crunched every time. We're thinking blocker bar or baulk ring failure. When BGH rebuilt my Type 9, standard used but good blocker bars were fitted I'm pretty sure. They, as well as all components in a normal Type 9, will last a long while if treated with mechanical sympathy. Mine is 100% pure track use and I try not to destroy it. As for ratios, like you say, how deep are you pockets and is it predominantly road use? Just waiting for Neil (7 Wonders of the World) to pipe up now and tell you to just stump up for the Tracsport cluster.

You can just about remove each individual pin of the 36-way Econoseal Emerald plug using normal poking tools found in the garage, but there is a special removal tool available. I will also be relocating my Emerald into the cabin, at the same time as making a new loom, so I have a new 36-way plug from Emerald for this purpose. Not a lot of money, ~£20, and you can extend your existing wires if needs be.

Powerspeed do some serious-looking exhaust bobbins. I need to fit mine after I shredded the previous bobbins by clobbering the back of the silencer repeatedly at the bottom of Paddock Hill on Monday.

My folks live in Saxmundham, which you probably passed on the A12 not far from the venue. I hope the weather held out for you! It's been rubbish all week but is now blazing.

John, when I used to run the 1.4SS alternator setup, I used a shorter belt from Halfords. The equivalent I can find nowadays is a 4PK737, same number of peaks as yours but 12 to 14mm shorter. Easily available and worth a try.

The Emerald has a tacho multiplier function. Set it to 50%!