DanJ

I'm in for a 4-2-1 Type A, I'm assuming they offer the collector options on this as well, in which case it's a 250 please and thank-you

Thanks Qu1nt, will post something up over the weekend. If I do use him (which is likely) I'll definitely let him know you recommended his work (see didn't ask!)

I've always been really careful about where I park my car and will deliberately drive to the emptiest part of any public car park to avoid inconsiderate door opening incidents etc. Despite this almost paranoid approach some oik has left a lovely little ding in my drivers door (it must be some innate herding instinct in where people choose to park!) Do any of you have any experience / recommendations for the now numerous companies offering paintless dent repair? I'm hoping to find an independent specialist whose been in that market for many years for obvious reasons!

and that I understand completely as well, half the fun is in the conception and then execution of what you want to do! You will certainly learn a lot along the way and I look forward to seeing it (them?!) progress :-)

Thanks everyone, I'm pretty confident it will repair withas the ding is not sharp and there's no visible paint damage. It'll wind me up like crazy seeing it all the time that's for certain! I'm on the Beds / Bucks border near to Milton Keynes so Peterborough / Cambridgeshire is pretty close, and I'll definitely drive to someone who comes recommended rather than risk it with an unknown. I'll post some before and after photos at some point so everyone can get an idea of a (hopefully!) good example.

Indeed, the polar opposite of you describe being a gas turbine which makes huge power but only likes operating over a narrow speed range. Without a torque curve for the twin-charged setup vs supercharged or turbocharged only its difficult to begin to make an objective assessment, but my gut feeling is that twincharged won't be much quicker. My rationale being the extra torque from the supercharger will be at low revs, so would only be of benefit on initial acceleration from rest when you'll likely be traction limited anyway (really need 4wd to exploit it - see Lancia Delta S4!). Once you're rolling then even with relatively long ratios you could easily stay in the region of highest torque. On the flipside of that you may be contemplating a dustbin sized turbo for huge peak power figures, and without a complicated (i.e. expensive!) anti-lag system you're expecting to rely on the supercharger boost to spool up the turbo this side of christmas? One dimensional graphs of dyno plots being useless to assess transient effects.

I don't envy your decision Nigel! If you've got a nice broad torque curve which I guess you should have on a twin charged setup then IMHO the trade-off is ultimately down to flexibility on number of gear choices for driveability into and out of corners vs lost time accelerating with more gear changes to make. From playing around with the spreadsheet I think which ever option you choose will be a big improvement on track vs the standard ratios, which are clearly compromised for more normal road use in 1st and 6th.

The spreadsheet wasn't as user friendly as I remembered so its been revisited this evening. It's got numbers for a standard MT car in it so I've been able to sanity check the results against my own car. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/87478421/GT86_Ratios_and_Tractive_Effort.xlsx All user inputs are yellow cells, greens are useful output, some of the yellow options are drop downs to quickly select between the different choices. You'll have to put your own engine torque vs speed numbers in, I used the Nm vs rpm from Cosworth's std vs stage 1.x to stage 2 graphs. There's no accounting for speed or torque dependent transmission losses so its only useful as a comparative tool, but is interesting none the less. A standard engine and gearbox but with a shorter final drive must be horrible in the lower gears, the fluctuation in tractive effort as you transistion through the dreaded torque dip is very large!

I just googled it to see what the ratios were out of curiosity (I'm sad like that being a mechanical engineer!) and spotted their calculator. I'm assuming the reduction ratio is on the secondary shaft to keep the bearing and synchro speeds around their nominal range, it looks like a lovely bit of kit either way. Somewhere on a backup hard drive I've got a tractive effort at the wheels spreadsheet. I wrote it ages ago to look at matching ratios to engine power curves, if I can find it I'll happily send it your way if it will help you decide which option to go for.

Yes, multiply each of the six base ratios by the reduction ratio to get the six engine rpm to propshaft rpm ratios. They've got a little application on the website which does that for you: http://samsonas.com/wp-content/themes/SamsonasNEW/soft/SpeedCalc.zip

That's exactly the same spec as mine, clearly a man of taste ;-)

Having just watched the video for these I have to say that in my opinion this is total hogwash, they do not understand bolted joint theory at all (to be fair most people don't, but then most people aren't trying to sell products like this!) the "test" driving over the green brick in particular is just nonsense. An M12 bolt holding a subframe on will be classed as safety critical and so will be at least grade 8.8 and probably grade 10.9, being generous and assuming its an 8.8 then the preload in the joint will be at least 20kN (the same as a 2000kg weight pushing the bush inner collar against the body) I'd be really concerned that as the collars are aluminium they will fret over time, which could ultimately result in loss of preload, which could eventually lead to lateral forces being reacted by the combined shear strength of the collar and the bolt. My apologies to the seller but as a qualified engineer who has direct experience in specifying safety critical bolted joints I advise everyone to steer clear.

The time certainly flies by! I've been musing on wheels over the weekend, think I've settled on satin titanium BBS CH-Rs, either way I've got a long way to go to catch up with all the mods you've done :-)

No substitute for a proper alignment, but using a digital inclinometer with a flat board held against the face of the wheel can get you close in the meantime. http://www.laserlevelshop.co.uk/rion-digital-inclinometer-0.1%B0~767?gclid=CjwKEAjwq-OsBRDd95aryprR9wQSJACQnU3G5BpvGBxmFiNnvV2lBfrU-fFrbHEJ7pdkMOxabrs_QBoC52Lw_wcB If you can get to a flat floor then you can check your toe settings by "stringing" http://www.hotrod.com/how-to/chassis-suspension/ctrp-1204-determining-wheel-alignment-string-your-car/

Thanks Lauren. Lots to choose from FI wise, my boss used to be Chief Engineer at Cosworth so has a few contacts there which I'm hoping = discount :-) It'll remain a daily driver so nothing too extreme on the suspension side I expect - the drive to work has a couple of the UK's finest roads!

Thanks Rob, I grew up traipsing round the Welsh forests watching McRae and Burns etc so it had to be the Subaru for me! They still don't seem to be selling many though https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=subaru+brz (which is a bonus for those of us who have!)

Thanks both :-) Keethos, I was at the University of Hertfordshire, graduated in 2006. When were you at Huddersfield? Do you know Dominic Lines? Longer term I'll definitely be going FI (probably next spring) but before that swapping the hideous standard spoiler for the TRD duckbill (likely to be the only purely cosmetic mod!), manifold + exhaust with remap (decisions decisons, although I'm erring towards Tomei UEL + Nvidia N1 - loving the sound at the end of this vid https://youtu.be/cYT1g3LMFss), will start thinking about which suspension mods after I've tracked the car as it is.

A little late joining the convo but I'm gutted for you, I went through similar pain in December when I'd had mine for a few months. They'll do everything they can to push you through their approved repairer network but its your legal right for the car to be repaired at the bodyshop you choose, so long as the cost of repairs are "fair and reasonable" which doesn't have to be the cheapest. My Dad works in the insurance industry (which is how I know the above), if you've got any questions or they give you any shit that seems wrong feel free to ask and I'll happily pick his brains for you :-)