S18 RSG

Hi all, Due to some unfortunate circumstances, as well as some good timing, at the end of the month I will be collecting a new carbon fibre bonnet. As I've never really considered incorporating carbon parts aesthetically, I don't have a particularly great catalogue of ideas when it comes to some small, aesthetic compliments to go with the carbon theme, so thought I'd look to some of you for ideas. To get the inevitable question out of the way beforehand: the "unfortunate circumstance" relates to inheriting a rather nasty dent in the bonnet, which when coupled with the thousand or so stone chips (a fair few of which are very bad), quite a few deep scratches, and the poor touch up job on old stonechips by previous owner (in what seems to be a very different colour red), the stock bonnet is a real eyesore on an otherwise rather well kept car. I had looked into prices for a replacement stock bonnet, and also bodywork and paint on the existing, but prices just didn't seem to make viable sense, and when a carbon part came up for sale for just a few hundred pounds more than the other two options, it seemed like a solid choice. So what I'm asking for is, if any of you have any particular ideas relating to carbon bits that may work well, or any suppliers/manufacturers who may be of interest, I'd love to hear them. Also, if any of you have any carbon bits that you might want rid of, I may also be interested. FYI; I'm not talking about carbon fenders, doors, bumpers, roofs etc, I just mean small things such as the fender garnish, mirror caps and so on. Also, I am considering, at some point in the future, having the bonnet painted body colour, leaving just the vents carbon, which is something I've seen discussed in the past. In case any of you suggest that, it's already a major consideration Thanks in advance. Ross

Mike and I will be a little late, but on our way

^^

Reason for the different perspective, contrary to what you may believe, wasn't to shit on BBK's, but more to make you aware that you don't NEED to spend that much money to get good improvements. Upgrading lines, fluid, discs and pads is already a huge upgrade and should see a marked improvement in the length of time you can spend on track. Because the car is so light, you don't necessarily need 6 or 8 pistons clamping on the disc for you to slow down. If you have a 2 ton Bentley, then yes, you do, but not a 1.2 ton sports car doing half the speed At the end of the day, it's your money. A BBK will obviously be better, but that's where your money goes. If you want to save some money, you can get probably 80-90% of the benefits for less than 50% of the cost

The more effective heat dissipation was more to do with the thickness of the discs and therefore size of the vents, which would make a big difference even on same size discs, grooved discs was just an observation of the difference. Just read through it myself and realise that I didn't really write what I meant.

A-level physics teaches us many things Ade, unfortunately I must have missed the lesson where we were shown how kinetic energy calculations meant that a big brake kit on a GT86 is significantly better than uprated parts. Curse my poor attendance. On a more serious note, one extremely vague example doesn't even come close to proving your point. You almost certainly didn't use the same brake pad compound on both stock size and BBK for a starter. You are also comparing a solid disc to a grooved disc with much more effective heat dissipation, which even at the same size disc would cause a huge impact on pad wear. However, to humour you, let's talk numbers, and continue where you started. Stock brakes last 4 track days @ £400 per renewal of parts. BBK last 12-15 track days @ approx £600 per renewal of parts (purely a guess, but I would say this is quite a reasonable assumption). So, every 12 track days (to keep the maths a little easier) someone with stock brakes spends £1200 to your £600 with a BBK. Unfortunately, we've not yet factored in the initial purchase price of a BBK, at £1200 (another nice round number). So, if you're making a £600 saving every 12 track days, you would need to do 36 track days to break even with someone on stock brakes. If we assume that this person does one track day a month, every month, it will take you 3 years of ownership for your point about cost to become relevant. Even if the replacement pads/discs on your BBK are the same price as stock, that's still 2 years before you make back your money, so really, I think we can ignore that point Also, just to refer back to my initial response. For someone with a solely track focused car (which is where your argument carries a little more weight) I said that a BBK makes sense, but in this case OP is talking about 4 track days a year, maximum, then all road driving. Going back to our old friend the "numbers", he would need to own his car for 9 years in order for a BBK to make sense from a purely financial standpoint.

Still gotta iron out some details, but I'm heading up to see Mike on Friday with the intention of having the money ready and waiting by then (just waiting to tie up a few loose ends my side first), in which case it'll be getting booked in for the earliest possible date

From a slightly different perspective, I would argue that stock brakes with uprated pads, discs, lines and fluid will be more than sufficient enough. Adding power doesn't add a significant enough weight penalty that a huge upgrade in brakes is needed, and it's the weight you need to stop at the end of the day. The 86 is still a very light car, so BBK's in my opinion are just completely unnecessary unless you're building a purely track spec car. If you have the money, do it, it's a great upgrade I have no doubt. If it were my money, I'd spend 30% of the money of a BBK on a set of upgraded stock size parts, with the knowledge that I've saved enough money to completely renew the brakes another 2 times before I've spent the money of a BBK.

For those asking about this turbo kit with a UEL manifold, it's very possible you'll have some answers within the next 6 weeks

Fortunately it's from 9pm onwards. If we're quick we can be out before then and relocate somewhere a little less Elvis-y

So this week I decided to seriously consider how plausible it would be for me to start making arrangements for forced induction. I don't feel like trying to squeeze it in before Christmas, but perhaps over the Christmas break (if anyone is available to fit it) or the start of January will be the time. Realistically, I'm hoping to keep costs below £5k, inclusive of fitting, mapping etc. Just wondered what kits are available for that price? I've narrowed the choices down to HKS, Sprintex, Harrop or Cosworth (or any similar kits, open to suggestion). HKS and Sprintex because the cost of those kits is much more appealing. Harrop and Cosworth due to the drivability, having now experienced both. Seems like the Harrop kit is closer to £6k including fitting, which is achievable, but for once I want to stick to my budget rather than keep throwing money at it. Would appreciate any input from those who've shopped around before me, and if any dealers read this and want to PM me prices (bearing in mind that I already have an ECUTEK license), that would be great also.

Yeah, you know about them?

Any time dude, just drop me a line on here and I can head out within 5 minutes. I live a minute away from Morrisons, so it's super easy for me to head out almost any night. Just PM me whenever

To be honest, I'm not too bothered. Big improvements in the mid range would be great, but I should get some improvements there with any kit. I accept that most supercharger kits are more suited to a linear power band that builds with rpm, as is the design of a belt driven system, but at the end of the day, more power is the objective. Sent from my LG-H850 using Tapatalk

Thanks mate, appreciate that. Were you in your car? Didn't notice anyone, but then I'm quite oblivious when driving lol. If you ever wanna meet up locally for a chat or whatever, let me know Nice to get to know the locals.

It's a C30 charger

Out of interest, what is the general consensus on the Jackson Racing kit? I stumbled upon a very good deal involving such that kit, fitted and mapped for a lower price than I've seen for any fit so far. Considering it certainly isn't the cheapest kit to buy, and one that seems to be highly regarded in the states, it is tempting, but I admit I've not researched it much.

Chris (DedicationBlog) took his car elsewhere because Fensport were too expensive, so he just bought the parts himself and shopped around for labour prices. Fairly certain they can do the work considering the shape of Adrian's car.

One of a few questions I was going to ask, but couldn't be bothered typing

Cancel that. I initially mentioned that I probably couldn't make it due to work commitments, but as it turns out that shouldn't be a problem any more, as my boss gave me a half day on Friday Lauren, if you could PM me details and let me know where/when to meet, I'll be there.

The midlands lunch meet is the following day, I could head up on the Friday then head down to that meet in the morning, providing the offer of the guest room is still open of course

They'll need the greenlight from Take2, their parent company, but as they're a huge multinational publisher, that shouldn't be a speedbump. They release games on a regular basis. As for marketing and budget, those details would have been worked out years ago, and I'm sure for a series as huge as RDR, the studio could basically ask for whatever they want. As for the game itself, I'd actually prefer it if they took out fast travel altogether. I quite like the idea of a train, but I never liked fast travel in games. Fast travel makes open world game far too linear for my liking. The magic of an open world game is that you get a mission, then on your way to that mission you get distracted for 10 hours doing side quests. Missing out on all that is like a slap in the face to the devs who put so much time into random events and detailed sceneries just for you to skip over them.

Well, during my industry interviews last year, I got a strong hint from a very reliable source that RDR was getting a sequel. This was in September 2015 at Eurogamer, so it's certainly been in production for at least a year, and from what I gathered talking to the person who told me that, it had been in the works for a few years already by that point. I wouldn't be surprised if they've been working on it since even before th GTA V release. You gotta remember, GTA and RDR come from different studios. GTA is primarily developed in the studio in Scotland, Rockstar North, whereas RDR is mostly developed in San Diego. Of course, they all work together, but each studio has its own unique responsibilities. Either way, I'm super excited. Rockstar rarely let us down. They're also very tuned in to what the community says, and they're fully aware of how much RDR means to our generation. They won't cock it up.

As Rich said, the game doesn't reflect poorly on the design or coding team, it reflects poorly on the marketing team and the face of Hello Games, Sean Murray. He was fully aware of what the game was going to be, and made a concious decision to market the game in such a way that completely overshadowed the finished product. I think the biggest difference here is the magnitude of their cock up. The Elite series, as an example, were never A list titles. It appealed to a niche market of hardcore fans. NMS tried to bridge the gap between Elite fans, space fans, and every other gamer. Unfortunately, they chose to do this in possibly the worst way possible, by marketing a different game to that which they produced. Absolutely none of the promotional material used pre-release, whether that be gameplay demos, trailers, videos or whatever, was made using the actual game that got released. Every bit of material was made using a man made world with scripted events, not the procedural generation mechanic the game shipped with. The human made worlds they showed in trailers and demos were full of amazing life, huge creatures, great scenery and so on, and the way they marketed the game suggested that all 50 quintillion planets (or whatever the number was) would be as good as the one they showed in the demo. Fact is, that was impossible, because the demo world wasn't procedurally generated. What the game shipped with was countless bland planets, all of which were basically identical except for the colour, landscape and temperature (which played almost no part anyway), filled with Frankensteined creatures pulled from a parts bin. That's where they messed up. As for Star Citizen, anyone who's naive enough to think that the game can be even half as good as they make it look in trailers deserves to lose their money. I mean, you can buy a game package that costs almost $20,000. That tells you all you need to know. They're just after your money.

Found an interesting topic today which goes in some depth as to why No Man's Sky was such a design flop. You can read it for yourself here, but I will summarise some of the main points: The "procedural generation" system works almost exactly as I previously assumed. The game files contain thousands of parts. When a creature is needed, the game chooses a main part, the head, then gives every other part in the files an equal mathematical chance to be chosen, hence the random selection of creatures The creatures found in the trailers exist in the game files, however, because of this "equal chance" mechanic, getting a creature that looks as polished and crisp as something we saw in the trailers is next to impossible. The developers COULD have manipulated this system, so that when a main part is chosen (a T-Rex head for example), all other dinosaur parts are given a much higher chance of selection than any other part. This would result in an equally diverse world of creatures, but with far more realism and sense. The colour selection system for planets and creatures (and just about every other texture in the game) is based off a base texture file, which gives the texture its pattern and design, then a randomly chosen pallette of between 4 and 8 colours. These colours can be pastelles, earthy, bright and vibrant, dull and so on. This is how the developers could get away with their statements of "infinite combinations", because there are almost an infinite number of colours. Couple that to a few thousand 3D models, which are randomly selected through the game's code, and suddenly you have NMS. They even used the same system for the ships in the game. Each ship isn't designed from the ground up, but a random selection of parts from the models inventory. Pretty lazy on their part if you ask me. A bit more time spent giving more weight to better suited models and textures would have resulted in far more believable creatures, and far more normal planets, as opposed to the mess of animals, planets and plantlife we got in the final game. Be interesting to see their response when the development team finally come out of hiding. I have no doubt that the reason behind their silence is more down to lawyer's advice than anything else, what with their ongoing false advertisement lawsuit, but surely they have to break the silence at some point.