Topic

Thanks for the great intro and

Thought I'd do a bit of a final wrap-up of my introduction story.

Had a great 200 kilometre drive through the hills east of Melbourne yesterday. Lots of windy, hilly roads which are my favourite driving environment. In this case, not much traffic, lots of third gear corners between 90 & 130+ Kmph, interspersed with occasional tighter sections and some good second gear bits. Mostly fairly smooth going but some rougher sections and all dry.

Car has now been through quite a few heat cycles, so felt comfortable pushing it along fairly hard, although cornering a bit limited by unknown brand tyres, different brand front & back, and me not even having got around to checking the tyre pressures, so they could have been anything! Nevertheless, the car handled surprising well, could dive pretty deep into corners & get the power back on pretty early with not too much drama. Really loved the handling, what great cars these are

I see what people mean about the stiff standard suspension. On the rough bits it became a bit of a handful. I don't think the springs are too firm, just that the standard shocks can't control them properly in some conditions. Brakes felt a bit dead, even though I've put a master cylinder/firewall brace on. But like the tyres, I haven't had time yet to see what the discs & pads are like or how old the brake fluid might be. Otherwise the car behaved faultlessly, water temp very steady at a third of the way up the dial, oil temp up to around 125, no water or oil used, very happy.

Mind you, as some other people have commented, the list of improvements I want to make just seems to be getting longer and longer, mainly to do with performance - bilstein shocks all round, bigger front brakes, better exhaust manifold & muffler, re-map of engine, new decent tyres - and some cosmetics like a new grenadine soft-top - anyone got one lying around?

All of that will depend on budgets from time to time. No hurry as I already love the car.

I think that's a good note to end my introduction on. Will possibly start another thread on modifications some time in future!

Cheers
Alby

Can't resist a little postscript. Checked my tyre pressures yesterday and found they were all on 31psi?!?! Oh dear, now I'll have to go and drive all those windy hilly roads again to feel the difference with correct pressures! Its a hard life but someone's got to do it, Lol.

That's really bad luck.When you come back from your road test you've got another tough job to do - sitting down with a beer figuring out what to do to it next ! Would highly recommend the re-map, it makes an incredible difference.

Haha, thanks Cletus. Will probably follow your advice. Cheers