Sunshine and flowers

 A bright, sunny day looked great from my bed but the air temperature was 6 degC and it felt even colder with the Arctic wind blowing - I expected to see penguins, it was that cold.

Earlier in the week, I had done something new for me - I bought cleaning fluids! The roof had some algae growing on it, so I blew £34 on Autoglym roof cleaner and sealant. Total waste of money - it looked better afterwards but only because I scraped the algae off. I could have done that with normal car shampoo. I put the sealer stuff on, which is supposed to have UV protecting and water beading properties - we'll see. I also bought some cheap Halfords spray-on wax but I never got time to use it - hopefully soon and I'm expecting miracles.

Strangely, despite the temperature and wind, with the roof down, heated seats on, it was fine and I met up with the Porksters at Denbies at 8am:

I was able to pass on my wooden spoon to someone else, who's car was still cleaner than Barry but I was ineligible, luckily...

We then headed off (with me leading, for some strange reason) for an amble down the A24 to the Old Barn garden centre, where we took over the still-empty car park:

(That's a Chesil, not an original 356, but still looked great).

After an enjoyable breakfast and some chat, I had to shoot off a little earlier than the others (dog walking promises) and I had a nice drive back, chasing down some 60s Midget-type car, with full rollbar and chunky wheels - he was doing 105; pretty impressive in that rickety looking thing. I obviously had to go past him just to prove a point...

I love the A25 on sunny days - all the garage queens come out; E-types, old Alfas, numerous Lotus's and supercars - great fun just to watch.

Devon in Zedster this weekend and my Wales trip is looking good as I put a post on the Boxa forum and got 2 people keen to join me, so that's in 3 weeks or so.

Road trip season is here - woohoooo!!

Horseshoes and Chickens

 A wonderful weather weekend (alliteration!) gave me an excuse to get out in Barry.

On Saturday, I drove over to a fellow Boxster owner who let me have his Porsche decals that he had decided not to fit. I was still on the fence about these but I thought no harm to get them and add them at a later date, if I wanted. However, subsequent talks with others suggests I better not because they are difficult to take off if you change your mind and my paintwork is bad enough. But it was an excuse for a short drive in the sunshine...

On Sunday was an initial meet with the Porksters at Hindhead and the Devils Punchbowl. The weather bought about 15 of us out:

It was a bit cold initially at 8am but I put the roof down for the Hindhead tunnel - lovely!! I hadn't washed Barry for a while so he did look a bit of a state and I won the wooden spoon award for dirtiest car. Proud to have actually won something for a rare occasion but not worth bragging about.

After a nice breakfast, a smaller group of 7 or so headed off for a lovely drive down to the Three Horseshoe pub in Elsted. We were going to go to Goodwood but the members meeting was on. We got to the pub just in time for it to open and had a nice cold drink in the sunshine, trying to catch the chickens that wandered around the pub garden.

We all agreed - the best way to spend a sunny day.

On the way home, in an attempt to avoid the beautiful but always busy A272, I fluked an amazing route back, which was sublime - no cars, reasonable surfaces, twists and turns - almost perfect. ,Gawd, I hope I find it again...it was so good, in fact, that it has cemented my decision to keep Barry. He was great fun on roads that would have had Zedster scraping his seat bolts. What a callous, heartless git I am....

In sadder news, my son's Golf is gone. He was quoted £3k to fix the turbo and intercooler (I think that was unnecessary), with no guarantee that would be the end of the problems and he just couldn't face it, especially since he hadn't really bonded with the car. He managed to recoup £6k of the £9k he bought it for by selling it to a friend's garage but he is now carless and a little depressed, poor guy. He's going to save up some money and wait until he is 21 in July (cheaper insurance) before committing to anything else.

This also means he misses out on both my trips; Devon in a couple of weeks and Wales in May. In fact, someone else may also not be able to make Wales, so we're down to 2 of us - I may have to postpone it.

Finally, on my return from the day out, I noticed my spoiler was not flush with the bodywork. Looking closer, I seemed to have lost all 3 of the fittings that hold the top piece on:

Weird, not sure when that happened, or has it always been like that and only now popped up? Anyway, quick trip to Halfords, £3.09 for some plastic pop fittings and all fixed - probably the cheapest fix I will ever do on a Porsche.

Run to the River

 So a decent run out with the Surrey Porksters, from Fairoaks airfield in Chobham to Benson (yeah, never heard of it) in Oxfordshire...

The clocks had gone back so the 7am alarm call was actually 6am and I had a few drinks the night before with friends, so I was pretty knackered. But it was dry with the potential for sun later, so roof down and a fun 50 minute drive to the airfield to meet the others:

Just the 5 of us but it was Easter Sunday so lots of people had family commitments. The traffic was pretty light so we had some good blats along some nice roads (pics courtesy of Artur in the red Cayman):

The Waterfront cafe did a very nice omelette:

The others had to get back so took the motorway- I tried to use my newish Tomtom satnav to take me a more fun route home but failed miserably. It was set to 'thrilling' which basically meant the tiniest, single track lanes - not what I wanted. I changed it to 'short' and that was better, although the M4 corridor is not the greatest place for nice roads.

I happened to be driving past Blackbushe Airport and stopped to have a quick look as they had a car meet there that day but it was done by the time I got there at 12. However, a kit car friend invited me round (he'd been at Blackbushe earlier and lived down the road), so I popped over for a coffee and chat.

The sun was out for the rest of my drive home, which was lovely - can't beat a convertible in good weather.

For the first time, I used my camera to film the run. However, the mount, stuck to the wind deflector, vibrates far too much, so the video at speed wasn't good. However, a short video was produced:

In other news, my son has had more bad luck - the turbo on his Golf GTi let go. Its going to a garage to see how bad it is - if he is lucky, it's just the turbo and will cost him £1200 or so to fix (lucky he just got a bonus at work).

However, this setback had him thinking again and he came up with an idea; he'd buy Barry off me and that way I could still drive him occasionally AND keep Zedster. I'm not sure about that - I'm not really keen on part-ownership but he bought an insurance policy (same price as the Golf) and he's had a few drives over the weekend.

His verdict was that Barry was great to drive (especially with the roof down) but the manual gearbox will be wearing on his commutes to work, so thankfully, that idea is out.

Booked tickets for the Goodwoood revival in September- only been once before and I stupidly took the kids who wanted to come home after an hour. Just me this time...

BOING - Spring is sprung

 The weather is improving, slowly...

Not done much recently, apart from a couple of runs to Torque Moto Cafe for lunch a couple of times. A great place, where you can spend ages just staring at the posters and bric-a-brac of racing history while having a very good egg and bacon roll and good coffee:

....and they've got a Scalectrix track on the ceiling:

Also, I decided Zedster2 is a rubbish name so....*fanfare*... meet Barry the Boxster. Yeah, I know but I like it...

I've possibly made a decision about the future of Barry - see my old blog for the details.

Assuming that decision doesn't change (no guarantee), I've got a few things planned so far this year:

Wales trip in May
Beaulieu 'Simply Porsche' day in June

....and hopefully some longer day trips with the Porksters...

A Tale of Two Days

 Popped out on Saturday with the wife (to look at a caravan) and it was monsoon time; non-stop, heavy rain, huge puddles everywhere.

Then Sunday, blue skies, bright sun - beautiful. A bit chilly early on as I went on a little run with my son before meeting with the Porksters at Newlands Corner for a very nice bacon and egg butty:

A decent 14 cars turned up and it was a nice run back as well, luckily managing to avoid traffic (the definition of a good run).

My wheels sold for £520, so almost paid for my new ones, which is good. However, the tramlining is really bad, so much so that I may have to buy new 235 tyres for the front, assuming the 245s are the cause and not the change from 19" to 18".

Re-wheeled

 So I went to get the tyres fitted and the guy tells me that the wheel with the bulging tyre is also a little buckled - he struggled to get it balanced. Looks like I hit a pothole, damaged the rim and caused the bulge in the tyre?

Now, I have had a vague plan to change to 18" wheels because most people say they are the sweet spot for the Boxster; look good but also have some more rubber to help with ride comfort. With the news of the wheel damage, I decided to bite the bullet and go for it.

A bit of searching and haggling on eBay and I bought a set of 18" wheels for £550 with reasonable condition tyres. The only difference was the fact the fronts were 245 rather than the standard 235 but I hoped that would make minimal difference....hmmmm....

Anyway, wheels bought and swapped over:

I do prefer the design of these and they are in perfect condition, unlike my 19" originals. Out on the road, they are more comfortable but that larger front set do tramline a little more as well. I can live with it for now, until I buy a new set, when I'll revert to 235s.

My 19" set are on eBay and already at £300 with a few days to go, so I might even make a profit on this swap. Unlikely, knowing my luck...

Retyred

Spelling mistake in the title of this post is for comedic affect (I wish I was retired)...Z2 is booked in for 2 new front tyres later this week. The bulge on the tyre is looking worse, so I cannot wait until I decide whether to do the wheel refurb or not.

I'm getting Yokohama tyres fitted as they're £100 less than the Michelins on there at the moment and I am not a great believer in paying for the brand - I wouldn't get cheap chinese re-treads but I'm not going to waste money just to please the purists (and I have had comments about my decision).

As a last hoorah to the old ones, I met up with the Porksters on a short run from Denbies to the Chalet cafe for breakfast:

A good turnout of 11 cars on a dreary but dry and mild day - Z2 is lovely with the roof down, then engine howl just does not fail to make me happy.

A mini club also turned up - look at this cutey:

After breakfast, I headed up to Forest Row for what was supposed to be a Jap and Classics meet. One guy from the Porkster group joined me (Tim) as he lives not far from Forest Row and he knew all the back roads so took me on a fun route through some lanes. He's a biker (with 5 bikes in his garage) so I had a hard time keeping up with him - I've told him to come on the Wales trip in May because he'd be good fun...

The meet was a little disappointing, with no real classics there (unless you count old Jap cars). There were a couple of lovely NSXs, however:

...and I do like these Honda S800s:

Quite a few Scoobys, MX5s, MR2s but nothing too exciting.

The reason I went is because my son has had to sell his C63 AMG (£13k insurance renewal!!!) and bought a Nissan 370Z - he was hoping to meet some other owners at this meet but they're a lazy bunch and none turned up.

Which is lucky, I guess, because 1 week after buying the 370Z, it's sold!!! Yup, that's my son - he doesn't hang about.

He bought the 370Z because he wanted decent power in RWD, like his C63 was. But the 370Z was a disappointment; huge rear tyres meant it had so much grip, it was hard to get any oversteer (which my son likes), even with 320 bhp. It also had very little torque low down and it took until 3k RPM before things started happening.

Worse, the steering was very flighty and it tramlined everywhere making it very nervous and not confidence-inspiring. I had a short drive of it and you just couldn't relax in a straight line - continual steering inputs required to keep out of the ditches. Lovely gearbox, however, and a good looking car but flawed.

So my son took it back to the dealer who bought it back for £1k less. This does sound like he lost a fortune BUT the story gets weird...

At the moment, car insurance is all over the place - my son was getting £4k insurance quotes for a Toyota GT86. This was partly why he chose the 370Z - insurance was £2,500 which he could afford. So when it was gone (and literally on the train back from the dealer) he started looking at a new car and decided to go back to a Golf GTi, a car he had had before. He found a decent one locally and went to do an insurance quote, fearing the worst. He went to cancel the insurance on the 370Z but it asked if he just wanted to change the car details on his policy, so he changed to the Golf. He then gets a message saying they now OWE him £700 !!! Yes, insurance is £1,800 for the Golf GTi !! A steal in the current marketplace...

OK, the Golf is only a 2L engine but it's got 4 seats, which normally is bad for young people (we thought) because they can carry friends who egg them on to do stupid things etc.

Anyway, bottom line, he's got a great car which will do 30+ mpg even on his commute, £200 road tax, 'cheap' insurance and will still do 0-60 in 6 secs. He is desperately unhappy about losing the C63 (easily his favourite car ever) but this has at least cheered him up a lot and he is saving a fortune.

Best of all, with the C63, whenever anyone started comparing it to a Ferrari/Porsche/Lambo, his stock answer was, "yeah but they've got small engines". Now, I can laugh at him for having a small-engined car :-)