My pilgrimage to see the oracle..
Discussion
...at Delphi (well, Chesterfield actually)...
Accomodation plans when a bit awry, so I ended up doing Edinburgh-Chesterfield-Edinburgh (plus a bit extra) in a day, which all came to nearly 700 miles - 6am start, 1am back home. But it was well, well worth it, not only getting the car sorted but to finally meet Mr. Lane in person after about a year of chatting on the telephone.
So I got all my geo, ride-height and damper settings sorted - my guesstimate settings weren't a million miles off, just a number of errors were all pushing in the same direction (a little bit of toe out at the back, too much toe at the front and camber biased to the offside at the front), all of which had been making the car a bit fidgety and sapping my confidence.
Joo also kindly changed my diff mount bracket for me (I didn't have time to get a new one sent to my house before I left, so I had it delivered directly to him). It actually failed completely about 15-20 miles from his garage, but no other damage was done. It took him all of about 10 minutes to get the new one fitted.
Also, on my way down I'd had my ar$e absolutely handed to me by a modified E60 M5 (the V10 one) - and I mean he totally drove away into the distance as if I was driving a 1 litre Corsa - so we decided to pop my car up on the rollers to check erything was all present and correct. Now I'm not the biggest fan of rolling roads, as I generally think they put too much unnecessary strain on engines, so we only did one run, and limited the revs, but up came a number starting with a 4, so we called it a day.
So a BIG thank you to the man. Not only is he extremely knowledgable and talented (that T350 isn't the fastest cornering car in the Dunlop Challenge by accident!) , and an all-round good egg, but I swear he's also charmed - in my garage, if something's wrong, and there are two possible causes, you can guarantee that it'll be the expensive one. In Joo's garage everything ends up getting sorted with a wave of his magic spanner! Also, even though he didn't actually *do* anything to the engine, I swear the "laying on of hands" has released a few extra horses!
In all seriousness, you can't underestimate the importance of confidence, and when you come away from a day like that knowing everything is literally as good as it can be, it encourages you to step up too and really drive the car and get that much more out of it.
How was the car afterwards? Absolutely brilliant! Even though it had been a very long day's driving, I had such fun on the road from Newcastle to Jedburgh (nr Edinburgh), that I turned back down the Coldstream road and went back and did it all over again! (extra 100 miles-ish)
I think this photo of the front of the car today probably sums up how much fun I was having (bear in mind that the car was spotless when I left home)
To the rest of you, I can't recommend a visit to Joo enough. Best car money ever spent.
Accomodation plans when a bit awry, so I ended up doing Edinburgh-Chesterfield-Edinburgh (plus a bit extra) in a day, which all came to nearly 700 miles - 6am start, 1am back home. But it was well, well worth it, not only getting the car sorted but to finally meet Mr. Lane in person after about a year of chatting on the telephone.
So I got all my geo, ride-height and damper settings sorted - my guesstimate settings weren't a million miles off, just a number of errors were all pushing in the same direction (a little bit of toe out at the back, too much toe at the front and camber biased to the offside at the front), all of which had been making the car a bit fidgety and sapping my confidence.
Joo also kindly changed my diff mount bracket for me (I didn't have time to get a new one sent to my house before I left, so I had it delivered directly to him). It actually failed completely about 15-20 miles from his garage, but no other damage was done. It took him all of about 10 minutes to get the new one fitted.
Also, on my way down I'd had my ar$e absolutely handed to me by a modified E60 M5 (the V10 one) - and I mean he totally drove away into the distance as if I was driving a 1 litre Corsa - so we decided to pop my car up on the rollers to check erything was all present and correct. Now I'm not the biggest fan of rolling roads, as I generally think they put too much unnecessary strain on engines, so we only did one run, and limited the revs, but up came a number starting with a 4, so we called it a day.
So a BIG thank you to the man. Not only is he extremely knowledgable and talented (that T350 isn't the fastest cornering car in the Dunlop Challenge by accident!) , and an all-round good egg, but I swear he's also charmed - in my garage, if something's wrong, and there are two possible causes, you can guarantee that it'll be the expensive one. In Joo's garage everything ends up getting sorted with a wave of his magic spanner! Also, even though he didn't actually *do* anything to the engine, I swear the "laying on of hands" has released a few extra horses!
In all seriousness, you can't underestimate the importance of confidence, and when you come away from a day like that knowing everything is literally as good as it can be, it encourages you to step up too and really drive the car and get that much more out of it.
How was the car afterwards? Absolutely brilliant! Even though it had been a very long day's driving, I had such fun on the road from Newcastle to Jedburgh (nr Edinburgh), that I turned back down the Coldstream road and went back and did it all over again! (extra 100 miles-ish)
I think this photo of the front of the car today probably sums up how much fun I was having (bear in mind that the car was spotless when I left home)
To the rest of you, I can't recommend a visit to Joo enough. Best car money ever spent.
Edited by Nefarious on Saturday 4th July 17:48
Edited by Nefarious on Saturday 4th July 17:57
Not yet been to Joo's new workshop, look forward to it. 
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