My closest shave........one for car geeks really!....

feetabix

Retrobike Rider
Part confession, part time killer as I am sat thinking about it, coming up......I have always been involved in the world of driving, as some of you will know, and my licence is important to me......no licence, no job!......after an adolescence dotted with BMW ownership, and a realisation that I had never owned anything that had left a Bavarian factory with an 'm' on it, I took a pre-emptive strike at my mid life crisis and bought a manual e46 m3 coupe.......for those that haven't moved away from the page,bored,it was estoril blue in colour, and very slightly breathed on......362 on a mates mates dyno..... ;) .....one summers sunday morning I departed for a track day at silverstone, the first of two consecutive weekends there....I departed home at about 6am and started my journey, glorious morning sunshine, dry roads and next to no traffic......10 miles in, fluids suitably distributed and warmed, and on a 2ish mile arrow straight section of road (thanks to a certain mr ceaser) I set about seeing how honest the manufacturer had been with its other German rivals in limiting its top speed to avoid an expensive speed war.......I treated the residents at wibtoft swingers club and the brewery at willey to my idea of a metallic 6 pot alarm call, and arrived a little wider eyed at dirft not long afterwards......my one ,last moment, glance down confirmed someone had not been 'entirely' truthful to Mercedes Benz at some point!........


.......roll on to the next weekend.......this time my dad was in the passenger seat, and knowing his lack of confidence in cars, I repeated the route but at a nice sedate 60mph.......in the layby at the end of the road, tucked into the bushes, 6.45 am, deserted road, was a speed camera!!.....the week before had it been there I would have ended up sewing mail bags!!..... :shock: .......I still shiver!.....I sold the car not long after......told everyone it was the sensible thing to do, knowing inside it had to go!.....
 
Top work hitting Vmax in the M3 on the fosseway autobahn ;) Guess it might well have been delimited if other work had been carried out on it....
 
Sounds like a monster of a car :shock:

I have had quite a few modified cars over the years, one particular one aka 'the widowmaker' had the ability to turn even the most relaxed sedate driver into a complete speed freak, just by sitting in the drivers seat - i just could not drive it slowly.

Nearly 200bhp in a car weighing around 850 kgs with NO safety features, a powerband non existent below 6500 rpm made for some hairy driving :twisted:

Now i drive a 1.6 Zafira :oops: :oops:

Reaching illegal figures in that requires the patience of a saint :oops:
 
I recall that Top Gear did a comparison between the hot estates from Mercedes and BMW not too long ago. And it turned out the 155MPH limiters were more than a little liberal. The Merc in particular was still pulling like a train well above that when they ran them on the runway at Manchester Airport.
 
There's a video on Youtube of someone in my No.1 'affordable' dream car - A Skyline GT-R (R34) - hitting 200mph junction-to-junction on an open motorway somewhere in the UK :shock:

Balls of steel. Yes.
Collosal w**ker. Definitely.

It's one thing to do it when it's just your life at risk but on an open motorway? Jeez....
 
Well all I can say is I once bought a new shiny R1 Yammy and took it for a spin down the local MWAY about 3am in the morning, well all I can say is my balls ran out way before the bike did and I've never had a speeding ticket since.
 
Signal11th":1mhnvnjy said:
Well all I can say is I once bought a new shiny R1 Yammy and took it for a spin down the local MWAY about 3am in the morning, well all I can say is my balls ran out way before the bike did and I've never had a speeding ticket since.

3am isn't so bad... The Skyline video was done in the middle of the day when there were cars and lorries everywhere!

I wouldn't have wanted to be his washing machine afterwards, put it that way ;)
 
A few years ago i 'may' have got tugged on the motorway doing 126mph on my ZXR 750.
'Maybe' a nice police officer proceeded to offer me 98mph and the 3 points and £60 fine as opposed to the ban he should have given me....maybe :cool:
 
widowmaker":4ogwqxmb said:
I have had quite a few modified cars over the years, one particular one aka 'the widowmaker' had the ability to turn even the most relaxed sedate driver into a complete speed freak, just by sitting in the drivers seat - i just could not drive it slowly.

Nearly 200bhp in a car weighing around 850 kgs with NO safety features, a powerband non existent below 6500 rpm made for some hairy driving :twisted:





Why does that say to me 'Vauxhall Nova, with a C20LET under the bonnet :LOL:


Ive done some silly speeds, in silly places in my younger years, i used to have a 2.0 16v converted 1.2 nova merit, it had two speeds, 'OFF' and 'ON' and i was caught by a traffic car doing 90 in a 30, passing a saxo VTS in some shockingly stupid race out of the town center at pub kicking out time :facepalm:

Luckily he was armed response and got an urgent call, he looked very annoyed as he handed my keys back to me with the words 'Dont let ME, stop you again'

The car was off the road a week later and eventually sold, i went back to a 1.2 nova after that, fast forward ten years and i have another, but i built this one and didnt just buy it, plus im ten times more sensible and tbf, i enjoy driving it slowly as its a tidy looking 26 year old example, and i love the way it turns heads and gets nice comments, so i go slow to see/get them :mrgreen:
 
Spudly":1wptylao said:
widowmaker":1wptylao said:
I have had quite a few modified cars over the years, one particular one aka 'the widowmaker' had the ability to turn even the most relaxed sedate driver into a complete speed freak, just by sitting in the drivers seat - i just could not drive it slowly.

Nearly 200bhp in a car weighing around 850 kgs with NO safety features, a powerband non existent below 6500 rpm made for some hairy driving :twisted:





Why does that say to me 'Vauxhall Nova, with a C20LET under the bonnet :LOL:


Ive done some silly speeds, in silly places in my younger years, i used to have a 2.0 16v converted 1.2 nova merit, it had two speeds, 'OFF' and 'ON' and i was caught by a traffic car doing 90 in a 30, passing a saxo VTS in some shockingly stupid race out of the town center at pub kicking out time :facepalm:

Luckily he was armed response and got an urgent call, he looked very annoyed as he handed my keys back to me with the words 'Dont let ME, stop you again'

The car was off the road a week later and eventually sold, i went back to a 1.2 nova after that, fast forward ten years and i have another, but i built this one and didnt just buy it, plus im ten times more sensible and tbf, i enjoy driving it slowly as its a tidy looking 26 year old example, and i love the way it turns heads and gets nice comments, so i go slow to see/get them :mrgreen:


Close, it was a Renault 5 GTT

But i have always wanted to do a coversion like that though. Those red-top engines are damn good in standard form and can be made pretty awesome, although the handling of the old novas was not for the faint heated :D

I had a 1.3 sr nova with a 2.0 8v Sri 130 engine in which was pretty hairy :cool:
 
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