What made you happy today?

[Kimbers]

Well deserved Fame!! Sooooo proud.

[Kimbers]

And now an even bigger article in the EDP!

http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/wendy-kimberley-nurse-artists-en-plein-air-winsor-queen-1-5674667

[andydclements]

An unannounced cheque for £150. Not entirely unexpected, but the unknown bit was when (OK, if ever) it would arrive. The pleasing bit is not the money itself but the fact the other party's insurer must have finally agreed to foot the bill. This was a claim dating back to early 2016 when a car ran into the back of mine, the drive sped off but was so bad at doing it that after they'd started to make off, I had time to travel 200m-300m (from a standing start), drive round a roundabout and drive back to the spot and come face to face and see the numberplate etc. The  car's owner denied being there/ having a collision. 

I've had several insurance renewals since then (main car plus three classics) where I've had to declare it and I think it's been taken as fault claim. What's the betting I don't get any refund of premium. oh well, at least it's now a non-fault claim.

[Giniw]

(on a private track, of course! — dry road but old dry tyres too)

It looks like the Esprit is now more or less OK ^^

Edited August 31, 2018 by Giniw

[Steve V8]

Finally finishing this artificial grass before the weekend, which has put me in the good books and earned me some much needed Lotus garage time👌👌👌

[Chillidoggy]

Surprised you never fitted carpet.

[robington]

I opened my garage door this morning and this was the sight. 😊😊

It wasn't a dream!!!

 

[Steve V8]

46 minutes ago, robington said:

It wasn't a dream!!!

It would be for the majority of people...

[pete]

Hung my new garage doors today

[Bazza 907]

Well hung Pete..

[pete]

Who talked?

[C8RKH]

Flossy.

[Kimbers]

No.... this guy talked!

[C8RKH]

Reading this made me happy as it malkes me feel there will be cars for me to aspire to in the future, even if they are not a Lotus. (reproduced from TopGear article)

I so agree with this 100% and it is a shame as if you repalce with McLaren with Lotus just about everywhere it would ring true i am sure with ALL Lotus fans.

 

Famously, McLaren has refused to join the SUV crowd; refused to join the likes of Porsche, Lamborghini, Bentley, Aston Martin and so forth. This hasn’t changed.

“There’s more than enough SUVs in the world,” McLaren boss Mike Flewitt tells TopGear.com, “and we don’t need another one. That’s sort of the flippant side,” he laughs.

But the reasoning is a little deeper than that.

“Effectively when we look at products – and we’re always looking at product concepts – is that there are three measures. One is around the brand, one is around the technology and the other is around the financials.

“So, the brand: an SUV is only going to dilute the McLaren brand. Our brand and heritage is motorsport and great drivers’ cars. SUVs are great, they have their place, but they’re not great drivers’ cars. They utterly dilute the driving experience so it makes no sense,” he said.

On the engineering side of things he noted how “a great many” of the big, luxury SUVs were all made by the same group, sharing the technology to make their own 4x4s fit the character of each brand.

“Nothing wrong with them,” Flewitt said, “but we don’t have a technology set that suits an SUV, so we’d be starting from scratch.

“And we’re not arrogant to think we can go up against the Range Rovers and Cayennes of this world with a better can than them overnight,” he said.

Third and finally, money. “We don’t have the technology and we’re not going to be first in the market, so what’s the point? You have to invest from scratch and we wouldn’t make any money out of it.

“After all that, why the hell would we do this?” he laughs. The customers too aren’t really chomping at the bit to get a McLaren SUV.

“The customers love what we do,” Flewitt said.

[C8RKH]

51 minutes ago, Kimbers said:

No.... this guy talked!

I thought it was this dodgy guy!

[Steffen_Leitgeb-LSWGmbh]

It made me happy that the Absolute Lotus Mag arrived today and I found they gave me a really nice upgrade of my regular advertising from first inside page to the back cover page 🙂
Nice stories in there as well … 
 

[pete]

9 hours ago, C8RKH said:

Flossy.

The Scottish escort

[C8RKH]

Yes. Apparently she's quite tight!

[Alfa2Evora]

Despite my mini-rant in the 'Unhappy' thread, they were still worth the expense of getting them here.

Another great item from Sherman at HethelSport - just got to hope for a dry day now to get them fitted.

(key there for a sense of scale)

[USAndretti42]

Not today but last Saturday, I went to a local car show in Northampton.  There was an orange McLaren Spyder there and what made me happy was that there was a young, probably around 12, girl, with a proper camera, not her phone, taking a great effort to get good photos of its interior.  Even better, she wasn't being pushed into it by her car-mad dad.  It was her mother who was encouraging and coaching her.  Saw her later taking shots of a Ferrari 308.  I was please to see a young kid taking an interest in cars and to see that it wasn't a stereotype.  Petrolheads are still growing.

[johnpwalsh]

Just found this bit of interesting info on my Elite 504. Copied from and American site. Lotus Elite 504, Only 45 vehicles were imported into the USA, and a total of 89 were ever produced, this is a rare car and internationally know collector car. This Lotus has a 3 door coupé body style, 4 passenger seating, fiberglass body, steel frame with a front mounted Lotus manufactured engine and rear wheels drive. The Elite was Lotus' first car to use the lotus made 907 aluminum-block 4-valve, DOHC, four-cylinder engine that displaced 1,973 cc (120.4 cu in) and developed 115.6 kW (155 hp), a famous engine for the next decade for Lotus. 504 also offered another first for a Lotus: a Borg-Warner three-speed automatic gearbox. The Elite had a claimed drag coefficient of 0.30, and at the time of launch, it was the world's most expensive four-cylinder car. The Elite's striking shape was designed by Oliver Winterbottom. He is quoted as saying that the basic chassis and suspension layout were designed by Colin Chapman, making the Elite and its sister design the Eclat the last Lotus road cars to have significant design input from Chapman himself, founder of Lotus. So that basically means I have 1 of 48 Excel SA's and 1 of only 89 504 Elites. I wonder how many of each are left.

[Vanya]

What made me happy today? Picking this up and driving it in to work at a steady clip of 160 km/h....

(lI was ess happy about the CEL it threw at me when I was half way there, but then again, I'd expect nothing less of this marque...)

[Fueltheburn]

Vanya... my money is on a throttle position sensor fail for the Maserati.

Very nice though 

[Vanya]

Cheers man. Code turned out to be a intermittent "suboptimal catalytic converter efficiency, left bank" story that's been following the car around for years. I've shut it off hasn't come back since. 

[Fueltheburn]

TP sensors on these are terrible.

They have tracks that wear out. They can be replaced with a hall effect sensor.  A sub-optimal cat converter code can be attributed to fuelling: MAF, TPS, coil pack or ecu engine coolant sensor I.e anything that controls fuelling and timing will mean the fuelling will go out of kilter and be picked up by the 02 sensor and throw a code.

Passed superbike test on Saturd🤗ay.