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Blimey, it's October 2009. Where did that spring from?? It's rapidly getting colder, wetter, windier, darker and altogether gloomier outside. Summer is officially over and Autumn is in full swing, with Winter just about in earshot, waiting to interject. Which makes it a great time to kick off my 2009 track day season. In fact, here's a picture of me having fun, enjoying the great British weather.

It's been a long wait since I placed the order back in May but I got the call early last week to say my Toyota iQ had arrived, and I picked it up on Thursday evening. So far it's been brilliant and even better than I had hoped for.

Less than four days to go until the delivery date for my iQ and I'm getting a little paranoid, thinking any moment the dealer will call to let me know it's going to be delayed. It won't be the end of the world if that happens but I'm quite keen to have a car that I can just jump to any time and use. The Caterham's been great but it's a useless only car.

I've had to use it quite a bit over the last couple of weeks which to be honest has been quite fun, but what hasn't been fun is constantly running out of electricity. One day last week I parked up at work and came to start it at the end of the day to go home, and it barely turned over at all. Not amused. So I bought an Odyssey Extreme battery from Grand Prix Racewear yesterday which so far has completely solved my problems getting the car started.

That's a posh way of saying I have a dodgy right shoulder. I was invited to a karting evening with some colleagues last Thursday and when the time came to get ready, I began putting my race suit on and somehow managed to pop my shoulder out of the joint, as the following before and after x-rays show (look away now if you're squeamish).

It's that time of year again where my Volvo needs MOT and tax, and thanks to a battery that doesn't hold a charge and brakes and suspension that are both kaput, it's going to cost a significant amount of money to keep it on the road for another year. Combined with the poor fuel consumption and the fact I don't really need a car that big anymore, I made the decision to get something else. The short of the long is I've just ordered one of these!

It's been a long time since I've had the opportunity to build a new PC for myself. I've been a fan of Shuttle PCs for the last six years or so but I've thrown in the towel after my outgoing model threw a hissy fit on Friday when I tried to enable the on-board graphics adapter. I'd returned home with a pair of new 19" monitors to supplement my main 20.1" monitor, with the plan being to drive them via the built in ATI Xpress graphics adapter.

However, as soon as I enabled the feature in the BIOS the system wouldn't start at all. Clearing the CMOS was the only solution and no matter what hardware I pulled out I could not get it to work. I very nearly took the monitors straight back to reconsider the whole thing, but then it occurred to me that the main CPU fan header on the motherboard had already fried, and my previous Shuttle mysteriously died a death, cause unknown. After four years of faithful (ish) service I thought it would be about time to just build a new system and move away from the cramped confines of a small form factor enclosure.

When I bought my Volvo in 2006 (almost 3 years ago now, blimey) it was already on something like 160,000 miles. I knew this was quite high in general terms but for a Volvo, only just run in. Well I've averaged 10,000 a year since then and yesterday the clock rolled over to 190,000 miles. If the car was air tight I'd be just over 85% of the way to the moon by now.

Unfortunately it's beginning to feel like it's barely able to keep water out let alone the vacuum of space, with an increasing number of knocks, rattles and squeaks. The brakes feel odd, the steering is iffy and the dampers are noticeably less crisp than they were. Nonetheless, the engine is strong and it's not that bad on fuel despite the short trips it's limited to these days. I think 200,000 miles is on the cards, at which point hopefully the government will be happy to give me £2,000 for it and I can walk away laughing.

I'm such a child, and I love it. Ever since I fitted an LSD to the Caterham all I've really wanted to do was mess about and do some donuts, and on Friday I finally had my chance. I joined the rest of the Hondas-On-Track boys and girls for another North Weald activity day full, complete with a brand new pair of rear tyres. It was hugely entertaining although there was a slight incident involving a cone that means the car's out of action again for a while.

In my opinion it's the biggest downside to airfield days. An inch off the right line and you clip a cone, and the resulting damage can vary from a scratch to a new side skin. Luckily as part of my spring cleaning adventure I replaced all of the metal wing retaining nuts and bolts with plastic versions, which are designed to snap off and save the side skin from being ripped to pieces with the wing. This is exactly what happened so all I need replace is the bolts, wing and light cluster.

As much as I enjoy messing about with the Caterham, I can well do without repeating the previous three weekends for a year. At least in theory that's how long it should be from now. I've just had the gearbox and differential serviced by Road & Race Transmissions. It's not normally a big deal; take it all out (two days work at a casual pace), leave the important bits with R&R for a week, and put it all back together again the following weekend.

Unfortunately the diff was missing its breather outlet, to which I would normally have connected a catch can (or suitable tight-git substitute, pictured below), so it breathed oil all over the back of the car. I wish I'd taken a picture, it was such a mess; every single component had a messy, dirty oily gunk attached to it. So I took the opportunity to completely strip the rear of the car and clean, fix/replace and re-paint anything that needed it.

Over the last seven years of driving I've been pretty lucky with punctures, only having had one that I can remember, until last weekend when I found a nail buried in the rear left on the Caterham. Luckily it was repaired and has been fine since. To add insult to injury, I went out to the garage again this weekend and find another (different) nail in the rear left! The tyre was repaired and all is well again, but I am seriously wondering, when did I drive over all of these nails?!

Anyway, the purpose of my first visit to the garage was to try and pluck up enough courage to take a Dremel to the passenger side skin on the Caterham, to fit a new exhaust I picked up. I have a rule about not doing bodywork simply because it's really obvious when it's done poorly (i.e. by me). But we are officially in a recession, so needs must.

I've been playing around with Windows 7 over the past couple of weeks. It's really impressive that Microsoft have seemingly managed to get all of the nice frilly bits of Vista into an OS that is as fast and usable in day-to-day life as XP. One of features that's new is Libraries which present a customised view of their content, which means a Library of documents can look quite different to a Library of music. Ars Technica have a nice article which cover the basics and gives an overview of how Libraries work.

What particularly caught my eye was how smartly a Library of photos is presented. The initial thumbnail preview of each library contains three photos arranged in a 3D 'stack' with a nice border and some shadows.

Hello! After a 16 month break I've given myself a kick up the behind and come back to the website. A re-design, re-structure and lots more content are just some of the new things to look out for.

>> Motorsport section for cars and track days
>> Video gallery with high definition videos
>> Picture gallery - completely re-designed to make it easier to use

What better way to round out a great season of Top Gear than by naming the Caterham R500 as Car Of The Year 2008. I'd love to say it's the same as mine but there's the slight issue of 120hp that I don't have. Nonetheless, it's a small vistory for "geeky" cars all over.

The Stigs power lap is a joy to watch and if you haven't already seen it, here it is below. If YouTube have pulled the plug on this particular version, click here to search for others.

Thankfully not a twist like last time! My dad and I took his 2007 MX-5 along with the Hondas-On-Track guys and girls for a sessioned day at Combe. I had a lot of fun with the car at North Weald and it didn't disappoint on track.

On a nice open circuit like Combe it comes alive - it really does handle beautifully! You have to switch the traction control system off or it will get upset very quickly, and the ABS cuts in far too early, but after a few laps it was clear that the chassis is very nicely balanced and the limited slip diff makes getting on the power early a very safe thing indeed! In fact, I had to flick it into a chicane off the power and jump on it again in 2nd to get even a hint of oversteer.

Today I dodged the showers and delivered my shell to TGM for them to turn it into a race car!

Everything I've done over the last few months has been leading up to this. I've given them a lot of work to do but the end result will deffinitely be worth it. I don't want to give too much away yet but, the car will come back looking completely different, certainly like no other racing CRX that I know of.

Part of my grand plan for the car involves a complete base colour change, and one of the things I want to have done is the wheel arches. Trouble is, they are covered in black underseal stuff much like the sound deadening tar that was all over the floor inside the car. It was bad enough removing that from inside, but the wheel arches are 10 times worse.

I used a wire brush attachment on a grinder as well as a smaller one on a drill. I've managed to get 90% of it off leaving only the hard-to-get-at places for someone else to do. Not much fun though sat pretty much inside the arch, getting showered in hot bits of underseal and wire from the brush and the noise... arg! So I've decided to get the bodyshop to do the rear arches, mainly because I really really don't mind paying someone to do the job, but also just incase the rust has come back and they fall to bits!

Car wise anyway. It's been a difficult month+ without much progress. However, I have now finally got the shell sitting on a trolley and I've removed all of the suspension and sub frames so there is literally not a single nut or bolt left attached. Hopefully I can get it to the bodyshop next weekend for the paint work and various other cosmetic tweaks - all shall be revealed shortly!

I finally got around to uploading the second video from Brands Hatch in December which shows a bit of the 'mini race' I had with Chris and Neil and their ex-CRX Challenge race car. It's a split screen view from both of our on-board cameras so it's quite good for comparisons. I've also been testing a high-def online video provider so soon I will be able to offer much better quality videos.

I won't say too much, I'll let the pictures do the talking. All I will say is that this is a huge step towards getting the car ready to race and Custom Cages have done a great job, and I'm really really chuffed at the moment. There's a lot of work to do and a long way to go, but this was a big milestone!

The cage is made from CDS and is fully welded in (no going back now!) so offers the absolute maximum protection for the best weight and cost. The guys at Custom turned the car around in 5 working days which is really impressive, and I was very pleased with the way they dealt with the project. Highly recommended!

First off, a little update on the CRX. I've decided to finish the car and do a full season with it and see how I get on. I'm aiming to get the car finished and ready to test for August, with the intention of doing a full race in September.

There is a huge amount of work to do to get to that point though. Task one is the roll cage so the car has been stripped down to a bare shell, leaving only the steering column, pedal box and suspension. I'm taking it up to Custom Cages shortly for a multi-point weld in cage which although expensive, is going to offer the best crash protection and shell strength.

Ok stick with me here because I've got nearly 3 months of stuff to cover. It does culminate in Saturdays track day at Castle Combe though, which didn't exactly go as planned.

I can't remember if it was late in December or early in January, but somewhere along the line I bought a new engine. It was a known good engine that had already had head work so I bought it thinking it would be a good engine to start modifying for more power, while also being lower mileage so hopefully more reliable. Not that I'd had any problems with the old engine, but it was starting to smoke a little.

I'd have put money on rain, snow and/or ice playing a major part in the final Hondas-On-Track track day of the year at Brands Hatch, but to everyones amazement the weather gods were on our side and the 15th of December played host to a fantastic day on the Indy circuit.

The day was shared with Lotus and MG and ran as 20 minute sessions, limited to around 15 cars on track in each session. After the usual briefing everyone scrambled to their cars for last minute checks. I was so convinced of the impending rain I brought the car with a set of 'wets' on, so I had to change back to my dry weather R888s. I've now done three track days on these Toyo cut slicks and they all still have a fair bit of life left, which is really impressive considering the abuse I've given them, and their relatively low cost.

The December issue of JTuner magazine has a 4 page feature on my car! I met with Matt and Craig at Brands in July and now the article has finally made it to print.

It's a little out of date (spec wise) and there are a couple of minor errors (the engine is a D16, not a B16) but it's all spot on otherwise, and Matt has really captured the spirit of what I've done with the car and what I've got planned for the future.

HUGE thanks to Hondas-On-Track for a superbly run activity day at North Weald airfield on Wednesday. Some 30 cars gathered for a damp and greasy day blasting around cones and doing everything you can't do on the roads.

We started out with a high speed bend which I struggled to get the hang of. My first attempt resulted in me drifting across the concrete, full opposite lock and full power (I'm sure it looked fantastic). The idea was not to cross a line of drains in the ground, which I did manage eventually, but the concept of turning in and not getting back on the throttle to steady the car really confused me. I had a some trouble with the front dampers hitting the stops on the rough surface, and damaged a wing as a tyre caught it (excuses excuses).

Exactly 2 years ago today I collected the Honda from my friend Alex. It's been a great 2 years, the car has changed a lot over that time and I've enjoyed every minute. This year in particular has been fantastic and hopefully the next will be even better, if I can keep it out of the barriers!!

Here's a small selection of images that show a brief history of the car while I've owned it...

My buddy Tony and I went up to Pumabuild in Birmingham today to get my brake discs skimmed. They have a very cool machine which will do the skimming while the discs are still in place on the car, thus making them perfect for my specific (dodgy) hubs.

I was a bit worried that the vibration I was getting was being caused by something else, but with the DTI attached it was pretty clear the discs really were about as straight as a £9 note.

I'm in quite a bit of pain at the moment; my back is a mess and my knees are bruised, but it was worth it all. Tony, Dave and myself went off to Lakeside Karting on Saturday to compete in a team based endurance karting event.

The last one we did was at a different circuit and we finished 3rd. We were all confident of a win this time around so we gave it our all. It was a standing start and we'd qualified 3rd, so as the lights went out I tried desperately to keep 4th place behind me, but into turn one I had to yield and let him past.

On the 3rd of August I returned to the Northamptonshire GP circuit to find out exactly how the car had improved during the year since my first track day at Silverstone in February (which you can read about here). Bizarrely the weather was worse this time around, but nonetheless it was a fantastic day and I was able to really enjoy the car.

The event, organised by Lotus-On-Track, was only a few weeks after the Brands Hatch evening so I was fairly happy with the car. However, although the handling was good at Brands I felt it was time to change to a more race orientated setup so I changed the springs around from 730lb/in front and 620lb/in rear, to 390lb/in front and 730lb/in rear. As odd as it sounds, it's very close to the setup the CRX Challenge cars used to run. It does take some getting used to though...

Well I think I am nearly there with the car. The last couple of weeks were pretty crazy with getting things finished in time for Brands Hatch on Wednesday, but it all came together in the end and it was a fantastic day.

First of all my new Toyo R888s were fitted, then the brake fluid was changed and some fresh engine oil put in. I was going to leave it at that, but Daz at Rare Import Parts called me...

For the last 2 months or so I've slowly been building up a collection of shiney new parts to fit on the car, to improve on the handling and get it ready for Brands next month. I kicked off last weekend by changing the springs around. I bought a new pair of 13kg (730lb) springs for the front, and I've moved the old 11kg (620lb) front springs to the rear for a much stiffer setup all round. Hopefully this will cure the remaining body roll problems I had at Silverstone and Llandow, as well as making the back end a little more lively.

Then for the past 2 days I've changed all the wheel bearings and studs, replaced the rear trailing arm bushes, replaced the rear calipers for ones that work properly, and finished it off with 15mm Eibach wheel spacers. Huge thanks to Tom and Neil at TGM for helping me out on Thursday with the bearings and bushes, deffinitely something I didn't have the expertise to do.

Pro: Had another great night out in Reading last night with the boys. I wasn't driving this week so it made a nice change to have a few beers.

Con: Had a little too much to drink. Slept ok until about 4am when my stomach decided it wanted to teach my kidneys a lesson. Stumbled into work (on time I might add) still not feeling quite right, and spent most of the day being quite grumpy!

What have I done. Honest to God, I am shocked at myself. I keep asking myself if this is the right thing to be doing, or if I've gone too far. But it doesn't matter now, I've officially crossed the line - I've bought a Volvo.

I was so fed up with driving the CRX home from Rockingham last weekend that I decided enough was enough, and I had to stop using it on the road. So the CRX is now declared as off the road, it has no tax, no insurance and now no number plates. The Volvo... it's a bit of a beast; a '97 P reg 850, with a 2.5 litre 5 cylinder engine, so it's quite pokey. It's a top spec model with leather, electric everything including drivers seat, climate control, "Premium Sound System" (written in gold, so it must be good) and even a factory fitted CD changer. And it was cheap too. Wonderfully comfortable to drive, very smooth engine and it should be perfect for towing the CRX to track days and race meetings.

Weekends, that is. I feel pretty exhausted now but it's been worth it.

On Saturday I went to support Sara Church, Tom Gannon and Richard Gane who were all racing at Silverstone with TGM. Sara and Tom were doing a 40 minute race, sharing Saras' Civic Type R. Neither the car nor Sara had seen a circuit race before so nobody really knew how it would go. Tom got the car into 5th on the grid and was upto 3rd by the 1st corner. Then a thrilling battle between Tom and two MGs finally resulted in Tom coming into the pits for the driver change over, leading the field.

Ok so perhaps it wasn't the best idea to order the paint for my interior from Halfords, but I've always had good results using the spray cans. So I ordered 15 cans at the beginning of last week and was told they should be in last Friday. Friday turned to Tuesday, which was a bit of a problem because I was trying to get it finished for the show this coming Sunday.

So today (Tuesday) comes and my buddy Dave calls me and gives me the bad news. Basically a cock-up somewhere along the lines means it wasn't on the order! ARGGG!!! The earliest it will be here is Friday or next week sometime. So if you see my car at Rockingham and think "wow that interior looks shocking", you can blame Halfords!

Where to begin! The last 3 months have been pretty crazy so I'll try and summarise what I've been upto in this post. I will be making an effort to post more regularly from now on!

Well we managed to get the car ready for Silverstone. The brakes turned into a bit of a nightmare due to the supplied hoses being completely wrong, but we got there in the end. Silverstone made a fantastic circuit to test the car for the first time and I really enjoyed myself. Learned so much about the car and how all the bits I've done work so well together, turning it into something capable of keeping up with (and in some cases out-pacing) Elises and Civic Type-Rs! I did manage to spin at about 70mph into turn 1 (Copse) on my first lap, but I soon learned to be a little less enthusiastic! Plenty of pictures here and a video of a few laps here.

Of we go into 2006 then, and what a fantastic year it looks set to be...

That is, until I started fitting my new Wilwood brakes at the beginning of the month. Honda decided that it would be a good idea to leave the connectors on the ends of the brake pipes exposed to the elements, so that 16 years down the line when someone needed to fit new hoses, it was going to turn into a complete mare of a job. So much so that I gave up and called Tom at TGM, who came and collected the car on Saturday.

First off some big news - I haven't written a car off for over a year!!! Get in!

It was this time last year that I collected the CRX and took it to the Jap Performance day at Santa Pod (it was the 10th last year). Which is exactly where I was today, although not running the car this time. It made a nice change to wander around and take pictures instead of running the car. The pictures can be found here.

Why is it that whenever I go to the Ferrari garage in Egham I always buy something I didn't intend to. You'll be glad to know my wallet was spared the £176,000 asking price for an immaculate F40, however it was mighty tempting!

Instead I settled for this fantastic Lego model of a Ferrari F1 car. Shocked at my now poor Lego skills, it took me most of the afternoon to build it. Ah to be 12 again...

It's not a series many people are familiar with, but the 2005 Britcar season is about to get under way and I was fortunate enough to be invited to the 'Press Test Day' at Silverstone on the 11th of March. Tom Gannon, who runs the garage where I take my CRX for all the seriously oily bits that need doing, has been racing for many years now with his brother Will and is currently entering a DC5 Integra Type R into the Britcar series. Unfortunately the car wasn't ready for Friday's test day but he did bring along 2 customer cars, an ex-works Honda Civic and a DC5 similar in spec to Tom's race car.

A very cold and windy Silverstone welcomed a huge variety of cars all hoping for success in the 2005 season, ranging from Ford Focus', BMWs of all ages and models, many different Hondas, Porsches, Marcos' and even a few Ferraris. For any petrolhead this was an eye-candy overdose, but it was the acompanying sounds that were the real thrill; in particular, a fire-breathing corner-munching red Ferrari 360 on a trailing throttle into turn 1, sounding more like a Band of Brothers episode as each lap passed.

The 26th of February 2005 saw the CRX-UK owners club head down to Millway in Andover for a rolling road meet. For those that don't know, a rolling road is like a tread mill for a car only the car is working the tread mill and not the other way around. The rollers are used to measure the power and torque developed by the engine and estimate the loss incurred through the transmission. We had a very positive turn out with around 15 cars at Millway, of which I think 12 were CRXs (no Del Slo's either!). All of the runners were VTEC Mk2 cars apart from my 16v, and I think everyone had a pleasing result all with at least the original quota of ponies. At least that means I had the best 16v result of the day! I made 137hp at the fly wheel and 112 at the wheels, which is spot on for a standard-ish engine.

The one exception to the fairly standard selection of CRXs was Marks SiR turbo. This car is something of a legend; currently producing around 300hp at the wheels, the engine has been designed with figures in the region of 500+ horse power! All of this, from a 1.6 litre twin cam VTEC engine. Madness.