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Little edit from the boys over at MiniTorque.... made me chuckle

Ditto, it's rather fun lol. i have a Tag for the toll so it's even more of a rolling start. however I have seen upwards of 10 BMW 330d Police cars (mix of marked and unmarked) and 2 camera vans on the toll before. I was in my 330d at the time and scarily blended in with the 'pack of sharks' lol.

As I'm in the the states at the mo, a 9mm

I ditched the standard turbo and went for tte 470! 460hp and it perfect. Drives likes the standard turbo but a lot stronger. Even Normal driving car just feels so much nicer and when putting foot down feels a lot smoother than my stage 2 not quite as snappy if you get me, Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Cleaned the beast. Last clean was nearly 7 weeks ago. It's so nice to have a clean car!! Started with a bit of snow foam. Rinsed it off. Gyeon Q2 Rim make the wheels super easy to clean. Then my camera died. Also did: Normal 2 bucket wash. Wheels Wet Coat sprayed on and then rinsed Air Dried with Metrovac thingy Final towel dry Also gave the interior a vacuum and clean. Result: Yes, the blue sticker is still there. Clean Clean Clean 😁 (until it rained about 7 minutes after being finished)

Rolled the golf out for a few obligatory snow pics. Getting it back in nearly gave me a hernia [emoji23] Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

Just to be different I am considering the Tarox 8 Pot 360mm BBK. My car is used predominantly on the road and the occasional track forays I'm also probably going to use Tarox Corsa pads as they are harder and will cause less pad pick up in the grooves hence cut down on vibration.They are not fully floating but I've had their kit on my old APR Stage 3 kit and it worked superbly especially with Corsa pads. Trouble is they do some really nice anodised colours and my original plan was to keep the callipers subtle and order them in black or grey but I'm now looking at the red calliper. Being Oryx running on Prets I wonder whether it will look odd or too garish. They won't match the rear callipers which you can't match. I suppose they will really stand out. Any opinions

I’m running mrc software, you would need Custom mapping. mrc have done a fair few now and I’m sure rick at unicorn has also done them just to name a couple, Not sure the cost on it tbh as they had a sale back in September 20% off and fitting will all come down to your own garage or doing it yourself etc. Will need Stage 2 hardware along with upgraded plugs are recommended. Then it’s plug and play basically. They also do an exchange price so can swap you old turbo as long as it’s not went bang as they won’t build it. My mate owns his own garage and is a tte supplier so can maybe get a decent deal. He also had a is38 sitting so sent it away for 470 build then took mine back in exchange which meant no down time on my car as 6 week waiting I’m sure. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

There's a setting on Spotify for high quality audio make your that is ticked. Too much reverb means your highs are to loud I think?

I have mine on Dynamic setting and with the Treble bias on +1 , and it sounds awesome with most music i listen to. Using Spotify via Bluetooth on 320 kbit/s. Plugging it in ala Car Play sounds just about the same. CDs also sound pretty damn good , and also stuff on the DAB. The Dynaudio is better than the H&K setup i had in my previous car. Not by much , but still noticeable especially the higher end and the lows.

I have just had a BCS Powervalve fitted to my Mk 7.5R. Quality is as good as you will get. The guys that I used to fit it, Hi-Tech Performance in Northampton, were really impressed. One of the added benefits of the Powervalve system is that it sounds pretty much stock at low revs (so you won’t upset the neighbours!) but makes a fab sound as the revs rise and the exhaust valves open. Price is not silly either considering the quality.

Thanks mate. Only took me 20 years of hard work, blood sweat and tears haha but worth it in the end Thanks Doc!

What was your old car ? My last car had B&O in which at the time was a £750 extra I think and came with 14 speakers and 705 watts. Im pleasantly surprised with the Dynaudio especially the speakers at the base of the A pillars. I use iTunes music copied across to an SD card.

Remember, you need to give it time for the speakers to ‘run in’, at least 40 hours, then it starts to develop into a richer deeper sound.

Driving Home for Christmas?

Preparation H...... I’m an old goat

Better to be safe than need a five door: p

Condoms...... Im a young lad

I’m not really a spreadsheet type of person although I have to use them a fair bit at work. However I’m sure there are an awful lot of GTD and R owners that spend an awful lot of time messing about with spreadsheets. The GTD is a spreadsheet type of car. Put it all down into a spreadsheet and it makes a hell of a lot of sense. Low company car tax. Tick. low running costs with strong resale value. Tick. Looks like a hot hatch. Tick. Hot hatch underpinnings. Same chassis and brakes as the well rated Golf GTI. Tick. Hot hatch performance. Flip back through some previous spreadsheets here. Yep, similar performance stats to the iconic mk2 GTI 16v and possibly better stats than quite a few other historic Golf GTI’s, maybe even comes close on paper to VR6’s and even the mk4 R32 in some commonly used acceleration tests. Tick. Hot hatch interior. Tick Yeah, it all stacks up there. Right, How does it compare to a Golf R on our spreadsheet? Same torque peak at similar RPM’s. Lighter so some BHP advantage nullified. Lower revving so you don’t have to wring its neck in give and take driving. Still looking good. In one of those “it seemed like a good idea at the time” moments around this time last year VW cleared out the last of the line production run of mk7’s with some massive discounts to be had, so I set myself a challenge of “how cheap can I get a performance Golf for?” It it did seem like a good idea at the time. I’d just sold my R as I wasn’t using it but realised I still needed a Golf in my life, I managed to get a factory order vanilla spec GTD for around £21k. Bear in mind in 2005 that’s what you’d have paid for a new 5 door Golf GTI which had no Nav, no keyless, no 18” wheels, no xenons, no bum warmers in the seats... Still looking good on the spreadsheet. In March this year I got the results of the spreadsheet quest in front of me which took the form of a White 5 door GTD. How does real life compare with a spreadsheet? Lets just say the GTD is a very good Diesel Golf. But, to an ex-R owner it wasn’t a very good option on so many levels that aren’t on spreadsheets. The best summary I can give is that it lasted me seven weeks before I chopped it in for a pre-registered Clubsport GTI. The GTD lacks personality. Yes, it has the looks, the spec, even the performance up to a point. The engine is slow revving and not as much fun as the old PD Diesels from ten years ago. The gearing is high so you have to drive it hard to get the best from it. The brakes aren’t the best. The biggest strengths of the GTD are steady state cruising where it’s quiet and refined with decent economy. Gentle driving is good too where you can ease along on the prodigious torque. And flat out it goes reasonably well. Get out of the GTD and step into an R though and you really do find the engine performance and response to be on a different level. The R just goes, no matter what the revs. The R engine spins around very quickly and seamlessly and sounds a million times better. It’s perfectly understandable why people buy GTD’s in huge numbers as it’s a very good car in its own right. But it just doesn’t have that ingredient X that makes the R shine so brightly. For those that think their R is a bit dull due to over familiarity, invest a couple hundred quid in hiring a GTD for a few days and you’ll soon be buying your R red roses again!

Had a nice winter walk today, plenty snow to keep Ballach happy. we had his coat on not so much to keep him warm but rather to find him. He really blends in with a snowy background and it's a bugger spotting him.

Mod 22 :- Installed a WiFi LAN in the boot. As I said above I found using my phones connection to be unreliable and also required intervention on my part. The S3 had an embedded SIM card which just worked 100% of the time with complete transparency. I decided to try and replicate this and put that very same data sim to use - this is part of my broadband deal and has 3Gb of data allowance for £10/month. There’s probably better available now I’m sure. Here’s how it went ..... Sponsored by Amazon this one I think but these turned up today ..... Possibly the most rewarding mod yet for the amount of effort required ! Here it is installed just below the parcel shelf ..... No need for it to be visible at all or taped to the window, it connects to the MMI 30 seconds after the ignition is on with full signal strength and 4G/LTE download speeds ..... The benefits of having this is that I get live traffic displayed on the sat nav rather than the limited information that the radio broadcasts. Also there’s the Car-Net connection that I use for speed camera POI’s. Passengers can connect to it also via the MMI hotspot and use the SIM card data. Perhaps the most useful feature is that my BlackVue 750S dashcam now also connects to it allowing me to remotely view either camera live via the BlackVue cloud - very useful for when the car is in for a service or any upgrades I can see what’s going on !

As it was such a fine day, I managed a long overdue winter prep; Wheels - VP Bilberry Snow foamed - AB Magifoam PW rinse 2 BM wash - Meguiars Gold Class PW rinse Ferrous decontamination - VP Dragon's Breath PW rinse Clayed - BH Auto clay 2nd wash and rinse Dried Wheels sealed - Gtechniq C2v3 Paint polished - AF Tripple Waxed - FinishKare 1000P paste wax Final dressing - Meguiars X-Press spray wax Tyres dressed - Gtechniq T1 Exhaust - Peek metal polish and coat of wax Still not overly convinced by the snow foam, seems to just sit on top of the dirt, rather than lift any of it away from the paint, perhaps I had my hopes set to high when I bought a lance a couple of months back, I'll persevere anyway seeing as I have about 5 litres of the stuff to get through! First time using a clay bar, reassuringly easy and didn't take long to do. Impressed with the FinishKare, I bought a sample pot a while back but have tended to use Collinite waxes and latterly 476S, but I found that a pain to buff off at times, the FinishKare was a breeze in comparison and will definitely use again. Was a pleasurable 3.5 hours and the time spent should hopefully see it through the worst of the winter. The light wasn't the best by the time I had finished, but hopefully the photos show the final result reasonably well.

Stupid idea. Why don't you go the whole hog, send back a 1.2 tsi Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Not sure if it's been mentioned in here,installed the jb1 to my new 7.5R and it all works great!