The daily Post

During the first race at Thruxton in 2010, my car and that of another competitors got a little close, ok they tried to go round the outside by pushing me to the inside of ‘Noble’ so what was left was a dented door, rear quarter panel, and all they got was a little wing damage, and the indicator lens broke.

Whilst the picture does not show the full state of the damage, but the rear quarter panel near the sticker is pushed in and the edge is pushed to the door, the sill has a small dent (that will probably never come out), but the most painful is the dent in the door (highlighted by the red paint). The tyre marks were just a mark, and with a little polish should come off without harming the paint underneath.
I thought about having a go myself, but just visioned needing to get the door resprayed, and the quarter replaced if I touched it, so I thought I would try one of the many dent removal companies that advertise the ability to repair dents without needing paint.

As the one on the door had not broken the paint (the other dents had) this one was my main concern to get back into shape. After a couple of calls I got some estimates to fix the damage, and instructed one company Dent fix to come out and fix the dent. It was harder for them to do than expected as they did not realise it was aluminium doors (they are apparently easier to dent, but harder to straighten, as it takes more force to push them back to shape). After about 30 minutes of working on the door it was nice and smooth again, the rear quarter was also pushed back into shape as much as it could be (due to it being on a edge it could not be pulled back totally due to the inner constraints of the panel)

Some people have asked how I get some of the items that are on my car, well if you shop around then you see sometimes (most of the time) the parts can be cheaper in the states, buying from the US is easy with some companies, but others will only ship to the US, so to get around this restriction I use a service called bundlebox its a free to join service, you get your own US address to ship items to and then you can arrange them to be forwarded to your address in the UK.

They charge postage to send the item to the UK, and they also price in the custom charges, so there is no more to pay when the item is in the UK, I have used them on a couple of parts that were nearly double price in the UK, and I found there postage costs comparable with prices that I could get myself.

Follow this link to find out more about bundlebox

I brought a couple of items recently, one was brought from the north east of England and at present is returning from a trip round Germany, for some reason once I did not receive the item on the intended day I phoned the courier, and they located the parcel (sans label) we arranged for it to be delivered the next day (that was over a week ago) so whilst I am waiting for it the package is on a tour of Europe. I can guarantee that they will attempt to deliver it when I have nipped to the shop for milk.

Then suppliers, I recently brought an exhaust, its a two part item and one part was not in stock, I was informed that they would not part ship an order and I would get it only when all parts were availiable to ship together, well half has turned up on a saturday (they also stated no saturday deliveries), where is the other part you may ask. I enquired to the supplier to see if they knew, I got told that it was there but the other part (which they had sent me) was not availiable and they needed to wait for it to arrive. They are now sending out the missing part for delivery when I am not in! So in anticipation of the fun I am going to have with the courier, whilst trying to get that part of the exhaust off them.

During the recent race at rockingham, I noticed that the crack on my screen was growing larger slowly (and this may mean the expense of a new screen). After searching on the internet I located a local firm called ‘Glass Doctors’ you can see there website on this url http://www.glassdoctors.co.uk

David the director of the company was on duty and came out to see my car and the crack, he had no problem in stopping the crack (by drilling a hole at the end of the crack) and then filled the crack with some resin and after doing some other magic to the screen, cleaned it and I could not see without close inspection exactly where the crack was, and this should mean the screen will live for another day.

My only regret is I did not get a photo of the crack before and after.

I found out that supersprint make a race exhaust for the 318is, so I thought I would get one, this was the easy part, the UK distributer was stating that they were not available in the UK, so I went to the italian makers direct and that told me that they had them in stock, but I had to order through the UK distributer.

I managed to get the UK distributer to cooperate, and 3 weeks after the order, they informed me that it had arrived and was waiting to be dispatched (this is a 2 part exhaust)

I received the back box today, but the connector pipe is MIC (Missing in transit) so as all the offices are closed over the weekend, I am going to have to wait till monday to see whats happening.