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Did a self driving wine tour in Tuscany today driving a Bright Green Bambina ‘Cinquecento’. Absolute blast and felt like an genuine antique compared to the E30. No gauges aside the speedometer whatsoever, first is good to around 20kmh, 2nd maxes out at 40kmh but then drops you way out of the 3rd gear ‘powerband’. Still a hoot though and managed to avoid stalling at all 💪🏽 Only in Italy will they hire you a car then ply you with wine 🤣

Sold.

I've been doing track days once a month at Puke and intend to until closedown.

Wow, you are an optimist. Really think they’re going to fix them? They are ridiculously bad, embarrassing for supposedly the main highway.

The staging area on the left of turn one is already up for sale.

Was there on the weekend too. Great track to watch at when it's an event this big. Big TVs everywhere. Sat down on the hairpin where most of the action is. The horse racing story is just so there is less backlash. The track is barely used for horse training. I bet it gets developed in just a few years. I might sneak in a track day or race event before it closes for good. Anyone that attends racing or track days should be far more disappointed. Only Manfeild is left as an affordable option.

The output from the Chinese sensors is crap. Standard ecu doesn't seem to mind it much, but a few aftermarket ecus won't have a bar of it.

Totally agree, for me it's rose tinted. The track is epic and teeth shattering in places, it floods routinely despite all the drainage improvements and getting out of the elements is not possible at the best if times. Time stands still for no one, and the operating cost must be huge. I'm surprised it survived this long, there have been a few times where it looked like track was done for.

That’s the only thing with Pukekohe, it’s history, and unfortunately it has been under invested for many many years. Take away all the temporary tents, stands and facilities from the Supercars and what is left is pretty poor. Not the best spectator track, with only certain small sections visible from each vantage point, with the back straight and hairpin (the best bits) only visible if you are a long way from everything else. Great track to race on, if you don’t scare yourself at least once on each lap then you are not pushing hard enough! With the Horse Racing Club being the landlord and the motor racing circuit the tenant it was only going to end one way, and that writing has been on the wall since Hampton Downs opened.

I'd be up for one of the play days, they seem to be on the calendar for the next few months. Possibly something others would also be interested in?

With the engine still a bit of a shambles, was nice to finally get some wins on the board over the weekend. Got the gearbox very much ready to drop in. Now just the small task of sorting the engine... Spent an absolutely stupid amount of hours cleaning it all up with all sorts of drill bit brushes. Impossible to get it perfect but at least isn't as caked up and crusty as it arrived. Then refreshed all the shifter pins, reverse & 5th gear detents, new shift lever and all the shift linkage bushes, new metal clutch fork pivot as well as new oil. Also threw on a new reverse light switch. Probably didn't need to but at $7 figured I might as well. Did a bunch of digging online, people seem to go with either 75W80 MTF, pure ATF or a 50-50 mix of the two. Read a few accounts of shifting being a bit notchy until the gearbox warms up if using 75W80. Seems to be climate dependant to some degree too. Went around BMWorkshop and B&T who both recommended ATF so I went with that. Good enough for them - good enough for me. Will see how it goes. The set of special punches form Street Driven Industries came through who also threw in a set of plugs for the shifter pins that I'd been struggling to source. Did charge me a rather silly US$10/each but was the only place I could find them so figured what the hell. Happy to lend the punches out or sell them on if anyone wants to do their detents as I probably/hopefully won't be needing them anymore. As is typical for these, she was clearly suffering from 5th gear lean. Reverse and 5th especially needed some effort to jam into. Pulling the 5th gear detent out, was pretty clear it had seized up and chunks of the inner sleeve it was sitting in were flaking off. Bit of a mission getting those out, literally have to destroy them before they let go but very much doable. Got myself an E60 shift lever and ZHP gear knob from Schmiedmann, as per @Eagle's recommendation. Seems only a few mm's difference but probably does change the geometry enough so it doesn't feel as much of a row boat. Threw the shifter linkage on to play around a bit. Rowed through all the gears, of course whilst making manly engine noises. Shifts seem much smoother and more effortless now so was definitely worth doing. Onto more serious sh*t now.

Wasn’t the 4.6 developed by Alpina for BMW ? Great looking x5 , looks good in that colour