GimmeShelter

Well, well, I recognise the restaurant: Tierra Astur. We were in the one in Oviedo last April. Damn fine cow meat! Makes me want to be back there again.

Just seen this/these. Amazing! Love it/them!

That Monza 1000 looks seriously desirable - but it isn't an official Guzzi product, is it?

I'm still impressed by your hard work and dedication.

I went back to the past this year. I had a 2007 SuperDuke 990 for seven years, from new. Loved it. Sold it and moved on, but ... this year, acquired a low-mileage 2013 SuperDuke R.

Love this project. It's coming along very nicely indeed.

Thank you!

Correct!

For over a year, I've been wondering about getting a McLaren. You hear all sorts of stories, after all. But given that the previous supercar (the LHD F430) hadn't exactly been problem-free, it came to the point of 'Why not?' I asked around, and in particular, spoke with the folks at V Engineering, who were most helpful. Anyway, after a long search and having looked at a few, I alighted upon this 600LT, which joined the household a month ago: We'll see what McLaren ownership is like. It seems like a genuine car, from a genuine seller. It's a 2019 car, which will be five years old next month. The previous owner (it was a private sale & purchase) has posted an 'Exit Interview' on Pistonheads, in the 'Supercars - McLaren' section, should anyone wish to read it. For the moment, all I can say is, "It's great". It rides amazingly well, the ergonomics are excellent, and it goes like ... well, a rocketship.

Why didn't I take the car to an official Ferrari dealer? Firstly, the nearest one was in Verona, and secondly, it was Friday afternoon and they refused to take it. Whereas Hot Engines were prepared to stay late on a Friday afternoon/evening to receive my car. As it turned out, it was a damn good job the car was at an indie. Ferrari Italy had no stock of actuators for my F430. Nor did Ferrari UK. But Alex at Hot Engines rang round other indies in Italy until he found someone down in the south with a set on the shelf and got it FedEx'd overnight so that they could set about working on my car the next day. Of course, they did that work, road tested the car and discovered the fault with the O2 sensors, ha ha. So a second job ensued, but that only added another day or so. After that, we were back on our way. We collected the car early afternoon, crossed Austria and checked into a hotel in Ulm in the late afternoon - such is the pace of Austrian and, even better, German, Autobahns. Here is the car at the 'Art' services, Illertal, Germany, that afternoon: But after that, we'd kind-of lost faith in the car, and in robotised manual gearshifts. So I decided to sell it. After a considerable hiatus and lots of consultation, it's been replaced with a ... (drum roll) ... McLaren 600LT. I'll start a new thread for that.

After leaving Switzerland, we went to the Italian Dolomites. My Goodness, it's beautiful there. For the second time, we stayed at the Sporthotel Exclusive in San Vigilo di Marebbe, a lovely hotel in a lovely village. However, the day we left there, the F430 had other ideas, just as I was accelerating away from a motorway tollbooth: changed up from first to second, no problem, then pulled the right paddle again to go to third ... nothing doing. Car stuck in second. Imagine: Italian autostrada, everyone accelerating, car won't get out of second gear. I 'screamed' it to a refuge on the hard shoulder and stopped. The police came. Actually, they were helpful and charming (we were in a Ferrari, after all). Cutting a very (very) long story short, I located a Ferrari indie, called 'Hot Engines', in Bolzano, who agreed to take the car and work on it immediately. (Fortunately, in that part of Italy, the first language is German (yes, really) and I have a good enough command of German.) After a few days - during which time we hired a car, on the holiday insurance, and went to Slovenia and back - we were able to collect the car from Hot Engines (pictured below), who had completed not one, but two repairs: replacement of the gear selector actuators (the original failure), plus replacement of the O2 sensors in the exhausts, which I had cooked, screaming the car on the autostrada.

End of Term Report! I need to confess to having sold the F430 last year. We had a lot of fun in it, but it did go wrong. It was that flippin' robotised manual gearchange. In Italy. But I'll come to that. In 2023 we did our second European tour in the car. As ever, it was fabulous, while it was working. Here it is on the shores of Lake Brienz in Switzerland:

I haven't posted for a long while, and there's been very little to report. I've largely been using the SC as my 'daily' during the Summer (except for mundane stuff like runs to the tip, for which, my long-suffering Focus ST170 gets pressed into service), which has now extended into Autumn. Here's a gratuitous shot taken after a run back from seeing a group of car-mad mates one evening this week:

@SkunkWorks Sorry, I've only just seen this post. If you're serious, then yes, I'd be happy to liaise with the manufacturer about getting another run of wheel arch liners cut, if you'll handle all the commercials. Please be aware that there are two sizes: standard narrow-body cars (e.g. 3 litre SC) and wide body (e.g. 930 turbo). Please also be aware that we've previously had two 'false starts' where people have said that they'll do all the financials and distribution, so I've approached the manufacturer for prices and lead times on their behalf, only for them not to follow up; so the manufacturer might need convincing that this time we actually mean it.

Millers VSPe