So today I settled down to replace the M5′s front brakes. When I got the car, some two and a half years ago now, I noted that the front discs were quite crusty and lipped, so now seemed like a sensible time to do something about them.

Generally speaking, the brakes and wheels are just some of the parts of the car that prevent it from looking really smart. I therefore decided to not only replace the brakes, but also give the calipers and carriers a decent clean and a paint, and I’ve also booked the car in to have its wheels refurbished next month.

So straight to the usual routine – car up, wheels off…

Despite the discs being rather corroded, I was pleased to note how well maintained the various bolts were – they were all a pleasure to operate, and showed no sign of the car being 10 years old.

I had a little bit of a mission finding the brake fluid reservoir – turns out it’s under the driver’s side microfilter. I’ll probably make a dedicated post on this matter in due course to make this information easier to find for others, but for now, here’s this photograph:

Having marvelled at how well maintained the driver’s side brake assembly was, I was of course massively stitched up by the other side. The M5 has not one but two retaining bolts to hold the disc to the hub, and unfortunately one of those heads had been previously thoroughly rounded. There was just no way I could get a tool of any sort to bite in there – I even tried hammering in a star key. So I took to drilling it out.

Several hours later I was clearly getting there but was running out of daylight and warmth. This was extremely disappointing, so I did what I always do at such a stage, and I gave up and called Alex. Regular readers might remember that Alex saved my arse when I couldn’t replace the 330d’s propshaft donut. This time we discussed the issue, and I explained that I was patiently drilling the bolt out. Alex told me to man up and use an angle grinder, and 5 minutes later I was done. Good advice!

So then I was finally able to crack on again. I wired brushed and solvent prepared the calipers and carriers. Previously:

Then, painted:

A reminder of what the brakes looked like this morning:

Crusty! This evening:

That’s as far as I’ve got – bad light stopped play. Tomorrow morning I’m off in the tractor to BMW to collect new retaining bolts, and I’ve also elected to replace all the wheel bolts – once the alloys are refurbished this should really make the car look much smarter.

I had previously mentioned that I was hoping to fit drilled discs to the M5, but unfortunately C3BMW have stopped stocking those as they say they received too many complaints about them warping. The only other options were > £2,000 for full on multi-pot caliper conversions. Since I don’t actually track the car, and I haven’t got those sort of funds available(!), I’ve therefore fitted BMW parts.

It’s a bit of a shame really, as when viewed in perspective with the rest of the car, these brakes don’t really look up to much:

Could be bigger, or drilled or generally a bit more bling, no? 400 horse power after all sir. Oh well, at least it’s all clean and tidy now. I hope to be back on the road by lunchtime tomorrow!

Last month I popped the tractor into a local independent garage to have a small PAS leak sorted. While it was there, I had a similar age 318i touring, and ignoring the obvious it made for a very interesting comparison. I’ll compare them in terms of looks, performance, ride, economy and interior, and finally discuss the main point: overall value. So the 318i; here it is next to the M5 on the driveway.

Looks

To the untrained eye (for instance, my father’s) it’s the same car. I appreciate the high gloss shadow line and the white indicators – with chrome around the windows and orange corners it’d look really basic. That said, those 16″ wheels are tiny (the tractor wears 18s – even its winter wheels are 17s – those 16s wouldn’t even fit over my front brakes!) and the SE bumpers look far more placid. The chrome kidney grilles complete the “wouldn’t say boo to a goose” image. For comparison:

Beauty is of course in the eye of the beholder, but I felt the 330d won this round.

Performance

This comparison isn’t supposed to be a one way street, but I must get the numbers out of the way. Compared with my dyno figures the 318i has 70% of the power and just 48% of the torque. On the road that difference is painfully obvious under all circumstances, so again, the 330d wins this round hands down.

Initially I tried to motivate the 318i into proving that it was in any way an Ultimate Driving Machine, but I soon realised it was best to waft. This worked well: the 318i is extremely smooth and makes a delicious noise. Especially in warmer weather with the windows down I find myself operating the 330d’s accelerator fairly digitally; the rush of the torque wave and the sound of the wastegate releasing are extremely addictive, so it was good to be more mature with the controls and thus travel with a little more comfort.

Ride

On the subject of comfort, having ridiculed those teeny wheels I soon noticed the transformation in ride quality. It’s fair to say that while a lower ride height on stiffer springs and ultra-low profile tyres makes for some eye-popping cornering, it also makes for a spine shattering ride over bumps and pot holes. On comfort suspension and big floppy tyres the 318i was a real pleasure over Woking’s battered roads. The compromise of course arrived with each corner, but the whole package makes sense: without performance and supportive seats there’s no point trying to corner fast, so I didn’t. Even so, without question the 318i wins a round here.

Economy

I’ll lay down the facts here, and we’ll come to the topic of overall value soon enough. When I was really, really kind to the 318i, I got 30mpg. If I tried in vain to extract some performance, that figure tumbled. The 330d either does 40mpg on a sensible run, or 35mpg if you drive it like an animal. Yes, diesels are renowned for economy, but smaller petrol engines shouldn’t be this bad. I guess here the sheer weight of the car meant that the engine was always strained. In any case, a definite win for the 330d.

Interior

Compared with a late E46 M3 the 330d certainly lacks some switchgear on the panel in front of the gearstick. However, inside the 318i was a bit of a barren wasteland.

The lack of sat-nav was the most obvious visual difference, but the flat seats and narrow steering wheel certainly left the 318i feeling substantially less focussed. Here’s a comparison with the 330d taken when I fitted the new E46 M3 steering wheel (but before the black leather illuminated gear shifter).

So while there was nothing wrong with the 318i’s interior, getting back into the 330d felt a lot more right. 330d win, again.

Overall value

Now we come to the point. Given that the 330d gives better performance, is a more pleasant place to be and costs less to fuel, what are the benefits of the 318i? The smaller petrol engine still has two clear advantages: it’s cheaper to purchase, and it’s cheaper to maintain. Brakes cost less, services are cheaper, tyres I imagine are a fraction of the price. Yet the 330d no doubt holds its value better.

Clearly I’d rather have the 330d – that’s why I’ve got one. But if pushed for funds would I rather have a 318i touring than a similarly priced Vectra estate? Yes – it’s properly built and the correct wheels are driven. It’s a good car, but the 330d is simply excellent.

Update 26th April 2011 – 21:00 GMT

Sony have released more details on their blog – personal data has indeed been compromised. The important bit:

Although we are still investigating the details of this incident, we believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following information that you provided: name, address (city, state/province, zip or postal code), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity passwords and login, and handle/PSN online ID. It is also possible that your profile data, including purchase history and billing address (city, state, zip), and your PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers may have been obtained. If you have authorized a sub-account for your dependent, the same data with respect to your dependent may have been obtained. While there is no evidence that credit card data was taken at this time, we cannot rule out the possibility. If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, to be on the safe side we are advising you that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may also have been obtained.

So, if your PSN password is associated with your PSN email address anywhere else, time to change all other instances.

What is unavailable?

At the time of writing Sony’s PlayStation Network (PSN) has been unavailable for over 5 days. As an avid user of online gaming (mainly the Call of Duty series and Gran Turismo), this has now certainly reached the point where I’m getting a bit grumpy about it. Had we not had such good weather over the weekend, I’d probably be fuming! It’s still possible to play single player games and watch movies etc, but online gaming as well as internet based services such as LoveFilm aren’t available. The incredibly poor photo on the right shows what happens when I try to log in: “PlayStation®Network is currently undergoing maintenance”.

Why is it unavailable?

PSN is down because it was hacked last week. Well, Qriocity (pronounced ‘curiosity’) was hacked, that’s PSN’s media streaming service. Sony appears to have taken the view that it is best to take the entire service offline while they sure up their security.

Has any information been leaked?

This is a very interesting question, and one to which we haven’t yet got any answers. [See above update; we have now!] In order to sign in to PSN you need a valid email address. There are about 70 million registered accounts, so that’s quite a haul of valid email addresses. If those have got out, expect some spam (links to malware sites enticing you with Adobe products appear to be most in fashion at the moment). However, the real haul would be the credit card details many users have on file to permit them to easily make purchases from the PlayStation Store. Sony offer all sorts of media from game extensions to the latest films for hire, so I’ll bet a good chunk of those 70 million users have credit card numbers stored along with their addresses on the PSN. If those have got out, it’ll get rather more interesting for everyone.

Why was PSN hacked?

As yet there’s no official answer. It could be simply an attempt to harvest the email addresses and credit card numbers mentioned above. I think there’s a good chance this event can be traced right back to the launch of the PlayStation 3 Slim in September 2009. Prior to that point Sony had an extremely geeky USP in that the original PS3s offered OtherOS – or the ability to install any operating system (normally Linux) on the unit to sit alongside Sony’s. Just before the slim was launched Sony enforced a software update that removed this functionality – probably due to game piracy concerns.

To cut a long story short this suddenly made it a challenge among the hacker community to find ways around Sony’s attempted block. Then followed the usual ping-pong match of loopholes being found and patches being released, but the sparks soon turned to flame when Sony filed a lawsuit against renowned hacker George Hotz (Geohot) who had published his PS3 jailbreak technique on his website. Many argue that Sony deserved this for removing one of the console’s key features – essentially they have mis-sold the product. Sony I would imagine see this as an unfortunate side effect of protecting the reproduction rights of game creators. While Sony and Hotz have reached an out of court settlement, speculation is rife that Hotz’s supporters have led this breach on Sony’s network.

When will PSN service be resumed?

Right now the best sources of information would be the PlayStation blog, or their twitter account @PlayStationEU. There’s also this entertaining site.

You should have bought an XBox!

I know some of you just can’t wait to cram the comments box with this sentiment, so I thought I’d save you the energy. ;)

Today Alex and I popped along to Castle Combe circuit to spectate at their Spring Performance Car Action Day, the highlight of which was to be two drifting sessions. I’ll start right now by saying that I wasn’t disappointed in any way – today was nothing short of awesome! There were a huge variety of cars present, and a full gallery of photos is available here. Also, for those with a shorter attention span, here’s a video clip to help convey the general atmosphere of action!

So, down to the usual blogging business. After an early start I found myself parked next to Alex’s van trackside at 9:30.

We spent the morning watching those brave enough to take to the track on get to grips with our little corner.

Of course plenty of people were doing very well, some were a bit slow, and some were a bit bland. But then the mistakes started to happen, and we were happy! :)

Just before the first drift session was a about to begin, I found myself exceptionally entertained by this gentleman doing apt justice to his Vauxhall Omega – it’s hard to get more sideways than this!

Here’s the above hero at work:

Soon the first drift session was underway:

It wasn’t long before we saw the first wheel loss of the day…

Here’s the video clip that leads to the above!

And some classic E30 action:

We then went for a wander along the pits where we saw lots of wonderful cars (and some, er, dubious ones…). Let’s start with this – if you know me, you’ll know how excited I was…

The afternoon sessions saw two more cars lose wheels (that we saw on our corner – who knows how many wheels were lost in total today!), and another epic drift session that went a bit like this:

I’ll spare a special note for this E39 M5 – it had lovely multi-pot AP brakes and the tyres looked well used, but I couldn’t help thinking that the poor chap looked a bit slow. It really made me want to take to the track to fly the M5 flag, but I didn’t because I know what I’m like and I had no spare wheels and tyres to get home on. As this conversation was taking place, said M5 came past us and simply popped a wheel off for me to inspect – almost as though it was offering to help!

Really, a BMW dropping a wheel off on the circuit? Outrageous! He clearly should have been going faster – those nuts rely on a good dose of V8 to self-tighten, don’t you know. ;)

Here are a few more of my favourite photos, starting with a Ford Capri:

This Lancia Delta Integrale was showing a level of decay typical for its age:

This reminded me a bit of Smith’s Chavbo:

And this definitely reminded me of our old 106 Rallye.

Carry on racing – there’s nothing to see here…

POWER, POWER, POWER…

What a glorious day to chuck a wheel…

Always good to see the show cars in top notch condition – in particular I liked the rear wheel arch.

Raah!

Best place for a Corsa, really.

The king of the forests needed a bit more grunt on hot sticky tarmac.

What a scene!

Anyway – there are loads more photos on the gallery page, and of course there are more videos on my Youtube channel. I’ll conclude by saying that it really was an excellent day, and by thanking Paul Stewart for letting me know about it. If you’re one of my friends who so often thinks “damn, I wish I’d gone along” then why don’t you actually do that next time? ;)