Croc

Karl - you are not being helpful. Yes you can squeeze slicks on these but then they do not fit under the lower profile CSR front wings....sigh.... Rick - There is only one CSR owner who checks on here - me - and there are only like 7-8 in the US, no idea about Canada. Have you tried the USA sevens net mailing list? You may just get another CSR owner there. Worst case if no one takes them then let me know and I will reassess my thinking.

He must be suave and good looking? :cooldude: :jester:

You are nicely positioned. No matter what the investment markets do your retirement benefit is fixed based on when you retire and length of service up to that point. Only issue is whether your company can afford to pay the benefits. So many have converted DB plans over the years to DC plans simply to save costs. I got burned this way by a previous employer.

Hi Skip - you have just asked one of the more challenging questions in investing. Lots of people can tell you they time the stock market - in reality they get lucky. Your equation for timing is really based on what the forecast for price/earnings ratio will be. If you think earnings will improve then you bet the economy will not go into recession and you are buying today. If you think earnings will fall because of us having a double dip recession then stay out of the market until you reverse that forecast view to an economic growth view. The technique I use when not really sure about a market's future direction is a "dollar cost averaging" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_cost_averaging As for Slomove's automated strategy approach, unfortunately that will not work. There have been some very good academic studies that show how difficult it is to time the market based on a rules approach to investing. A couple of alternatives exist: (a) Motley Fool's Dogs of the Dow value investing approach is well tested and I use actively as a part of my investment thinking. You can take these principles and apply them with some common sense in most markets. http://www.fool.com/school/dowinvesting/dowinvesting.htm The Motley Fool website is also a good one for general education. (b) The theory behind index funds which is really another play on dollar cost averaging with low transaction and management fees. Try https://personal.vanguard.com/us/insights/investingtruths to read up more. © Technical trading or charting stock prices is another market-timing strategy that seeks to identify resistance and support reference prices for decisions to buy (price hits the support) or sell (price hits the resistance). There are lots of vendors selling black box software that purports to help the user win against the market. Mostly snake oil at a retail investor level. Those charting trading solutions which require critical thinking by investors are more successful simply because it is you making the decision based on a series of facts that a software program helps you sift through. These guys have had a positive influence on my thinking over the years and have helped me identify market factors to make decisions: http://www.safetyinthemarket.com.au/

Now you will be unstoppable on the track! Sorry for the hijack. :leaving:

Can I recommend that you do not panic and start doing stupid things. Selling now just crystalizes the losses and then you are out of the market when the inevitable bounce occurs in the next day or two. If you struggle with the pressure of the stock market on a negative day like today then maybe you should not be invested in stocks as your risk tolerance is too low compared to what the stock market actually is like. This is when you do the opposite of the lemmings in the market :willy_nilly: and start selectively buying quality stocks at 10-20% discounts to the fair value based on the financial statements. :cooldude: As yourself what Warren Buffett was doing today.... Now if you were invested in bonds then you had a very very good day and you may want to harvest some gains there. REITS looked to have a good day as well.

That car really does look great. Where did you find the black brooklands? Did you paint/powdercoat it yourself?

Supposedly it was done with a US production spec car. I thought the current Subaru Impreza WRX model was a bit anemic in the power department? I recall more motoring writers getting excited over the latest Evo. If it was not speeded up then it must have been good camera angles/settings to get the best sense of movement. One of these days I would love to drive that circuit in a seven - nowhere near as fast mind you....

Great little video of Subaru's attempt on the IOM TT circuit production car lap record [/url]

Shamelessly stolen from the OzClubbies website. Neat little application. http://locost.lt/mach7_colour_final_1.0.swf So now....what does a seven in baby poo brown with a purple stripe look like?

Continued: So knowing this where do you go as an investor? - US Bonds - No go. Yields are at record lows and there is only one way to go. Yields up, fair value goes down, investor losses unless held to maturity. - US Stocks – Not appealing. Figure on sub-par growth then prices decline to keep the P/E ratio in balance with normal rates. - Avoid anything in the Euro zone unless you are targeting on a value play where you can cherry pick the best pieces. - Emerging markets stocks/bonds - best growth opportunity plus you have the added benefit that the currency is likely to rise against the USD. Expect a long term holding time and it will be very volatile. - Gold - Will still go up as a play against uncertainty but most of the ramp up in price has already occurred. Not sure how quick it will unwind. Little too volatile lately. Too hard to judge prospects. - Cash - you preserve the capital but lose money this way as the inflation continues to erode purchasing power and the fees eat up return. - Real estate (direct) - value play if leveraged to give decent returns. Very market specific. - REITS - Probably the best bond surrogate/cash surrogate as returns are decent and risk of capital losses less. If carefully picked (i.e. no warehouse REITS) then you can insulate recession impact from the property base. Still some potential for declines but you should be able to yield 4% if picked right. - Hedge funds – average returns are no better than a emerging market bond fund without any of the currency upside and for good measure you get killed on fees. Tax treatment can be iffy too for some.

You are not the only person struggling with this. I grapple with the issue at work everyday and in my own personal portfolio. Unfortunately what you read in the press is the everyday drama on what is observed. You can see some tactical information out there in places like the WSJ, Barron’s, etc. but nothing much strategic that helps us focus on the end game. The following blue text is part of an email I sent yesterday as part of a work debate on why we are where we are and where do we go for investment strategy and allocation. It was exactly on point to your post. Extract: My 100,000 foot outlook that led us to where we are: - Asian countries, mostly China, artificially pegged their currencies significantly lower than the US dollar, Euro, GBP. As a result their exports boomed (as they were cheap) and their imports stalled (as they were expensive). End result is that there is no growth from domestic market demand - they rely on developed world growth to support their economies. - The developed economies ran lower interest rates to reduce any further upward pressure on their currencies. Reason for this was to avoid potential recessionary influences. Plenty of domestic demand spending in these economies though. - Higher relative USD creates purchasing power for consumers who then start to spend on relatively cheaper imports (cheaper than home grown products). - Lower interest rates drove overleveraging in the US housing market and other sectors (cars, etc). - The Euro zone complicated things because each country has a separate sovereign government that has separate policy prescriptions so you can get different economic growth results by country. So a two speed economy runs in the Euro zone - healthy and unhealthy. This normally is not a problem for the unhealthy growth countries as a Government can choose to adjust policy settings or let the market find the right setting by lowering the exchange rate to the point where the economy can find its way to be competitive again such that exports are allowed to grow, imports are restricted and the growth level is restored to equilibrium by the market. However, that monetary policy lever is removed in the Euro zone. Now Euro governments have only a fiscal policy available to them (i.e. spend money via a budget deficit and microeconomic reform to incentivize growth). Normally this will not be an issue but Euro governments have tapped out their borrowing capacity hence the crisis with Italy, Spain, et al as their only way out of a debt crisis is to grow and you cannot grow an economy by cutting government spending or leaving the currency high. 2008 was a confidence crisis caused by fundamentals getting out of whack with common sense. Confidence was temporarily restored by the policy prescriptions with the aim of engineering a soft landing, however the policy measures did not restore economic fundamentals to an appropriate level. These policy prescriptions ranged from more leverage (Government budget deficits) to money printing (e.g. QE1 and QE2 by the Fed). So we saw a temporary recovery from 2008 because people believed the problem was fixed....but it was not. Our issues today are multiple: - The developed world is deleveraging. When you deleverage you are effectively saving. If you are saving you are not spending. Not spending means lack of economic growth in the developed world. - Lack of economic growth in the developed world means less ability (or inability if you are Greece) to pay back your debt. Normal policy cure at this point is to depreciate the currency against its competitors to the level where is restores competition. Refer to J curve discussion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_curve for balance of trade and country status explanations. However, the "developing" economies/emerging markets have pegged their currencies too low against the developed world. Or in the case of the Euro, Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland have their rate fixed within the Euro zone. Either way, the developed world currencies are too high to be competitive. With the developing world, they are unable to grow without someone in the developed world spending as their economies do not have sufficient domestic market. They will not likely have sufficient domestic spending market until such time as the developing/emerging markets allow their currencies to appreciate relative to the developed world currencies (i.e. empowering their population with relatively more money to spend on imports). Productivity improvements would assist growth but it is an "icing on a cake" solution. You still need the economic imbalances in debt, currencies, and interest rates sorted out as these are the core drivers to our current problems. So assuming politicians are true to form and will delay the pain to preserve their re-election chances then here is my strategic economic projection: - The USD will continue to progressively decline until a confidence shock causes it to drop like a stone. Figure this will happen in the next 3 years. When it does, figure on US interest rates increasing back to longer term normals. - With US saving rate now at 5% and deleveraging continuing, then the US economy will bumble along with mediocre growth 1.5% area GDP growth for the next few years. Maybe next year is a recession but it will bounce back to mediocre growth levels fairly quick. - Asian economies will continue to restrict their currencies with continued rubbish announcements about how bad the developed economies are in managing their economies. Their growth will still be healthy but not the high rates you would normally expect for an emerging market. - The Euro zone has two choices - closer integration or partial disintegration. Population is not ready for the former so expect the latter. Greece, Portugal, Italy, Spain, etc are all prime candidates to exit the Euro, float a new currency and then devalue it to make their economies more competitive in the absence of other government policies. - Commodity inflation will continue given the demand from the developing world. Low growth should restrain other forms of inflation. However, US health care inflation will continue to run at its normal 9%pa rate.

Hi Jude - I got a tip recently on blatchat that putting the external mic in the boot under the boot cover eliminates the wind noise but gives acceptable results. I have not tried this yet but listening to another video it sounded ok. The alternative is what I have been experimenting with - routing it forward up under the dash - problem is that it is a long way from the roll bar...

Stephen - Busa has you well covered for now but in case you have other items on your shipping list later this year, I go to Sydney for Xmas every year to see family. If you have anything you need brought back, let me know. Its cheaper to post from Oz to NZ.

The CSR front wheels have the following specs 7x13 - et40 - 139mm backspace

Now you get it - we have large go karts. :cooldude: Most people who have never driven a seven treat it like a big ol heavy car that has to stick to a line around a corner. In reality you can chuck it into a corner and pretty much do what you want because it will out handle anything around. It was good to see you passing all those Volkswagens :jester:

Mondo - where do you find your avatars? I think it is funnier than your posting!

How the hell did she get the cars in that crash position? Its like they all aimed at each other?

Why is 1988 bad? State retitling issue?

Photos http://www.wirewheel.com/gallery/98894.jpg http://www.wirewheel.com/gallery/98910.jpg http://www.wirewheel.com/gallery/98896.jpg

To put Jack's post another way - the Caterham duratec uses the short input shaft for the T9 installation whereas the Caterham Zetec uses the long input shaft configuration on the T9. I assume the Birkin installation follows the same pattern as I believe they use the same bell housing as Caterham. From hearing Jack's pain first hand, the swap over from short to long on the Caterham 6 speed box required disassembly of much of the gear box. His suggestion of a phone call you would find useful as Jack has had his transmission apart more times than anyone else I know! For ordering bits: 1) I second Jude's recommendation of Burton. I have always had good experience with them and their catalog is really good reading. 2) Try Dick Brink. He seems to always have a good supply of Caterham specific parts even though he deals in Birkins. 3) I am sure Jon at Caterham USA (or UK) would have bits. They had a bunch of transmissions on the shelf when I was there a few times this year.

I think they seal about as well as the factory original. When I saw one that SVT cover the one time in a focus, it was four screws holding it down. There was no seal on each side between the plastic cover and the cam cover. So if water found its way onto the top of the cam cover or the SVT plug cover then it was always going to drain down between the common joint into the central cam cover valley. It was for this reason I never bothered to track down the part that was always missing the time I had the car. You have a much bigger rain issue than I ever did so I really do understand your need for something. At $30 it looks like the link above is a reasonably priced option to get one and see if it works the way you want. The first option of Carbon Mods is probably the best design for what you are trying to prevent since it will at least shed the water off to the side of the block. You could probably fabricate one of these yourself in thin ali as a temporary measure to see if it works?

I have never had it happen to me but how do you deal with it when it starts? Gently slow down?

Well it is a premium price for a car with exception history and condition. Hard to object to a price like that for something so rare. I did have a chance to sit in this 19 (and make brrrrm brrrm noises to myself) at Sports & Specialist Cars in Hopewell NJ: http://www.princetonlotus.com/ViewClassic.aspx?id=203 http://www.princetonlotus.com/images/DisplayImage.ashx?id=844&type=full At $199,000 it is also unaffordable for ordinary mortals. I think I still prefer the styling of the 23.

Sorry for the hijack - is there an online link to the European Car article?