Hi there
I thought I should share some experiences with you regarding my trip to portugal this last weeked, I live in Torremolinos (Malaga, south of spain) and my girlfriend and I decided to go Lisbon for the weekend.
So jumped in the car on saturday morning and set off, driving at high speed in Spain is far easier than in england where i used to live, there is far laess police presence on the roads and far less traffic volume, but the roads arent always ideal, the road surface can vary from ok to awfull and radius of their corners on motorways can scare the life out of you at 200 kmh +, but when we crossed the frontier in to portugal through the town of Badajoz heading towards lisbon and joined the motorway i was very pleasently surprised to find an excellent motorway with very wide radius on the corners and a good surface with hardly any traffic.
We travelled at 230- 240 km/h during most of journey, I was quite pleased that my girlfriend didnt object to my speed, in actual fact she commented that it felt to her like we where only doing 160-180 km/h.
The car felt very stable, far more than my last trip to france back, probably due to fact that, the car wasnt loaded with people and luggage, but fuel consumption at high speed is atrocious, I used more than 30 litres of fuel to cover 200 km. and wind noise above 200 km/h starts to become a problem.
On the return trip on sunday afternoon, i decided to take the same motorway back and try see what is the max speed of my beast, although the conditions where ideal, my girlfriend didnt quite like the idea and objected quite loudly when she looked across realised that the needle was on 270 km/h mark, I was in 6th gear, and although i realise that max speed is more likely to be achieved in 5th gear, but mechanical sympathy for the car in a addition i was hoping to perhaps make use of some of the downhill gradients. the surprising thing was that the car was still accelerating at that point and felt like it would have reached another 10 km/h at least. ( aircon was on at the time )
What i did find out is that my driver door would loose its sealing at 250 km/h and that wind noise is very loud at these speeds and makes travelling at these speeds very tiring, you also can not believe the noise and mess that insects make when the splater themselves on the windscreen at these sort of speeds, this was one the things that alerted my girlfriend to check at what speed we where travelling.
Other comments, temp needle stayed in the middle ( even though aircon was on ) and oil temperature did not go above 100º. and brakes become very nosey when braking hard from high speed, i believe i need to change the front discs.
I have a question for you guys, has anyone change from the standard m5 mirrors to M3 like units that where optional and noticed any improvement in the wind noise, i feel a large part of the noise is from the mirrors.
Regards
Joe Rubido
(One day I will tape it cus I think most of guys dont believe that the E34 M5 does 7500RPM in 5th gear)
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