sasha@lazytrips

Sounds interesting. I'm currently deciding on what I'm doing this winter, but just so I know ahead of time, what sort of turn around would these be for delivery?

I remember in my previous job, somebody parked with tyres over the dividing line in a moderately tight multistorey car park and a suitably angry big cheese parked their bmw within millimetres of the driver's door (couldn't stick your finger through the gap). The mirror stuck out just infront of the other car, so there was no way for the person to get out of the space (let alone get in the car other than climbing through the passenger seat. The big cheese then duly left work at around 7 when the offending car owner finished at 4.30, thereby having to wait almost 3 hours to be able to leave work. Half the office took their time to go and take some photos, but I unfortunately don't have one. Valuable lesson taught.

Are these full winter tyres or all season ones? Do you know what the model is? If these are all-season, their prices are pretty competitive against even standard Falkens which could make quite a lot of members very keen as these could be used in the summer too.

Might be me, but it looks like you've got a number of sensors going off. I counted a few A/F codes and 1212 - ABS sensor. Have you checked all your fluids? Coolant can set off a number of these sensors including the A/F one as per a number of recent cases. Other than that, another common fault is one of the lambda sensors at the bottom.

I'm interested and would like to know sooner rather than later if you get any prices on winter/all season tyres. Ideal sizes are: 255/35/19 and 285/35/19, but something between 245 and 265 on the front and 275 and 295 on the rears would do.

Looked at that site as well as numerous others. Not really keen on spending £200-300 a corner + fitting/balancing.

brembo clearance is something I didn't think of. Would need to look at that. Taking another car is not an option & I'm not planning on driving off-road or over mountain peaks - just a trip across to Russia and back. Alternatively - anybody know where you can get 19'' fat all-season tyres?

I'd get the "buyers' market" thing a lot more if it wasn't for the fact that a number of other cars in and around that price bracket aren't doing the same thing. i.e. if you are selling a 5-bed house in great condition, etc, even if there isn't a market for 5-bed houses, you'd still expect to get more than a 2-bed bungalow in the same village...

Here's an interesting question. Say you want to drive right across Europe & back in the middle of the winter with most countries requiring winter tyres. Let's also presume that you have a stupid sporty rear-wheel drive car which will throw a wobbler as soon as it sees anything other than hard tarmac unless it has some appropriate rubber. Add to this the fact that it is virtually impossible to get all-season tyres for 19'' wheels. So I got thinking and came up with this: What if I went and bought some "cool rims", say 16 inch by 6.5 and fitted big fat all season tyres to them (215/60 and 215/65). Given that all-in this could actually come out pretty cheap due to the sizes, is there anything that I haven't considered in this set up?

I guess the answer is simple. 1. Rock up to a Nissan dealership in your 350z in a smart suit and blag your way through getting a GTR for an afternoon/day 2. Drive your GTR across to Porsche and say that you want something a little more refined and European and blag yourself a 911 for a day. 3. Drive your brand new 911 to the Ferrari dealership and say that you're looking for a weekday car to compliment your weekend toy and are keen on the 458...

I've built my own PC as well and most of what was said above is true... BUT. Given the situation and all the information that people have provided, you could try and adapt to the world around you and think how best to make use of your skills & knowledge instead of a simple go/no go decision. What if instead, you offered a Computer rebuild/upgrade/refresh service. Instead of selling people the full package as per almost all shops, you'll find almost everybody already has a screen which is usually good enough for their purposes, ditto with the keyboard, mouse, speakers. Very often the box & power supply are only 2 years old as well as various cables. Often the RAM sticks and even the motherboard can be reused in the right circumstances. I would reckon if you offer a personalised approach and work to significantly improve customers' existing computers at a fraction of the cost of buying a new one, you would likely be able to have a much larger mark-up for the service, thought & work. In the end everyone's a winner.

As an owner of a higher mileage GT on an 04 plate with some minor mods, I am seriously astonished as to how much value these cars have lost over the last 6 months or so. I know that gas guzzlers are coming out of fashion, but the zed is not as bad as people might think. When I compare other cars you can get in the 6-7k bracket, I'm really struggling to see how the drop is so huge. Saw a slightly newer Suzuki Swift sold for almost the same price and I drove one yesterday - seriously confusing stuff.

Got a maths degree from Oxford and here's my best advice: unless you figure it out yourself, you won't ever understand the issues properly. It's not so much about 'cheating' or anything like that. It's much more about understanding the core concepts and the only way to get there is to work through it yourself. Next time you come across a similar or related question, the right answer will stare you in the face.

Quite surprising how long this took. There has got to be some serious lobbying going on by the industry to prevent a serious clamp down. I am a man of numbers and am astounded by how these companies are not forced to refund customers based on incredibly obvious competition law abuses. Here are some numbers all from insurance companies themselves. Insurance premiums rose 40-45% over the last year. To make it simple, a £500 quote a year ago has on average become £700. Admiral Group who are one of the biggest players in the market have released some numbers recently saying that 77.5% of their turnover forms the loss ratio, up from 67.8% a year ago. That's a 16.9% increase in claim costs. Hence the increase in rates from the industry's own official figures is more than double the increase in claim costs. To add insult to injury, they have posted half year profits of £161M which is a 27% increase on the previous year. Notice anything here? 17% increase in claim costs + 27% increase in profit = 44% increase in insurance price. I know this is grossly oversimplifying, but the maths is pretty straight-forward. Here's another interesting statistic I worked out on my casio. £161M x 2 = £322M annualised profit. With an average of around 2.75M customers over the last year, that means that each and every single customer pays around £120 towards the company's profit on average. Depending on which source you look at, the average insurance price is quoted at between £900 and £1,000. So the gross profit makes up 12% of the revenue which is unbelievable for an industry of this kind where your turnover should be almost entirely funding the costs.

game any good?

That's pretty cheap compared to Do-Luck. I totted up on the back of an envelope how much completing my Do-Luck bodykit with all the remaining parts would cost the other day. Let's just say it makes nismo stuff appear to be very good value!

Saw one of these a few times at the Nottingham Cricket ground in the past. Not my cup of tea personally, but does look a little different. On a separate note, is it just me or is that front lip not attached to the bumper properly? Someone been having a rendez-vous with kerbs while parking?

I would fundamentally disagree here. Everybody can see the obstruction, everybody politely queues up to get past and the idiots who feel they can use this as an opportunity to "overtake" and bypass everybody are incredibly annoying. Everybody else is just being sensible about it rather than pushing past each other just right by the cones.

I agree with most of the above. With a fair bit of driving during the rush hour, one thing that has recently really begun annoying me is people who, when travelling in a rush hour continuous stream of traffic and approach a roundabout where everybody goes left/straight and go into the right-hand lane trying to jump 1/2 cars by pulling in and pushing their way through. This really ticks me off as it is both pointless and extremely dangerous. Most won't condone my response, but the moment I see one of these bypass the line of traffic and pull up next to me at the roundabout, there is only one thing I now do and that is keeping exactly in line with said car and at any attempt to pull in, I just get as close as is necessary to the car in front. This week had a guy who had to physically stop in the middle of the road as the road narrows after the roundabout because I wouldn't let him in and there was a stream of oncoming traffic. These kinds of idiots need some serious education.

A more complete list can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Top_Gear_test_track_Power_Lap_Times While the 370z/350z position is interesting, I still can't get my head round the GTR. rear seats, decent amount of space, large boot, engine at the front, stereo, etc, etc & costing pennies in comparison with almost every supercar there is, including the original Veyron, all Zondas, all Ferraris, all Porkers & all Maseratis including the MC12 being slower. One can only wonder what a slightly enhanced one would do.

I've been drooling all day. Contemplating swapping BOTH kidneys for a cheapo dialysis machine.

Anyone know whether 295/30/19 on the rears is too far out from standard?

not lowered and no rubbing issues. The wheels aren't that close to the arches, and I would hazard a guess than an extra 1cm will fit easily. Might do some measurements later today.

Pretty sure mine are 9 wide at the front and 10 wide at the back. In my personal opinion 245 and 275 is not quite wide enough for a fair coverage if you have a rim poking out. That's why I'm thinking of getting slightly wider tyres all round.