sasha@lazytrips

I just wanted to check before plunging in and ordering a set of new tyres for my wheels. I've got a set of Rota GTRs all round. 19 inch wheels with 9 inch width on the fronts & 10 inch width on the back. When I had the wheels fitted, they came with 245/35/19 on the front and 275/35/19 on the back. The lip sticks out a fair bit and the tyre seems a little stretched to me. I am about to order some 255/35/19 for the front & 285/35/19 for the rears, but wanted to check to make sure that these would be fine. I checked on tyre calculators and the fronts against 225/45/18 (standard Rays) are +0.21% out (better than the 245 that seem to be much more popular here for 19 inch wheels) and the rears are +0.65% out which is pretty close too. Would I have any issues (other than finding the right rubber) in having these? **** And lastly, the bonus question: If I went with 295/30/19 on the rears (-2.67% out), I can get Ultrac Sessantas instead of Falcons which I would prefer a fair bit. Am I right in thinking that the difference in size will throw the sensors out and generally not be a good idea? Otherwise I'll be going with Falken 452s all round.

The average cost of keeping someone in prison is £40,000 p.a. What about signing a deal with some appropriate country (e.g. Bulgaria) and outsourcing all long-term (>1 month) prisoners? 1. I am sure that including transportation costs, you would most likely save well over half of the current running costs. 2. We would be able to imprison larger numbers of offenders instead of releasing them due to a lack of space. 3. The deterrant of going to prison in a foreign country with forced labour is likely to be far higher than the relatively comfortable UK establishments. I should really write up my entire manifesto of how to sort this country out

I have had this issue on a few occasions in the past. it is usually a switch issue, but could be the motor that drives it. I found that despite logic pointing to the contrary, I just moved the seat about as much as I could & pushed the recline to one of the extremes to make it work properly again. Once I stripped the whole thing and looked at it and the motor was just seizing up going one way, but not the other. Once I pushed it all the way to the end, it was very happy to work both ways again. Be careful though, as if you push it all the way and it doesn't recover, driving the car could prove a little difficult

Different parts of different cars can come out very differently in these types of situations. I smashed a huge badger at speed with the front of my zed and while the badger ended up all over the road in lumps, I didn't even get one tiny scratch anywhere on the front bumper. Similarly, when someone in a Volvo drove into the back quarter of my old Megane, their entire front wing, metalwork underneath, wheel & suspension & bottles & stuff on the inside needed work and I got two minor scratches on the bodywork.

Check me being spotted right left & centre My behind has a floor spoiler between the exhausts - should be pretty recognisable - think it's the only black one in the country

Had my brother-in-law call me last night after going past the accident. Shame as when I come round to buying one, the prices are only going to inflate with more of them written off.

Holy thread revival!

The best bit about that drool is that it has an almost carbon copy of the zed's 3.5l V6 engine inside.

I am very gradually (read one change a year) trying to shift towards a subtle black-red overall colour scheme

Yep, it was me. I park in the covered car park most of the time now as it's closer to where I work. And before it gets mentioned, yes I do need to wash the car. Oh and I do love the rust-black combo you have going.

I'm currently in the process of starting up having registered my company and being in the process of setting up a lot of the constituent parts. My business will probably differ from most in that I am not buying/selling stuff, but instead offering an alternative online service, so the model will be very different. Ultimately, the one thing I am learning is that there is no substitute for hard work. As plain and obvious as it sounds, nobody gets anywhere without grinding it out. My business revolves around travel and I am quite passionate about that. I would probably side with some of the above and say that if you are passionate about what you do as well as the profit side, then the drive early on is easier to get. There is nothing harder than pushing yourself to keep grinding at 11pm on a rainy tuesday night when you haven't seen even a penny of income for the first month or so of operation. I'm also looking forward to all the accounting, etc. Here's hoping that my maths background with a solitary accounting module at uni should be enough for the first year's returns, etc as I don't have the money to hand over to an accountant to do it for me If anybody is interested, only the blog part of the site is up at the moment @ http://www.mapmydream.com with a lot of development on the main part of the site in progress. Watch this space

if the glanza is as fast as your zed without an engine swap, there is something badly wrong with your zed :S

Pedantic as it is, the owner of a 2011 GTR would be paying £1,000 tax in the first year.

On your travels, be sure to check out some other alpine goodness: Top 5: ways to cross the Alps

A Dodge Charger is hardly a muscle car

Interesting that. Seen a few Thrifty/Dollar locations and never seen anything like that. Avis/Hertz have a few Camaros on book. It's especially strange given the fact that you can't even book anything remotely like a Camaro online - if they offered it up, that could have been the bargain of the century!

You sure it was a Camaro? When we went about a month ago and hired from Dollar, the best they had was a convertible Mustang which is what we took. Never heard of them having Camaros and they're not on their site either. The only place you can get a new Camaro at the moment is Hertz I think. Here's a link for picking your rental next time you head across the pond: MapMyDream.com

What you should have asked for is a Challenger R/T

I think you'll find that it was sold for A LOT less than £11.5k given that the dealer has now put it up for £11k (usually at least a £2k mark up). http://www.pistonheads.com/sales/2855480.htm

I'm not too sure on the price element (although I would say that £11.5k for a 53 plate is way too high even with the add-ons), but I would fix everything before selling as you're likely to end up taking the same net profit as you otherwise would, but would significantly increase the liquidity of the car. If you take it back to standard in terms of exhaust, etc, that may make it even more liquid and net you a slightly better profit if you sell the parts separately although will make it a lot more of a headache.

In addition to the above, I would add: 5. What alternative way could you propose to allow for you to continue to accrue your pension on the same terms? The government doesn't just happen to grow this money on trees. I'd highly recommend the moaners to read a book called "Who moved my cheese" which takes around forty minutes at best to get through which explains the realities of change in life and how different people approach change. Could seriously open some people's eyes.

The one thing that confuses me here is this. Am I right in understanding that the government's proposal will not retrospectively affect all accrued pensions up to the date on which the switch takes place, i.e. if you've done 20/30 years, then you'll get the pension equivalent of final salary as if you left at this point and whatever else you accrue under the new programme for the remaining years until actual retirement. This is the point that the government made, but every single person you read about in the papers/see on TV conveniently ignores and lies about. Would the people protesting prefer for a large proportion of the workforce to be made redundant? There are no two ways about it as when, as Chesterfield pointed out, more money comes out than goes in, something will have to give. So the government had a choice: 1. Make tens of thousands of people redundant. 2. Pension fund goes bust in around 12 years meaning that nobody gets any pension at all. 3. Borrow astronomical sums of money to fund this pension gap which will most likely eventually lead to the country defaulting on its debts making the Greek crysis look like peanuts. 4. Ask public sector employees to contribute a little bit more to their pensions and retire at the same time as everybody else. Given the above options (and there actually are no other options), what would the protesting public sector voters prefer? Got to love the incapability of structuring any logically coherent argument from people paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to be union leaders.

I was going to make a very long post, but then found that Chesterfield actually infiltrated my brain and wrote it all down in a far more concise and explicit manner.

Or here's an alternative option: All start at an agreed location (near London or whatever) with a full tank of fuel at 9.00pm on a Friday night. Everybody has to return to same agreed location by 9.00pm on Sunday night. (allows people from most places in the UK except some of Scotland to get to/from starting location without missing work - precise time can be adjusted) The exercise is then to drive as far as possible in this time frame with the evidence of pictures of the car including numberplates and yourself next to two recognisable monuments (e.g. famous buildings, bridges, whatever)/natural wonders (e.g. famous mountain, river bend, whatever) wherever it is that you end up. This would be a combination of endurance, driving, logical thinking and planning skills. That hardcore enough?

For that sorta money, I would have a very very very long list of cars I'd rather buy if I'm honest.