rabbitstew

Back in the day traders would sent off the tax disc straight away to claim the money back. But these days traders are not allowed to claim the tax back, so its of no advantage to them whether its got tax or not. When i part ex`d my zed i sent the tax off for a refund as soon as i could. They reckon it can take 6 weeks before they actually send you your cash back. But on a £460 a year tax I was looking at quite a nice refund. Certainly enough to pay 12 months tax on my beemer.

Yep, i did the same on mine last night. iplayer looks incredible in HD on the nexus screen!

Easy - the maps are stored on a dual layer dvd in the dvd player behind the drivers seat - or at least they were on my 2007 car. Its just a case of buying (or obtaining) a newer map disc. The one which came in my 2007 car was dated 2006, so I just got the latest one I could (Dec 2011 if i remember correct) and used that instead. Even google maps on tablets / phones has an option now to download maps and store locally, although I havent tried it yet so im not sure how much it stores. There are loads of other satnav apps which do the same. Or, why not just get a tomtom? Ive a tomtom one which I used to use and you can downlaod european maps etc... all stored on the memory card in the device so you never use a 3g connection.

Have to say I wasnt impressed with my 748SPS at all. Previous owner paid nearly 12k for it new. I bought it when it was 2 months old and it only had 400 miles on the clock. The engine blew up at 600miles and went back to Ducati for them to fix (took them 3 months!)(a valve had dropped into the cylinder head destroying one head, piston & liner). I then did about 10,000 miles on it after then in 8 months (used it as my daily commuter). It took me ages to set the suspension up on it, as from the factory the back shock is set so hard the back end would slide out on roundabouts / bends. At first I thought maybe id hit some oil, but it was the shock setting. Once I set it up it was fine, but it never handled anywhere near as good as my ZXR750L2 did. Performance wise, I had it superchipped and terminini carbon cans on it, but it just didnt have enough power compared to 4 stoke 600`s. I never managed to get used to the low rev limit, and the v-twin lent itself to more relaxing "leave it in 6th gear" poodling about. The best thing about it was the sheer noise the engine made with those race cans. I sold it to a guy from Glasgow who hired a van and drove a 700 mile round trip to my house and bought the bike for cash without even riding it. I went out and bought a nearly new R1 and a VFR750 with the money & still had change. I did try a friends TL1000R a few times afterwards and found that much better powerwise as its a bigger engine - so maybe id have got on better with a 996 or something.

Thats standard practise and insurance companies have been doing that for as long as I can remember. They know a certain percentage of customers will just renew without shopping about and thats what they are banking on.

They are cheap as chips to. I saw a nice looking convertible one on a forecourt a few months back for 4grand.

Thats not so easy these days. I built a massive triple garage sized workshop at my old house as i had the land for it, but when I moved the other year there were very few houses these days which had a double garage or even the land to build one on - unless you went for some farm type place. In the end I managed to get a house with a double garage - but any "double garage" seems to only be about 16ft square, so you can just about squeeze 2 cars in and thats it.

Well i bought my 350z last year and had no end of trouble trying to get it insured for a reasonable price. Thats with 20 years ncb and im 40. I ended up paying £900 fully comp. Year 2, I managed to haggle this down to about £700. Then I sold the car a few weeks back. Out of interest ive just gone onto confused.com and did a quote as if i had just bought my old car again and I am amazed that ive just been quoted £330 fully comp. WTF is that all about? In December they were charging £700, and now its down to £330?!!! Have 350z`s suddenly dropped in risk or something? All my details are the same as back in December - i just clicked "renew quote". As ive got 20 years ncb its nothing to do with that, nor is it anything to do with being more experienced in that car as i put that ive not bought it yet. Talk about good timing - a soon as I flog the car the insurance halves?! Whats next? The government announcing that nissan 350`s pay £10 a year tax or something instead of the £460 i was paying?!

3 points increased my insurance by 20%. In fact ive just logged into confused.com and did a checked and its 18% increase for me. Also, something strange seems to have happened with insurance prices of 350z`s now i happen to have sold mine. Year 1 for me cost me £900 to insure my zed. Year 2 cost me £700. (this is with 20 years NCB). Now, ive sold the car, Privilage are happy to quote me £330 fully comp on my old car. WTF?!

Was going to say these are stock parts arnt they? Im pretty sure my zed had these.

I think he`ll be very lucky to sell it at that price. You can pick up my old mint low mileage 2007 313 GT Roadster with about 4k of factory extras on it for less than that at a main dealer garage atm.

Nissan @ Marshalls have 5lts 10/40 for just under £11 - I'll go for that. Can lay my hands on 6 Denso Iridiums for just short of £60 which I'll go for. Both sound very good prices!

Good news Jay, but it would still get those witness statements while its still fresh in minds? I find in my professional role its better to get witness advice sooner rather than later - in the same way the police do, as it could make the difference if crunch time does come +1 I had exactly this problem a number of years back when some woman pulled straight out in front of me and knocked me off my motorbike. All the witnesses came up and said to me that they couldnt believe the woman didnt see me and that they all thought it was her fault. The woman herself admitted it was her fault etc... However... my insurance company were next to useless and spent 8 months haggling with the other insurance company before deciding to go to court to decide liability. They only then tried to get witness statements, by which time the witnesses couldnt remember what day of the week it was, let alone who was where. Result was, it was decided as a 50/50 liability and I ended up loosing 4 years NCB on my motorbike.

Sounds like it might be a dry joint or something inside the speedo, which is being affected by the heat. Ive not had this happen on a zed, but on one of my previous cars, the trip computer / readout in the speedo cluster used to show all sorts of weird things in summer when the car had been sitting in the sun - due to a similar issue.

Aha Me & a friend make a hobby of winding those scammers up. The idea is you string them along for as long as possible and try to get "trophies" out of them - like photos of them holding silly signs etc... Most of them are from Senegal in Nigeria or that sort of rough area.

+1 thats incredibly low for zero NCB. I have 20 years NCB and was paying same as that at my last renewal in December.

Cloud works anywhere where there is wifi or a 3g signal on your mobile, so for me thats pretty much everywhere. I use my samsung s2 phone all the time for streaming & data and because i have wifi at home, wifi at work, wifi in the local coffee shop, I find I only use about 60mb a month on my 3g data tariff when im not somewhere where i get wifi. Your right, on a plane or anywhere where there isnt a good 3g signal you may want to store stuff more locally. Ive got the 16gb version and with movies coming in at around 1/2 gb each, can easily get enough media on the device if I wanted to take it on a 12 hour flight to the US. But if you wanted your entire media library (mine fills 3tb on my nas box) then you`d be struggling somewhat. The USB adapter powers usb drives as well as lets you use them - same as on a laptop. At the end of the day, as you say, you need to workout which device does what you want. The same reason as I didnt go for the iphone - its far too limiting, I wanted the flexibility my s2 gives me - incl the ability to use SD cards. I also wanted the best technology for the money at the time. Both are great gadgets, and the Samsung Tab 2 7" is a cracking piece of kit and with 32gb SD cards getting cheaper (i paid 35quid for the one in my s2), you can easily get a lot of local storage cheap. Both have great displays are light, slim and good performance. To save money id not bother with the 3g version as no point in forking out 30quid a month in order to get the tablet online when you can just share your mobile phones internet connection. Only other advantage with the tab 2 is that virtually everywhere is sold out of the nexus, you just cant get them now. (they are selling on ebay for between 50 and 100quid over retail price due to demand out stripping supply). Whereas with the samsung you can get it from your local store straight away. Saves a lot of messing about!

I downloaded "ES file browser" - its free. Its a bit like windows explorer really - you just browse to wherever you want on your local network - you can set favourites. Just clicking on any file and it will automatically play it through whatever app you want - stock or otherwise. I use MX player for video, winamp for sound etc. I only have my media server set up really just as a file storage location, but if I had the time you can set it up to be a proper media server, which would then allow me to use any internet brower to stream / view content on it. Ah... see, i was going to go for the sammy tab 2 for the same reason, even though the performance specs of the nexus 7 blow it away. Theres several ways around this. a) google want everyone to store there stuff in the "cloud" and stream it to the device. This works very well for some people, but others (like myself used to), like to keep stuff local on the device. I have 50gb storage on my s2 mobile phone which is always in my pocket and thats more than enough, i could use that to store my media on and stream to the nexus 7 when away from home. This isnt an option for you if you have an iphone however. c) You can get mini usb to normal usb adapter and plug USB stick or hard drive into the nexus 7 if you want extra storage. Theres a free app to allow it to map external drives. I think you just need to root it (to give you admin access) to allow this - something which takes litterally a couple of minutes. d) When I had mobile phones (i always use mine to play music from) with smaller capacity like 16gb, I used to just copy a particular play list over and listen to that for a few months, then change it out. But, not an option for you if you dont want the hassle. Id go for option c)

Ducatis are (or always used to be) quite heavy. I remember getting off a zx6r onto a ducati 748SPS and that weighted a ton in comparison. You were also perched very high up, so getting knee down seemed to mean leaning over miles. HD for first bike can be done. The aforementioned ex neighbours of mine, that was there very first bike. He passed his test and they went out and bought a harley. They loved it, used to tour all over europe on it.

If you wanted a replacement stock one, I have a drivers side reflector off the facelift bumper. I hit a pheasant or something with mine and broke the passengers side one, so i had to buy a replacement pair just to replace that one. I`ll put it up for sale on here this week if i get time.

I ran Falkens on mine without any problems at all and so do many others. They were £500 a set when I bought the last lot. However, as you only need 2 tyres, and are happy with the Bridgestones id be tempted to go for them. Then, when all 4 need replacing at the same time, maybe look at other options then.

All depends on what you want it for really. My old neighbour had a Harley. He was about 24stone and his wife was about the same. They were accountants but at the weekend would stick their leather jackets on, complete with tassles and go off pretending they were hells angels. My mate got one after several years on sports bikes as he wanted something a bit more sedate, but ended up hating it. For a first bike, most people would go for something a bit smaller, easier to handle and cheaper to insure. Something like a 250, or more commonly these days a 500 or 600. If you dont fancy the idea of a fast, quick handling sportsbike then something unfaired might be better, like the hornet 600, the ER5, the bandit 600 etc.. Im more into my sportsbikes personally, and currently have an R1, a ZXR750 and a VFR750 (which is more of a sports tourer). However, ive always fancied a buell lightning!

Have to say im getting more and more sceptical about Tescos fuel prices. I normally fill my diesel cars up in my local waitrose - its 131.9 a litre for diesel. However, we got a 5p off a litre coupon for tescos last week so I decided to go there instead. They were 137.9 a litre for diesel, so even after the coupon it was still 1p dearer than waitrose. Still, I was on red, so put something like 75quid`s worth in the car and "saved" about £2.50.

Why would keeping the car in the garage be more i belive this was the other way round ? Yep, as ChrisS says, in a garage its out of sight, so thieves can happily spend ages breaking into the car without being seen. On the street, people are more likely to see a thief and so its a lower risk! A lot of people incl. myself have found this when you play with the quotes on the comparison sites. +1. Ive got 3 motorbikes, 2 push bikes, a project car, a full multigym, workbench, roller tool cabinet, a lawn mower and still room to move about in mine. My old garage was bigger, so I had another car in it as well!

I find the cars on piston heads very often tend to be overpriced or at least priced at top money. Most of the cars on autotrader are traders cars or dealerships - they charge so much now to advertise on there that most private individuals tend to avoid it. Ebay is the place most people I know look at. Outside of that, the forsale section on here is a good place.