rabbitstew

omg!!!

911 is a good option and running costs maybe less than you think. My 997 turbo has a 20,000 mile service schedule. Minor service at my indi is £300 incl VAT. Major Service is only £370. That includes them fully valeting the car etc. Im getting nearly 30mpg so pretty economical for the performance. Insurance is cheaper than what I was paying on my 350z and stuff like tyres are about the same price I paid too. The biggest cost I found on running my 350z was depreciation. Looking at the prices over the last year its changed a bit now, but I lost £4000 a year on my zed. My 997 has not gone down in value over the last 18months. In fact, had I not used it, it would be worth roughly £10k more than what I paid, however im happily piling the miles on it as my daily. How about an M3/4 or C63AMG?

Well heres an update. We resubmitted new plans to the Town Council for a smaller extension. It meant making a lot of compromises. The new utility room will be so small we cant now have a back door off it. The en suite will be so small we cant have a walk in shower - will be a bit of a squeeze. We wont be able to add any extra space to the small bedroom through which the new hallway will go so this will go from being a double bedroom to a small single one. The new 4th bedroom will be a lot smaller so we cant have a walk in wardrobe. The new main kitchen/dinner will be a lot narrower and smaller. It will all be built out of the same matching material as the main house. Its not the extension we really wanted, but hey ho, if it will help get it approved then needs must. After waiting 4 weeks for the next Council meeting... whats the Town Council`s verdict? "It wont match the existing house or others in the street." WTF? I am using the same materials! And an even bigger WTF they say it is a "huge over-development of the site and the extension is far to big compared to the existing house." I am amazed! Are these people blind? Its 14m2 bigger than my existing extension. It takes up hardly any of the current outside space. Its not as if im doubling the size of the house. My building to plot ratio is half of any of the surrounding houses! On the other hand they have happily approved a house a few doors away`s extension. The owners have already extended their house previously, so their building to plot ratio is twice what mine is and yet their similar sized (albeit single storey) extension is perfectly fine apparently. Luckily the planning department seem to be sensible. They have said that they are perfectly happy with my plans and will put them forward to be approved anyway. I should have it all signed off within the next few days. Makes you wonder though why there is such a long drawn out process like this where a bunch of Councillors with no planning or architectural experience can drag the process out, ignoring experienced planning officers recommendations and declining permission for something which is obviously perfectly fine, when the planning department themselves can just override their decision anyway. Weird.

Just leave it to your insurance company to sort out.. They will speak to the other company and decide what to do. Sometimes your insurance company will do the repairs etc. themselves then claim back off the other insurance company, other times the other insurance company will just sort it all out.

Spotted just now, in Cambourne, Cambridge. Silver 350z Coupe, reg **54 PCO

Looks horrendous imo! Much prefer the styling of the older ones. And wtf were they thinking painting one in that yellow colour?

It will take a good few months to get over it. Like you, I was quite surprised. Ive crashed motorbikes many times etc, but this was completely different and left me shook up for a long while. But, you do get over it and you find you end up driving like Miss Marple as your paranoid it will happen again! Hopefully the insurance company will get back to you soon. Have they given you a hire car? When I had that person crash into me, companies were fighting over giving me loan cars as they just claim them straight back from the other persons insurance company.

Was 2 degrees outside the other morning and 5 degrees inside my gym. I dont usually wear gloves but I had to as my hands were freezing on the barbell!

I have actually been making pretty good progress since June. Up`d my calories to 3200 a day, cut down on carbs and increased the intensity/weights. My body weight seems to hover about the same amount no matter what I do. Belly isnt getting any bigger, and actually has got a bit smaller, so I may have to up the calories a little more. Ive had a few injuries which have hampered my strength gains. I fell down the stairs seriously twisting my ankle, and I mean seriously twisting it. It swelled up to twice the size of the other one and turned black. I couldnt walk for a few weeks and even now nearly 4 months on its not 100%. It has limited movement and I can feel its still swollen compared to the other one. That put paid to any leg workouts - squats, deadlifts, even running. I have re-introduced light squats and heavy deadlifts this month and was quite sad to see my current 1RM deadlift is what I was hammering out for 6 sets of 6, 12 months ago. Nothing like backwards progress. I also pulled a muscle in my trap muscle, but I was careful to work around it and that seems to healed. However now I have bad tendonitus in my right arm for the last 6 weeks which means I cant do any bicep curls. Ive had it before and its very anoying, it just seems to linger about for months. Seems like im falling apart! So its been very hard, especially when i still have hardly any spare time, and you wake up at 5:30am, having been up all night with a screaming toddler, then having to switch psycho mode on and hit the gym. Still, im extremely motivated atm and have been getting proper medieval with the weights. Whilst my weight hasnt changed I can see my upper body is improving and all my shirts are feeling tight now. I also was quite pleased to have 3 of the wifes friends quite independently comment about how I look. Their words were "my god you look massive, what have you been doing?!". One just couldnt get over it and must have exclaimed it at least 4 times during the day. Whilst im not one to walk about in a muscle vest or anything, comments like that really do help motivate you and make you feel good. Im hoping to keep up the intensity over Christmas, avoid any more injuries and take full advantage of all that Christmas food!

I thought it was 8 degrees? Either way, its actually listed in the owners manual if you have a read of it when you get the car. When I had my 350z Roadster id have the roof down 99% of the time anyway, even if it was 2 degrees. I used to love finishing work on a cold winters night, stick the roof down and heaters on. You`d be cruising along in a bubble of hot air, with the dark winters sky & stars sparkling up above. Awesome stuff. I only had it a couple of times when the roof would get stuck half way down. A quick tap with the palm of my hand used to solve it. The other problem I had was that the overhead support bar above your head. The metal which wraps around it started to peel back. Nissans answer was to rivet it back on.

Be interested to see how you get on with it. It took me quite a while to get used to my 911.

Depends on what work pattern you think will suit you. Personally id go for Job B, even if the long term prospects arent as good. Weekends off, plus finishing at 4pm each day sounds great to me. Before I got married and was able to hang out with friends, all of them would be off at weekends - so if i worked a weekend id not be able to hang out with anyone. You can always change jobs again in the future.

The ZXR400 is a cracking bike. Ive a ZXR750L2 in my garage ive had since 1996/97. Was my first "big bike". Crashed it loads in the early days, when I was young & foolish.... oh... wait! EDIT: Not implying you are foolish, more that young people are more likely to crash as I proved when I was that age.

Good stuff!

That is mental!!!! My first car was an 850cc classic mini which (if I remember correctly) had about 30bhp. Very true. It seems that insurance companies do take age over experience. My mate passed his bike test the other year, aged 32 I think, and his first bike was a ZX6R. Think it only cost him something like £400 to insure it. Mad really as back when I passed my test, the normal route was a 250cc bike, then maybe a 400, then maybe a 600cc. I think a lot of it might be bikes are cheap now. You can pick up an old R1 like mine for a couple of grand. A lot of the born again bikers dont seem to think that 35 years back a 1000cc bike probably kicked out 80bhp. Now its over double that. To make you feel better, I just renewed my bike insurance and its costing me £80 to insure both my R1 and Ducati 996 on a multibike policy.

It does shake you up when this sort of thing happens. I had someone pile into the back of me when I was stationary once. He must have been doing 60mph easily. I was thrown back with so much force it ripped the drivers seat clean out of the floorpan. For months and months afterwards id be paranoid about the same thing happening again. You would be sitting there and see a car approaching from behind and start finding yourself flinching. Not a nice experience. As others have said, the onus is on the other guys insurance company to fix it all up and get you a courtesy car to use in the meantime. Hopefully the garage will make a good job of the repair, but make sure you thoroughly check it all through. When my wife had her car repaired once, I had to send it back 3 times before they finally did it properly. The first time they had even used the completely wrong shade of paint on the repair. And this was a big national repair company.

I still think that boot spoiler is a bit too small! GLWS

My thoughts exactly! Id be very eyes wide open looking at this one.

3 grand! Thats pretty mad how cheap you can get one for. Thats a lot of car for the money.

^^^^^^^ Awesome! Welcome to the 911 club. When I bought my 997 turbo, the 1 week wait to collect it was absolutely agonising.

Spotted just now, 1pm in Cambourne, Cambridge. Cherry Red 350z Coupe, Plate was F* MTD. Had a sports exhaust on it. Sounded good!

If its a 911, the OP would have had to have had quite a big bag of cash!

Im always very wary of car dealers selling cars needing work like this, especially when they say "no comment on why its smoking" etc.. My thoughts are is that they pretty much know exactly whats wrong with it and it just not financially viable for them to fix it and then sell it along side their normal cars. MOT history doesnt show anything scary, it was only MOT`d 11 days ago. I always thought an engine management light showing was an MOT fail, so whatevers happened to it may have only just happened.

Guess it all depends upon experience. By the time I got my first car at 19 I had been driving my parents cars on private land for 5 years. I remember on my very first driving lesson when I was 17 I was doing 3 point turns, reverse parking, everything most people wouldnt do until much later. But looking back now, how I used to drive in my 20`s scares me, and that was with much less powerful cars. I didnt get my zed until I was in my 30`s and felt that my attitude towards driving and risk taking was more appropriate. But everyone's different and it depends on how sensible you are really.

Very much like the A14 near Cambridge. There was something like 4 or 5 fixed cameras on the stretch from Peterborough to Cambridge, and yet during a daily commute it was impossible to get anywhere near the 70mph speed limit. The only time you could was at 2am coming back from an airport run or something. There were lots of accidents, which usually involved lorries. The answer? Spending £600k (if I remember correctly) on installing average speed cameras along the entire length. The result? Still loads of accidents and you still cant get anywhere near 70mph. Only people it catches are those 2am people making good process on a deserted road.