rabbitstew

Ive always said the best way to make your car quicker is to drive some shed for a few weeks, then get back into it. I had the same feeling earlier in the year when I hadnt riden my R1 for about 6 months due to blowing the gearbox up on it. I fitted a new gear box and tuned it back up myself, then took it for a spin and my god I left a brown smoke trail for miles. Having a new back tyre didnt help as it was wheel spinning at 120mph and I had to hang over the front bars in the 1st 3 gears just to try and keep the front wheel on the ground. Must have took me about 2 hours and 20 smokes to calm down afterwards.

Short answer is no - 3G is not 3G - see this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3G Also speeds depend on the connection being used (which kind of 3G) and the contention at the cell you are on. If there are lots of users using the system at the same time you wont get full speed - much the same as the internet at home being slow on an evening. O2 widely get the highest mobile internet speed because to support the original iPhone it had to upgrade the network to support EDGE. This mean they added a whole load of new spare capacity to the network which they can divert iphone traffic over, as well as more tradition standards which evens out the contention at the cell. cheers! Hmmm so many i shouldnt have moved from o2 to orange. Doh!

Let us know how you get on!!!

Definitely. I was really surprised how cheap the local place was. Esp compared to the online places. Normally with my other cars, for years, ive been buying from mytyres and getting a local place to fit them. Used to cost me £5 per wheel to get them fitted. When I got a price from Mr Grumpy at my local garage he said "yeah that would be £20 fitting per tyre if you want to supply your own tyres". I really thought he was having a laugh, as the last tyres I bought for my golf only cost me £15 each brand new fully fitted for goodyears! But then ive noticed a not many garages are happy fitting tyres you supply any more. I guess they dont make as much cash out of it.

I dont understand these data speeds. Regardless of whether its an iphone or a galaxy s2 or any other phone, in the UK we have 3g done we... and isnt 3g 3g? So, regardless of phone if 2 3g phones are sitting side by side both with full signal then the speed would be the same? With data, you`ll be ok until you start streaming video through 3g. I actually downgraded my data plan to a 250mb one, as I only use about 80mb a month. I get all my emails on my phone, its perminantly connected to the internet. I use the satnav all the time, social networking, download apps & updates and pretty much am perminantely on it. I use it for browsing the internet all the time as its actually quicker than my netbook. The reason I only use 80mb is that 90% of the time im actually somewhere where im on wireless - either at work, at home, at a friends house, at the airport etc...

When I got my car the tyres were getting low, but ive still managed to squeeze another 10k miles out of them. Id been dreading getting new tyres as I treat my car like a baby and dont let anyone touch or work on it as from previous bad experiences with other cars, I just dont trust anyone! So, the thought of letting some YTS lad jack the car up and fit new tyres, scratching my newly refurbished mint alloys was not good. After giving the car a service and the once over I noticed that I couldnt put the tyre change off any more. The backs were down the warning indicator mouldings, and both the front where nearly smooth on the insides - which explained the cars recent tendancy to tramline a lot on very badly surfaced roads. Thought id stick with the falken 452`s as they seemed to be good value and offered reasonable grip. Shop around. Mytyres were coming in at 585ish fitted or £520 supply only, Blackcircles were doing them for 565ish fitted. So I thought id try a couple of local garages too. First garage... my god the guy was a miserable so and so. First he moaned at me for where id parked. Secondly he then moaned at me for using Falkens and said I should be using Kumho. I soon found out why as he had massive posters advertising Kumho in his shop. He came in at £600. Next I called into Wellingborough Tyres, just down the road from me. And, they quoted me £510. I had to ask them to double check that they were the right ones at that price and they were. They got them in within about 4hours and fitted them no problem. I even had 3 guys working on my car at once getting them fitted. Very impressed with their level of service and they really did take great care over the fitting. Car handles miles better now. The tramlining has vanished. I reckon I should be able to get 20k at least out of these which should take me up until next summer.

My god. £45 a month?!!!! Jesus.. you can get the galaxy s2 or even the iphone 3gs for £15 a month. Thats a huge increase over the competitors phones.

Most people I know cant wait and will get one as soon as possible. Even if there are problems - like the iphone 4 with its dropping calls etc... you know apple wont release a fix quickly - so it could be a long wait if you are more cautious about a new release. Shops will sell out quickly tho, so expect big wait or get in there quick! I cant wait to see what they make on ebay bet there will be people making a killing!!!!

I always pair up with whatever tv provider im with. I was with Virgin for 10 years, and every year id threaten to leave and they`d give me half price internet for another year. I had no problems with their speed or service. Then moved areas and went with sky cos the missus wanted sky telly, so i think we pay an extra £7.50 for the broadband. The speed is incredible. Miles faster than I was getting with Virgin - although it maybe because im next to the exchange and i dont think anyone else in my cul-de-sac has broadband. My folks used to have talktalk and their speed was shockingly bad. I got quicker using my 3g phone. Also their customer service was terrible. Refused to upgrade them so I cancelled it. They made me go through 101 hoops to cancel the contract (was well outside of the 12month period), then after all that they said "oh you should have said, we would have upgraded you for free". Argh!

Totally agree. Regardless of whether you are an Apple fan or not, there is no denying what the guy achieved and I see him as probably one of the best marketing people there have ever been. How he took existing gadgets and technology, rebranded them and introduced them to the man on the street. Take the ipod for example. There were already loads of mp3 players out there, which people could drop music onto using windows explorer. But in the main most people i knew outside of my computer mates had no idea what an mp3 was. Jobs came up with the idea of having itunes where you could buy music and store it, and rebranded the mp3 player into the ipod. Having white headphones was a fantastic idea as everyone could "see" you had an ipod instantly. The ad campaign for the ipod was huge - now every man on the street could have their music, the "new" walkman even - and it became the mega trendy must have item. Sheer brilliant marketing which has continued through the iphone and ipad. I really struggle to think of another brand where whatever they produce becomes the "must have" item, where people have such brand loyalty that they will rush out and buy the new version of the product as soon as its released - regardless of whether technically its the best, or whether its the best value for money. I certainly had a lot of respect for the guy and take my hat off to him.

Checking the exhaust isnt part of the service, but your right, most garages would have noticed there was a problem with it and given you a heads up. My vote would be if you are going to replace it, replace it with the scorpian. In order to weld the original one, you`d really have to get the whole thing off the car anyway, and battle with those rusty nuts.

Hope it all works out! I had some idiot pile into the back of me once doing about 60mph when I was stationary! My car ended up all squished up and about 3 foot shorter than it originally was. After then I was kinda paranoid about watching who is behind me for a long time afterwards.

Ive a 1999 blue one. Had it since it was 2 years old. Did about 40k on the old engine, new engine only has about 5k on it. Ive rejetted it all, modded the airbox, full race titanium akropovic exhaust, race fairing, no headlamps, no indicators, harris 916 style dampner, crash bungs, single seat and the rear light replaced by some leds in the seat unit. Needless to say the MOT man has to be a little "friendly". Ive got it in bits atm as im just about respray it and stick some new Yamaha graphics on it. Im also trying to do something with the underseat plastic to make it look better although im not sure what to do yet. I dont want to forkout loads for one of these after market undertray things. Which R1 have you got?

Definitely. Just pop out a couple of pins and slide the pads out on the brembos. I did mine and my missus`s cars the same day and hers was a nightmare in comparison. yes they look around and tell you stuff you already know and charge you for it. what else do they do which they so reluctantly charge you for? Bit like those "70 point checks" some garages boast about doing as part of the service.....

I saw the 'Hitler hears about the new Star Wars blu rays', and had tea coming down my nose! They are brilliant! Im still laughing at the iphone 4 one. "what did you want my fuhrur?" "i wanted magic"

Best one of those hitler ones was when he finds out his xbox live account is closed down...

Definately. I popped my wheels off a few weeks back and saw my pads were low, so did a brake pad change myself. I think every owner should do a check every few months to see how things are wearing on their cars.

Blown engine sucks. I had a similar thing on my R1... missus dumped me and moved out, I got made reduntant and my car was having problems, so I decided to MOT the R1 and have some fun on that. Took it to the MOT place, it passed first time, came out, did a wheelie and BANG... gearbox blew up. Garages wanted about 1500quid to fix. I bought a complete low mileage engine / gearbox off ebay for 400quid, fitted it myself in about 3 hours and had it back on the road.

What does your documentation say about a P1 service? viewtopic.php?f=64&t=32277 suggests that its just oil / filter & inspection. There are other items which are optional at various mileages, like brake fluid changes and spark plug changes.

Oh ... it's safe... Plus Alex "Super-Z" Man is strong enough to hold it up with a spare hand anyway... ..... Some say, he glows in the light, NOT in the day.... Some say he wears a kilt under his ZMan outfit.... and that he eats his old worn out tyres. ................ all we know is, he's called "ZManAlex" ..!!!! Still, fair play and its an excellent idea. I wish id built something similar in my old shed - Just need a pallet of breeze blocks and a few old sleepers. I love the way those trolley jacks look shinier than the actual car!

If you sign up for giffgaff through quidco then they give you a load of money for doing so. (i did it last week!) Not really "loads of money": But better than a slap in the face I'll grant you. Well they are hardly likely to give you hundreds of pounds just for buying a ten quid top-up are they? But, to get 40% back is not a bad deal! I think you also get £1 for requesting the sim from them in the first place.

I think I'd have to disagree with you on freewheeling - correct don't use the brakes, because you have wasted the energy getting there, just use natural engine braking. Also when freewheeling the engine will use fuel to turn the engine over and keep firing, however, keep it in gear going downhill, just take you foot off the accelerator - the momentum keeps the engine turning ie use gravity to power the engine not petrol I am no mechanic/engineer - so feel free to shoot me down Hmmm. you learn something new every day. What I found with the golf was that under engine braking the car would slow down quicker, whereas if free wheeling, you could happily freewheel for a much greater distance - so if i saw cars braking up ahead of me on the road I could just time it so id freewheel up to them, whereas with engine braking, the car would end up stopping too soon, and id have to accelerate again. You can cover quite a long distance sometimes through freewheeling, esp if down hill - so in effect you could be travelling at 60mph, but engine revs are just idling at 600rpm - compared to whatever revs you`d normally be pulling travelling at 60mph. I know on my golf it made a huge difference, but maybe on the zed things are different. As someone else said, at any rate, the zed isnt the car to have if your worried about saving a few mpg!

Reminds me of those people who get a 1989 MR2 and stick a ferrari replica body on it. I saw one the other day for sale, it even had 4 tail pipes and a fake ferrari engine cover to make it look like it was real. Only problem was it would have still sounded like a nissan micra when they started the thing up.

If you sign up for giffgaff through quidco then they give you a load of money for doing so. (i did it last week!)

To be honest I think 17mpg is about right if your doing that speed. If i only use the car around town then i see similar figures. On my commute its about 45miles and I guess maybe half of that is cruising at 80mph, the rest is slow moving in traffic at about 30mph. My mpg is about 25mpg over a full tank. When I had my golf TDI I became an expert in mpg and trying to increase it. The best I saw out of that was 74mpg over a 30mile trip, incl stop / start, roundabouts, door-to-door, incl starting the car from cold. Typical average mpg per tank was more like 55->62mpg. Things you can do to improve it is to knock it out of gear and free wheel to a stop rather than braking, changing up as early as you can without making the engine labour. They reckon turning air con off saves 10% of fuel but I never found that made any difference. Really its all about predicting the road ahead to save you from wasting energy & fuel braking & accelerating. Also, cruising at 50mph or at least keeping it under 70 will help too.