rabbitstew

Welcome to the forum! Have to say, I wouldnt be parking my zed that close to the wall there!!!!

Funnily enough thats the opinion my mate has of them now. I was speaking to him at the weekend as I hadnt seen him for about 18months. He had a brand spanking new BMW M-Spec 320d when I last saw him. Fully loaded nearly and it came in at over 36k from what I remember. Had everything on it, all voice controlled, big wheels, leather, dvd player etc etc.. and I was very jealous at the time. Turns out he had it for about 18months, not much longer and when he sold it, he got £12k for it! Thats a hell of a depreciation on it. I didnt feel quite so jealous at that point. In fact I had the last laugh, as when he saw my zed he was seriously jealous. Apparently he`s wanted one for years but his wife wouldnt let him get one!!!

I really hope this winter wont be bad as I do not want to be using my zed trying to get up the hill to my house in the snow. If only the insurance on a 2nd car wasnt so expensive, id buy some old shed to use over winter instead.

Welcome! 10k should get you a nice example. Plenty out there so shop around, and ask advice / questions on here if you need any info.

Brilliant!!!!!

My god Nissan must be desperate. Not only did I get the glossy flyer through the post, ive now had 2 follow up emails from them (which ive ignored) and 2 TXT messages to my mobile phone (which ive also ignored). I now expect they will phone me up soon. They must be really desperate for my business!

Wow! Thats like some sort of David Blaine trick! I remember similar kits avaliable when I used to go to motorbike shows. Still think £100 is a lot of loot for what is just a solonoid and a bit of wiring.

People do really get wound up tho on these games! Have to say I havent played online games since the days of Duke Nukem, when at one company the whole sales team used to spend all day playing it.

Bit like the numberplate on my Yamaha R1 which reads 4KOF

I going up on thursday to finalise the finance - presumably if you end early (and pay it off) = less interest charges ? And on the other hand, usually an "early repayment penalty fee" added to it also. Depending on the loan agreement, sometimes you can get around this by overpaying a lump sum so you are left only owing a few quid on the loan, then when your next monthly payment clears the loan its classed as the loan ending of its own cause, rather than you clearing it early. Depends on the company however.

From saying FOCQ out loud a few times, I think it may just mean f**k you.

Hmmm you would have thought that pressing the button would have at least made it try to open the roof unless a fuse has blown. Mine had a problem when very cold that the roof would get about 50% through its way down then stick. Pressing button to close it slightly, then back to open again resolved it. Apparently common problem and nissan doesnt recommend putting roof down when its cold! Nissan themselves had a problem with my roof when i took it back to have them look at the roof trim under the hood. I dont know what they did but the hood would not close or open at all. They spent a day or so trying to fix it, which they did sucessfully and told me it was "mis-alligned". So I dont know what they did to break it and subsequently fix it. If you search on google you can find several reports from a couple of people on the web who have had problems with motors, but in general there isnt much out there from people who have had problems with the roofs. So either they are pretty reliable, or those people just havent been bothered to post.

very true!

Mines the same. Release bearing type noise when idling, goes when you put foot on clutch. And a whine when you accelerate in low gears (1st, 2nd mainly) - bit like the syncromesh noise old mini metros make, or cars with race gearboxes make on the track.

I actually had a very lucky escape the other week. I parked in a carpark, where id parked hundreds of times before. Put the handbrake on the same amount as I always do. Get out and start to walk away and my car starts rolling away towards the back of a landrover. I have never run so hard in my life as all I could think about was my mint front bumper smashing into the back of the landrovers tow bar and the subsequent repair cost to my car. Luckily I got in the car and managed to stop it in time. Now I pull the handbrake up higher than id normally do and leave it in gear. With regards to the OP`s car sitting happily for an hour before deciding to roll off - I have heard of that happening before with other cars - something to do with the disc brakes on the back - as they cool off, they shrink slightly which reduces the pad on disc pressure you first had when you put the handbrake on.

And RRL dropped something like 8% nearly after yesterdays "positive" renouncement. In fact everytime RRL does an announcement the price drops. I cant wait until they announce that they have hit 100billion barrels of oil, as I thoroughly expect the price to drop to zero at that point.

Christ, thats nearly 4k less than I saw these advertised for earlier in the year. Its rapidly approaching the wrong time of year to sell a roadster... and I think the crappy summer we have just had with lack of sun isnt helping. I really think you are going to have to end up part ex`ing it for something more sellable.

Doesnt seem too bad for a 7k car, they are certainly getting more affordable. Should be fine for what you are wanting it for. They are okay in the snow and around town, but not serious off-road. I was doing some work at Rockingham Motorspeedway a few years back and they had the BMW driving experience school there, which had these X5`s on a small off-road course. It wasnt a challanging course by any stretch of the imagination, but the X5`s kept getting stuck and they had to use a 50 year old land rover to pull them out. Personally I quite like them, its just the servicing and running costs which put me off, but then I do mega miles each year. How about a Range Rover Sport? You can get a them for 15k upwards depending on mileage.

Yeah those wheels look a bit rubbish in my opinion, but im sure you could sell them for decent money and get a set of more original Rays wheels. Prices will vary no end, dealers will always big up the spec, but the reality is that most of the 350`s out there have the GT pack as dealers tried to encourage buyers to go for it. That gives you the bose system, heated leather electric seats and cruise control. Id shop around and play one dealer off against another. These sort of cars are hardly flying off their forecourts atm so in theory they should be open to a deal. In practise from my experience the dealers are tight as anything and I really struggled knocking even a couple of hundred quid off their asking prices when I was looking.

And as an added bonus, found out Saturday that O2 have a deal with Pieminister and are giving away free breakfast pies before Rugby matches! So, ive ordered one from them already and hopefully it will arrive shortly. Bit of a result eh? Free pies!!!!!

I assume its the mk5 golf you saw? From memory the 1.9 is 100bhp and the 2.0 is either 140 or 170bhp depending on model. I wouldnt worry about the golf not being pokey. If its the PD engine which I think it is, the mk4 golfs had the same engine, but came as a 115bhp, a 130bhp and a 150bhp model. The 115bhp one which I used to have did 0-60 in about 8seconds out of the box and could be remapped to 160bhp easily. The golfs are all about in gear power, esp if you have a 6speed one. Of course, compared to a 300bhp zed its just not going to have the same feel. Noise wise, I found my PD golf very quiet. When cruising I could hear no difference between it and petrol cars. The only time I knew it was a diesel was when idling, when it was slightly louder than petrols, but a lot quieter than other diesels, like peugeot or renault for example. Diesel vs Petrol really depends on the sort of mileage you are doing. Diesel costs a bit more, but you get more mpg. Last time I worked it out, 15k per year was the sort of mileage where any more made sense to get a diesel.

There is a lot of satisfaction to be had in building your own pc, and you get it the spec you want. I built my last one about 2 years back now. A nice media pc with a case which looked just like a hi-fi seperate. 2 2tb hard drives, dual processors, 4gb ram. The graphics card alone cost me more than a ps3 would. But, even now, its awesome playing games fully maxed out on settings. I plug it straight into my telly via hdmi and audio is streamed into my 7.1 surround system, so I can stream HD movies straight from the media pc. Total cost, I think was something around about 1200quid. But, for that cash, really I could have just bought a ps3 and used that!

It doesnt help that a few years back every man and his dog jumped on the IT band wagon. Ive been in IT all my life, started programming when I was 10 on a BBC Micro. What I noticed is that a few years back every one started saying "theres money in IT", there were adverts in all the papers "get a high paid job in IT" and you had plumbers and bricklayers all doing IT courses and walking into IT jobs. The result of that was that the more experienced IT guys were made redundant and then were faced with cheaper competition when trying to get another job. Of course, when the IT recession hit, and loads of people were laid off, those plumbers / bricklayers went back to their original jobs and continued earning loads of cash. But us IT guys struggled to find another job and if we did the salaries were less than you`d get doing plumbing or bricklaying. As an employer what I am seeing with the programming jobs is that a lot of companies will go for the cheapest option. For example, my company employed a developer a few months back who is from India. He is more than happy to work every hour in the day for basically minimum wage. I fail to see how the guy can survive, but he told me that he shares a 2 bedroom house with 8 other guys and so his outgoings are quite low. Compare that with some of our other developers who we have to pay good money too and I can see why my company went for this new guy.

I used to build PC`s for friends and family many moons back. They would spec exactly what sort of thing they wanted i.e. business pc or gaming, or media centre etc... then I would source all the components, build it up and add on a little for my time & effort, or do it for a couple of pints or something. I stopped doing it because you ended up being their computer support person for the rest of your life, and trouble shooting issues could be hard... was it the hardware? software? or user error. But the main reason I stopped was that there was no money to be made in it. Most people will run to Dell or one of the big names. When I last looked, Dell was knocking out desktops incl windows for a fraction of the price I could build a similar spec one for by buying bits from ebuyer. If I wanted a more specialist pc then there were hundreds of little computer shops in town. You could even buy ready made gaming pc`s from websites like overclockers. Back in the day a lot of people were scared of PC`s and didnt understand them. But these days nearly everyone I know is comfortable at building their own system or installing windows etc...

This was one of my gripes when I had a 370z for a few days earlier in the year. It scraped on everything. Even getting in and out my drive, and definately over every single speed ramp I came to, no matter how slow I went. It doesnt physically look any lower than the 350 so I figured it was the front bumper or spoiler. Was very anoying tho!