rabbitstew

On the zeds if you had the GT pack you got black leather seats. On top of that if you paid an extra £600 you could spec the Alezan orange or the Frost Blue. On the roadsters, they had the black mesh middle bit (whereas in the coupes they were solid leather panels), I believe to aid ventilation to the person sat in them. My 2007 HR Roadster had these exact seats. And yes, they were electric and heated also. Here was mine: [/url]

GT3 eh?! alright for some! With regards to costs, it depends on which model you buy really. I bought my 997 turbo 12 months back and have done 15,000 miles over the last year in it much to my local Indy`s amazement. Thats more miles in 1 year than it did in about the 5 years prior to be buying it. Its actually cost me pretty much no more than the BMW 1 series it replaced to maintain over the last year and the insurance was only a fraction more. Im getting 27mpg out of it on my daily commute which for something with this performance I think is great. Thats better mpg than my zed returned. Actual value of the car looking at current prices id say its worth roughly the same as I paid for it baring in mind the extra miles ive put on it. Had i only done 2000 miles it would probably be worth 5 grand more than I paid. Whereas on my zed I lost £5k in a year and the BMW 1 series was loosing £3k each year. So all in all, it was a good buy. Only problem I think I am stuck with it. I cant think of any other car atm which can tick all my boxes for the money.

I eat about 6 meals a day, usually have 1 of them as a protein shake, but at the weekends when I dont have much time, it is so much easier/quicker to just knock a shake back. I use Isolate from Protein Dynamics and it works out at 60p per shake which gives me 46g protein & 200 calories. Thats pretty cheap. Brian Shaw (Worlds Strongest Man) shared a video a few days back of what he eats in one day and it was pretty good watching. 12,000 calories.

I had exactly the same experience as the OP so your not alone! I was 40, 21 years NCB, full clean car license, full clean motorbike license. Experience of loads of 1000cc superbikes and various fast cars over the years. Live in a quiet cul-de-sac full of old pensioners and so I thought you couldnt really get much of a safer risk. But no. I struggled to get anyone to insure me for less than £1000. The "specialists" incl Flux said it was because I hadnt any recent experience of powerful cars. Which to be honest was a load of bull as whilst they were quoting me £1000 to insure the zed, the same companies were quoting me £450 to insure a new M3, £600 for a GTR and £500 for a Lamborghini Gallardo. The Gallardo in particular being worth something like 5 times what my zed was. So, it actually seemed specific just to the zed and not the driver despite what they said. In the end saying i left the car on the street rather than the locked secure garage, and adding my 80 year old grandmother to the policy actually reduced it down to £950!

We have a lot of stuff delivered at work and some of the couriers are shocking. Several will actually sign the delivery thing themselves, forging our receptionists signature saying that its been delivered when it hasnt. Apparently they get commission based on deliveries and if they think they wont be able to deliver it that day they will sign it off as delivered, then deliver it the following day. Quite anoying as in this day & age you get the "delivered" alert via your amazon app etc, go out to collect it and theres no sign of it.

Can have risks though if the property market suddenly crashes or something. I did something similar though when I moved last as I knew there was no way I could possibly move all my cars / motorbikes / toys in one go. What I did was buy my new property, then spend a few months decorating and moving all my stuff over before selling my old house. It was good in that it allowed me to get the new place ready first, but was bad in that my old house then took 6 months or more to sell. So I ended up paying 2 mortgages for 6 months and finally letting my old house go for well below what I should have had. Not only that, the hassle of getting a 2nd mortgage to buy the new house was a nightmare. Even though the repayments on both mortgages was well below what I was allowed, and the total amount also was below what I was allowed, the mortgage companies just didnt like someone having 2 mortgages. It took me ages of searching and involving a specialist financial adviser before I managed to get one.

Ive never used a spotter. I think it was Franco Columbo who once said "forced reps are best done by oneself". You certainly manage to find that extra bit of power if you suddenly face being trapped under a bar and ive had some very near misses. However, when I started training to total failure on some sets I got myself a power cage, just to be on the safe side!

Reminds me of when I first got my 911, I took the missus out for a spin and she asked why everyone was staring and looking at my car. I explained that when your a young lad growing up you often have pictures of super cars on your bedroom walls and a lot of kids have pictures of 911 turbos on their walls. My missus replied "oh, did you have one on your wall when you were a kid?". "No" I replied, I never liked them I had pictures of Ferraris up instead".

The best I ever saw was these guys doing benchpress. I say guys as there was one guy was lying on the bench trying to push the barbell up, whilst his mate was standing over him trying to pull the same barbell up in a rowing motion, and another mate was supervising screaming out encouragement to the guy trying to push the barbell up. It was amazing. The guy was really struggling to push the barbell up and his mate was struggling to pull it up also. It must have been the longest rep in history as they both struggled to move this bar. I honestly thought I was going to step in and help the poor guy. They finally managed to rack it up to my relief only to then hear the guy who just nearly killed himself under the bar to exclaim "that was light, lets put another plate on each side..........." I just pmsl at that point and it really made me loose focus on my own workout.

Me neither..... until I got my 997 turbo.

This is the first time ive ever got any breakdown cover. Always relied upon calling up a mate with a tow rope, or limping home. But figured with my 997 I should splash out, especially when it cost hardly anything via the tesco points.

I used my tesco points to get RAC membership last year. Worked out at about 1/4 of the full price.

Wow, i didnt realise it costs so much to upgrade your license. Fortunately for me I passed my test well before the requirements came in. I remember at 17 my dad sending me off down the local market with a trailer to collect some furniture he had bought. Fortunately years of towing caravans with my dad meant I could happily reverse a trailer into very tight spots without any issues. I too have considered buying a car trailer, but the problem for me would be having it sitting on the drive doing nothing for most of the year vs just hiring one occasionally.

I had a similar collection of various different car magazines. Whilst yours have sold now, what I did was to advertise each magazine individually on ebay, listing the cars covered etc. I sold literally hundreds of them for £3 each to enthusiasts who wanted to read up on old articles or cars etc. Took a bit of time/effort, but was so profitable I did consider buying more in bulk just to resell!

Mine was a 350z HR GT Roadster. I had the roof down nearly every time I went out in it, regardless of whether it was warm or cold. You could turn the heaters on if it was an icy cold day and you`d be driving along in a bubble of hot air. It was great. Whilst mine was the GT I didnt actively look out for a GT. I just wanted an HR and at the time there was only a couple for sale within 100 miles of my house so choice was limited. I did use the cruise control a lot as a lot of my daily journey is on a 70mph SPECS camera road. But had a non GT one turned up id have been just as happy with that. The bose system wasnt great. The leather seats were good. The dealers did push the GT pack very heavily when selling the cars and sort of sold it that it would help owners keep some value in their cars, so in general there seem to be more GT cars out there than non GT.

Wow. I remember when early boxster S`s were down to £1500 so they definitely seem to have gone up in price a bit. Certainly loads of different cars to choose from out there, I think if I was looking for a weekend car, my biggest problem would be the insurance as id have zero NCB to use on it which might affect which car I bought.

I had a nearly new 370z Roadster as a courtesy car once and sure enough it was empty and needed filling up. I put super unleaded in it, but I noticed in the glove box loads of receipts which showed that their sales team had been filling it up with normal unleaded.

Respect!!!!! With regards to the insurance, as people have said, double & triple check before you buy. I was shocked when I got my zed that even though I was pushing 40 and had 21 years NCB & a clean license some companies wouldnt touch me and those who did wanted ridiculous money. That included the so called "specialist" companies. They gave me a variety of excuses, the main one being that I hadnt had recent experience of a high powered RWD car. Which was a load of bull as the same companies were happily quoting me a 3rd of the price to insure an M3.

On one of my motorbike forums, the guys there have had a lot of success with £30 ebay trackers on their bikes. Just stick a payg sim in and off you go. The ones they had can either be hard wired, or just run off batteries. Batteries last 2 months. My 997 turbo came with a built in tracker from the dealer, but theres a yearly subscription and plus you have to decide that should some low-life steal your car and give it a mega thrashing, do you really want the car back? None of the insurance companies I asked even mentioned requiring a tracker so it was entirely upto me if I bothered enabling it or not.

I use a massive USB stick with all the downloaded tunes im likely to want to listen to. But 99% of the time i just end up streaming music from my phone instead as I use google music for all my tunes now.

Ah, they dont like that do they. That just made me remember that I did that once. Pouring with rain, I am on my Yamaha R1 desperate to get home and get dry as the rains coming in through my waterproofs down the back of my neck and I come up against some muppet sitting there in lane 4 of the motorway doing 65mph. All the other 3 inside lanes were clear for as far as the eye could see. I drop it a couple of gears and fly past the car on the inside. I cant remember what speed I was doing now, but the R1 can do 115mph in 2nd gear so I would have been easily have hit over 3 figures - in order to "overtake quickly & safely". Anyway, turns out it was an unmarked car, pulls me straight over and starts taking my details. Im sitting in his patrol car absolutely bricking it as surely im looking at a ban. I give him my name/address, then realise that the bike was (at the time) registered at my parents house as the insurance was cheaper, so that automatically gives the copper a red flag. He says any idea what speed you were doing, and at the time my speedo wasnt working so I genuinely told him I had no idea. Copper does not look impressed... He gets ready to start to write out a long list of crimes when his radio goes mental and he says "its your lucky day, ive got to go to this emergancy, dont do it again". I rode the whole way home at 60mph and poured myself a large whisky when I got in the door.

The problem I found is that all the local tyre fitting places around here no longer charge a fiver a wheel. If you havent bought the tyre from them they want £20 a wheel to fit, which personally I think is a bit excessive. In general ive been amazed at the terrible attitude most of my local tyre fitting places have. Questioning why you want a certain brand of tyre, dismissing that make as being rubbish and trying heavily to push the "el cheapo brand" tyres they sell instead. Then sighing and tutting as if they just dont want the work etc. Fortunately I found a friendly garage in the next town who will happily price match (or get very close) to the online prices and so ive used them for the last couple of sets of tyres ive had. My 997 needs some new tyres soon (rears are on the limit) so I will have to go through the same hassle again shortly...

Last time I was stopped was in 2011 in Australia. I was in a hire car, and having run out of beer was driving to the nearest "bottle-o" to get some more. It was late evening & dark and this copper decided to pull me over for a breath test. Came up clean & fortunately I had my driving license on me. Funny thing was, about an hour or so earlier id been thrashing this birds Monaro VXR down the same roads, probably without any insurance. Back when I was younger, I thought points meant prizes and got stopped quite a few times. Usually for speeding or "suspected" speeding, usually in my car, as on a motorbike you can easily get away and hide somewhere. Although I used to get paranoid how whenever id have been out for a thrash on my bike, when I got back home id nearly always hear the police helicopter out. Worse probably was back in about 2000 when I had a copper chase me in my car for a good 5 or 6 miles. I had no idea as he was so far behind me. He only caught me because I got stuck at some traffic lights and after sitting there for absolutely ages he flew up behind me with all his lights going. I pulled over and the copper went mental at me. He was a typical arrogant sort who proceeded to verbally abuse me for ages. Turned out that he had seen me pull of a motorway at what he thought was a fast speed, then because he was unable to catch me (he claimed in court he was doing over 100mph), he assumed id been speeding. It went to court and I was expecting a ban after the copper on oath portrayed me as some sort of lunatic driving at 200mph and that he had over 50 years experience of high speed pursuits and how his super fast patrol car couldnt keep up with me etc.. but I ended up with just 3 points. Once I actually had a copper pull me over one night at 3am after id been out clubbing for "driving too cautiously". Of course I was driving cautiously id spotted him following me for the last couple of miles. He`d clearly seen me driving out of the club car park and assumed (wrongly) that id probably had a few pints etc and would be an easy target. My brother had a copper bait him once. It was dark and this car kept accelerating right up behind my brother, then backing off. After a while my brother got fed up with this, so he floored his hot hatch and when it got to about 80 in a 60, the car behind stuck all his flashing lights on and it turned out it was a copper. Copper comes over and says to my brother "You were doing 80 in a 60" and my brothers first reply was "id have been doing a lot faster than that had this clutch not been slipping....."

I had to laugh, I went through something similar a couple of months back. Before I got married & had kids I used to love gaming, but since I just havent had the spare time to enjoy myself. But a few months back I decided to fire up the old Nintendo Wii for the first time in about 8 years and see what my 3 year old lad would make of it. He loved it. So I then fire up my "state of the art" media PC and realised Windows XP was a bit obsolete now. But, it still played the old games I used to love and the little lad thought it was great fun smashing cars up or racing super bikes around the track. So I thought, like you, id buy a couple of new car games from steam and hey presto, my PC wouldnt even play them. Quick bit of research revealed I had actually built the PC back in 2006 and now it was totally ancient. The graphics card which took up like 3 slots and had 3 power leads going to it which cost me as much as a console back then was now rubbish. So I upgraded the OS to Windows 8.1, bought a GTX 1050Ti for something like £150 and also upgraded the ram to 8gb (£112). That was enough to bring the PC up enough to be able to play all the latest games I wanted without having to go the whole hog and start looking at motherboards/cpu`s/ssd drives etc.

Just shows how inconsistent insurance companies are. For my Ducati, changing the value from £4000 to £6000 actually INCREASED my premium... even though ive only got it insured 3rd party only - so it makes no difference what so ever what the value of the bike is as they will NEVER pay out on it!! Even the insurance guy on the phone couldnt explain that one to me.