rabbitstew

Like those cases in the news recently where 10 or 15 years after the "final" divorce settlement was agreed the woman realises the bloke has now done well for himself and has come back to rinse the guy out of any money he has made since they split up. Madness.

Pretty mad really how some women think. Before I got married I lived with 2 other GF`s over the years. GF "A" paid me £400 a month to live in my house which went towards the bills/food/upkeep. The house was in my name and I made sure I paid for everything myself. I figured it was a fair deal as before then she was paying something like £700 a month to rent a flat plus all the bills. So, in theory she should be saving £300 a month. We lived together for 3 years before splitting then her parents hit me with a solicitors letter demanding half the house. I spoke to my solicitors who basically said that she was entitled to nothing. But, as a good will gesture I gave her £1500 which would be able to set her up in a rented flat, so basically she would be no worse off than she was before she moved in. In fact, £300 a month savings over 3 years meant she should be very well off. GF "B" on the other hand, she lived with me for 2 years and paid me absolutely nothing towards living there. She basically saved a fortune up, then dumped me and went off and bought a new car, had a couple of nice holidays, bought a big telly and then spent the rest as a deposit on a house with her ex bf. At no point did I think "hang on", the relationship failed, I want £x amount back from you.

Wow, thats pretty brutal.

On the fords you can disable it in the user menus.

Some of the Porsche dealers appear to offer a full inspection and a 2 year warranty. If that warranty includes the IMS and bore scoring then 'possibly' worth the extra they charge just to sleep at night? The Porsche dealers appear to charge around £2K more than alternative dealers for a similar car but you would 'hope' that they do a proper job and only sell decent cars. Or, if you want, you can pay for the porsche inspection yourself and buy the porsche warranty for the car if you found a car privately.

I do all my motorbike tyres myself - ive all the gear at home. If your careful and use rim protectors then theres no excuse. But if you dont then its very easy to chip the rim. Most tyre places just tend to bang the tyres on/off as quickly as possible.

That confuses me even more. My old house apparently was a "C" and my current place is a "B", and yet my insurance costs more at my new address!

For me, the insurance on my zed was through the roof when I got it which really surprised me. I had something like 20 years NCB, clean license, half decent postcode and had been driving for a very long time. I had years of experiences of high performance cars and still ran some high performance motorbikes, however I struggled to get a half decent insurance quote. I was paying £180 to insure a GT TDI golf at the time and had quotes of something like £400 for a Porsche Boxster S, £500 for an M3 and even £460 for a new Nissan GTR or a Lambo Gallardo, and yet the cheapest prices I was getting for my zed was over £1000. I tried the "specialists" and they were even more expensive. It purely seemed to be something against the zed at that time. Amazed me that they would insure the Gallardo costing something like £70k for less than a half of what they wanted to insure me on a £15k zed. The only thing I can think of is that maybe statistically they had paid out more claims against zeds that year than any of the other vehicles I had got quotes for. The fact I was a virtually guaranteed safe risk didnt even factor into it for them.

No mate, i meant the OP. First thing I always do before i buy any car is check that I can afford to insure it first. Doesnt really help though in your situation, like when they jack the prices up mentally or change their minds.

Surely you must have got some quotes before you rushed out and bought a zed?!

Mine had a clip out of the top of one of my calipers on my zed after 22k miles. Its very easy to do when you take your wheels off, they can drop off the hub and chip the caliper. The humbro gold model paint is an exact match to the gold brembo colour and you can easily touch it up.

Multistorey carpark?!!?!!! Might just be me, but they seriously scare me. Was fine back when I was a lad in a classic mini, but anything bigger than that and I just get scared. I will happily park a mile away to avoid them. One option which worked for me for many years when parking was an issue was just use a motorbike instead. Can park it in any little space in the carpark or pavement around where you work and much less hassle. I used to even park it in the cycle sheds at one job I had. Also had the bonus that the fit receptionists used to get a bit hot under the collar seeing me in my leathers in the morning. Doesnt solve the "i wont be using my zed any more" problem though.

Great spot tho!

Bit of a b*gger for you. I have been in a similar situation before. I was offered a job at a company and one of the first things I asked was "does it have a parking space", as parking is a nightmare in Cambridge. I was assured it did. Turn up on my first day only to find out that actually, no there wasnt a space. However, if a free space came up that day you could park. Was a nightmare as id end up having to squeeze in the tightest spaces next to some people carrier full of baby seats where you knew full well the owner wasnt the best at parking. If there was no spaces that day then id have to park a mile down the road in a park & ride. Wasnt good times and most days id walk into work fuming. In the past, I had to use a public car park for one job. That again was very stressful as it was back when I had time to polish my car every week etc and it was my pride & joy. But to be fair, I never had any problems and after a few weeks didnt worry about it. These days, I figure, its just a car, hence im using my car as a daily and not overly worrying about it. I only get time to wash it once a month and certainly dont get time to polish it. Expect it will probably be wrecked by the end of the year, but hey ho.

We had a similar problem recently. The wife had a company car for 4 years, then her company changed their policy and she had to buy her own car again and insure it. She had something like 8 years NCB on her personal policy up until when she got her company car. Unfortunately all the insurance companies we spoke to said that as she hadnt used her NCB for the last 4 years that it was now invalid. Apparently they only let you "keep" your NCB if your not insuring anything for 3 years. In the end we found an insurance company who was willing to give my wife 4 years NCB if her company could provide a letter assuring them that she had not been involved in any claims or accidents whilst she was insured under the company insurance. So thats what we did. During all this time, my wife was on my own personal policy as a named driver and that didnt count for anything apparently. So, based on my experience, maybe you can do the same with a letter from your traders insurance to say you havent made any claims?

Not shite, lucky Some of my ex's over the years tried crawling back and I fell for it more than once. Always ended in disaster and with me feeling worse. I think it depends on who dumped who. Sometimes when you dump a woman like the sort we are talking about here, it gets their back up a bit as they like to feel like they were the one in charge and they were the one who finished it. I remember the psycho ex single mum I mentioned earlier, when I finally dumped her she used to call me up offering me all sorts of filthy bedroom activities if I popped over to see her. I resisted quite well to be fair, then one day when I thought enough time had passed I agreed to go and service her car for her as a favour. I turned up with my spanners in my hand and she answered the door wearing saucy red stockings/suspenders/ the works. Needless to say I ended up servicing her rather than the car that day.

When the tester logs into the MOT software it should advice them accordingly. Personally I just found a garage which had a tapley (think thats what the box is called) device and told them I didnt want my zed on the rollers. Was a bit nerving seeing someone drive off in your car, but to be fair they barely went over 20mph from what I could see. One person drives, the other sits in the passenger seat with the box on their lap. The box is so sensitive apparently that even if you have virtually no brakes it will pass.

Was particularly handy once when my handbrake wasnt working and after trying several times to get a reading on the brake machine the MOT tester asked me to give it a go. Needless to say the reading went off the chart when I applied both the handbrake and the footbrake at the same time.

All the main dealers ive been in wont let you so it might be just garages at that level. My local Porsche indi for example, actually happily took me on a supervised tour of their workshops - mainly I think to show me how professional their workshop was etc to try and get my custom. My local back street MOT station however was the place where the guy gave me a severe b*llocking for standing 2 feet outside of the designated "MOT viewing area". Quite surprised me as my old MOT center would actually let me drive my own car on their ramp and help out with the brake tests etc. Ive just remembered that the backstreet motorbike garage I used to always use always had its doors open. You could just walk in and chat to the guys, but then at that point in time they were just 3 mechanics. They then got so busy they actually hired a receptionist and closed their doors, so everyone had to go via reception and no longer could you speak to the mechanics directly. Was a shame really, but I could see where they were coming from. Apparently they worked out they were loosing so many hours a day chatting to people that it was affecting their productivity!

Dont know which sort of garages you use, but whenever ive been to a garage they wont let you anywhere near their workshops. You have to speak to the receptionist and your never allowed anywhere else. Health and Safety is what I was told. I did actually walk into the workshop at one garage to chat to a mechanic and actually got a long lecture by the garage boss for doing so. Same as when you actually take your car there to have work done. Nissan in particular I remember the very young female receptionist taking my keys, walking out to my pride & joy, jumping in and driving it off to their workshop. Ford & BMW were the same. If your lucky, a mechanic will come out from the workshop and speak to you in the waiting room. Not saying I agree at all with the mechanics "reasoning" behind turning the cam off. As an owner, I can certainly understand why some people would feel happier knowing they have a cam on monitoring whether the garage mis-used their car or not.

There was a discussion about mechanics turning off dashcams on a mechanic group im on. There was 2 main reasons mechanics gave. Firstly they felt it was a security risk, as owners could play back footage and see clearly inside their workshop. See what tools they have, where they were kept, probably scope the area out nicely etc. Mechanics are very protective of their tool chests etc as there`s some serious moneys worth in them and its their livelyhood. The other reason given is that they just didnt like "big brother" watching & listening to them. Some customers are the type who complain about every little thing and should the mechanic say something which could be mis-interpreted, or do something the customer wasnt happy with then that would be the mechanics job on the line. Each to their own really. I dont have a dash cam in my 911 turbo and happily leave it at my local indi for them to work on. Some of their mechanics do actually look like they have come straight out of prison, but the place has an impeccable reputation, go the extra mile and so I trust them. Afterall, when you see some of the supercars they look after there, it makes my car seem pretty average to them.

Looks like quite a few people are getting monster trucks, ours arrive in around 3 weeks. Only concern I have is the width, any issues with the Edge and narrower roads. Given how some full fat RR are driven I suspect you get use to the extra gearth quickly??.... I hope so anyways, the latest arrival on the drive is going be around 80cm wider than the K10 Micra I learnt to drive in!! TBH its f**king massive. Its when you sit behind FFRR`s and think "hang on, they look pretty small" when you realise how how big the Edge is. Parkings fine as its got front & back cameras + sensors but narrow lanes I do struggle on tbh. The tech on the Edge in general is just ridiculous. Makes you wonder what they will think of next. But the driving position and the actual drive is a really nice place to be. For me also the rarity is an added bonus. We got ours before Christmas and havent seen another one on the road anywhere yet. The downer is the mpg. 32mpg if your taking it steady. My 997 turbo does 26mpg... which makes my man maths for my sensible daily even more easier! All in all cracking car although im not looking forward to the narrow Cornish lanes when we go on holidays. But the Edge was entirely the wifes decision and nothing to do with me, so hey ho, not my problem!

Lovely looking motor. Im loving the wifes Ford Edge atm. So nice to move from my daily into something a bit more cruiser like. You can just relax and drive.

That sucks dude, hope you feel better soon Cheers mate. I weighed myself earlier and ive lost 7lb in just over a week. Booooo.

Well ive had a nasty cold for 2 weeks which meant ive been unable to workout, despite tons of motivation, and now just when I thought I was getting over that, its turned into sinusitus, so for last 7 days ive had sore throat which turned into headache/toothache and endless amounts of snot/blood from my nose. Talk about getting a raw deal. So that will be 3 weeks of no working out, just when I thought i was making a little progress. I did actually try and have a light workout yesterday but thought my head was going to explode. 1 step forward and 3 back.