rabbitstew

Dont forget to factor in running costs. Set of Ferrodo ds2500 brake pads for example cost me £250 all round (i fitted them myself). Set of tyres will be £650 upwards. 20mpg and having to run on super unleaded soon adds up. Actual servicing costs however are cheap - oil / filter / air filters etc.

Not something I ever noticed with my zed and that was a roadster as well!

I think the prices for the HR zed do seem to be remaining strong. I sold my HR Roadster back in 2012 for £9k to a dealer. He put it on his forecourt for £12k. Looking at the prices now, they dont seem to have moved much since. Quite annoying for me as I paid £16k for the car 18 months before hand, so it dropped nearly £7k in the time I had it. The HR is definitely the one to go for, although they are a bit rarer so you may have to shop around etc. Make sure the car is the HR model though and dont assume because its a 2007 (or even 2008) model it will be. They came in mid-2007 so you can get non HR 2007 models and we have even seen some 2008 registered non HR models. Easy way to check (besides the humped bonnet - which some people retro fit to older cars) is to open the bonnet and look at the engine. The HR model has 2 airboxes at the front and just the one aux drive belt at the front of the engine. Also it will rev to 7500.

Just got my wifes car insurance through Admiral last week. And as always, the whole insurance experience never fails to amaze me. Shes had a company car for the last 3 years and so let her private insurance policy expire back in 2013. Anxious not to loose her 5 years NCB on her private insurance we spoke to her insurance company at the time who assured us that as long we we insured another car before April 2016 (3 years after the old insurance expired) then we wouldnt loose the 5 years NCB. Anyway, roll on to last week and I call old company up and they now have changed their tune, and say that you can only keep NCB on record for 2 years, not 3. So our NCB has vanished after April 2015 due to not being used. Great. So I then do a quick comparison check online and Admiral are coming up the cheapest if we had 5 years NCB. £330, fully comp on a brand spanking new 27grand Ford Kuga. Next day I check again, litterally just log in, click on "resubmit quote" and Admiral now come back at £272. Thats a drop of £60 in just 1 day. Same details, same car. Go figure! So call them up, explain the problem with the 5 years NCB now apparently being non-existant. They agree, they only would take it had it been within the 2 years rather than 3. But as wifes been on companies car insurance for last 3 years they will take that as 3 years NCB. But it will mean an increase to the premium....... Fair enough I think, so I ask whats the new price, baring in mind 5 years NCB came in at £272. The new premium is £272.98. wtf. So 2 years extra NCB is now only worth 98p?!

Im blind!!!

Excellent result. Like others, i really was not expecting that outcome. And icing on the cake is that your mate charged them double, which might help cover the cost of the first lot of repairs you did.

Brilliant. Book marked that. Wish id known about it sooner, could have made some great use out of it.

I had the same thing last year when I renewed. Previously adding my parents, or indeed any random old pensioner would reduce my premium, but upon renewal last year Admiral suggested I remove them and it would drop my premium. Strange!

Id agree with this. I built up my collection of tools one by one over the last 25 years and I dread to think what I have spent on them. I could have saved an absolute fortune by just buying a tool chest from halfords with all the tools in it in the first place! I have bought a few halfords advanced & halfords professional tools in the past and they are good quality.

Have to dis-agree on the sellers test drive point. Nearly all the cars ive bought, the sales man cant wait to get you in the car itself and out on the road. The reason being is that 9 times out of 10 once you have driven the car, you will want to buy it. Also, it makes you a captive audience for the sales person to work on whilst you are in the car. Same sort of reason as to why they always give you a coffee to drink when you arrive - they know you have to sit there spending 10mins at least nursing that coffee which gives them 10mins of your time. When I bought my current BMW, I had spent days doing all the research, deciding what car I wanted, what to look out for, etc. etc. etc. I had pretty much decided on this exact model and just needed to drive one to make my decision concrete. I called my local BMW dealers and found one which had the model I wanted and I booked an appointment. When I arrived, all I wanted was a test drive just to tick the final box to confirm my decision to buy, then I could agree a deal. However, the salesman had other ideas and we ended up spending about 40minutes going through all sorts of pointless things such as "how much are you looking to spend", "can you afford this", "have you considered a new car", "what spec are you looking for". etc. etc. etc. etc.. I sat there getting more and more frustrated and very nearly walked away several times. My time is precious and if im at a BMW dealer for a pre-arranged appointment to view/test drive a £26k car then you can be d*mn sure I can afford it and I wouldnt be looking at that particular car if it wasnt the spec/price/age/condition I wanted. As for speaking to previous owners, i really dont see what the problem is with that. The previous owner is the person who has most experience with that car. They know what they have had done to it and can easily answer questions such as "has it had the plugs done" or "has it had a clutch" etc. etc. Unless the car has had significant problems, surely a positive conversation with a previous owner can only help sell that car? Other than that, sounds like this dealer really spends their time on their cars which is refreshing to see.

I dont see why not. Technically, normally when you bleed the brakes its recommended to do them all in a certain order to ensure all the air gets out. But in the past, I have managed fine with just bleeding the one brake im working on. What I would say is that unless you have have changed your brake fluid recently, id keep the reservoir topped up and keep bleeding & bleeding until brand new fluid comes through on each wheel you are working on in order to get rid of any old stuff. Once you have done them all you can always go around them in the correct order afterwards to double check all the air is out.

Totally agree!

Depends really upon what you are used to. I have to say initially I was a bit disappointed with mine. Coming from mad turbo cars, which would throw you back in the seat when the turbo kicked in, I felt the zed really didnt feel like it had 309bhp under your right foot. But, once you get used to driving it, it is fairly quick. It still doesnt seem to "feel" as quick as it is if you see what I mean. The problem you will have with the HR model is that the engine & car in general was overhauled. The engine in particular is 80% new. NIssan basically did everything they could to improve the engine & get as much power out of it whilst keeping it reliable. So, they added twin air boxes, with a ram air effect, which gives you something like 6bhp more when doing 60mph, they improved the water cooling on the block to keep things reliable,the engine has a longer stroke to improve torque, 7500rpm rev limit etc etc. they even "tuned" the exhaust system to make it sound better. The engine was mounted lower in the chasis to improve handling. Suspension was altered etc. So a lot of the mods people do to the older cars, such as induction system, pendulum, exhaust & a remap just wont give you the gains you see on the older cars. The general consensus is that the standard air filter & induction system is the best. You can fit HKS or Cosworth filters to the stock airbox, but they dont really make any difference. What Ekona is referring to is that if you fit cone filters or something like that, you will increase the induction noise - which can make it sound pretty good, but I am not sure if that will reduce power slightly?

I went for the HR Roadster over the coupe. The noise of the engine & exhaust with the roof down are incredible. Even so, I fitted an after-market exhaust and that made it even better. Boot space on the HR is huge. Sure, the actual "boot" is smaller (can still get golf clubs in if you are into that), but the hidden "locker" space between the boot & the cabin, where the hood folds into can be used also for storage if you have the hood up. Its amazing what you can fit in there. Handling, the car actually handles the same, if not better than the coupe. The shocks are the same. The roadster has loads of bracing underneath and a lower centre of gravity. Performance wise, i believe there is something like 0.4 seconds difference in 0-60 between the coupe & roadster, certainly nothing you would notice on the road. Really its about what do you want. Some think the roadster looks ugly with the roof up, but I think it looks fine, it looks like the car was actually made as a roadster from its looks. When I bought mine, the roadster was at a large premium money wise, over the normal coupe. The roof itself is fairly reliable. The handbook recommends not using the roof when the weather is below something like 8 degrees if i remember correctly. This is because the roof material gets stiffer and the motors can struggle. This showed up on mine when it used to "stick" at the half way point on cold days. A swift "tap" with the hand, or clicking the switch from "down" to "up" then back to "down" used to resolve the problem. I remember buying my car in the March time and even through the weather was cold id still have the roof down. With windows up & heaters on, you just drive along in a bubble off nice warm air. I think pretty much 9 times out of 10 when I was driving mine I had the roof down, regardless of the weather. The only problem I had with the hood other than the known cold weather stick was that the metal support over the drivers head in the roof started pealing back from the roof frame. I think this was the tension the big elastic straps put on this cross beam. Nissan just re-riveted the bit of metal back on to "resolve" the problem. The whole experience of driving an HR Roadster for me was brilliant. I remember when I bought mine, it was one of only 3 for sale in about 120miles of my house. I rang up all 3, one was sold, one was midnight blue, the other was the one I bought and I had to travel about 70 miles to look at it. I looked at it and bought it there & then. They didnt make many of them, something like 140 or whatever the figure was, so they were pretty rare compared to the coupe. In 18 months of ownership I only ever saw 1 other on the road. With regards to general public`s opinion of the roadster, pretty much 99.9% of people thought it was brilliant. I had total strangers say to me "nice car". Even popping down to the local co-op to get a pint of milk would end up taking an hour or so as someone or another would usually say "wow nice car mate" and end up talking to me about what car it was etc. I had the same from the local MOT place and even the local car parts place - pop in for a bulb and come out to find the manager drooling over my car. I remember a couple of times just driving along with the roof down and bunch of kids on side of road just shouting out "nice car mate!". Only "negative" comment I ever had was from one mate who despite him having a Peugeot 206 Convertible claimed that my 350z Roadster was a "hair dressers car" and used to rib me about "where do you keep your scissors". As his car at the time was worth about £1500 and mine was worth £16,000 I assumed it was just jealously.

From my experience id say it just needs the cats replacing. The MOT regs now are quite tight with emissions and I have heard of several people failing MOT`s on emissions with HFC, so that along with the O2 warning codes seems (to me) to be just down to the cats. As strange as it may seem, some sellers just cant be bothered, and if they want to sell the car, dont see the point in forking out 650quid odd to have new cats fitted - ecu reset - maybe an MOT if its not already got one due to emissions. Even though if they did all that, chances are it would sell quicker & easier. Still, my rule is that if in doubt just walk. Plenty of more cars out there.

Ive got both a mig gas welder & an arc welder, but never really had to use my mig much until last year when I decided to start repairing my project car. It involved bodywork - replacing sills etc, patching things up. I was using 0.6mm steel sheets. I taught myself easily enough just by watching a few youtube videos and practising on some new clean metal. As others have said, a lot of the problem is setting the welder up right. Mine has some example settings in the manual which werent far off and it was just a case of practising a few times in order to get the hang of what speed I needed to move the wire and in which direction. Once you start welding on an actual car its a completely different kettle of fish as 9 times out of 10 you may struggle to get a clean surface to weld on, or be hanging upside down under the car. Besides the actual welding, make sure you wear gauntlets and if you dont wear a long sleeve top you`ll end up with a lovely welding tan. (as I found out ) After welding half my project car up im getting quite good at it now, and even managed to sort the old lawn mower out which broke in half after some "enthusiastic" grass cutting.

All sounds a bit strange. Why would he think the previous owner wasnt happy about something. As for an HR, I agree, I had the choice and went for the HR when I bought my roadster. Lovely cars. Look out for the spark plug service, as thats due now on 2008 cars if I remember rightly and its not automatically included in the normal P1/P2/P3 service schedule. Only problem I had engine wise was that the fan belt on the very front of the engine shredded itself every 20k miles. I had one go at 22k then another at 40k. Nissan had no idea why and said all the pulleys were aligned correctly and normally they would expect the belt to last 100k miles. First time around Nissan charged me £100 to supply & fit the belt (they took 1hr 30mins). The 2nd time around I bought a Gate`s belt (£15) and fitted it myself in about 8 minutes, including having a cup of tea. Besides that, tyres arnt cheap so if they need replacing some dealers will wack on a set of the cheapest nastiest tyres - so see whats on there. Brake pads are a very easy DIY job if they need doing. Also, I always take a photo of the MOT/logbook if I can and check online at dvla to see what all the previous MOT`s say - you can check all the mileage adds up and see if any advisories have been issued at any point etc.

indeed!

Ah, looks like im not the first to have spotted it! http://www.350z-uk.com/topic/98429-350z-on-eastenders/

Last night the wife was watching Eastenders religiously like she normally does most nights whilst I was reading Guy Martins Autobiography. Happened to glance up and I could have sworn I saw the back end of either a 370z or 350z in one shot as some character or another walked over the road towards the car. It was a black one.

I have always hated MOT`s. For me its just like going to the dentist. Firstly you are letting someone else loose in your pride & joy (besides me, the MOT man is the only other person whoever drives my car) and secondly you never know what they might flag up. Sure, if the cars newish and in good nick like my 123d, its unlikely to fail on anything, but I still get that nervous sick feeling whenever its an MOT day.

Spotted this morning at 9.30am, Azure Blue 350z Coupe. Really dirty and back exhaust was hanging off as if the drivers side rubber mount had broken. **04 UBM It came onto the A428 at St Neots and I followed it all the way to Cambourne where it turned off.

I agree, 3rd party only. If you want to insure beyond that i.e fully comp or just fire and theft, you can with brokers/companies. This last 5 years or so when ive got insurance quotes, 3rd Party only insurance is always more expensive than Fully Comp. I am presuming that it is because years ago 3rd party used to be the cheapest way to get your car insured, so I guess statistically maybe 3rd party only insurance is now a higher risk to them than fully comp. Who knows!

"the vehicles also demolished a Victorian post box which had been in use for 120 years at Penpont, near Brecon" Poor post box.

I usually go with option A.