rabbitstew

What he said. I do a daily 90mile commute, and my zed was costing me a small fortune. £450 a month alone on fuel - even if i drove like a grandad it would still return about 25/26mpg max. I drew up a spreadsheet working out the total monthly costs of running the zed, including insurance, tax, service, depreciation, tyres etc and it came to £1250 a month. What I did for a while was to buy a cheapie Peugeot 307HDI for £1500. I ran that for about 6 months along side the zed. The Peugeot was doing 56mpg which dropped my monthly fuel bill down to more like £200. Tax was cheap compared to the £500 my zed was costing and insurance was also cheap. Tyres cost nothing compared to £700 a set etc. etc. But then of course, the major cost with 2 cars is that you then have 2 lots of insurance, mot, tax, servicing etc. Even so, if I remember correctly, the combined costs of running the 2 cars still worked out cheaper than using the zed all the time. I also found that in only using the zed maybe a couple of days a week, I enjoyed it a lot more. It became a fun experience rather than a boring trundle to work in hours of traffic jams. Ultimately I realised the best option was to sell both the Peugeot & the zed and buy a decent diesel - which depending on which one you go for can give you best of both worlds. I now run a BMW 123d Coupe. Its RWD, handles better than the zed, does 0-60 in 6.5 seconds (so only half a second off), has over 200bhp and 400nm (about 300ft/lb i think). And yet im still getting 50mpg in my daily commute. Road tax is £130 a year, insurance cost me half the price of the zed, servicing, tyres etc are about the same (just had a set of tyres for £750). The monthly total cost of my 123d according to my spreadsheet is about £650, so roughly half what the zed cost me and yet I still get the performance/fun. In addition if I get bored with its performance for about £300 I can remap it to 270bhp & 500Nm which is pretty staggering.

Sounds like a good result then. Im sure the old boys dad has given the lad a right ear bashing about it all and so hopefully he has learnt his lesson. Also your insurance premium wont go up next year through having a no fault claim.

My god, ive not heard that expression since I was at school!!!!!!!

Thats what I always use. To be honest I do have a compressor and an impact gun which runs off it, but I seldom ever use it. Much prefer the manual brute force method. It depends what you're doing I guess, as I always used to do it manually too. Until I went for a weekend of drifting and bruised the palms of my hands with all the changes I was doing and very quickly realised I couldn't get the nuts fully tight as I was easing off because my hands hurt so much. Now I have a breaker bar just to check the gun has them tight enough. Thats very true and I think id do the same in that situation.

Always happens mate. I spent about £1500 on my Ducati 996 on servicing & parts last year (thats with me doing all the work myself). This year I decide to upgrade brakes to a better version of the brembo`s which are standard on it... thats £250, then out for a ride last week and the clutch decides to sh!t itself. So thats now another £300 on clutch bits. At this rate the bikes going to end up costing me as much as the purchase price. Last month I had the road tax on my bmw 123d (£130), plus new set of tyres (£750)... there always seems something.

Thats what I always use. To be honest I do have a compressor and an impact gun which runs off it, but I seldom ever use it. Much prefer the manual brute force method.

I use these on my motorbikes, look pretty cool on them, but on cars its very much 1970`s.... I think on 4x4s you can pull it off, but not on sports cars. The other thing is that they do look good for a few weeks, then the white quickly fades and looks more grey so you have to redo them all. After a while you end up with thick paint on the letters which looks a bit bad. Most car accessory shops sell em, so you dont have to get them off the bay.

Just googled her! Defo wasn't her. She was a lot younger. I think what we really need to know is was this nurse fit? Get any pictures?

Yep. +1 +2 There was a good Darren Brown show where he exposed them which shed a lot of light on how they do it all.

So that makes you 65 years old?!!!! eeeeek! now THATS scary!!!

Nope, dont believe in them at all. However, I do experience weird un-nerving sensations sometimes in certain situations - like if you are hanging about in a graveyard late at night or something. err.. not that i have ever done that. but that might just be psychological.

Good result then!

Welcome

It might have been that the standard japspeed bungs in my K1 were knackered, but i never took them out to see if it got any louder with them out. TBH Personally I quite liked the noise, especially when I was out for a "spirited" drive, or going through tunnels, certainly got attention. Problem for me was that I used the car for my 80mile daily commute and at 70mph it droned like mad which meant I had to normally cruise at 80mph for it to be a bit more bearable. Still, for the money they are a nice cheap exhaust system.

It's not stupid loud but has a very nice tone to it.. Better than OEM by far and actually i really liked the sound! I had a K1 on my roadster and it was so loud my ears used to ring after a ride out. Had the bonus that my missus would refuse to get in the car as it made her ears hurt. That was with the baffles in. I darent take them out as if i remember correctly it was recording over 100db inside the car on a sound meter. However, mine was a roadster, so im guessing it was the lack of sound deadening in the roof etc which made the exhaust sound so loud.

+1 I got rid of my zed back in 2012 and im still here!

I was in the same boat as you a few years back, and decided rather than get a 1 bed flat the size of a shed in Cambridge, id buy slightly out of cambridge and get a 3 bed massive house instead for the same money. On the road behind where I work in Cambridge, I see 3 bed terraced houses, no parking, small gardens selling within days for £600k, its a crappy area too. If I was you id be looking up near Peterborough (30miles away), maybe some of the villages/towns like Manea, March, Chatteris, Huntingdon, Haddenham etc... there are some lovely areas and prices are a lot cheaper. Downside would obviously be a commute in and the costs/time involved in that, but ive done it for the last 15 years without any problems. I currently live about 42miles out of Cambridge and my commute usually takes me about 45mins->1hr depending on traffic, but the advantage is that I have a spacious 3 bed detached house, with double garage and a big garden for less than £200k. Good luck though with what ever you decide!

Another vote for the Autoglym stuff from me. My alezan seats were still like new when i sold my car. I used the autoglym leather cleaner stuff first, then the balm to condition the seats.

In order to impress Ekona, i'd go for one of each.

What a thread!

Wow. My old 2007 HR was the same colour and seeing yours reminds me of how awesome mine looked when washed and polished. Such an awesome colour.

Must be a common Renault trend. I remember doing a 3 point turn in the driveway once at my folks house and the steering wheel on my renault 5 sheered clean off. Half left on the splines other half in my hands. Was really glad i wasnt out on the road doing 60mph. Good ol' Renault. Wonder why I haven't seen a 5 in over a decade? I see one every day as i still have mine in the garage, but your right, ive only seen a couple of on the road in the last 10 years.!

Well we hit Portland Bill too whilst we were there and everything in the entire area was white due to the dust from stone mining. Mad really, supprised the Eastern European Car Washes werent rinsing it there. Here in Northampton we have a million of them, yet there where they need them, theres none!

Must be a common Renault trend. I remember doing a 3 point turn in the driveway once at my folks house and the steering wheel on my renault 5 sheered clean off. Half left on the splines other half in my hands. Was really glad i wasnt out on the road doing 60mph.

I understand what ajh350z is saying but I totally agree with Paddy78. In this day and age I personally do not trust any car dealers as far as I can throw them, not only that, its your money you need to be 100% sure with what you are buying. Take for example, last year I bought a Ducati 996. Now, I spent ages reading up on all the various models of 996, what spec they are, what you get, what is desirable, what mods and extras and what they cost. Which years had which items as stock, how much each year is likely to cost me. I personally looked at about 3 bikes over a 4 month period, did full HPI background checks on them, checked with Ducati what spec they were directly (okay, I cant see many people doing that with Nissan on a 350z). I even went as far as to phone up the previous garages who had serviced it to check what they had done. In the end I bought one, paid slightly more than others id seen, but it was the right one for me. It was the spec I wanted, year I wanted, colour I wanted. Having done my research I knew that it would likely need about £1200 spending on it straight away with servicing etc, and I factored that into my pricing. I also knew it had about £600 of extras on it. On the other hand, I could have just popped into a local dealer, forked out £6k and walked out their showroom with one without even blinking an eye or knowing anything about them, and trusting the dealer when he said "yeah its had a full service...." Like the others on here, i do hope Matt gets it all sorted. J17 seem to be quite a big dealership now - i used to live about a 5 minute walk from them. Ive not dealt with them personally but they do seem to have a lot of cars in stock and be doing really well.