rabbitstew

Right, so following on with this co-incidentally I had another run in with my insurance company. I have several motorbikes, but only insure 1 atm. Its a Yamaha R1, worth about 3grand. 1000cc, 145bhp. Costs me £65 a year to insure 3rd party. So, ive been offered a Ducati 996. Same year, same engine size, same value. But its a slower motorbike and its only 120bhp. I want it 3rd party only again. So, the only time there is a risk for the insurance company is on the bike im out riding at the time. If its stolen, catches fire or if i crash, the insurance dont pay out. They only pay out for the vehicle I hit. So call up my insurance company and they want nearly £200 extra to insure the Ducati on top of the R1. Where is the logic in that? Im surely less likely to crash a slower, lower powered bike. So if im out on the Ducati rather than the R1 they will be less likely to ever have a pay out. So, I then ask, how about if i want to insure another identical R1, so id have 2 identical bikes, identical value, year, cover & risk. That came in at the same as if I insured the Ducati & R1. How an earth do they work these prices out?

Well i believe this when i see it. My insurance has increased every year without fail, even after shopping around and going through the annual game with the insurance companies. Ive now got 20 years NCD and it makes no difference.

Apparently they dont like the smell of marmite, so eat plenty before you go out next time.

As others have said its normal. My 4 year old (at the time) zed was rusting like mad under it. Likewise my wifes 1 year old Nissan Juke is as well. Its as if Nissan use no metal protection at all on their metal. In contrast, my 180k mile 13 year old VW which I sold still looked brand new underneath!

They are probably just trying their luck. Theres a company on there who are based not far from where I used to live and their prices for their roadsters are just staggeringly high. They seem to always have a good selection on there of them, so I assume they are just hoping that someone will come along and buy them, not realising they are a good few grand over priced.

Not if you want third party only and for just you to drive only. Ive had arguments with insurance companies over this before and they cant offer an explaination, only that its their policy. In my case say ive got a 50grand lambo and paying £2k a year insurance on it. If im happy with third party only cover and only the car im driving at any one time to be covered whilst the others parked in my drive, Why should I pay more for driving a £200 Ford Fiesta in the week whilst keeping my Lambo for the weekend. If you look at the risk to the insurance company, its a fraction of the risk for them when im driving my Fiesta in the week, compared to if i was driving the Lambo every day. With third party only insurance, regardless of what car your driving, the insurance only covers the car you run into. But, as far as they are concerned, insurance is on the car, not the driver and so they use any opportunity to charge you more. In my case, i can only use NCB on one car, so id have to insure the Fiesta as if I had no NCB at all, which means they would sting me even more to insure it. Ive actually got 2 cars and 3 motorbikes. And if i want to drive all 5 items I have to have 5 seperate insurance policies. Sure, some companies offer "multi car" policies, but in every case ive looked its been more expensive than insuring them seperately. So, now ive got 2 motorbike policies, with various NCB on each, and 2 car policies with different NCB on them too. Right pain in the rear. What makes it even more hilarious is that whilst third party only insurance means much lower payouts for the insurance company, statistically they have had more payouts. So, for me, FULLY COMP insurance is miles cheaper than Third Party Only! I was quoted £500 for TP Only for one of my cars and yet only £80 Fully Comp from the same company!!! I looked into this as this appeared to be the ideal solution in my situation. However, there were only a handful of insurance companies offering trade insurance. You had to prove you were a genuine trader, drive with trade plates and also take out public liability insurance before they would consider it. And even then the quote they gave me was mega high.

Nice one! Although being a 2007 it looks like you missed out on the 313 engine by just a few months which is a shame!

awesome!!!

And in my experience depending up on your industry it can be mega hard to find a job with progression. I can safely say in my career the only way ive been able to "move up the ladder" is by changing companies. The way a lot of companies see it, is if your doing really well in your current role, why should they promote you? If they did, they would have to go out, find someone to replace you in your old role, train them up, probably pay them more cash, and then find out they are not as good as you were. So, companies in general seem very reluctant to promote people and move the up the ladder. Unless you are rubbish at your job, in which case some companies I know seem to promote you quickly. Its the old saying "you fail upwards". At least thats how its worked in the various companies ive worked in over the last 20 years. Its a shame as it doesnt really promote company loyalty.

I was given the keys to a Monaro whilst i was in Australia a few years ago and told to "have some fun". I was out in the blue mountains on the east coast so plenty of bendy roads. I have to say I was totally underwelmed by it and sure the engine sounded nice & was very torquey, but compared to my zed it was pretty boring to drive, felt slow, heavy and didnt handle great.. Very low rev limit if i remember rightly, and you kept hitting it quickly so was forever changing gear. I think I did a review on it on here at the time. I do quite like the looks of the VXR8 though and having seen a few they do sound good. Whether or not they would be any more exciting than the Monaro i dunno, as ive not driven one.

1250 ! ! ! ! I worked mine out to be around £700 including everything, that is using the car everyday for work as well ! Yep, it wasnt cheap. Luckily I had no loan on it, else it would have been even more. It broke down into something like £500 a month on fuel, £500 deprecation and then £250 for the tax (£490 a year), insurance, tyres, servicing, MOT etc. etc.

Only cos you like wearing the waitress uniform......

I read a book last year about a guy who is a mercenary and does anti piracy stuff on boats and he said due to laws etc they arnt allowed to even take guns on board. So they made fake guns out of bits of old snooker cues and just had to walk around on deck looking menancing with them to try and detere pirates. Bearing in mind these pirates are multi billionaires with all state of the art boats & weapons now I dont think id fancy doing that job.

The stuff I read on another forum about the halfords trade card said the opposite! And that you didnt save much on consumables but the biggest saving was on the tools! It did say that it doesnt apply to stuff in the sale. So for example if the item was 90quid normally you`d get it for 40quid using trade card. But, in the sale it might already be down to 45quid etc.. Thats what I read anyway! But, it might be different in practise!

Possibly, depends on the guy making the decision in the store apparently. Im hoping with my new business cards and letter headed paper that im also now "in the trade"...

One of my local hand car washes turns over 3 grand a day over the weekend.... so that aint such a bad idea!

The one I want is about £89 on their site, but its never in the sale. Apparently if you open up a "trade" account with them then you can get massive discounts on tools. But you have to be in the trade to get that.

Not much choice really, they have to put it where it balances the wheel. If you moved it to behind a spoke it wouldnt balance.

I think at your age you are young enough to be able to do whatever you want. You would be very lucky to get the £40k a year your looking for though at that age. When I was 24 I was getting £15k...... in fact, more recently only 3.5 years back I was made redundant and I was only on £50 a day for 12 hour a day labouring on a building site. £50 a day worked out at about £12k a year. If I was you id be looking at a trade, like plumbing, brick laying anything like that. The money people I know who are in building trades make is amazing. Certainly more than a lot of guys who sit in offices get paid. It wont take long on a course, and even if you took a year or 2 of a lower pay whilst you get grounded, it will pay off in the long term.

£31??! I only paid about £15 for mine!

In my experience of course men & women can be just friends. Although it depends upon the people involved. At one place I worked I was friends with all 3 of the receptionists and used to go out to lunch with one or another of them every day. They were all 18, very fit, attractive and so nearly every guy at the workplace used to be quite envious of me. Would I have slipped them a length? In honesty had I been single and they had been single I might have done. However, I had a gf (who granted wasnt as fit as these birds was) and they had boyfriends so not being one to cheat I kept them as friends. As for can you remain friends after doing the devils dance with a friend, well depends again on the situation and the people involved. If you have been dating first, then split up and try to remain friends, usually one person still has feelings for the other and that ends up causing problems. However, I had the situation once where I was extremely good friends with a girl - she`d be on the phone to me every night nearly chatting about stuff, we`d go out for lunches and chat about anything & everything. After a year or so feelings developed between us and before you know it shes giving me the eye and im giving her a length of the old pork sword. Anyway, we started dating and because we had been friends for so long previously we got on really really well. But, then after about a year of dating she dumped me and ran off with some chav and didnt want to be friends any more. I havent spoken to her since! On the other side, ive remained very good friends with several of my ex`s, usually its a case of they were hoping to re-ignite the flames and so wanted to remain friends. But usually when they meet someone else its a case of the new boyfriend isnt comfortable with their missus still having contact with her ex. and so the friendship fizzles out.

The best thing to do is to get a spreadsheet and work out all the costs per year, then see what that works out per month. I did this for my 350z Roadster and it came to £1250 a month. That included tyres, servicing, insurance, MOT, road tax, plus petrol for the 500 miles a week I was doing as well as depreciation of the car. Obviously for you, if you are getting free tax & insurance your monthly cost will be slightly different.

This stuff is a nightmare to get off. I spent literally days cleaning my wheels inside & out to try and remove that gunk. In the end I had to use some heavy duty cutting compound which had sand in it to clean it all off. Even then i wasnt happy with the finish, but luckily it was on the inside of the wheel so not too visable.

Yep theres a stock dealing thread somewhere on here. I thought similarly that i`d have a dabble a few years back and all of the shares i bought promptly dropped and have never gone back up again. So for me ive just written that money off and hopefully in 10 years time they will be back up enough so i can break even. One thing to consider is dealing fees. The place I use charge so much per transaction, so if your only buying £50 here & £50 there, the transaction fees will end up costing a huge percentage of that. From watching the market for ages, the only way really to make money on shares is if you buy like £400,000 of them, they go up by 2p and then you sell. Big amounts just for small profits. Either that, or you get some insider info like on Wall Street!

Must resist!!!! Ive already got 2 socket sets. Have to say I really rate halfords professional stuff. Ive quite a few of their items now. My favourites are probably the ratchet spanners..... lovely!!! Need a new torque wrench though, so hopefully one of them will appear in their sale!