rabbitstew

Welcome!

Welcome!

Cheers, yep i have been looking at the cat c & d ones, as like with the elises, if the clam gets damaged then its basically a write off, even though its usually just fibreglass work. The turbo ones are awesome, but its a huge jump in price from some of the cheaper NA ones ive seen to a turbo one. I did read about astra vxr mods you can do to the NA one, which sounds interesting..... My only concern with a NA one is that i remember test driving a series 1 Elise back in about 2000 when they were fairly new, and I was totally underwhelmed and disappointed by it. Back then though my fun toy car was a heavily modified Renault 5 GT Turbo which I worked out had twice the power to weight ratio of the Elise, handled like it was on rails & could do 0-60 in around 5 seconds or so, I was also using my motorbikes more - so jumping in an Elise felt quite slow. I remember turning up at the dealers on a brand new Ducati 748SPS and the guy just gave me the keys to the Elise and left me to it! Will checkout vx220.org - cheers!

Guy on the babybmw forum bought one of these earlier in the year and it seems the CS is a good compromise between the M3 & the CSL. The one he bought was about £10k less than an equivalent year CSL!

I wouldnt have thought so. Doesnt a splitter bolt to the underside lip on the bumper?

Nice!

Welcome!

Excellent. Cant beat the roof down fun of the roadster.

Yep, certainly not the £490 bracket which i was paying on my 2007 HR. So, you can breathe a sigh of relief!

They are? Duke of Edinburgh is Greek. When he came to the UK he changed his name to Mountbattern. He started chatting up (these days i guess its called grooming) the Queen when she was 13, then got her Dads permission to marry her. When they got married, he got upset when the Queen wouldnt change her name from Windsor to Mountbattern when they married.

Very nice, I have to admit ive been watching vx220`s and Elises on ebay now for about 12 months waiting for the right one to appear. I pretty much get an alert daily when any new ones appear. Seen a few which looked interesting, but im after one which needs a bit of work as a project.

I for one am folllowing this, only cos William Hill gave me 9-1 that its ginger.........

I was going to say are you sure there isnt a body in there, but someone beat me to it. I never had a knock on my zed, but my missus did on her convertible and it turned out the exhaust back box was very close to one of the bracing struts under her car and that caused a knock, especially over bumps etc. A swift few blows with a sledge hammer sorted her out. (The back box, not the missus)

Lovely looking car and perfect time to sell it. Always hard to pick a price, but in general have a look at what others are up for. Advertised price isnt always the sold price, but will give you a rough idea. Also, take the dealers prices and knock 15% off as a rough guideline for a private sale prices. Worse comes to the worse, dealers will give you about 30% below their forecourt price, but im pretty sure you`ll be able to sell that this time of year.

Okay. I sold my 07 HR roadster at a garage last year for about 9k. They stuck it on their forecourt for £12k. Baring in mind that roadster prices for an 07 are (or were this last few years when i checked) typically 2 grand higher than the coupe. And that the garage will give you about 30% below their forecourt price for your car there is no way they would do a straight swap. In my 07 example, if id had driven up there the next day in an 07 coupe they would have given me probably 7k for the coupe, meaning id need nearly double that to get my roadster back from them. Not only that, this time of year, convertibles increase in price by around 15% as dealers know when a bit of sun comes out a lot of people want soft tops, so they are very very unlikely to budge on screen prices unless, as someone else said, they have some sack of poo car they want to off-load quickly, or you are swapping an 07 coupe for an 03 roadster. Ive been keeping an eye on the roadster prices over the last 3 years and im still amazed at what some dealers are trying to sell their roadsters for on ebay. 10k for an 04 plate for example... EDIT: Although for just £17.99 you can easily swap your coupe for a roadster using this: http://www.homebase.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?langId=110&storeId=10151&partNumber=152431

Problem there is that depending on the colour & where the car has spent most of its life, the paint on the car will not match that paint code any more. Its amazing how much paint can fade, especially stuff like red & blues. The place I usually use will match the paint exactly to the paint on the car, but even then its pretty hard to do. Depending on the condition of the paint on the car, sometimes you are just better off respraying the whole car rather than just do bumpers / bonnet / tailgate etc..

Sounds good! And the support beam over your head isnt pealing back on it is it? That seemed to be the most common problem on them. Design fault with them really. Mine started doing it at just 22k miles.

What he said. I had one of the rear shocks on my car start leaking at just 25,000 miles. Its easy to see, as if you jack the back end up and look at the shock you can see oil leakage. Replacing the shock was a 10minute job if that, really easy on the back. Before it was feeling a bit bouncy and wasnt good, afterwards the transformation was extremely noticable.

Very nice, much like my old 313 roadster. I used to love the 500 mile weekly commute in that with the roof down. I remember after I fitted the K1 exhaust I drove through some tunnels near Birmingham and my god the noise was just out of this world, i nearly had to change my pants. Awesome. Do you know if the roof has been treated at all? I used to re-treat mine with some autoglym stuff twice a year which cleaned it up, waterproofed it and re-sealed it. It didnt take long and it looked totally brand new afterwards.

Welcome!

I paid £600 to have an entire car resprayed once, but that was back in about 1996 and that was cheap back then. it really depends on each bodyshop really. Some will be more flexible, especially if they are smaller "one man band" type places. Some even drop the price if you do all the prep etc. If you go to a bigger place which is used to doing insurance work then they will charge you the earth. Either way, definitely try to see some of their previous work first. The quality of work ive seen varies drastically.

I use fuelly to work out mine and prior to that always worked it out manually rather than trust the onboard computer.

Love the way the seller keeps mentioning that its 2005 when actually that was just the date it was imported and its really a 2002 one. No way on earth that is worth £8k on parkers, you are approaching 2007 HR money for that!!!

My roadster, albiet a newer 313 model used to average about 24->26mpg on a tank full. My weekly trip was identical each day. Id do 3 miles of 30mph, then about 6 miles of 40/50mph then 30miles of 60mph->80mph, than back down to 2 miles of 30/40mph. Id repeat that twice a day, so id be doing about 450 miles a week just of that. Fuel was costing me nearly £450 a month. If i went out for a weekend thrash when id be driving a bit more spirited, id get it down to 15->17mpg, but normally on a "drive like a nun" weekday commute it would be 24->26mpg.

Always a sad moment when you say goodbye to a baby. But, more adventures are coming from the sounds of it if you get your Ducati. I recently found out my Ducati 748S I had back in 2000 when it was brand new is back in the UK again and for sale. Very tempting, but for now, for this summer at least, i`ll stick with my R1.