coldel

That won't rent a 1 bed flat down here - wish my payments were this side of £1000 let alone £500 - lucky sod I was going to say, what have you bought that has a mortgage like that?!

With the above, the GTR wheels look wrong, preferred the 5 spokes.

Aye, I think that the £25 is somewhat overpriced for what it is

Its a game they all play. They figure that a certain percentage of customers will just renew without questioning, so they hike the premium up ridiculously for the renewal. In reality what it means is that they either loose customers to other companies, or they have to pay for customer service team to take the call from the customer - then "speak to their manager" before dropping the renewal quote down to a more sensible level. Still, its a pain in the backside having to call them up every year and play the same game. I am surprised that the likes of these specialist insurers think they can go in with the big renewel and think customers wont notice - given that they are specialists that people hunt down and trade off against other specialists its unlikely that customer is a passive car insurer paying £15 a month for a Micra, we are a very different segment of customer. I would imagine it works well with the likes of admiral with about 80% of their customer base paying smaller premiums on everyday cars. But I would bear in mind all the comments on 'customer service' are very much qualitative, you can examine the detail but you cannot draw conclusions unless you have a big enough base of consistent comments. If 20 people all come on here saying the same thing about Adrian Flux then yes you might say it is going downhill. For instance I used A-Plan for my R33 last year and the guy couldnt have been more helpful, recontacted him this year and said I had a Celica GT4 and he couldnt have been any more unenthusiastic. It really is not something I can draw a conclusion on A-Plan though that is concrete in terms of how well it performs.

Hello again mate, hope all is well

Some that look almost identical on ebay for a fair few quid less...in fact one which is £19 which looks like it comes from the same sweat shop CarPros come from. Checked on the actual CarPro site, and couldnt find this product either?

Ha! Forgot about how loud the car was in the rain, yes the open cabin and boot space makes for a wonderful audible experience

Will370z can give you a personal view on headroom £5k isnt much for a zed, as you said you are bottom end of the scale, have a good look at the buyers guide on here and also a few threads where people have bought £5k cars and the problems that followed so you know what you are potentially letting yourself in for. I would also make sure you have a slush fund outside of the purchase cost, 4000 miles after buying mine the clutch went so had to fork out £850 straight away on a clutch kit and flywheel, consumables on these cars are not cheap.

...Epic thread addition?

Good luck everyone enjoy, would love to have joined but off to take part in my surprise 40th birthday present from my parents...god only knows what it is. But always wanted to do this, so make the most of it those who are going!

Maybe its not running quite as it should and those are the bits and bobs...or that people are scared off of the idea that if anything goes pop, you got a huge bill on your hands?

That splitter has seen so many repairs over the years

Operator error on Keyser's drive way. Oh no! Never let Chris drive

Nice work fella, how did you scuff it?

I hope you are getting a good bit of noise out of it because it certainly wont give you much in the way of extra bhp, in fact as others have mentioned you are probably losing it with it set up like that. I used K&N on my R33, the cones are about twice the length of the one you have so have more surface area. Also it was secured to the body to ensure it wasnt flapping about at speed which yours might look like it will be. The K&N I had was located as far from the engine as poss (and right below it you cannot see in the pic is a hole where the old intercooler is so there is a direct air feed about 3 inches long straight into it. Like others have said, would be VERY nervous of some cheap copy from ebay, most likely thrown together on a tiny budget in china and could degrade quickly and unexpectedly.

I really am not an R8 fan, in terms of styling. Had to double take an Audi earlier on the way to work, saw the front thought it was an R8 but then realised it was an A5. The styling is bland, uninspiring and just too close to the rep mobiles they churn out. Its just a squashed Audi. Does the GTR look like a squashed down pulsar, not a chance, it shouts something very different. I guess thats German design for you though. As JP said, if you are spending £40k on a car, surely £500 a year difference in servicing or whatever is so irrelevant. If you are concerned about that then you shouldnt be buying a car which costs so much more in road tax, fuel, parts etc.

There are some tremendous gains to be made on cars like the Evo etc - on my GT4 I can make 300bhp just by buying a boost controller and dialing it up to a safe level. They are very tunable cars stock with little cost for big gains. And 4WD, never thought I would enjoy it so much

I guess in terms of cash I wouldnt stick a set of £200 discs and pads on something with 400bhp - but agree with you prefer to do things myself (I say that but what I mean is give it to my dad and brother!) - although if you are paying out £40k+ on a sports car with a perfect dealer history the temptation is there to make resale as smooth as possible to keep it going.

I'm the first to admit am a hippocrit, as much as I find the concept of getting money for doing nothing (ie: investment) a odd situation, I'm actively looking to put our savings into as profitable investment portfolio as possible....And if I can build up a big enough portfolio to let me retire by 45-50, great. But surely if every did this who's actually going to any real 'work'....Unless you can find cheap labour from near by countries All the people still trying to reach 40-50k savings? Exactly, the number of people super rich and retiring at 40 is miniscule, the media blow it up as if there are millions of them dodging tax and just attaining wealth but it is such a relatively small number, probably 0.0000001% of the country or something like that. If you are earning over £60k a year you are in the top 10% of earners in the country which seems like a lot but £60k is nowhere enough to be in a sort of situation of early retirement though and those people will most likely work till 60 odd. The vast majority are earning, spending, saving, just like anyone else.

My mate from uni got into taxation and found himself writing taxation law, he is retired now at 39, he is sitting on his backside insulated from the world, letting his money work for him - I dont think thats wrong, good on him in fact. He is from the north east, his family were not rich, he was as poor as the rest of us students at uni and just another one of the blokes. I don't begrudge him one bit.

I dont think thats controversial at all JP - I know there are people that are unlucky in life, read this morning about a builder who was working on a Tesco store had an accident which meant he lost his job, he ended up stealing food from the bins at the Tesco store to feed his family, the judge dismissed the case citing that the food had zero value and been thrown away therefore couldnt be classed as theft - although clearly he used it as an excuse to throw the case out of pity for the guy. So there are people out there desperately doing what they can, but there are people like the two people I also read about this morning who had over 100 bank accounts in different names with £200k in benefits stashed away. The system begs to be abused unfortunately.

I agree, if someone has had a the ability to achieve a lot of wealth then fair play to them. I also dont like the phrase 'make them pay more' as that is anti-enterprise and actually if they are not taking tax loopholes (which is a different issue) then buy having a higher earning level they are already paying more, its how %s work.

I kind of see your point gangzoom, but your numbers arent really adding up - plenty of people in London earn say £60k+ a year and live out in zone 4, pay a lot to commute, etc. The mega wealthy are there with their super cars and the like but you know what, I don't care, I set my own targets and I go for it and I am happy earning my salary. Do I think we need to close the gap between us and them, not really, as its totally unrealistic in a free market with democracy in action, unless you prefer a socialist approach?

Was going to say that as Brillo said, the faster you go the faster you need to stop, most guys putting big power through skylines also upgrade brakes, clutch, fueling etc which runs into thousands. But they dont have to pay so much as turbo cars are much better set up from the start to make big power gains. In terms of bhp/running costs, any supercharged VX220 would drive away from a supercharged Zed - using half the fuel - guy on here just bought one actually quite recently, Daryl was it?