coldel

Chatter on the forums sounds like its a common thing, the alarm and immoboliser take about 2-3 weeks in cold weather to drain down some batteries enough that it wont have the cranking power to turn the car over. Browsing the extensive paperwork that came with the car couldn't find a receipt for a battery so it must be pretty old. Have to say quite excited in a bizarre way about my new super power battery arriving

My car is parked on the street, not always outside my house so trickle charge is not an option. I have bought a solar one to plug into the cigarette socket to try and do something but yet to see how effective it is. This is the third time over the winter I have had to do this, more than 10 days and the battery is shot. I have a very good CTEK which has bells and whistles on (full recon option) but three times this current battery has gone so have decided to get a higher amperage new one with the solar charger plugged in to see how we go.

Well after leaving the car standing for 2 weeks, went out yesterday to start it and nothing. Hooked up the jump starter, barely turned over. I think the battery has had it (not the first time it has done this) so whacked the CTEK on to get it through the week and have a shiny new Yuasa 52A one arriving Wedsnesday Apparently the battery change procedure is a bit of a mission, but lets see how it goes. You have to remove water bottle and various cables, and somehow pick it up out of a recess which if it doesn't have a handle (this one doesn't) means a layer of skin left behind

I did get @buster in it last summer, there was a moment I confess I didn't think we would get him out again (sorry Bob mate!) - falling out of it on your hands and knees tends to be the quickest most efficient exit manoeuvre !

Speed handling mpg and character in one subtle package

Interesting article, but not sure where he gets the big numbers from? Its not going to be a cost to each taxpayer because the infrastructure needs to be privately created. Is petrol currently distributed by infrastructure provided completely by the government? A friend of mine is the chief exec of one of the largest renewable energy companies in Europe, he does joke about me and my dinosaur cars but he does talk a lot of sense around renewable energy creation and the fact that his company produces so much unspent electricity at night that they have to store it en-masse, which is when most cars will recharge. There are already billions of pounds worth of projects in the pipeline to ramp up electricity production through renewables. Really the issue seems to be more around the status quo, people making 3 mile commutes to work in a car on their own as a behaviour will need to disappear. That we demand we can completely refill the tank and get 200 miles of range in less than a minute. It's the mindset that nothing changes and tech has to fit around us that is the challenge, the private sector will lap up the opportunity to make money whether its building offshore wind farms or creating an industry that recycles batteries etc.

There will be market forces at play along with government intervention like any industry really. A quick look on autotrader shows ballpark 450k used cars for sale at the moment, if I pop in £5k as a price limit it drops to 80k, so in effect 20% of the market is sub £5k - where do those buyers go when they need to replace with a used car? I can imagine there will be petrol cars around for 10 years after the sales ban, then it will dwindle down to a handful of enthusiasts who have to travel further to find stations still selling fuel. Certainly there is also the issue of hydrogen cars, at the moment the process is not very green to get the fuel, but that will change (as did the ability of batteries to store larger amounts of power) so the future is likely to be a mixture of manufacturers selling hydrogen and electric vehicles. The real challenge is about air travel, far too many planes in the sky burning stuff. So in terms of your question OP, no dont worry about modding a car that in 20 years you will still be able to drive, they will have to tax EVs and Hydrogen cars as they do now petrol cars to keep the coffers topped up, either that or they tax road usage via your connected car or similar. But as others have said, we are lucky to be able to have motoring as a hobby and a passion at the moment. When I first drove my VXT the power is quite immense but after a while I am used to it and it doesn't thrill me, what does make my hairs stand on end is the visceral noise, the vibrations, the smell its the theatre that is addictive not the speed that proponents of EVs go on about, for me the numb silent running of a 2 tonne EV is so dull I would rather cycle about

My zed had the number plate C5UPE which was quite cool, checked on the mot registry though the other day and it no longer registered at all, car could be gone!

Yes the accommodation even in May was quite pricey for what it was! And there was a fair few other road trippers out there. It was brilliant though, driving in the sunshine one minute, then through a hail storm the next

Sold my zed way back in 2012 I think it was...then went through a few older Jap cars, the GT4 was fantastic much better than the R33. For me though addicted to the VX/Elise platform, takes driving fun to a completely new level easily better than all that came before it. Would I get another zed? Probably not, I enjoyed it, it was my entry point into 'weekend cars' but the 370z isn't a big enough step on from the 350z for me and I seriously doubt anything potent is coming from Nissan in the near future. Will enjoy my VX this summer and see - I did like sitting in Stu's BRZ really nice place to be and it sounded fantastic.

When Irn Bru organised the drive I went on (amazing trip @Irn Bru) we weaved up the west coast then cut back down from JOG down the middle, as apparently the east coast is less spectacular. I think we went mid May, traffic wise wasn't too bad and we only had a splattering of rain over five days which was pretty lucky.

Can't get my head around the heat, radiation, and simply how dazzling it is and having to deal with all that. But yes exciting how many efforts are going on to better understand stuff!

Complete waste of time, effort and money. There is a very good reason people don't buy sat navs any more

All about area under the curve for remaps Mid range change is really good there, you can see how much you are gaining. Velocity stack is a very simple fit, just test fit it to the box first as they are machined to within a tiny margin to fit tight, then some silicone to affix it in place, let it sit for 24 hours and you are good to go. Basically attempts to straighten out the airflow through the box like you see on later models. And I believe it will be an uprev on an 04 car, I dont think ecutek can be used on older cars?

I might aim for 11am and stay an hour or so...I just got reminded by the missus that erm *cough* its our tenth wedding anniversary that weekend

Not the crap newspaper, the proper one...aside from the engineering breakthroughs needed to even make this happen - am somewhat excited to see what this turns up. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51420402

What time is the meet Martin?

You wont get a good tune with the car without the proper mapping, ECUTEK And UPREV are what you need. Horsham Dev and Abbey Motorsports are down south, TDi North I believe can do the same - all three are traders on here and know the cars inside out. Don't give it to some tinpot tuner who will just have a punt and probable **** it up https://h-dev.co.uk/350z-and-370z-uprev-remapping/?v=79cba1185463 Ignore peak BHP numbers even on the remap they are to all intents and purposes pointless (a peak 15bhp gain does not mean your car now has 15bhp extra at all revs) the big thing here is to remove flat spots, drivability, AFR etc.

1) Payco - Datsun 510 SSS Coupe - PAID 2) RS200 - Toyota Supra - PAID 3) Rick - Ford Focus ST - PAID 4) Zippypooz - Gunmetal 350Z - PAID 5) Darkside - Rocket bunny - 350z - PAID 6) Paul K - 350z Roadster - PAID 7) Coldel - VX220 Turbo Roadster Targa Top - PAID Note to Martin, can you check the allocation, my laptop at work seemed to have problems getting through to the payment page took a couple of goes and now have 3 emails saying I have registered three times! I have only paid once, but I think we may need to ask them to deregister two of the submissions. Edit: Sent images to the organisors as part of the registration, and added a note about the registration issue.

hahaha good grief! Once bitten eh

Surprised you can physically notice, I didnt when I put mine on, it was only when it was combined with sports cats/exhaust and given an uprev I got an extra peak 15bhp (which of course doesn't mean an extra 15bhp across the range).

In if you dont mind an old Vauxhall coming along...I can convoy everyone again

To be frank, if the car is standard then its easy enough to just go on to the main selling websites like AT PH and eBay and compare it to others on there to get your ballpark value.

You could also try TGM in Fleet for a quote. They do all my work, brilliant quality, including repairing (some builder muppets didnt secure some roof tiles on an ajoining house which flew off missed me but landed on my bonnet!) the aluminium bonnet on my GT4 Celica which has all manner of curves and it was in red, one of the toughest colours to get a match and on a 24 year old car. When they were done the repair was invisible, completely undetectable. They also run their own motorsport team, they know their onions. Appreciate all the suggestions are for southern based repairs!

Saw one up close a few weeks back, the fake vents in the bonnet are ridiculous.