coldel

Good write up. I spend A LOT of time looking after my car and I think anyone buying a nice car for the first time would do well to read through this. Too many would grab that old sponge under the sink with some washing up liquid and go to town. I think a polish can be a good idea if you want to bring up the colour a bit (whether it does or if its a placebo effect I'm not sure but I do it anyway) but also the polish is a good thing if you have a DA as it will get rid of those spider web scratches you see when you look at the suns reflection on the paintwork. Obviously dont just grab a DA and have a go, make sure you know what you are doing! I'm with Dan on this issue of the jet washer, I don't use a jet washer at all. I would only use it to generate the snow foam but would not use it on the bodywork as it would as far as I can see strip any wax you have applied. And I would certainly not recommend using it on alloy wheels in any shape or form, maybe I am a bit nervy of that as the wheels I had on my Zed were pretty darn expensive. But yeah, I go through the wash/clay/polish/wax routine every 3 months, between that its just a case of giving it a good wash (depending on usage and weather conditions etc) once a week and allowing the wax to do its stuff.

I think Stew has a point, wanting to add £1k to your current salary is going to be a tough ask, not impossible and people do achieve it, but it requires more planning and execution of a strategy than luck. When I was 24, with A Levels, a good degree and three years work experience in various office type jobs I was on £22k (although that was fifteen years back). I guess you are going to have to aim well outside the norm of jobs to get that sort of money, or, retrain. My brother is a car mechanic, dresses in knackared overalls all day and looks a pauper but has his own business and probably earns around £200-£300 a day after tax depending on what he works on - he started specialising in commercial vans and lorries, its a constant flow of work. He has no A Levels or Degree, just retrained with an eye on the future

And I remember our chats last year Darren, started with 'should I buy an MX5 and supercharge it' and look where I ended up...

Yep it will be there on Sunday!

Haha didnt they do one in the newer body style? Guess I didnt investigate them that much then!

Ah yes the older shape Z4Ms are around the £12k-£13k mark but dont like the look of the older ones!

Dont open them and tuck in, it would be a form of cannibalism

Cup of tea somewhere in kent on Sunday I believe!

Yeah the Z4M does look sensational, although a fair bit more of a premium price. Snapped another photo tonight, on iphone so bad quality but can't help having a nose out the window every ten minutes!

Lose that chrome, I will even come over with some black marker pens if necessary

But do you want to be more than 'just friends'? The thing is twobears, you're in to a decision point here. Is it more than 'just friends' as in "bloody hell I would!.." or "...wow, she is something else!..". The two can be extremely close or indeed, proved by interaction over time, very far apart. There are a myriad of complexities, as you know, dependent on interpretation, inference, impression, ones social experiences as well as that of the person (male / female ) that you (or they) may wish to be 'more than good friends with'. This is true for both men / women / young / old etc. You're at risk of over simplification or indeed underestimating the sophistication of men's emotional interaction with women. Let alone under valuing the female ability to know the exact potential impact of their behaviour in terms of love and romance, based on their long established and well recorded 'sense of intuition' You've been asked this question before haven't you...

...walking along Richmond Hill and spied a very nice blue modified Zed driving towards me, it was indeed a wasso! After some frantic hand waving he spotted me and stopped in the middle of the road for a chat Colour on the car looked stunning

Absolutely can be friends. I used to house share with two girls who are very attractive, I even went to Thailand on hols for two weeks with one of them - my longest serving friend is a girl, we met when toddlers at nursery, we are both now in our late 30s!

Yeah I know, they are rare enough to confuse most people. Already had an older couple walking by as I cleaned the VX say 'Hey nice Ferrari' - his face when I told him it was a Vauxhall

Or spend a small fortune on armour fend...

There seems to be an ongoing 'rubbed up the wrong way' dispute between Lotus and VX owners on the respective forums there seems to be a few instances of full blown rows erupting on some threads

I have seen a few NAs going for about £6k, they tend to be higher milers though. Not many exist with 100k+ miles due to the ease of write off if you scrape the bodywork so no idea how good the engine and transmission is over longer mileage stretches. I would imagine they do ok as its a reliable engine and the car weight bugger all. You can modify the NA engine (not sure what VXR mods you can do to the non turbo?) but a shorter drive replacement in the gear box (or a zafira gearbox) will improve acceleration at the expense of top speed, lightened flywheel, freeflowing exhaust/cats all make for a quicker car - you can also go the individual throttle body route but that is expensive. Easiest route is supercharging which you can do for £3k-£3.5k which takes it from 150bhp to about 260bhp which will put the car in the 0-60 in 4 seconds bracket. Personally, I find that being sat one inch off the ground, with the top off, the engine 6 inches behind your head makes the car feel like its doing 60 when its doing 30 and produces miles of smiles

What miles you got on the clock out of interest?

Stunning looking car another +1 on colour!

Good grief

Looks good

I did start a thread some time back where I found Brembo discs I think it was priced up at the same price as the pads I foolishly posted up on here and they found themselves with about 200 orders for brembo discs at something like £34 a pair we all had our orders cancelled. I did however get an ipod dock from Tesco which someone also posted up on here where they were selling it at £16 instead of £86 I think it was, they delivered on the price despite changing it the next day!

I would get yourself onto VX220.org Stew, quite a few cars up for sale on there long before they hit ebay and the like and obviously there are benefits of seeing owners history on the forum vs ebay. If price is a concern, there is always the cat c/d route which is no where near as fraught as Zeds. One guy had his VX written off after hitting a stray dog which split the front bumper and broke a headlight - bodywork write offs happen a lot. There is a guy on the forum called 'Turboluca' who picks these up and repairs them to a high standard - you get all the photo documentation of repairs etc. He only does turbos though...let me know what your budget is, car spec etc and happy to keep a lookout for you. CS2000 yes the turbos are very fast, if you look on you tube and search for VX vs GT3 there is a guy at the nurburgring chasing down and passing a GT3, although how much of that is car vs comparative driver skills...

Shims missing?

Yes the Elise's are appreciating a lot at the moment, even something like an 80k mile early S1 is going for around £8k-£9k which is a lot in the grand scheme of things. There is an element of badge snobbery though, the VX is essentially an S2 Elise. Its somewhere between daily and toy - I will use it for when I am doing stuff in the evenings but I commute on the train every day so its not used for daily work reasons. I also now have developed a great method for getting in and out quickly without looking a tit which helps!