rtbiscuit

its a bit of a trek but there is team afm in martlesham near ipswich which is my local performance specialist. they did all the work on my 350z and others, as well as my s2000 and my XKR

yep need to know early as possible

thanks leon, i can't wait to get the new colour on it, but as i have no where to spray at the moment its going to have to wait.

its worth a quick read http://www.pistonheads.com/news/default.asp?storyId=27522 but basiucally a huge jap recall on cars built between 2000 and 2004 so this would include early 350Z's and this recall was for nissan mazda toyota and honda

i can get it to you via courier on saturday before 1pm for about £25 or before 9.30 am for £45 thats just the courier costs, and not the vinyl. Rich

For those of you who don't know this is what my XKR looked like when i first got her about 2 years ago. When I bought there car she was bought as a project car knowing full well there was a lot of work to be done. admittedly when i bought it i think iwas wearing very heavily tinted new car syndrome glasses and i did kind of mute down the work that might be needed. she is what i call a crossroad car. when i got her i was either going to run her into the ground till she died or restore her. well i went with the restore route. so this is the car 2 years ago Now these photos are a little bit of a lie as this was just after a full machine polish and doesn t show how bad the paint was (still is) swirls galore, its like it had been cleaned repeatedly with a brillo pad. and it also doesnt show all the rust either. in particular behind the rear bumper and in the rear arches. and under the car. I have sincew sorted the underside, its all been stripped and cleaned and specially painted and waxoiled. but i hadn't got round to sorting the rust at the rear of the car. and to be honest i was planning on leaving it for another 12 months as i knew how much work was needed and the cost involved. well the car forced my hand shall we say as about 3 months ago it did this to me.... It decided to finish rotting out the rear bumper mounts, which decided to let go of the bumper thankfully in my wifes work carpark and not at speed on the dual carriageway 2 minutes earlier. but it didn;t tell me and i dalso reversed over said bumper. rendering bumper now useless. you'll be pleased to know it fits in the jag boot, as i folded it in 3 you also can;t see the 2 very large rust holes on either rear quater, or the state of the arches. so while i deliberated about what to do i dorve the car around for a month with no rear bumper. and then i decided to bite the bullet. so i ordered a new style rear that could be used in rebuilding the rear bumper. and as i'd bought the rear i thought i might as well buy the sides as well....and then the guy about a fortnight later offered me a cracking deal on the front i bought the dront as well. so the next job was rust removal and i think at this point the pictures say more... as you can see there was alot of reconstruction work carried out and basically new arches built and welded. Now you may ask why change the front, well on mine the paint was heavily spidere webbed, the badge had been nicked and the grille was falling out. and the cost of the new grille was not far off what i managed to get the whole bumper and new grilles for. so i did it any way. this is my original nose my car with no nose my car with new nose now at this point my mates and other peolpe had been laughing at me, i had a primered nose. a rear bumper that was temporarily riveted on for transporting it. and rust, lots of rust. i think i had created the first rat look jag. sadly i have no pictures of this embarrising phase. now at this point i don't have the fitting and blending pictures to hand. so i will skip ahead to the current stage of completion so this is where the car is up too now. i have to add at this point that this isn't the finished article. i still need to fit arch extenders at the front, the lower grille needs adding, and the under tray fitting, also need to complete the front with the upper bumper mounts to push the top edge inline with the bonnet. as well as the rear grille and the exhaust tips adding (originals had to be cut off as the new bumper had round holes and the old exhaust was oval and now too long for the new shorter rear) the guys at the body shop also gave the car a quick burst of a mix of primer and tp coat to seal it all in. the reason i've not had a full paint job is i'm planning on repainting the whole car. but for now my wallet needed a breather and i want to sort a few other things out. so this is by no means a finished paint job. now the plan was that iwas going to do most of the work myself, but because the winter has gone on so long i haven't been able to work outside. and my garage isn;t wide enough to get the XKR in and still work on it. so a big thanks has to go out to tony at paragon design who let me use his work spoace for the front and for sorting the parts out and o be fair doing most of the front fitting as he was quicker than me and another big thanks goes to the guys at Ipswich Accident and repair who did all the welding and fitting at the rear. great set of guys and top work.

You're complaining they gave you wheels. I've just spent 2 weeks in a proton savvy. Have to say it was a right little hooner. Turns out its a Clio underneath the body shell. At the end of the day it meant I still had transport and didn't have to claim for lifts.

Yep I think both those comments merit one, but you might have a chance to redeem yourself Ok point taken.... I would only go for the GT86 if I wasn't getting a Jag made me giggle

which did you prefer between the EP3 and the FN2?

this might give you some colour ideas; its the pics I took from last years jaguar speed trials

Colour wise a nice jag cream might be worth a look

I like that alot

Should be a good little winter project

Lot of work ahead. Give me a shout if you need an extra pair of hands.

hmmmm...it might suprise you...it might suprise you in a nice way....or in a bad way...it depends on what your expectations are. best way to know is to drive it yourself; then tell us what you think. Zed is very linear in its power delivery; its not that its slow becuase it isn't its just very deceptive of how it gets there.

is that a dead body?

RT Performance are very capable wrappers, and worth the trip to London.

Thought you'd like that one

There advert put me off before I even want windows

if you re paint your own wheels I can sort you out with new decals to go on them

did you weld it like this?

http://www.cardipuk.com/ I just bought 2 cans of black from them to try out before buying enough to do my whole car.

I'm getting the xkr to a point I can sell it in about 12 months time. But should get most of my money back out. But that will take me to 3 years in the jag which is the longest I've ever owned a car. Will be hard, but I have some new projects on the horizon.