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Ekona

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Everything posted by Ekona

  1. Not disagreeing with you, but why? And is there one available in the OP's budget?
  2. Sorry for your loss Celia That's a great photo, almost looks like he was trying to sneak into the driver seat before you
  3. That's actually not a bad deal there for that, tbh.
  4. Those numbers will be just fine, no fear there Exactly what model is it you're looking at? IIRC it's something plasticky that actually snaps off, but I've not used one for a while so exactly which bit I'm unsure. Who knows, they may have improved them by now in fairness.
  5. But yeah, just give it a bit more oomph and it'll come apart.
  6. Kranzle ftw, but a touch out of your budget Karcher are okay, but expect to be replacing the gun in short order as they're made of chocolate. That said, for £50-£70 I'd be happy enough recommending them as aside from the guns I've never had an issue with the ones I've owned over the years. But I do love my Kranzle very very much now.
  7. Well yeah, there is that Why Joe Public spend £££ going there though and treat it like it's the Best Race Ever, I've no idea. I'd be quite happy for it to fall off the calendar, at least that way they might have a rethink about improving it rather than just raping wallets.
  8. I don't understand why anyone bothers going to Silverstone for the British GP at all. I can't think of a race I'd like to go to less: Literally any of the other F1 circuits appeal much more. As you point out Doc, it's ridiculously expensive there too, so why bother? But then, after LM everything is a bit disappointing COTA, on the other hand, looks absolutely immense
  9. Nowt wrong with a worm drive clamp. If it fits, it fits. The other alternative would be to get a bigger coupler and possibly shave the hardpipe down a bit.
  10. Ekona

    ITS HERE....

    Put it this way, that’s the same price bracket as an R8 or a 540C, and I’d damn as hell take either of those over this. I cant help but wonder if this was designed as a race car first, and a road car second. Aston aren’t shy about pushing their racing credentials these days, so I wonder if they’d decided to make the best racer possible so it would sell more road cars? Don’t know.
  11. Ekona

    ITS HERE....

    Messy. And waaaaaay too much money.
  12. Just to note, you no longer need a breathalyser in France. There is no legal punishment for not having one, so just don't bother. Also don't speed in France, they take your licence there and then if you're proper naughty. #VOE
  13. Might have missed it, but when are you planning on going?
  14. FWIW (and following on from our many conversations about this), the answer for you is Job A. You spent forever and a day bitching to me about how crap your last job was, and that you hated it, and you desperately wanted out of the industry to go and do something you enjoyed. We worked up plans to put in that place, and we spent time figuring out just what kind of roles would get you to a point where you didn't hate work and life in general. To go back to that is utterly pointless. Put it this way: You were doing a Mon-Fri, 9-5 job that let you spend money and time on your cars, and you hated life. What makes you think going back there is suddenly going to make you happy again? Unless you desperately need money (and you may well do at this point, which is fair enough) then the only answer is Job A. Job B is going to leave you f*cking miserable and stuck in a dead end again, and then you'll be a year or two further down the line with nothing to show for it once more. I see zero point in that. If you take Job A and don't like it then you can fall back to Job B (or similar) in a couple of years having lost precisely nothing, but if you don't take that chance while you can then you'll be kicking yourself about it. Do you want a job, or do you want a career?
  15. Very good You might well find it's repairable, in which case I'd personally just let the insurer's garage deal with the whole thing. No disrespect, but it's only a Nissan so doesn't exactly require a huge amount of expertise to sort and all OEM stuff should just bolt straight on (i.e. you don't necessarily need an top-level bodyshop to fettle everything). Also this then puts the ball in their court to make sure it's all done properly, as they chose the garage not you Insurers don't want to pay twice for the same thing nor naff their customers off, so the big guys will only deal with quality garages these days anyway.
  16. I see no reason not to leave it up, nothing there is prejudicial to your case. Video is as cut and dried as they come, arguably there's a criminal case for the other driver there but that's unlikely to ever be proven. And yes, dashcams are absolutely superb in these situations. What I will say is that this demonstrates why I say get the best one you can, as your footage isn't remotely clear enough to identify the car in the dark. Irrelevant in your case as clearly you have other pics post-crash, but if he'd driven off you'd have nothing. That said, anything is better than nothing as proved here. Good on you for getting a camera sorted Sorry to see this though, but please don't be too shaken up as there was absolutely nothing else you could've done. You were at the appropriate speed for the conditions, the other guy clearly wasn't. Cars can be repaired, people can't. Just glad you're okay bud.
  17. Don’t worry, the Scoob has a the big STi spoiler we can use
  18. Oh heads up for the Xboners here, the Xbox Game Pass is currently £1 for 30 days rather than the usual £8. Sign up, play a bunch of games for 29 day’s, cancel before the end and you’re done. Or carry on paying if you make use of the service, or buy the games cheaper than usual etc. Im currently finishing Halo 5 (which I started when they did a free 24 test a year or so ago) and trying F1 2015 (always wondered how good the F1 games are, the answer is quite). God bless Black Friday deals!
  19. Nothing else lined up right now, just fancy a change and going to see what’s out there
  20. Linky to PH ad with more pics on October 2004 car (’54 registration) 124,000 miles Manual gearbox 3M Gloss Burnt Orange wrap over Metallic Silver Roof, wing mirrors, side strakes and window trim wrapped in gloss black Custom quad-tipped exhaust BC Racing BR adjustable suspension H&R adjustable ARBs K&N open cone filter with custom aluminium heat shield Japan Racing JR18 wheels in Hyper Black, 18x8.5J front and 18x9.5J rear Maxton Design front lip Carbon fibre FRP adjustable rear wing Black kidney grills M Sport gearknob Retrimmed steering wheel in nappa leather with perforated 12 o’clock marker Recaro Pole Position driver seat on VAC Motorsport adaptors with Recaro side mounts MOT due Jan 5th 2019 (yup, nineteen) Here for sale is my 2004 BMW 645Ci, purchased by myself in January 2015. She is an incredibly rare manual coupe, and over the last couple of years I have carried out a fair amount of work to not only bring her up to the high standard that she deserves to be in, but also to significantly improve the way she drives. Any research into the E63 6-series will confirm that the biggest issue with the V8 is the valve stem seals. Essentially these fail and cause the car to burn a serious amount of oil, as well as smoke excessively. This work is not cheap by any standards, and if a car has not had these replaced then you’ll need to budget at least £2K at an independent to have them replaced. I had this work carried out in 2015 by AutoEnhance (documentation included) so that it was something I never had to worry about, and neither will the next owner. The PCV valves have also been replaced, another popular cause of excess smoking. I also had the coolant transfer pipe inspected, as this can be another expensive failure, and this was showing no signs of any degradation at all. The car is not using any coolant to this day. Also in 2015 shortly after purchase I had a new clutch and flywheel fitted, along with new discs and pads all round. A full fluids and filters change was also carried out at the same time. The current iDrive service intervals are showing the following: Brake fluid 02/2019 Oil 4.4k Plugs 17k Front pads 17k Rear pads 26k Microfilter 29k In terms of intake and exhaust, the latter has had two new custom rear boxes installed in early 2015 to release some extra noise. In no way intrusive or excessive, but certainly noticeable over the stock system both at idle and throughout the rev range. The restrictive OEM airbox has been removed and replaced by an open cone K&N filter. This was carried out by myself after discussions with K&N USA as to the appropriate size of air filter required, and I’ve also fitted a one-piece aluminium heatshield to protect from heat soak but still allow air to flow around the filter rather than just stall. Any car of this age will have seen better days when it comes to the suspension, so I took the opportunity to replace all four corners with the BC Racing BR coilovers. These were installed by AutoEnhance in October 2015, along with a new set of H&R anti roll bars front and rear. All of these are adjustable, and in January 2017 I had a full chassis tune carried out by Center Gravity in Atherstone. This included a full corner weighting, ride height, rake and damping setup, so the car handles as well as it possibly can and certainly better than it did in full OEM guise. The car is currently on Japan Racing JR18 wheels, 18x8.5 on the front and 18x9.5 on the rear. These are wrapped in Michelin Pilot Super Sport tyres, with 245/45 on the front and 275/40 on the rear as per BMW specs for 18 inch wheels. There is approx 3-4mm remaining on the tyres. In June 2016 I had the entire car wrapped in 3M Gloss Burnt Orange by Valet Magic in Camberley. I specifically chose the 3M wrap not just for the wonderfully deep colour and the obvious quality of the material, but also to ensure that should I ever need to replace any then it would be easy to get hold of. The wrap included the external door shuts as you can see in the photos, and I also had the wing mirrors plus the chrome trim on the side strakes and windows wrapped in gloss black. The roof had previously been wrapped in gloss black by AutoEnhance at the same time the suspension was replaced. None of the wrap is showing any signs of bubbling, fading or lifting at all: It’s one of the best wraps I’ve ever seen on any car. The Maxton Design front lip was also fitted in June 2016, and gives the front end a more aggressive look but without being so low that it catches on anything. This was very much taken into account on the chassis setup Center Gravity carried out, so that this is still a usable car on all roads. The rear wing was fitted in May 2016, and is supported underneath the fibreglass bootlid by steel supports to prevent damage or movement. This was mounted onto a spare bootlid I had resprayed in the original silver colour, and then wrapped. Original bootlid available if you would like to swap them over. The Recaro seat was fitted in November 2016, and is mounted on genuine Recaro hardware including sliders to ensure full range of movement. It’s a wonderfully comfortable yet very supportive seat, and is very similar in design to the seat produced by Recaro for the M/CSL cars of the era. The gearknob has been replaced by a genuine M Sport one which reduces the height of the shift, allowing for a much more positive gear change. The steering wheel was retrimmed by Hide N Seat in nappa leather, and bulked out slightly for comfort as the stock wheel on these cars is too firm in my opinion. In terms of other maintenance carried out in my ownership, I’ve had the following replaced: Front headlight HID bulbs (now slightly brighter than stock at 6000K) Headlight ballast OSF Brake hard pipe as indicated on MOT Wheel bearing OSF Lower ball joint NSR Tie rod OSF Coolant reservoir (these are known to leak after 100k miles) Oil pressure sensor Air con compressor pipe seals Clutch delay valve removed (gives a much more positive clutch feel) All belts replaced in 2017 So nothing particularly major at all, and I had Center Gravity carry out a full inspection of the underneath of the car in terms of suspension components this year and they could find nothing else that needed doing any time soon either. Certainly the car still drives as well as it ever has. It goes without saying that she certainly doesn’t go unnoticed, but I’ve always prioritised performance and especially maintenance over anything cosmetic and I think that any careful and reasonable owner would do the same. I do still have the original wheels (Style 118), the original driver seat (in excellent condition), airbox and the original unmarked bootlid which the new owner is welcome to and will be included with the car if the asking price is met. I would happily put her up against a car with half the miles on in terms of overall condition, and certainly with the valve stem seal work completed she will go on for many years yet. This is a wonderful car and just shows how good the chassis underneath actually is, as with the few modifications that have been carried out this is now a very involving driver’s car. Any inspection is welcome, but test drives only with proof of full UK licence and fully comp insurance please. Any questions or queries welcomed.
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