Ardesco

Could try something like this: http://www1.westfalia.net/shops/car_acc ... 7a37359529 Not got myself a working stereo yet so no idea how well it works.

Is the passenger price for children £15 as well? I have a feeling the eldest may want to come with me and look at all the cars

ooo useful link, thanks very much

It was an ATS euromaster, went to the other local tyre garage (This one isn't a national chain) and the guy was the complete opposite, really helpful, really seemed to know his stuff and I will definetly be going back there.

JDM so he prolly either didn't get a manual or can't read Japanese

Have to remember not to go near there again then

Slightly OT but I decided to get my tracking checked at one of the local tyre garages. They guy said sure no problem, walked out took one look at the car, all the colour drained out of his face and he said: "No way am I going to touch one of those mate, main dealer job". Any ideas why he had such a reaction?

Check the tyres. Lots of people can't read the arrow showing which way the tyres should rotate and put them on the wrong wheels. One rotational tyre put the wrong way round can cause it to pull to the left/right (depending which side it is on). If they are putting the tyres on the wrong way round don't trust them to do anything else to your car

I think he means the display that shows Temp/KM per Litre/DTE/stopwatch/etc. As far as I'm aware you have to replace it to get it changed, however to give you a rough idea 8.7 KM per Litre is around 25 MPG.

I would generally do an HPI on every car I was going to buy (what's the cost of an HPI when you are spending a few grand), although I didn't with the JDM I just got. I have the documentation of it coming into the country and I am the first UK owner. I figured that if it did have any accidents in Japan will not be listed anyway. I just spent hours looking at panels and got the guy selling it to pull up the carpets and the trim so I could see the metal inside and out to look for anything that looked like dodgy repair work.

Looking at that list, you don't seem to have a car PSU? I was looking at one of these: http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=12004 Will turn the power on and off when you turn the ignition on and off and also provides 250W to power everything in your machine.

Sorry I was slightly wrong it's a toslink connector i'm looking at (although most toslink cables come with a toslink -> mini-toslink adaptor. It is a cable that looks like this: It is optical digital output, that is currently supposed to provide the best digital signal to an amplifier, it's used in home hi-fi stuff a lot, but doesn't seem to have made it across to the car world too much yet.

Can you provide a bit more info on the CarPC? I'm interested to know exactly which components you purchased, I'm still building my list, although I think I have the base spec to actually get a working PC in the car sorted. The main sticking point that I have come across at the moment is finding a car amp that accepts a mini-toslink input. Any suggestion greatfully accepted

Thanks...... I now have this horrible image of some bloke squeezed into an Ann Summer's Nurse outfit stuck in my head....

You're only jealous coz yours isn't that big. It's not the size of the wing that matters........

May have managed to source a transflective touchscreen with a Panasonic LCD panel in it from China for around the 200 USD mark (All sort of depends upon import taxes, etc). Got to love the way they do business, the screen will cost you X amount. How much would you like the invoice made out for?

Or maybe he's Big Phil's +1

Is it a darker or lighter black? Kuro is Japanese for the darkest shade of black there is. If it is lighter (as i suspect) it is the Holt Duplicolour.

Everybody is now looking at me funny because I burst into laughter in the middle of a quiet office....

I agree, but I'm not looking at a whole shuttle, just the motherboard ( I believe you can buy them for around the £100 mark). I have a plan forming that I will have to price up and see what I can do. It may not be a realistic challenge (I'm fully aware that they are different beasts so it's not really a fair comparison) but a worthy one anyway

Only looking at buying the shuttle mobo, not the whole shuttle unit, currently trying to find a affordable 7" touchscreen monitor that is transflective. I'm thinking that the challenge is to get it up and running for less than the cost of a double din head unit that does DVD/Radio/Sat Nav/etc.

A bit more hunting around at lunch time and some reading of the MP3Car.com website and It would appear you can get a 250W PSU that will power a shuttle: http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=12004 http://eu.shuttle.com/en/desktopdefault ... ead-14213/ So my current thinking is a shuttle motherboard as that will provide 3 internal SATA ports, 2 external SATA ports, 4 USB ports, 1 firewire port, an Optical S/PDIF output, integrated VGA support and a wireless LAN option. It is also a small form factor and doesn't need a big cooling setup. It also has the added advantage of using standard PC hardware enabling me to plug in any bits and bobs that I have lying around as well.

I think I'm sold