jamesyj

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/629/629/7293011.stm

I got told about this today, needless to say I was apocolyptically mad

A mate of mine who lives pretty close to Syston is very tempted with this one. He said he's going to have a look on Saturday.

If he goes and sees it before you, I'll let you know how he gets on.

I'm gonna be getting an ECU soon anyway. My bolt ons will give minimal gains, but for around 1k I could fit cams. Is it not worth it do you think? I'm not after massive improvements, just noticable ones that keep my interest.

 

I only meant with the fuel eceonomy in the lower rev range i.e around town. If there's less power in that rev range will I not use less fuel?

 

You will not get a Haltech and Tomei cams and a set of buckets and proper head gaskets and a remap etc.etc.etc. for £1000. unless you are proposing to do the work yourself. Sorry to burst your bubble mate but no point in this I am afraid.

 

The 1k was just rough cost of cams and fitting - cams £500 fitting for 10 hours work £500. Already will be getting an ECU and mapping, so price was just extra on top.

 

A lot of the american sites rave about cams and headers so it's good to hear that it's basically a waste of time, gives a different perspective from someone who's trusted in the local Zed community

 

My pleasure Chris, just don't want you wasting your money mate.

Please note my comments are purely based on my own personal experiences and some one may be along later with a different view but it is a lot of money for very little gain.

 

I just love your quote of 10 hrs labour, I can do this swop out with my eyes closed and even with my eyes open it would take much longer, try 3 times that and you are getting close.

 

Alex.

30 hours to fit some camshafts?!?!

Does this include making them yourself with a nail file?

How come it takes that long?

Er...

Je voudrais dix panache sil vous plait?

My guess would be the traffic alerts are turned on, just unfortunately you're getting news of a traffic jam from Rouen.

If it all worked fine before, it must logically be the Kenwood?

If you're after a hot hatch, an Astra VXR will knock spots off most of them, especially the Focus ST.

The Cupra K1 is seeing very very good gains from a remap.

An Astra VXR remap will see you hitting around 260bhp at least, with a Remus exhaust which you'll be able to get pretty cheap now everyone is upgrading to a Milltek from Thorney MS, and a different fuel map, you'll see 290bhp.

As it's a Vauxhall, it's cheap, cheap parts, cheap servicing. I had a Astra VXR Nurburgring for a few days (it's a white one with a pretty loud exhaust), driving it pretty hard with some medium cruises in between, I averaged 26mpg.

Get a black one with anthracite 19's, as subtle as it's going to get.

Can you tell I work for Vauxhall....

If you need to know anything about Astra VXR's, give me a PM, It's unfortunate, but I know just about everything about them.

Just a little update:

 

All my bits have now been ordered and they are being delivered on a daily basis

The pc i ended up buying was this

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&item=220347519988

 

Also went for a samsung 32gb ssd

 

I have drew up a little sketch of the general layout

 

 

A little bit sad i know but there f*ck all else to do!!!!

 

That drawing looks like some technical stuff!

 

Sure does! My install plays music!

Dude, I forgot how to put CD's in the changer the other day. I pressed eject, and 1 (empty) thinking it would ask me to insert CD, which it didn't. 5 mins driving along swearing at the CD player, then saw the 'load' button. Idiot!

I can't be doing with this ICE stuff. I'll be happy if my BOSE played CD's on a cold morning, which it doesn't.

The Vauxhall Insignia aerial has a nice fat base (lines up spot on with oem base) and is considerably smaller, probably half the height, looks standard fit but doesn't look like you have a remote control car.

http://www.likwidart.com/

This chap may be able to help. Rob is the bloke you need.

HKS filter sold.

My first noisy mod for the 350. Get in!

PM sent

Is the HKS filter available or is it now sold?

Because you can get into a 350z for cheap monies, and you can't go on holiday because of the balls exchange rate, people with a little cash to splash will treat themselves to a weekend car.

I'd buy one as a weekend car! I even bought one as a daily driver!

Other people will buy a 07/57/08/58 plate used car because they're so cheap, business will boooooom. But you can't buy a 07/57/08/58 plate normal family car (Audi A4, BMW 3 Series, Mondeo etc) because fleet companies are keeping them longer. So you look at a sports car (350z), but people will command top money for new/nearly new 350z's as it's the last run and all that crap, so you buy an older one, demand goes up. Then we all sell for £10,000 profit, easy!

But on the other hand, it may not. I love the new/used car market!

Very true.

We had a chap with an EK9 Type R in, no-one believed me that we could sell it for £5000-£7000, until they looked on Autotrader.

We offered him something like £1200 as to us, it's a 1998 Honda Civic. Yet I could walk out tomorrow and buy an EP3, facelift with Air Con for £6000 easy.

I took pity on him when one of my salesmen told him the trade in price, I said to him "I know what you've got, you know what you've got, sell it privately".

Genuinely awesome cars will always hold their value, look at Honda NSX's!

Sounds like I should be on some VTEC forum......

Basically, 350z's are wicked, don't worry about it.

Just thought of an example actually.

When I bought my car (05/55 GT with 30k) back in December.

It Glass'd at £11,300 ish, CAP'd at £9,600 ish. I bought it for £10k, I can only assume the place I got it from (through the trade) had bought it in ages ago and were losing money hand over fist on it, hence took £10k for it, but even then, I paid over CAP for it.

Via Parkers today, they say £13,600, the Network Q one is £12,600. Mmmm?

Parkers seem to be a mile off.

http://www.networkq.co.uk/nq/buyers/valuecar.do

That's more like it but even those may not be 100% accurate.

When valuing a car at a garage/dealership, we value it online via Experian.

Experian show us two figures, Glass' figures and CAP figures.

CAP always hit cars harder when it comes to trade prices, upto £2000 in some cases, but there is usually £500-£1000. In a 'normal' car market, we'd value our cars by Glass' but we found CAP is where you need to be looking. Cars were at one point behind CAP which isn't good.

We're finding now, CAP is about right, the market seems to be ever so slightly lifting.

Just a little update:

 

All my bits have now been ordered and they are being delivered on a daily basis

The pc i ended up buying was this

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&item=220347519988

 

Also went for a samsung 32gb ssd

 

I have drew up a little sketch of the general layout

 

 

A little bit sad i know but there f*ck all else to do!!!!

That drawing looks like some technical stuff!

It's very surprising what you find working at a car dealership.

You can't whack a find like that, it makes my week!

Very nice mate.

I had a spin in an SLK at work a while ago, I quite fancy some open top motoring in my life down the line, I looked briefly at a SL55 AMG, very tempted when they get a little cheaper one day.

Perhaps a trip to a Renault dealers may suffice.

I was in a Clio 182 at work the other day, in the driver door, in a sealed plastic bag, there was a luggage net. Mmmm

I opened the bag, the sized looked about right. And it fits perfectly, nice and tight!

I bet you that Renault one is cheap as chips.

There are some serious serious bargains to be had if you're in the trade though.

 

My 350z GT. Black, late 05/55, 29k on the clock, retail example.

 

Up for sale originally at circa £16k, dropped to just shy of £14k.

 

I bought it 2 months ago for £10k dead on.

 

It's definately the wrong time to sell your car but by miles, the best time to buy.

 

 

On another note, we had a chap in who bought a brand new VXR8, paid list price, circa £34k (not from us). He had it for 6 months dead on, put 9k miles on it and his missis left him so he downsized to a Vectra VXR. We gave him £23k for it, this was even before the arse fell out of the car market. Then he bought the Vectra for 17k, then the arse fell out the car market, he had that for 2 months, traded it in elsewhere for 12k.

 

Poor chap.

 

Serves him right for paying £17k for a Vectra

Bloody damn right mate!

It wasn't new either. List is circa £26k, you can spec them past £30k which is the scary thing!

To be fair, that is list, a no-one ever pays list for a car, especially for a Vauxhall.

There are some serious serious bargains to be had if you're in the trade though.

My 350z GT. Black, late 05/55, 29k on the clock, retail example.

Up for sale originally at circa £16k, dropped to just shy of £14k.

I bought it 2 months ago for £10k dead on.

It's definately the wrong time to sell your car but by miles, the best time to buy.

On another note, we had a chap in who bought a brand new VXR8, paid list price, circa £34k (not from us). He had it for 6 months dead on, put 9k miles on it and his missis left him so he downsized to a Vectra VXR. We gave him £23k for it, this was even before the arse fell out of the car market. Then he bought the Vectra for 17k, then the arse fell out the car market, he had that for 2 months, traded it in elsewhere for 12k.

Poor chap.

I can't find Miss England on the Miss World site.

But.... I have got off with Miss England 2008 once or twice.

To be fair, we're old school friends and she was in my tent.

Odd thing is, never found her amazingly attractive, lovely girl though.

Still, high five for celebrity factor!

I'm in charge of the advertising/marketing at the Vauxhall Main Dealer I work for.

I must be doing ok as for new car sales, we're the number 1 in the country for an independant dealership and number 3 including groups.

I sort out our website, photograph cars, advertise cars, contant meetings with Autotrader with the never ending battles to stop them from screwing us over!

It's not all fun fun fun.

I think we had 120% of our 1st quarter target by mid January, and the salesmen could certainly be pulling their fingers out and making more sales!

All in all, we're doing surprisingly well for the car market, and for a place that sells Vauxhalls!

Lovely watches!

I'm in love with Breitling though. Buying a Breitling watch ended my last relationship basically, well it sparked off 'the talk'.

Two days later they rang me up telling me that my bank had refused the order which was very odd to me and did I want to re-order. I said no.

I'll stick with my Dreyfuss & Co. for the time being.

Well when it snowed the other week, I borrowed a Landcruiser at work, awesome fun this green laning!

I took my car to work, someone said it's not that bad snow, I reckoned I'd be alright if I could get to a main road that had been driven on constantly....I couldn't..

Dad said as he rescued me from the cold "Perhaps you should think about getting rid of that thing and get a banger to drive to work and back"

What the name of all that's holy would I want to do that for?

That's it people, you must drive 4x4's because it's snowed for 5 days so far. 300 wet ones and 60 dry ones is not enough proof for Dad to have a "silly" car. Idiot.