sasha@lazytrips

This is actually a decent suggestion if somebody can put it into practice.

You just wait until I show you what I saw in Bologna in tomorrow's update

10 countries, 5 nights, 2 idiots, 1 Suzuki Swift - Part II. Here's the next installment. Warning. Car porn material.

Thanks for all the replies! Had a further think and a look around and the original choice appears to work quite well. I exercised my poor photoshopping skills and the TT seems to look quite nice with those OZ Wave wheels (excuse the lack of callipers - was just way too lazy IMO definitely they look nicer than I originally thought they would.

Yeah. 40 Swiss Francs for the pleasure of crossing their country

Exactly! I know I pull Ollie from Skys legabout insurance but seriously I just can't deal with it! I can't deal with the fact that someone is trying to tell me I'm more likely to have a crash because someone crashed INTO ME! How can you even begin to argue that point! Statistics may back it up but it literally HAS to just be a fluke of the numbers - its a pure and simple fact that someone being a clumsy ***** is not infectious! It doesn't rub off on your car and turn you into a careless moron too! Unfortunately, statistically that is very true. In some cases, a good driver would be able to avoid being crashed into through better awareness, etc, etc. Hence if you get crashed into, you are slightly more likely to crash into something yourself...

Welcome to the fold

Hi guys, Don't know if anyone might find it interesting, but I'm about to go down for the Bologna Motor Show and will be posting up a few pictures of the road trip down and the Motor Show itself. Not going in the zed seeing as my co-pilot is not insured to drive it. Also, not going to duplicate the effort, so if you're interested in the progress, here is the plan of where we're going over the next few days: 10 countries, 5 nights, 2 idiots, 1 Suzuki Swift - Part I. 10 countries, 5 nights, 2 idiots, 1 Suzuki Swift - Part II. 10 countries, 5 nights, 2 idiots, 1 Suzuki Swift - Part III. <<< Motor Show pictures 10 countries, 5 nights, 2 idiots, 1 Suzuki Swift - Part IV. Future updates with photos et al to come at www.mapmydream.com. P.S. The site is currently under development, so excuse the stark layout with nothing there at the moment

your handling and performance will be way out and half your sensors will be set off (e.g. ESP) unless you run much thinner tyres on the rear wheels. Some cars are designed that way and some aren't.

This is one point I fundamentally disagree with. Granted, it's coming from somebody who has actually worked in banks and could be classified as a "banker" in the recent past. 1. I did not have a huge salary or extortionate bonuses. 2. Neither do 99% of people working in all the banks in this country. 3. Believe it or not, but the media hype around "playing the lottery" with 2-3 individual fraud cases as highlights are complete nonsense. The regulations, internal policies and the models/systems used by 99.9% of all banks and in all types of operations are very carefully thought through for a reason. The reason the whole situation happened is because we as a society have built up an opinion that living beyond our means is acceptable. This has led to every single entity from an individual person to a small business to a large corporation and almost every country spending more than they had coming in. Clearly this is all a self-inflicted Ponzi scheme as on average these entities all borrowed more money from X to pay off Y. The big problem is this attitude at every level of our society and until the concept of a deficit is not severely changed in people's psyche, this problem will not go away. Here's a simple example of how the world works at the moment: Start: Persons A, B & C have 0 debt. Nobody has any problems. Person A borrows £200 from person B and owes them £400 including interest. Person B borrows £400 from Person C to lend to Person A. They owe Person C £800 including interest. Person C borrows £800 from Person A to pay Person B. They owe Person B £1,600 including interest. Person A borrows £1,600 from person B to pay Person C. They now owe person B £3,200 including interest plus the majority of the original (and not yet paid £400).. etc, etc. *** And the biggest problem of the lot is that people have gotten used to this way of life and nobody wants to lower their expectations of living standards. Everybody regardless of income expects to "have the right" to own a house, two cars, 3 TVs, new kitchen, yada yada. All the idiots (excuse my french - there is no more succinct word here) who say otherwise and go about protesting because life is unfair and everybody is out to get them really need to wake up. As previously pointed out, if a teacher on £30k gets a £20k pension (40/60ths), the price of said annuity is going to be >£650k. In order to accumulate that kind of money, accounting for some average inflation and all that jazz, you're looking at paying around £400 a month out of your salary. Given that most public sector employees contribute around £120 out of that amount, who is gonna pay to more than treble their contributions?

To be fair, judging by his rear tyre, there is a large degree of blame in getting completely the wrong tyre size on those rims too.

6 of one, half a dozen of the other. Nobody is taking away pensions that have already been accrued! That's the thing. Nothing is being "taken away" from anybody. Everybody now has a choice. They either stick with the proposed arrangements or they can leave and go work in a the private sector. My understanding is that everything accrued to-date stands.

WOW. I went on that link and on the first page, they've got this sentence: "Now they are told that their pensions, the schemes they pay into every month, must be cut to pay off the deficit caused by reckless bankers. It's just not fair." I have no words to describe the stupidity.

From having seen quite a few of them on TV, I'd say that they actually do, yes. Q: Could you tell us what you're protesting about? A: They want me to pay more towards my pension. Q: Your pension is already the best pension deal anybody in the country can get and if people don't pay more, the whole system will go bust and nobody will get any pension. What would you propose to do about that? A: Erm. I dunno. Burn the bankers, sell their homes and pay me the resulting money?

I think one of the issues is that people get too deep into the discussion without actually thinking or talking about the basics. I am yet to hear a single so-called union "leader" propose a viable alternative to the current scheme which does not lead to inevitable bankrupcy. This is pretty much exactly the same line of thinking as those "Occupy" protesting idiots. I actually went up to some of them sitting in tents in Nottingham one evening as they were having a cup of tea and asked them if they could succinctly explain to me what they were protesting about. A bunch of them threw incoherent gibberish at me after which I asked whether they had a firm plan of action with concrete steps, dates and numbers which the government could take and they all had absolutely nothing to say. I might be stupid, but I really don't get what the point of protesting is if you have no suggestion whatsoever as to what you want to happen as a result of your protest. Having said the above, I do think the government could have been more subtle and smart in how they introduced these cuts. I don't think they have worded the changes clearly or transparently enough which meant that most of the people affected still don't really understand what the impact on them would be. What they really should have done is put a lot of simple numbers in front of people to make them understand the "why" as most of them just don't get it. e.g. (all numbers fictitious) We have a £10Bn pot for pensions sitting in a bank (now I know that it doesn't work like that as there is no actual national pension fund, but ignore that for the purpose of the exercise). Every year without any change, this pot goes down by £2Bn. We have thought through a number of scenarios and our tax and National Insurance changes are the optimal solution at the present time and they will pay for £0.7Bn of the above gap. All people on public sector pension schemes now have a choice: Option 1: You pay an extra 3.2% in pension contributions. Your pension benefits remain unchanged. Option 2: You continue paying your old contributions. All contributions to-date will remain at the previous arrangement, but your pension accrual from now on will be lower - please refer to some document which will explain how much lower it will be. Option 3: You choose to opt-out of the Public Sector Pension Programme. All contributions to-date will be honoured and you will make your own private arrangements through a private pension scheme. You will get half the standard employer contributions (in monetary terms) added to any of your own contributions. If you put it forward as a straight-forward explanation that there simply is no other way as you can't just magically make up money that doesn't exist, then maybe a few more people would wake up and smell the coffee.

Pricing looks on par with the Audi TT range (£28k for the basic one). Audi TT RS is £45k and I certainly know what I'd pick if one of those is the same price as the Subaru.

I'm guessing you mean 5-6psi a week. If it bar then is say you had a puncture. That sounds more like a seating problem on the rim and not being sealed correctly. I wouldn't say it was the tyres losing air. Did you not get them checked for punctures and leaks? Tyres were checked, rechecked, moved around and whatever else. >10 visits to tyre shops. I think I just got extremely unlucky with a set of rubbish tyre compound (maybe same batch). And yes, I did mean PSI That is extremely unlucky bud. What model of maxxis was it, if you can remember? No idea to be honest, but for 3 weeks, all 4 corners lost air week on week. I couldn't believe it myself. I thought 1 tyre, maybe 2... So the basis of my 2 cents is: Falken 452s, Toyo Proxes & Ultrac Sessantas are the only mid-range cheapo tyre I'd go for.

Here's the wife's choice (she's a fan of those Brera rounded wheels too): O.Z. Racing Wave. I've heard some good things about O.Z. Racing in general. Am I right in thinking that they're a decent brand? Here's the wheel: Anyone know anywhere where I can get this wheel at a good price? All internet prices seem to be identical.

I'm guessing you mean 5-6psi a week. If it bar then is say you had a puncture. That sounds more like a seating problem on the rim and not being sealed correctly. I wouldn't say it was the tyres losing air. Did you not get them checked for punctures and leaks? Tyres were checked, rechecked, moved around and whatever else. >10 visits to tyre shops. I think I just got extremely unlucky with a set of rubbish tyre compound (maybe same batch). And yes, I did mean PSI

At the moment it's got some aftermarket no-name wheels. The car was bought with them on and I guess that's the reason for them getting buckled. They're just a 5-way twin spoke type of thing with polished/diamond cut/metally colour/whatever on the surface and black on the sides and everywhere else (don't have pics). I haven't seen any wheels like them on sale, so no idea what they are.

I know they're not the same tyre, but I recently got rid of 4x Maxxis tyres on a different car as ALL FOUR were losing air (about 5-6 bar per week). I know I must be incredibly unlucky and this sort of thing can't happen to many people, but the tyres were not very old and I would have expected better even from a budget tyre. I personally wouldn't touch them again.

Apologies - I guess I was just trying to figure out what makes are good and which aren't. I had a look at ebay, but the problem is that you rarely know what the real reasons for sale are, etc and a lot of them cost similar to/more than brand new alternatives. Budget is a little flexible, but at the lower end of the scale - from an initial look, probably looking at around £750 for four corners give or take (without tyres). I basically don't want duff halfords own brand wheels and want something that I know will last, etc, but don't want to be paying Audi prices (£450 per standard wheel) for it. With even the cheapest second-hand ones being at least £400ish (most are >£1k) including the collection/postage, it probably makes sense to get good aftermarket ones from a reputable brand for say £750ish and not worry about the potential issues the second-hand ones might have.

Hi guys, To cut a very long story short, I have an Audi TT wifemobile that needs new wheels after I finally found a competent garage who could show that I've got a buckled one (and possibly even two). It needs wheels that will fit some brand new Sessanta 245/40 18 inch tyres that will clear pretty large calipers (standard on the 3.2 Mk2 car). I am not 100% sure, but I think the bore is 57.1 and there are 5x 112 studs - if someone knows a way to confirm this, I would be delighted. Phoned 2 Audi garages and they can't tell me! I would really prefer to not have to use spigot rings if possible, but basically just need some suggestions as to what wheels to get. Looking at the online shops, there is a million different wheels, most of them either way too expensive or cheap rubbish. What brands are good and not expensive and will be reliable?

holy threat revival! Incidentally, am I the only one who finds the 225/40 tyres on the front of that 350z a little odd?

The standard Audi wheels are £1,800 without tyres. Isch don't think so. Plus they look horrid too. Gonna try & get the spigot rings swapped first. Will measure them and order the right ones from CS.