sasha@lazytrips

You'll be hard pressed to find somebody up for a swap as both of the wheel types you mentioned typically go for a fair bit more than your quoted price on the sale thread and once people have them on, it's rare for them to get rid unless they're selling the car

As the previous guys said, ask Alex. My wife got some for me for my birthday last year and even she commented on the amazing service. He'll tell you the price and you would be extremely hard pressed to get anything that matches the price/quality. In fact, isn't there an existing thread on this?

As the previous guys said, ask Alex. My wife got some for me for my birthday last year and even she commented on the amazing service. He'll tell you the price and you would be extremely hard pressed to get anything that matches the price/quality. In fact, isn't there an existing thread on this?

I'm running the Ferodos with some slotted discs and the performance is stunning. Only ever had to do one real emergency stop (someone pulling out in front of me when I'm doing somewhere around the speed limit give or take around 20mph). The pads worked pretty well to the point where BOTH of my front calipers failed (the piston spring mechanism) due to the amount of braking force. You're not gonna get any harder stuff than that!

'04 plate on 91,000 miles still on original battery & clutch. No idea how.

Ahaha. £3,850 for mine before any deductions for a small scratch that they'll find somewhere. Awesomeness. There must be a lot of idiots in this country for them to make the money that they do.

I think it looks pretty neat and with that engine, I'd imagine there would be copious opportunity to improvise. As for the badge, I really don't see how anyone who owns a Nissan can be a badge snob.

Want! NOTE TO WIFE: If you are reading this ahead of my impending birthday, this this will do very nicely, thanks.

Probably having a calm run at low revs ahead of a strenuous track session.

+1!!! You do not have to use the insurer's preferred repairer. They can however require you to provide two quotes and will deny you a courtesy car if you choose your own garage - but I think its worth it to know that the quality of the work is going to be good. Is it Admiral by any chance? Erm, yes - it's Admiral - you don't work for them do you? Thanks for all of the advice, I'm going to go and get some independant prices. If anyone can recommend any other bodyshops in the Farnborough, Aldershot or Guildford area then it would be welcomed. They can refuse a courtesy car, but this is not a good reason for you to not get one. When the other company refused to provide a courtesy car in my case, I calmly said that I will then happily sue them for loss of earnings and any other related damages as I require a car to get to work and their client was at fault for me being unable to do so. At this point, a car was very quickly (within 1 hour) provided. I immediately phoned them back and explained that I believe that I am at right not to be significantly disadvantaged due to the actions and fault of the at fault driver. As a result, I'd like them to take back the Peugeot 3008 or whatever it was and provide a suitable replacement. You have to be very clear, yet courteous with these conversations. A convertible brand new TTS was driven across the country that very day, so don't take what they tell you as gospel. Hope it all works out for you.

As this is not a fault claim, the third party's insurance cannot dictate where you take your car. You have to be very concise and clear about what you want. I had exactly the same issue before and you have to let them know that you are adamant that the car has to be returned in at least as good condition as it was in prior to the accident as otherwise they are not remediating appropriately. What I would do if you haven't done already is: 1. Find out who their "approved garage" is. 2. Check that this isn't some pretty decent high performance garage or some place you actually WOULD want to go. 3. Contact garage(s) of your choice and see whether they are prepared to/able to take on insurance jobs. Not all garages will as it is a lot of messing about with paperwork. 4. Contact the insurance company and say that you refuse your car to be repaired by a substandard garage as you have a high performance and relatively rare car and prefer a specialist garage/body shop to be involved instead. Ask them for their recommendation on a high performance specialist with expertise in your car type in your area. *** Note that you can refuse even a Nissan garage if you want to as you can claim that it is not one of the Nissan High Performance garages which specifically deal with Nissan sports cars and would therefore not have appropriate expertise - I did this successfully as my local Nissan garage is awful. 5. When they come back with "we don't have one", state clearly and concisely that in that case the only viable option is for you to provide the details of a garage you deem appropriate and insist that an arrangement is made for your car to be repaired there as the company has failed to provide an appropriately qualified repairer.

I would guess that your pal doesn't drive faster than a fly's reaction time to seeing you come across the corner.

I'm confused by why I keep not being able to research any new cars. Stuck with the supercar which just doesn't quite seem to cut it in Formula no. 1. I reckon we should have a Top Laps list on the original Bloomtown circuit so that everybody can participate. If you get a better time, the list can be updated as and when. I'll kick off with: 1. Sasha - 26.52

downloaded. report to follow.

I remember in my previous job, somebody parked with tyres over the dividing line in a moderately tight multistorey car park and a suitably angry big cheese parked their bmw within millimetres of the driver's door (couldn't stick your finger through the gap). The mirror stuck out just infront of the other car, so there was no way for the person to get out of the space (let alone get in the car other than climbing through the passenger seat. The big cheese then duly left work at around 7 when the offending car owner finished at 4.30, thereby having to wait almost 3 hours to be able to leave work. Half the office took their time to go and take some photos, but I unfortunately don't have one. Valuable lesson taught.

Might be me, but it looks like you've got a number of sensors going off. I counted a few A/F codes and 1212 - ABS sensor. Have you checked all your fluids? Coolant can set off a number of these sensors including the A/F one as per a number of recent cases. Other than that, another common fault is one of the lambda sensors at the bottom.

Looked at that site as well as numerous others. Not really keen on spending £200-300 a corner + fitting/balancing.

brembo clearance is something I didn't think of. Would need to look at that. Taking another car is not an option & I'm not planning on driving off-road or over mountain peaks - just a trip across to Russia and back. Alternatively - anybody know where you can get 19'' fat all-season tyres?

I'd get the "buyers' market" thing a lot more if it wasn't for the fact that a number of other cars in and around that price bracket aren't doing the same thing. i.e. if you are selling a 5-bed house in great condition, etc, even if there isn't a market for 5-bed houses, you'd still expect to get more than a 2-bed bungalow in the same village...

Here's an interesting question. Say you want to drive right across Europe & back in the middle of the winter with most countries requiring winter tyres. Let's also presume that you have a stupid sporty rear-wheel drive car which will throw a wobbler as soon as it sees anything other than hard tarmac unless it has some appropriate rubber. Add to this the fact that it is virtually impossible to get all-season tyres for 19'' wheels. So I got thinking and came up with this: What if I went and bought some "cool rims", say 16 inch by 6.5 and fitted big fat all season tyres to them (215/60 and 215/65). Given that all-in this could actually come out pretty cheap due to the sizes, is there anything that I haven't considered in this set up?

I guess the answer is simple. 1. Rock up to a Nissan dealership in your 350z in a smart suit and blag your way through getting a GTR for an afternoon/day 2. Drive your GTR across to Porsche and say that you want something a little more refined and European and blag yourself a 911 for a day. 3. Drive your brand new 911 to the Ferrari dealership and say that you're looking for a weekday car to compliment your weekend toy and are keen on the 458...

I've built my own PC as well and most of what was said above is true... BUT. Given the situation and all the information that people have provided, you could try and adapt to the world around you and think how best to make use of your skills & knowledge instead of a simple go/no go decision. What if instead, you offered a Computer rebuild/upgrade/refresh service. Instead of selling people the full package as per almost all shops, you'll find almost everybody already has a screen which is usually good enough for their purposes, ditto with the keyboard, mouse, speakers. Very often the box & power supply are only 2 years old as well as various cables. Often the RAM sticks and even the motherboard can be reused in the right circumstances. I would reckon if you offer a personalised approach and work to significantly improve customers' existing computers at a fraction of the cost of buying a new one, you would likely be able to have a much larger mark-up for the service, thought & work. In the end everyone's a winner.

As an owner of a higher mileage GT on an 04 plate with some minor mods, I am seriously astonished as to how much value these cars have lost over the last 6 months or so. I know that gas guzzlers are coming out of fashion, but the zed is not as bad as people might think. When I compare other cars you can get in the 6-7k bracket, I'm really struggling to see how the drop is so huge. Saw a slightly newer Suzuki Swift sold for almost the same price and I drove one yesterday - seriously confusing stuff.

Got a maths degree from Oxford and here's my best advice: unless you figure it out yourself, you won't ever understand the issues properly. It's not so much about 'cheating' or anything like that. It's much more about understanding the core concepts and the only way to get there is to work through it yourself. Next time you come across a similar or related question, the right answer will stare you in the face.

Quite surprising how long this took. There has got to be some serious lobbying going on by the industry to prevent a serious clamp down. I am a man of numbers and am astounded by how these companies are not forced to refund customers based on incredibly obvious competition law abuses. Here are some numbers all from insurance companies themselves. Insurance premiums rose 40-45% over the last year. To make it simple, a £500 quote a year ago has on average become £700. Admiral Group who are one of the biggest players in the market have released some numbers recently saying that 77.5% of their turnover forms the loss ratio, up from 67.8% a year ago. That's a 16.9% increase in claim costs. Hence the increase in rates from the industry's own official figures is more than double the increase in claim costs. To add insult to injury, they have posted half year profits of £161M which is a 27% increase on the previous year. Notice anything here? 17% increase in claim costs + 27% increase in profit = 44% increase in insurance price. I know this is grossly oversimplifying, but the maths is pretty straight-forward. Here's another interesting statistic I worked out on my casio. £161M x 2 = £322M annualised profit. With an average of around 2.75M customers over the last year, that means that each and every single customer pays around £120 towards the company's profit on average. Depending on which source you look at, the average insurance price is quoted at between £900 and £1,000. So the gross profit makes up 12% of the revenue which is unbelievable for an industry of this kind where your turnover should be almost entirely funding the costs.