sasha@lazytrips

Thank you for sorting me out with all the hardware!

I'm alright in Russia as I have dual nationality. Belarus should definitely be entertaining! Don't think they see too many British cars at the border! (Reportedly <10 British cars drive into Belarus a year)

Nope. Those are the Rota GTR wheels with a natural red lip. These look a fair bit more scuffed 50k miles down the line but still holding up!

Update: Visas - all done Car Paperwork - now all done (except Belarus insurance to be purchased at the border) Places to stay - 90% booked All parts & new tyres delivered. Going onto the car tomorrow! Exciting times!

Mileage should end up at somewhere around the 5k mark before any detours - this seems to be about average for our trips!

Lazy Rally 2014: Eastern Europe It's August, the weather is great and the sun i shining. So I thought I'd go on a little road trip. Naturally enough my comrade Tom (brother-in-law) has decided to come along and we got the map out to randomly point at places in Europe we hadn't yet made it out to. When: Saturday 23rd August - Sunday 31st August Who's going: Just the two of us Why are we doing it? Why not? Sounds like fun! Check points: > Krakow > Minsk > Moscow > St Petersburg > Gdansk > Bremen More details to come! Here is a nice practical practical solution we have come up with for the trip. Comes complete with a set of oversized "soft and comfy" wheels, bone-shattering "smooth ride" suspension and decibel-pumping "quiet as a whisper" double pine apple guns at the back and various other comfort-exuding gadgetry. Latest Preparations for the trip are underway and we are setting off in about a week and a half. Stay tuned - plenty of photographic updates shall be upcoming! Task #1 is to get the car ready in time! TO DO LIST - updated 15/08/2014 Visas: DONE Car Paperwork: DONE New tyres: DONE New brakes: DONE Rusty bit replacements: DONE Fire extinquishers, breathalisers, triangles, etc, etc: All purchased including an emergency jerry can Wobbly plastic bits: DONE Places to stay: 90% booked

So I'm off on a little road trip in two weeks and could do with a few bits and bobs fairly quickly before I go. I haven't been around the owners club much for a while so if I can be pointed in the right direction to get these without remortgaging the house (i.e. Nissan prices) #4 and #5 are pretty urgent compared to the others. 1. New standard Nissan gear knob 2. New standard cupholder thing 3. One of those double cup holder units that fit into the ashtray bit just behind the gear knob 4. Two bits for the rear suspension set -up (new): The two long bits that go across the bottom of the car wheel to wheel - the flat strut brace with the jagged edges that sits underneath in front of the rear wheels and the curved stabiliser tube thing that sits just behind + all the fixings for these (both have rusted pretty badly) 5. Good standard GT Brembo grooved discs (DBA ?) 6. Thick boot mat 7. Good quality new front mats 8. Car cover (not as essential as the above, but would be interested in price) Any recommendations appreciated! Thanks, Sasha

Right the opposite end of London which with roadworks one way and the Dartford tunnel the other way will mean no weekday travel and only very rare weekends so unfortunately that'll be a no go. CC - sent you a message matey but again looks like it's a bit far & will be out of my price range

Hi all, Does anybody know of a garage I can rent somewhere not too far from the Kent/Surrey border (Sevenoaks)? I want to stick a car into the garage and do a bit of work on it on occasional weekends/rare weekdays. Not really fussed about details as long as it's secure and I can get there in reasonable time + it would need a bit of space so I can actually do work on the car. If anyone knows of anywhere or can point me to a good place to look, I'd appreciate it. Thanks, Sasha

While I am in no way advocating not wearing seatbelts, in some extreme crashes they can do more harm than good. I personally knew a guy who died in a car crash where a car with 5 people was wiped out by a truck. Only one guy in the car wasn't wearing a seatbelt and he was the only one who survived because he got thrown out through the windscreen.

Have been looking for a very very long time and looked all over Europe as well as across the pond. Think the fact is that unless I win the lottery I ain't gonna be buying a perfect example as these cost more than my mortgage Since I've moved down to Kent, we only ever really use 1 car at any one time with rare exceptions, so this shouldn't be a problem Think this will not quite be the daily driver the zed has been over the last few years.

So I've been looking at potential replacements for the zed as it is going to go at some point and have gone round to look at a car this morning. We're talking a fantastic looking large american V8 with many litres and ponies under the hood. And here is the dilemma: 1. This is pretty much my dream car and I have been drooling ever since seeing it. It's a unique opportunity to own something that I could only dream of before and these cars are appreciating nicely. (+It actually has very decent useable rear seats and an enormous boot) 2. As is typically the case with these things (Let's just say it is much older than I am), there is no radio in it at the moment, a few wires here and there (e.g. found the wiring for the 12V not going anywhere), the aircon is blowing hot air (typical in about 90% of these things), yada, yada, yada. Heart says get the thing, keep it forever and make it into a perfect car over time by tackling the known and inevitable unknown gremlins one at a time. Head says steer clear and get something modern and practical instead. Anyone been in this position before? Anyone have any advice? Argh! P.S. I am not going to mention which specific car I'm looking at as the number of these around this side of the pond can be counted on a pair of hands - I don't want to encourage anyone

Have you driven these? I had a big test drive in one before getting the zed as well as the Alfa GT (both with the 3.2 block iirc). Pretty darn awful for what looks fairly nice. Its rear seats are laughable even compared to something like a TT, visibility is a fair bit worse than the zed and the responsiveness/agility/power delivery/torque made my old Megane feel nice to drive.

Get a bike (the pedal-driven variety), make up some amusing/rude fake numberplate & stick it on the back, find a quiet residential 20mph speed camera. Make it flash all evening.

Only 76 yellow GT4s were ever made, so on the proviso that a few have since been murdered & half are not in any kind of good condition, you're going to be fairly hard-pressed to find one quickly. If your heart is set on it and you're prepared to wait, then by all means keep looking.

Not claiming to be an expert, but have driven mine and several other zeds for 3 years now, been there done that with almost all typical problems that you can get with them and have heard the noises when things go wrong. Can't do anything during the day, but if you get the car & you're anywhere near Sevenoaks in the evening, I can give the car a once over for you.

First thing I did when I bought my car is take apart my boot and disconnect the stupid parking sensors that were built in. Never found it a problem to park a relatively small car and the deafening Nissan beeping every time you stick it in reverse was giving me a proper head ache.

Good stuff. I would still personally go for more ponies in the processor & a new gen graphics card for the same money & build it myself, but glad you got the machine sorted

I can't understand how people like this look!!! Surely it must handle terribly? +1. For me, that looks no better than barryboys in corsas with wheels sticking out, pineapple gun hanging underneath the car on pieces of string & a cardboard spoiler stuck on the back. Tyre wear with that camber must also be fairly amusing.

I have 285-wide 452s on the back and 255 on the front (should have gone for 265 in hindsight) and I get more than enough grip at all times. Even powering 3/4 of the way round a mid-sized roundabout, I would have to drive like a complete numpty to slide the car. My personal opinion is that despite sticking the 18 and 17 inch wheels on the cars as standard, when you look at the size of the arches, size of brakes, etc and feel the traction differences, you could reasonably believe that the car was always designed for the 19 inch business.

Still a lot of money to be saved out there. When I compared my rig spec that I built to the online prices of a number of these customising companies, I was still getting a lot more computer for a lot less money and compared to places like Dell, we are talking multiples rather than percentage differences. The margins there must be pretty healthy as I'm assuming they can source their components at a much cheaper price than my buying on ebuyer.

any stock grey BMW 320 diesel should fit the bill.

I think it really depends on how the valuation was provided. If you spoke to the dealer over the phone and just gave the registration and were given a price, then fair enough. You can take off whatever nice bits you want and put it back to standard + cash in the tax. If the dealer actually saw the car and evaluated it based on condition, etc, then in my personal opinion cashing in the tax would not be appropriate because it would naturally lose the dealer potential value in selling the car. But hey that's just me.

I think even the average user will notice a significant difference between an AMD and an Ivybridge Intel at the moment, but that wouldn't really be a fair comparison because of the current gap between the two. The way with these two is that they continually spur the other on. It wasn't all that long ago when AMD's first 2/4/6 core processors were lightning years ahead of the contemporary Intel ones (~2005 - 2008). I'm sure AMD will come out with something awesome like they have recently done with their new graphics cards which came and wiped the smirk off Nvidia with superior performance on every count for a fraction of the price.

AMD has been behind by a long way for quite some time now. Since Intel released the Sandybridge processors in late 2010 - early 2011, AMD got pretty much sunk as these have completely outperformed in both performance itself and price. If AMD do come in and launch something new soon, it'll be interesting to see how they compare to the Ivybridge Intel stuff, but as of right now there is no real comparison.