Paulzx

Well funnily enough the chap at the garage said he thought it might have been a crack in the paint because if you look carefully at the paint finish, this particular wheel looks to have been re-furbed and a very slight 'orange peel' effect in the paint is noticeable whereas the factory ones look completely smooth. The cracks are not on the front face of the spoke, they are about 10 to 15mm length starting from the edge of the side of the spoke, i may see if i can get a photo but to be honest it's hard to spot. Has anyone actually had one of these wheels collapse on the spokes?

Hoping for some pointers here... Had my GT4 serviced at the dealers yesterday, and they have given an advisory that the car is unsafe to drive due to one of the alloy spokes being cracked. Having had a look at this when I collected the car, there appears to be a very feint hairline crack in the offside rear alloy, I wouldn't have ever noticed it but the technician who did the service noticed it, removed the wheel and looked behind the spoke and declared it a genuine crack, therefore the integrity of the wheel is compromised and now unsafe to drive. I had to bring it the short journey home anyway because I can't leave it at the garage for however long it takes me to sort this out, of course they were willing to keep it there and order another wheel for me at the cost of £900 but naturally I wanted to have a sound around before doing anything. I doubt this can be repaired? If there is no option except to buy a new wheel, where is the best place to get that other than nissan?

Ah... not any more. A few years back a burglar broke into a house in the same town I lived in. The home owner caught the guy and gave him a severe leathering with a baseball bat. The burglar tried to take the owner to court and the judge just threw it out laughing at the guy. Since then there have been several cases on the news of burglars being beaten up or even killed and its been regarded as perfectly reasonable in order to defend your home. Where you do have to be careful unfortunately is with regards to what is classed as "reasonable". For instance, if I happened to be cleaning my gun and then shot a burglar then that might be regarded as a little excessive. But, if i beat him around the head with a lump of wood, then that may be classed as okay. Hmm.. I would be very careful of this because we are not yet at the point legally in this country where you can extract your revenge on a burglar without consequence, like you can in some countries. Not sure about the baseball bat story because you would still have to show it was reasonable defense to use it. The problem with the reasonable force issue is that firstly, you can only retaliate with similar threat to what you are confronted with, i.e. if the burglar isn't armed then you can't use a weapon either, you can't use more force than they do. The second point is that what some consider to be 'reasonable' after the event doesn't have much bearing on how people react in the heat of the moment. In some countries you can dish out a good hiding and ask questions later, simply because someone is in your home when they shouldn't be, but the law isn't like that here, even though they are talking about revising this type of thing.

Blimey, some real nonsense been written in this thread, to be expected in the hamilton vs. button fan debate i suppose. Being a particularly long time F1 fan but not really a mclaren fan or JB/LH fan I would say from an objective point of view it would appear that the two mclaren drivers are very capable but various abilities come to the fore in particular circumstances. Button doesn't appear to be as impatient and therefore is better placed to put in a performance as he did. lewis is starting to look a bit desperate with the realisation that they cannot really out perform red bull regularly enough, which is probably hard to swallow when you come in to F1 already in a winning team, or a team with a car that can win you the championship. I think what a lot of people are missing is that the most interesting part of sunday is how vettel dropped the car under pressure from button, he's obviously struggling with the notion that his car is no longer quick enough to allow him to scamper off into the distance without a worry, especially seeing as wet conditions somewhat negated the extra aerodynamic performance of the red bull, and we all saw what happened when it came down to just the driving. It was by no means the best drive of all time but it was impressive.

why does a wrap de value a car? For two reasons - and this may be an opinion rather than across the board but it's still common sense... For a prospective buyer, the scenario of removing a wrap should you decide you no longer want it, is something very unnatractive, in fact most people would end up paying to have that professionally removed. Secondly, if you're buying a car with a wrap, you can't easily see the condition of the paint underneath, i.e. doing the wrap in the first place to hide your scratched or damaged paint. I would never buy a wrapped car, just walk away and buy something you can see properly all over.

Why oh why would you bother? Surely better off to put your money towards having the damaged paint re-done? And it de-values the car - unless you are willing to remove the wrap before selling, in which case you're back to square one...?

Coulthard is doing what he did before with Jake Humphries and Eddie Jordan as well as race commentary. I feel a bit sorry for Legard but he wasn't particularly inspiring as a commentator. Since Brundle arrived the trend is obviously now towards ex drivers and people who have worked first hand in the sport rather than just peole who can talk about it.

That is a lovely car, if you have the money how can you stop yourself?

From the cars you have come from Im not surprised, My 172 feels quicker until I look at the dash. There is no kick like a turbo or high end power like a 172 just a nice smooth curve. Its great for driving spirited without touching the limiter. My 300zx twin turbo felt a lot faster than my 350z GT4, it isn't, but the power delivery in the 300 was a lot more brutal, realistically though, the 300 seemed more dangerous because it wasn't as stable at higher speeds, particularly in bends. But standard Z's are only 276bhp - it's lively but it's not the same experience as some of the 400bhp sports cars around, or a TVR etc but at least when you run a 350z you know it's not absolutely necessary to have AA breakdown recovery...

Thanks Alex, sounds like this may be the way to go. How much is the full service pack? Naturally the garage isn't going to like this very much because they will lose the profit from the parts, but I will get a price from them just to do the labour, they could still do me on the labour costs so we'll see what the outcome is.

Thanks chaps. I'm in Isle of Wight, so talking to the local nissan dealer here. What they're saying is the plugs are £18 each but the labour is 2hrs extra hence the steep price. I'm guessing it would be back down to £147 if I don't have the plugs done. One of the problems here is that I don't know what everyone else is being charged for a standard service and a P1 & plugs service so I don't really have any comparison. I suppose 5yrs is a long time to have the original plugs. Is it a fact that the plugs will deteriorate over that time even on such low mileage?

I was wondering what you guys would do here, I have two issues I want to resolve, firstly the servicing cost and secondly the changing of the spark plugs. To summarise my situation, I bought my GT4 in march this year, it's had a full nissan service history, all services were carried out 12 monthly around december time and it's due it's 5th service which is apparently a P1 service with new spark plugs. The car has done 21,000 miles from new. The costs I've been quoted are as follows: £147.00 for a regular service or £354.00 for the spark plug change P1, reading some of the figures on the site that sounds a bit dear to me? Second thing is whether to change the plugs. Obviously nissan say it has to be done on this P1, the guy at the garage said that realistically because of the low use of the car the plugs are probably only half way through their life and therefore I could do the service without the plug change and maybe just do it at the next service or whenever deemed appropriate. Whilst I don't like the idea of wasting money on new plugs, I don't want to do anything to mess up the servicing history either. What do the rest of you do here, should the plugs be done religiously on the P1 or do you not bother? Cheers Paul

Have to say that I used up the last of my super resin polish recently and it seemed like a good product. Having gone back to the vehicle after using the polish there were definately flies on the car so i do think there is something in this theory

Actually it is pretty realistic for a game. if you play F1 2010 with the fuel and tyre simulation on, rules on, damage on and no traction control, you've got a realistic challenge on your hands and multiplayer is very good if you have some decent people to race against too

Be very careful dealing with this particular individual. I bought a blank key fob from him, he assued me it would work for the car etc but after having the key cut, it transpired that the blank didn't fit in the fob because the locating hole for the small screw was the wrong size. He messed me about like you wouldn't believe over this, even claiming he hadn't had the returned key back (which had been signed for recorded delivery). After i threatened him with getting ebay involved he finally returned to me the key, cut for my car, already attached to a fob. I don't know exactly what he did to make it work but i had the feeling that it wouldn't have happened at all had i not threatened him, so anyone doing this, beware!

i recently raced a cayman s round thruxton, nice car but quite honestly i think my GT4 is comparable, considering the price, the cayman isn't exactly in a totally different league. it does have good poise, and it does look good, the interior is nothing to write home about and if i'm honest, the gear selection is not the most positive i've ever used. but i've never owned a porsche so i would consider 'trading up' from the zed to one of these, i can see why a lot of people think the cayman is a natural progression from a zed, but i also think a lot of that has to do with the brand kudos also. it's definately not in a different league for performance say compared to a GTR which obviously is a much different proposition to a zed. but zeds are a 'relatively' cheap great car for the money. i've had nothing but admiring comments since i bought mine

am i right in thinking you have to manually switch TC off each time you start the car because it automatically sets it to on each time you start the engine?

GT5 isn't out yet, i'm guessing you mean Prologue? The 350z & 370z should be well modeled in Gt5 as they use those cars for testing quite a bit Unfortunately can't say the same for the 350z in NFS Shift..

Over the years I think the Stig was in fact six or seven drivers in total. Ben Collins may well have had the longest stint but there were a few. In fact, Damon Hill I think, stepped in to do one of the F1 stints on that show. Does anyone even care though? I doubt it, Ben Collins isn't even a household name so to most of us it still could be anyone. On a side note I think Top Gear has de-generated into little more than a cartoon now. It very rarely offers up any valid car journalism now as opposed to what it was like some years ago

the clutch was burning simply from the guy resting his foot on the pedal? wouldn't he have to actually engage the clutch to cause it to burn?

Thanks for the info mate. So it seems the birdview is pretty useless then if updating it is limited, is it the same deal with the later cars too? Guessing the 370 must have a different sat nav altogether? I'll ask Nissan - whilst being firmly seated with some good smelling salts to hand

Managed to find a few threads on this subject but no real definate conclusion.. I know Nurrish does the replacement all singing all dancing unit but for now I would like to keep the birdview if possible because I only use the sat nav maybe once or twice a year, so it would be handy for me to have it in good working order if possible. The car is UK 2005, don't know what version the sat nav is but everything else is still original in the car so i expect it's as originally purchased. The birdview does work, but curiously it seems to try and send you the wrong way at certain turns so it's obviously not working 100% properly. Can it be updated - without spending a fortune? and does anyone have a fully working version of this thing? Cheers Paul

plus, who actually cares what he's been up to?

the dispute between the two parties you were referring to is bad enough to create such bad feeling that it's obvious the ex-convict did it? so matey has some balls doing that to the car knowing you're likely to suss it straight away if it were me i would say nothing to anyone about this, get the car repaired, wait until you move then leave him a nice present on his own car. no confrontations, no accusations just two very unfortunate occurances. lets hope he doesn't read this forum eh?!

quite often with these things I find it's the act against you personally that angers more so than the actual damage because if matey did it and it's that obvious, then he will know you'll know it's him, so it's a bit like he's inviting you to a confrontation. what doesn't make sense though is that by doing it to your wifes car and not yours does not avoid a confrontation with you because you will take it up whichever car was done, most people would do that. are you sure it was them - or him? are you positive this wasn't done to the car somewhere else and no one had a chance to notice that side of the car for a day or two? very risky going on to someone's property to key a car because you could never be sure you aren't seen doing it, whatever you do, one thing i have learned from experience, is make sure you have your facts straight before stepping down that path.