rabbitstew

Was £10,500 when I checked the other day, so basically the "trade" or "auction" price which is roughly 25% lower than retail.

From my previous look at values, it sounds like they have basically offered you the trade value - i.e. the price a garage would buy it for, rather than the price you would have to pay for it. As others have said, tell them its a black edition and give them the examples of the 2 current ones for sale at £15k and £16k - which whilst they have slightly lower mileage is a good starting point. Id expect yours to be priced at £14k at a garage to reflect the slightly higher miles.

Changing bembo pads really are very easy. Im sure theres lots of guides online, but when I did mine, it really was a peace of cake.

Actually, its nearly 3 years thinking about it... May 2016 I got it! Has absolutely flown by.

I have just had to look up Audi R8`s - I didn't realise they were so cheap now. Less than £30k for some. Mad! And yet Gallardo`s are still double that. There's a lot of performance cars out there for your budget, but don't forget to factor in insurance costs due to your age. With regards to the Porsche thing, I too never liked them. I thought they all looked the same. However, when I was in a similar boat (looking for a daily performance car) with a similar budget a few years back I started looking at them for the first time. I really wanted a Gallardo, but I also needed 4 seats in order to drop the kids off at school etc... which kinda limited my choices. I started off reading up on 911`s, all the various models, then figured I may as well go straight for a 996 Turbo as they were around £30k or less. As with anything, the more you look into something the more your budget increases and increases and I ended up with a 997 Turbo. Initially I didn't like it, but after having the suspension setup correctly I loved it. 2.5 years and 35,000 miles later I cant think of anything else I could get for the same money which would be as good. Its practical for shopping & kids in the back, does 28mpg on my daily commute, with nearly 700bhp now there`s not much quicker which I come up against, it handles like its on rails and with 4WD and engine in the boot the grip is unbelievable. As for the "all look the same" thing, that's actually an advantage to me now as I can leave it parked on the road over night, or in Tesco carpark and noone even bats an eyelid. And yet for those who know, the sleek curvy lines, the wide hips, the massive air scoops and the boot spoiler make the car look pretty good.

57,000 i guessed based upon MOT & Mileage history.

As a guide to the value, I have just had a look around and there are only a couple of black editions for sale atm. Based on those I would expect a rough retail value of £13,995 based on your mileage, and a trade value of £10,500 (roughly 25% less than retail). We buy any car would offer £10,500 for the car which matches up with the trade price.

That seems to be the best solution tbh. You can always add the bbq space on it afterwards - thats how my old builder used to work. He loved to push things to the limits. He got permission to build a double garage in his garden. He built the pitched roof nice & steep on it, and made sure the ceiling height of the garage was nice & high inside. Once all finished & signed off, he then did a loft conversion on the garage adding 2 rooms an a shower room in the roof and converted downstairs into a kitchen & living area. He then extended the back of the garage under permitted development adding further rooms, before turning the roof of the permitted development into an outside balcony/bbq area.... So now he has a 4 bedroom detached house instead of double garage...

In actual fact, depending upon what you are building you may not even need planning permission. When I looked into it, you are allowed to build a single story side or rear extension up to a certain size without needing planning permission under permitted development. If you want to build out front of your property then you need planning. Its also best keeping it 1 meter away from any boundary else you may have to get a party wall agreement with your neighbour. Id be tempted to pull down the old outhouse anyway - if its your building then he cant do much. Is the wall yours or his?

Surely the other neighbours wont care less as its nothing to do with them. With regards to the outbuilding using a retaining wall - maybe you can get a builder or someone to confirm its fine then have a chat with the jerk. I objected to one of my neighbours planned extension, simply because currently my whole back garden & rear of my house is not overlooked and very private. With his planned extension it meant he would have a balcony & seating area directly overlooking my garden. In fairness to him, he came around my house & we sat down together with his plans and agreed a compromise. I wasnt still 100% happy but I was pleased he made the effort to speak to me and was prepared to change his plans enough to take into account my views. His plans were approved. I think technically his original plans would have also been approved as overlooking your neighbours garden and ruining their privacy isnt a good enough reason to object. Alternatively, can you alter the plans so the new garage goes right up to and includes that wall? so you would be replacing the old outbuilding with a new garage?

My family have had a couple of cars written off in the past and our experience was as follows. Insurance company will send out an assessor who will price up the damage and take photos. They go away, price up repairs and decide if its a write off or not. Its usually if the repair value is more than a certain percentage of the actual cars market value. If its a write off, they will send you an offer. That first offer is usually a ridiculously low one as they know a certain percentage of people will just assume thats what its worth and accept it. What you need to do then is to give the insurance company examples of identical cars currently for sale, so they can see what the market price is. i.e. what it would cost you today to go and buy the same car, same options, same condition, history & mileage. In our case, the insurance companies immediately agreed with our prices and matched the market price. With regards to the car then after, with one vehicle the insurance company simply said to us we could either keep it for free, or they would arrange to dispose of it for us for free. We kept it, and sold the remains of it on ebay for a nice bit of money. With the other car, the insurance company offered to sell it to us. We looked at what prices we could get for it in bits vs their asking price and decided it wasnt really worth it. Either way, the whole point of having insurance is that you should not end up in a worse off position than you were before - they have to make sure you can get back into the same car as you had before. I have heard stories from people saying insurance companies give you the "trade price" for your car. In my experience they dont, and why would they? You cant walk into Nissan and buy a like-or-like replacement car for "trade price" - you have to pay the market price!

Excellent viewing, im surprised you didnt pile into the back of the GTR the amount of corner speed you had compared to him. And I had to laugh when he went off-roading..

^^^^^^ what he said!! The other bits you have fitted dont really have much effect on engine power itself.

With regards to planning, the councils take very little consideration for neighbours opinions. The people who own the building next to my wifes flat built a massive 2nd storey extension on their property, completely destroying the views from her flat and blocking 50% of light coming into her rooms. It also caused manic parking issues with people trying to visit the new building and having nowhere to park. It wasnt just my wife who was affected, about 30 of the local residents complained against the planning application, but it still got approved and built. Its also worth noting there are 2 parts to getting planning approved. The town council gives its "advice" first. They can advise against an application. However it really means nothing as its ultimately the District Council`s planning committee which decide. When I put an application in for my hefty house extension last year, i spoke to all my neighbours - they were all fine. Planning officer came out, inspected the site and was more than happy. Notice went in the papers, no complaints. Goes to town council and some 200 year old councillor who had no experience in building/planning complained. So, it went to the planning committee who laughed in the face of the old councillor, said she was being ridiculous and wasting their time and promptly approved it.

I thought you`d have measured up before you started making the chasis, as those Ford Pops are mega narrow cars! doh! How much wider does it need to be? Still, a lot of people would have just chopped the top off 350z and welded the pop shell on top.

Checking old cars MOT history very often makes for interesting viewing. The other year I checked an old Golf GT TDi I used to own only to find that it now had less miles on it than when I sold it 6 years previously. A bit of trawling back through MOT`s and I worked out that someone clocked over 100,000 miles off it shortly after buying it from me. Unfortunately the online history only went back to after I sold it so I couldnt pinpoint the exact year it happened.

Firstly 350z vs 370z is really down to personal taste. I had a 350z roadster and when it was back at Nissan for some work they lent me a 370z roadster for the week. Visually I preferred the looks of the 350z, I felt the sharp lines on the 370z didnt look as good. Interior wise however, the 370z was miles better - but then it was a much newer car and so it should be. The media/sat nav system especially was miles better. The fully electric good release was nice too, rather than the manual release clasp you have on the 350z - but thats only a minor point. My 350z was a HR, my logic at the time was I may as well go for the best 350z I could, so I paid a premium for it. Whether or not the difference between 276bhp and 313bhp is worth it, most people who have driven both seem to say the HR is a much better car. You can of course, pay extra and modify the older cars to get nearer HR performance if you wish. Id drive both if possible and see which you prefer. The 350z roadster can have issues with the hood. In general Nissan recommend not using the hood if its below a certain degree in temperature. They can stick half way down. A bit of help manually will help it. I found my roadster was great fun and did 22,000 miles in it over 18 months as a daily driver.

Nope, still the same for me, not enough spare time to hit the gym. Throughout all of 2018 I was unable to workout as my builder took over my garage to store all his building materials whilst the house was being extended. (i have my own gym in the garage). The builder subsequently did a runner, so ive spent the last 6 months spending all my spare time finishing off the house extension myself. So, weighing myself just before Christmas ive lost about 2 stone and weigh the same now as I did when I was 16. Its quite de-motivating, as all those t-shirts & shirts which were skin tight and I needed to buy bigger are now hanging off me like a sack of potatoes, and my jeans are falling down. I went to another wedding a couple of months back and the first thing people said to me was "wow, you have lost a lot of weight", which was quite demotivating after all the hard work it had taken to put some size on. Even my butcher is getting worried, as I used to buy £50 of meat off him every week and now I spend hardly anything. I am hoping to get some workouts in this year, but its even harder now as the wife bought a dog, which I have to spend 30mins in the morning & 30mins at night walking. Thats an hour I didnt have spare in the first place, but an hour i could have used working out. I could leave the dog, but if I didnt walk him he`d never get a walk and just ends up p!ssing all over my living room, which I then have to clean up.

Ive been running the PS4S on my daily driver for last 18 months and to say they are awesome is an understatement. The sheer level of grip & feedback is amazing. Not only that i've done around 20,000 miles in them and they are still nowhere near the wear bars. Compared to 12 months and 14,000 miles which killed the set of rubbish Pirelli P-Zeros which I had before hand.

Those tiles actually look the same as I put in the family bathroom when I did that 8 years back. Porcelain ones from B&Q if I remember correctly. I used black grout though. Looks very nice, although I thought stuff like trolley jacks etc and all the mechanical work I do in the garage would soon chip/damage them.

Tiles look good! Ive yet to get my 997 in the extended garage as its still full of rubbish. Still, been a busy month for me, fitted entire new kitchen - including doing plumbing myself, kitted out a utility room making use of the old kitchen, then stripped old kitchen out. Fitted roof speakers in living room and 75" TV on the wall with all wires hidden. Drylined the new porch and did a stud wall to create a new clockroom, plastered & painted it, also did the electrics to get a light in there. Next need to extend the LVT flooring out of the new open plan living room and throughout the rest of the downstairs area - about 40m2 I think. But in order to do that I need to strip the downstairs toilet & sink out in order to lay the new floor, then refit.... arrrrggghhhh!!!!!

Have to watch it doesnt start spinning around with the drill bit & do you an injury!

Should be able to use a normal centre punch and punch a small dent in it, then drill through it with a suitable sized drill bit. Might be hard to clamp it in a vice though without it getting squished!

I filled mine up this morning £1.37 a litre. Getting more and more expensive. Mind you, few years back I seem to remember paying more like £1.50 for super. Filling the zed up used to nearly hit £100 a go if I remember.

That was my thoughts too!