rabbitstew

My brothers first car was a Peugeot 206 Gti 1.9 and that cost him around 900quid to insure 3rd party. He was around 22 at the time tho, but had only just past his test.

Neil - thats mental. You must have a more understanding insurance company than I had!!!

had to laugh at the last picture, thought it was my gf for a minute then! lol.

Why is a teenager even considering trying to insure a 1.6 litre car? When I was 17 there was no way on earth I could afford to insure a car that size. Even a 1.3 was way out of my price range. In the end I had to get a 20 year old 850cc Mini and even that cost me nearly 500quid to insure 3rd party only. Maybe he should be looking at an old Fiat Panda or something. Okay, so £24k for insurance is a bit steep, but did this guy really be so stupid as to go out and buy a car without checking if he could insure it first?!?!!!

That looks awesome!!! Very nice indeed. If im not mistaken, its not got the GT pack which is probably the first ive seen for a while without it. Love the colour tho, in that light it looks much better than other azure blue ones ive seen. So clean! I need to get out and polish mine some more!!!!

Ive not seen any blue ones around Cambridge. Did see a dark midnight blue coupe with nismo exhaust on it, in Tesco Barhill last week but thats about it. I`ll keep my eye out as im in Cambridge every day pretty much.

I had the misfortune of dealing with Swiftcover for a friend who made an insurance claim last year and they were next to useless. The bodyshop they used had to take the car back 5 times to rectify faults and the communication between them and the insurer was terrible. The car then had loads of new problems when it came back which Swiftcover claimed were "normal service items" - all which were perfectly fine before the accident. In the end my friend got so fed up with Swiftcover she took the car to her local garage and asked them to find the problem. They came back with a long list of items which were now faulty and an estimate of about £1500 to fix. After several heated calls to Swiftcover they said these things happen and because my friend couldnt prove that they were as a result of the accident then they would not cover them. In the end my friend sold her car off to a car dealer for about 1/2 what it was worth prior to the accident as it just wasnt safe for her to drive anymore. To make matters worse, because the accident was her fault, she lost 4 years NCB.

Same here. I do around 500 miles a week, so cant quite get away with filling up once a week.

I was wondering that as mine has satnav in it also - so im not sure yet how i would access the top screws on the bose unit. If I get time at the w/end i`ll try and fit mine and let you know how it goes. Didnt get time this w/end to have a go at this, but looking at my unit, where you say "pop up the tray in the cubby hole and undo the 2 screws holding the top of the bose unit in". On mine, cos its got sat nav, im guessing id have to crowbar out the sat nav controls which should then give me access to the screws holding the top of the bose unit in. But, i dont want to end up damaging the sat nav controls. Anyone have any idea how these come out? Can i just slide a credit card around them and pop them out?

Out of interest, on the way home from work last week one night I thought I would play a game. What I would do, is everyone I saw who was either speeding, driving dangerously, changing lanes without indicating, hogging the outside lane, lane drifting, tailgating, driving with no headlamps, talking on their mobile etc. etc. I would give them 3 points. I would then count the number of points id given out over my journey home. In the 40 odd miles my drive took, I ended up having given out a total of 120 points nearly. These were all things which the speed cameras would not have typically flagged.

My usual road home was messed up tonight because of an accident, so took the back roads home, roof down, heaters on, stereo blasting out and what a cracking ride home it was! Got home and temp was showing 1 degrees and so i got some strange looks from the neighbours, but who cares! If the roadster is this much fun already, roll on summer!!!!!!!

Yep, thats true, but in the statistics they just have "speed". So anyone having an accident within the legal limit, but still too fast for the conditions, one of the factors goes down as "speed". Then they use these "speed" figures to justify cameras because of the numbers of accidents involving speed. Its all a massive con to justify the easy method of making money using cameras rather than police who have discretion. Totally agree. But i also seem to recall seeing some figures that even with the "doctored" statistics, speeding was only responsible for a very very small number of accidents overall. Just emphasises that they only want to line their pockets rather than actually make things safer.

Speed doesnt kill tho. Inappropriate speed does - which boils down to dangerous driving at the end of the day. At the end of the day, it seems the goverment or police are only interesting in making money rather than making a safer fairer system. Your point about the road tax is very true. I tax 3 vehicles and insure 3 separate vehicles. But, I can only drive one at once. So in theory why should I need to pay 3 lots of tax and 3 lots of insurance. It should all be based upon person - what risk are they, what risk is the vehicles they are going to drive and how much emissions is that person likely to be putting into the enviroment as a total over that year.

Strangely enough all the 350z`s i looked at had the GT pack, so I think if you bought one without this, it would really stand out in the market place as a negative point. Id try and buy from an enthusiast if possible, although thats not always possible. Service history and condition would be more important to me than mileage - but with your budget you should be able to find something easily enough id have thought.

wow, looks awesome!!!!

I was wondering that as mine has satnav in it also - so im not sure yet how i would access the top screws on the bose unit. If I get time at the w/end i`ll try and fit mine and let you know how it goes.

Ah but not in the polices eyes. Theres a road near me which has a 50mph speed limit on it, its a very long straight bit of road with 1 bend on it. There have been several accident on there, one of the last ones was when some guy decided to overtake a car on the only bend on the road, whilst a lorry was coming the other direction. Needless to say he crashed his car. A local news paper got a speed camera and sat there for a day recording speeds and said that 80% of all cars on that road were speeding. Clearly 80% of cars on that road were not crashing or having accidents, so its OBVIOUS that speed had nothing to do with it, its a case of DANGEROUS DRIVING. Any idiot can keep within the speed limit and still drive dangerously or drunk or with no insurance / tax / mot or license. So what did the police do? Put more patrol cars on the road to catch the dangerous drivers? Nope.. they invested £400k in SPECS speed cameras for the road. Where is the logic in that? Similarly with the a14 in Cambridge... average speed from Huntington to Cambridge (15miles) is around 20mph (in a 70mph limit). There are no end of accidents on the road and broken down vehicles. Sometimes it can take 2hours to do the 15miles. What was the answer, bearing in mind the average speed is never anywhere near the actual speed limit? Yep, SPECS speed cameras all installed. What difference has that made? Absolutely none. Average speed is still around 20mph, still broken down lorries and numerous accidents. Only people it will actually catch are those motorists who speed late at night or in the early hours of the morning when theres no traffic on the road.

Some use the camera through the side doors instead. I got done last year, id just driven about 80 miles, passed no end of cameras and even did 15miles on a road which had SPECS cameras, all without any problems, then as I was overtaking a lorry on a duel carriage way, i pulled back in and got flashed by a camera van which was parked on the side of the road. I was doing 81 in a 70. The funny thing was that there was a massive long queue of cars behind me waiting for me to pull in so they could overtake me. I was gutted, as id had the cruise control set at 70mph for nearly all my journey as im paranoid about speeding and id only accelerated slightly to get by the lorry. Got 3 points and 60quid fine, and it increased my insurance premium by about 10%. If they have got you, you`ll get a letter through within 2 weeks. My local police force obviously had nothing better to do as the letter arrived litterally the next day on my door mat!. I actually wrote to them and asked if I could do the speed awareness course instead, as a few years back my brother got rammed off the road by a dangerous hit and run driver - writing his car off completely. That driver when the police caught up with him was allowed to go on a speed awareness course instead of having points. But the police replied that my "offense" didnt qualify for the speed awareness course. Clearly it wasnt regarded as dangerous enough. Maybe if id actually rammed the police van then that would be classed as "dangerous" enough!

Excellent. I got my lead through this morning in the post, so if i get time this w/end i`ll be trying this out. Ive got the Sat Nav in mine, so am thinking about running the lead through to the storage compartment next to the handbrake instead if its long enough.

It wasnt a rabbit was it? lol!!!!!! nope... my missus wont let me have any rabbits.... dont know why......

Have to say im not a Chris Moyles fan at all. But have listened to some of this and there have been some really funny bits. And to raise that sort of money in such a short time is incredible.

Depends what its made of. If its plastic you can weld it. Ive done that loads on motorbike panels and the repair has been good as new and not re-cracked.

Christ, this was 60quid last time i looked, now its 1600quid!!!!

Mines a pretty quiet night too. Having a few drinks at home with the missus, our pet died this night last year so its kinda ruined Paddys day for us. Still, quite fancy some Guiness now, havent had any for ages!

Tough decision really, but ive been there and done it. My choice was a VW Golf, PD engine. Does 60mpg daily on my commute to work. You can get the mk5 in a 140 or 170bhp version, pretty quick, easy to drive. Very cheap to run and service. Servicing mine cost me 60quid every 10k miles. Brake discs /pads cost about 70quid a full set front/back and lasts 80k. Of course you aint gunna have the noise or experience of the v6, but the cash you`ll save on a daily basis is huge. Then, in a few years time when you are better off, flog it and get something mad again. VW`s hold their value and so you wont loose huge amounts.