rabbitstew

Speed doesnt kill tho. Inappropriate speed does - which boils down to dangerous driving at the end of the day.

 

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.

Nope - the government use speed as a method of "weeding out the bad drivers" because its relatively easy, and makes lots of money.

 

To weed out people who actually cause the problems would cost money rather than generate it, and be a lot more difficult. So who is the one making death on our roads cheap, the drivers who have accidents, or successive governments who wont invest in a proper method of reducing it?

 

 

Its very easy to quantify and monitor the emissions of each vehicle using its rated emission level and recorded mileage each year, but why bother changing it when the current system of charging based on the level alone without taking into account usage generates billions from motorists who dont use their cars. I tax four, but Ill bet if I work out the total tons of CO2 I emit it will be less than some who may only have one car but do less mileage. So in an emissions based taxing system, which the VED is now supposed to be, is it fair that I pay four times as much if not more, for emitting less?

 

Its the same with the "speed kills". Yes it does, but its by no means the sole contributor, yet its targetted as though it is - because doing it properly is too difficult and doesnt make as much money for the treasury, so this half cocked scheme is being touted as the be all and end all by safety campaigners.

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!!!!

Good guide good guide!

 

Is the extraction method the same for 07+ models i.e. with sat nav as opposed to the cubby hole?

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.

 

And how many of those are caused by speeding? Not all of them thats for sure.

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.

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!

 

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.

Hey, im no longer the new guy! yey!

Sorry to hear about your work situation, not good. But, at least you are getting plenty of notice. In the past when ive been made reduntant ive only had a few weeks notice!

Personally id wait until you get laid off. You will get a few months salary as pay off depending on how long you have been there which in my case was 3 months pay - which easily lasted me about 8 months as I cut all my spending down big time.

Changing jobs or retraining is a hard one. I work in IT and have been into IT since I was 10 and my primary school got a BBC Model B computer. Noone else at my school, incl the teachers understood it, but within weeks I was programming games. Had a natural "geek" ability with computers so followed that through uni and into my jobs. But then people started thinking there was money in IT and every man, dog, builder, plumber, carpender etc. all did IT courses and jumped on the band wagen. I knew someone who was a receptionist at the local dole office on about £12k a year - she did a 3 day course in software testing and within 12 months was getting £45k a year. So, the IT market became flooded, people like myself who had been in IT all their life were made redundant and due to competition salarys plumeted. Now all those people who jumped on the band wagen are jumping off and going back to their old trades. The builders, plumbers and sparkys I know are all earning a small fortune - certainly loads more than me who is stupid enough to stay in IT because I enjoy it.

If I was to retrain I think id seriously look at becoming a plumber or builder. The builder 3 doors away from me drives a brand new Porsche GT3 (or 4... not sure which it is). I had a quote to fit a new boiler the other week and the plumbers wanted about £4k labour to fit it if I bought the boiler. In the end I got a mate to do it for a fraction of that and it only took him 2 days. £4000 for 2 days work isnt bad going and the guy was fully booked for about 2 months!!!!!

I get this all the time with my VW Golf. If i leave it more than 1 day then the pads seem to stick to the discs. In fact last winter when i left my car for 7 days whilst I was on holiday, as i drove off the pads were so stuck to the discs that it actually pulled the pads clean off the back plates!!! Okay, so they were due for replacement anyway having been on the car for 4 years and 80k miles, but even id never had that happen before!

Id drive carefully until you know exactly what the problem is. With my other halves car the engine warning light was on for about 8 months and didnt cause any problems - in that case id already done a full OBD scan and established that the problem was simply the cat converter on the way out.

Excellent... knew you guys would come up with option D. I`ll give that a go and see what the DVLA say.

Cheers.

Don't you get a "cooling off" period, of like 14 days?

 

So if you cancel within that time, you get ALL your cash back?

Not sure, as surely if they did that everyone would be just doing this all the time and getting "free" insurance?

After waking up at 4:40am as im unable to sleep through thinking of this, and spending several hours searching online ive found an option c.

Option C: Get new 1 years insurance policy (wont be able to use my 18 years ncb as that can only be used on one vehicle), so cheapest quote is £500ish. Then cancel this after 1 week, which means I should get a full refund minus 1 weeks insurance cost + their "admin" fees.

The guy above is right, it goes P1, P2, P1, P3 and repeats. I believe there are "optional" bits on the services like fluids replaced etc which you pay extra for if you require them. Im not aware of a "big" service at the 6 year mark.

Those prices dont seem too bad, but id still shop around and get several quotes. Even different main dealers vary their prices.

Well, thanks to the new "continuous insurance" law that the government has introduced this year I am in a bit of a pickle.

Just bought my 350z and got free 7 days insurance via Aviva in order for the dealer to tax it and let me drive it home. Now, I need to sell my old car.

I was planning to just leave the 350z on the driveway, un-insured but taxed and use my old car over the next week until its sold. Then simply transfer my current insurance over to the 350z and use that instead. Nice, simple and easy. The government will already make money out of me as both cars are fully taxed and MOT`d even though I will only be using one.

But now I find out that because both cars are taxed they both will need to be insured. So, I need to insure both cars even though I will only be using one. Either that or cancel the road tax on one of them.

So option A. Cancel road tax on 350z - I have already lost 2 weeks tax on it because when you get road tax out, it goes from the beginning of the month. On the other hand, when you cancel the tax you "loose" the money for the month you are on. Then in 1 weeks time renew the road tax, again having to pay for the whole month. This will cost me about £60 extra in road tax just to cancel / reapply.

Option B. Try to get some sort of short term insurance for 1 week to enable me to drive both cars. Now this seems like a sensible and cheap option. Ive 18 years NCB, am nearly 40 and not had any claims or accidents. And, if i am driving my old cheap banger of a car instead of a high risk 350z the risk to the insurance company is a lot lower. So, I would have thought insurance companies would be very keen to encourage me to drive my low risk car rather than the 350z.

But no. Premium for 12 months on my old banger car comes in at 250quid, but the cheapest "short term" quote ive had is for £160 for just 21days insurance.

Multi car policies are even worse. My 350z is costing 750quid a year to insure, and yet if I tell the insurance company I want to drive an 11 year old golf diesel 50% of the time in order to reduce my running costs and lower the risk of anything happening to the 350z by 50%, they jack this premium up to £1200 !!!! When really id have thought they would reduce it!!!

So its looking more like option a is the only way forwards...

I really dont understand why insurance cant be based upon the driver and not a specific car. They should look at the drivers experience and history. Then look at the highest risk vehicle they will be driving and base the insurance quote on that. If the driver then wants to drive any lower risk vehicles they should welcome this free of charge (and encourage it) as if an accident happens they will be paying loads less out.

Argh!

I noticed the same thing on mine. When i looked under the back i was shocked at how rusty some bits looked, esp for a car which had done 20k miles odd. In fact it looked rustier than my 175k mile old work hack i drive. So, sounds like its all "normal" !

This guy just got a 12 month warranty:

 

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=46883

 

I certainly did. I was actually quite surprised as ive never bought from a main dealer before and am only used to getting next to no warranty from car dealers.

That clutch thing tho.. got me worrying now, as mine mates a whirring noise when its in neutral which goes as soon as you put the clutch pedal down. Its sounds a lot like the noise you get from a worn thrust bearing on some of my other cars. Is that a "normal" sound for a 350z?