rabbitstew

Whilst in theory depreciation may be low (or nil) you have to factor in everything else. If you buy privately, you may want to buy an aftermarket warranty and have an inspection, Which will cost money. If you buy from a dealer you`ll probably get that piece of mind already, but then you`ll be paying 15% more than private. Servicing, tyres, warranty, (assuming anything else dont go wrong) over a year will soon add up. Plus you have to factor in any finance interest etc if you dont buy outright. Ive been looking at 911`s since last July and whilst the ones im looking at are holding their value or slightly increasing in value, i worked out that they would have to go up in price by about 15-.20% over the time I keep the car in order for it to be "free" motoring. It only then takes one major problem for it to be a real headache.

Thats what i was thinking, make a lovely summer house that!

Dont see why not. They are big enough to get a car in. Would have to measure the width to see if you could actually get out of the car door or not though.

Spotted this morning stuck in traffic outside St Neots on the A428. Spotlessly clean 370z Coupe, Reg ** 15 BRZ. Very nice looking car.

I just spurted my tea all over my laptop. Thats hilarious, but the poor old biddy!

Groan!!! :lol:

The thing that's getting me here is does an A4 not have rear seats? Could your passenger not have sat there while you removed the front passenger seat? Still good story Thats totally mad. I remember buying an entire interior for my mini - i just drove there in the mini, loaded the new interior onto the backseat / passengers seat & a few bits in the boot, then drove home. Audi A4 has a back seat, so could easily stick new drivers seat on that. But, when your young sometimes we dont think it out! Would love to have seen the old bills face at you sitting on a bucket

Brilliant, i did exactly the same, except i bought a set of 6J x 10 inch alloys for mine - they were virtually square as they were so wide, that even the widest 10 inch tyres (165`s) were proper stretched to fit on them. The 4 spot lights were great, i remember fitting them, lit the entire street up, then the wiring melted.... after then I fitted a relay and separate wiring for them. Same drivers hinges went, so id either have to climb out of the drivers window ala Dukes of Hazard, or via the passengers door. Ive lost count of the amount of dodgy fixes ive done back when I was a young lad. By far the worse was probably when I bought a hot hatch once, back in the 90`s, in which the owner had run over a cow. I kid you not a whole f**king cow. The whole front end of the car was caved in. To make things worse, the front had jumped over the cow and landed on it, smashing the sump in. The insurance company wrote it off, so I bought it for about 1/5th of its normal price. I got a lump of chain and tied to a tree in my parents garden, attached the other end to the front of the hot hatch and reversed it as fast as i could multiple times (until the clutch started smelling bad). That and a bottle jack/lump hammer soon pulled the front out enough so that after fitting new wings/bonnet/bumper that the gaps all kinda lined up. I rattle can resprayed it and it didnt look too bad. The only problem was the chassis was totally bent as could be seen by a massive crease in the roof. So I hammered that in and filled over and painted that too. I removed the sump and hammered that out, then refitted it and gave the car a quick service. To be fair, it was a cracking little car and I ran it for about a year without any problems before selling it for 6 times the price I paid for it. What did open my eyes a bit at the time was that the new owner did a full Hpi check on the car and it came up clean. Sort of told me how accurate those checks were. Wouldnt dream of doing anything like that now.

Without a doubt my favorite ever post on this forum. I am loling everywhere even the cat looks like WTF Cat looks like its been photoshopped in there tbh!

Hmmm.. when i changed my HR aux belt (twice, as it seemed to fall apart every 20k), i noticed no difference in performance. Although i didnt disconnect the battery, so maybe any changes are more related to that rather than the belt change.

Not yet as I keep emptying them!

I used to love top gear back in the day, before it turned into the "Jeremy Clarkson Show", but from viewing the new Top Gear trailer I might actually start watching it now!

KA CHOW!!!!!!

You can come and look after our 3 cats. I hate them! All they do is moan that they want feeding, trash the carpets/sofa, throw up all over the place, do endless amount of dumps/wee`s in their trays and for fun they now take it in turns to trash the kitchen. Not only that, you cant cook anything without them trying to swipe it away from you. One of our cats has now realised that rather than try and swipe food off your plate, its easier and much more productive to just slice your hand open as you carry the the plate, then that way you are likely to drop the entire plate & contents on the floor, giving him much more chance to get the grub. Then when you think it cant get any worse they get ill and the vet robs you off nearly £900 just to tell you he`s got no idea what was wrong with the cat but he`s perfectly fine now.

Wish i had kept the chopper I had when i as a kid. I remember selling it to another lad at school for a tenner.

Maybe its because your kids are older, or the family relationship has a different setup to mine, as I dont get time to have a dump most days, let alone do half the stuff you mention. I was actually speaking to some of my mates the other night about this very subject and for some of them, having kids has not changed much at all with regards to their social lives / hobbies. One has just rebuilt a whole car in the space of a few months, spending nearly every evening/weekend in the garage (he has 4 kids). Several of my friends spend all day Sunday playing golf down their local club whilst the wife looks after the little ones. Another mate goes to every single game his local footie team play, including internationals where he stays away for a few days etc. One mate has just run a marathon having spent weeks and weeks training (very time consuming) (he has 3 kids) and another mate is either always in the gym or playing footie (he has 2 kids) etc etc, you get the picture... It just goes to show that you can do what you want still even if you have kids, (if your other half is prepared to look after them all the time).

Driving along Chesterton Road in Cambridge at lunchtime today 30/3/2016, black 350z coupe, reg ** 55MXZ , windows down, music blasting out. Car could use a wash.

All depends on how the cars been driven really. I did 25k in my zed in 12 months. That was purely commuting mileage, so it spent 99% of those miles just sitting at 70mph cruising along.

Congratulations on the new daughter. But, good luck on starting the project car. I started working on mine in June 2014, aiming to have it finished by Spring 2015. I managed to spend 1 day on it every week for about 8 weeks before that precious project car time was taken up with other "family" things. So its been sitting there, needing probably just 7 days work on it to complete it since August 2014. Ive also done about 300 miles on my motorbikes (in total) in the last 2 years and I only get to wash my car once every 6 weeks these days. From my experience, having kids does have a major impact on stopping you doing the things you enjoy.

I agree with this. I remember screaming children used to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and id want to just strangle them or give the parents a slap. But, once you have your own kids you get used to it and it doesnt seem to affect you as much. Kids have a very low attention span usually and it takes a lot of hard work to get them to sit anywhere and be quiet for any length of time. They also like to play games and want you to join in (hence running about a busy pub if you dare take them there for a meal - hence most parents would take them to a pub with a kiddies soft play area so the kid can run about in that whilst you get chance to half eat a meal) Another couple of things I dont think people have mentioned on this thread yet is. 1) Having to put up with mental mood swings and emotions for 12 months from the mother as she goes through the whole pregnancy thing. Sometimes even longer if it takes longer to conceive and even longer if she suffers from post natal depression afterwards. So you could end up with 18 months or more of living in hell. (cant be much fun for the woman either) 2) What happens if things go wrong at any stage during the pregnancy or even during/after birth. Having been through both of these its again, a hugely emotional and stressful experience which isnt nice and can take a years for things to get remotely back to "normal". (not that they ever do). So deciding to have kids shouldnt be taken lightly!

Cant comment on the car, but lovely area over there. When I was over there a couple of years back a friend I was visiting drove us all the way down that side of the coast from San Jose downwards - Id recommend a restaurant in Monterey Bay called the "Fish Hopper" - goes out on a pier into the sea. Their fish chowder was awesome as well as their other dishes.

On the other hand though, for both myself & 3 of my mates it literally happened straight away. We were all rubbing our hands in glee at the prospect of months of mega bedroom activities only to find literally after the very first night of action that the deed was done. We all were a bit gutted really as that meant any more bedroom activity was out of the window for a while. So it can work both ways!

Bloke who bought mine joined this forum a few years back after he bought it from the dealer who ended up with it on their forecourt after I part-ex`d it. I knew it was mine as it was pretty rare being a twilight grey HR Roadster. Not sure if he still has it but according to DVLA its still alive and not doing many miles a year. Every now & then I google the reg to see if anything pops up, but not found anything.

Thats very true. One of my mates decided to "invest" his entire life savings sending his kid to private school from day 1. Of course, that means nursery, preschool, primary school, secondary school, college/6th form, then uni... then probably further uni study etc. all costing a fortune. The way he figures is, his son will have the best start in life and should be "guaranteed" a decent job at the end of it, and so by then can afford to look after his skint parents.