rabbitstew

Both of mine were induced, fingers crossed yours will go smoothly, but prepare yourself that it may not go to plan. In both cases the induction caused issues and we were rushed at high speed into the operating theatre where I had to dress up as an extra from Holby City and watch the panic ensue as they had to get the baby out ASAP. They don't mess about and its quite horrifying to experience. So lots of good luck there if you are going to be there for the birth. Easily 2 of the most stressful situations i've been in and I really wished they had pre-warned me of what to expect during & after. That's certainly a big moment, when you realise how un-babyfriendly your house is and have to start baby proofing it. Its amazing how fast they can move too. My youngest was walking at 6 months, but the eldest decided the best way to move about was to drag himself along like a wounded soldier until about 10 or 12 months. Still at that stage Peppa Pig is your best friend. They will happily sit there as still as a statue for hours if that's on the telly.

Not much help to you as I am nowhere near the North West, but I have the Corbeau Clubsport XL in my Mini and its very comfortable. Like you, I couldn't try one out before buying so I was very pleased once I fitted it. Easily one of the most comfy bucket seats I have used. I am tempted to get some for my other cars too as they are very good value for money. One thing to note is that I went for the XL version. Lots of people recommended the XL over the normal as even though I am not fat as apparently it gives you just a bit more room.

Yep guess the Mini is a BMW so you were right! Its going really well tbh. Been a cheap little runner and ive enjoyed driving a car where I can absolutely wring its neck and not end up facing a life sentence in jail. Its still got 200 odd bhp so its nippy enough. Can park it anywhere and not worry about it. Only downer is the boot is rubbish if I have 2 kids in the back. As a 2 seater though with the back seats down it has loads of room. M3 is a good car, so fair play. I didn't really like the Z4M. I looked at them when I got my 350z HR. I guess one thing which put me off at the time was Z4`s were everywhere, so didn't have that rarity factor which I was looking for. I remember actually having a bit of a race with a Z4M shortly after and performance wise it was neck & neck. The zero depreciation though or even free motoring if it goes up in value is extremely tempting and adds a whole new factor into it - which is one of the reasons I got my 997 turbo back in 2016, and looking at the prices now, it was a really good decision.

Im angry looking with a shaved head and drive a mini! Some vast stereotyping going on here I think! My money would be on Cayman if you only need 2 seats. I didnt think the 350z to 370z was much of a jump. EDIT: That picture of the mustang next to the 350z, just wow. I knew the mustang looked big, but didnt realise it was so much bigger than a 350z. Makes the 350z look like an old MGB or something.

I used this stuff on my black plastic trim and its brilliant, really restored it and its lasted very well over the last 12 months.

Hardest bit is carrying all your gear / tools down to the carpark, then having to run back inside if you forgot anything. When I was at university, I often used to strip my old classic mini down in the car park and rebuild it.

Wow, those seats look amazing! That will make the interior look miles better.

I don't miss that bit of my commute at all. In fact, a few months back I moved our offices out of Cambourne up to St Neots, so I pretty much avoid all the A428 / A14 completely. I used to do A10 from Ely to Cambridge from about 2000 to 2008 and it was bad enough back then. Since then they have been building loads more houses. I used to use a bike for commuting for many years. Started off with a ZX7R, then Ducati 748S, then an R1. The same as with a car, it depends upon which bike you buy as to what sort of depreciation you will have. Running costs I found, servicing, petrol, tax and even insurance were all cheap. But id get through a set of tyres every couple of months. And whilst you can filter through traffic and would get to work & home with a big buzz as if you had just stepped off a roller coaster, the hassle of getting all the gear on/off plus riding in the rain/snow/ice was a pain. I think i've tried most options. For me I found the biggest cost per year outside of fuel was depreciation. For 4 years I ran a £700 old banger diesel. Did 50+mpg, serviced it myself. Due to its age various bits would go wrong, but in the main was cheap to run. Did about 80,000 miles in it then I sold it for about the same price I paid for it. So zero depreciation but boring as anything to drive. At the other end of the scale, I ran my zed for nearly 2 years, drank the fuel, expensive tax and due to depreciation (at the time) I lost something like £7000 over those 2 years. Nowadays, the depreciation on them is a lot less. I also looked at the 2 car option, but what I would save on fuel I would loose on depreciation & running costs on a 2nd car. Insurance especially always was the killer on a 2nd car. Besides, I just wouldn't get time at the weekend to use the zed anyway so it would just sit there if it was a weekend car. Everyone's "man maths" is different, so its really a case of putting all the numbers in a spreadsheet and working it out. Personally even when I was stuck in traffic, id love the fact I was in a fun car I loved rather than a boring commuter car and even now that's the case. And for me whilst its not the cheapest option, that "special" feeling alone is worth it.

Have you insured the zed before? When I first got my zed the cheapest I could find insurance for was a similar price to you £950. I had 18 years NCB and was in my 40`s. I was amazed as at the time I was paying about £150 to insure a VW Golf. Some companies like Adrian Flux really struggled to get below £1000. When I asked why, they said it was because I had no recent experience of high performance RWD cars. The fact I have 3 very high powered RWD motorbikes made no difference. Their "reason" was actually pure bullsh!t as using exactly the same details I was getting quotes of £400 for an M3 and even £600 for a Lamborghini Gallardo, both "high powered RWD cars". The Gallardo in particular being worth about 6 times what I paid for my zed. I could only assume it was because the zed was classed as "high risk" and more people had crashed them than the other cars. I had the same thing when I wanted to buy a £1500 Honda Fireblade once. Insurance companies laughed at me. However they happily insured me for just £120 on a £7000 Yamaha R1 which was miles more powerful and quicker. Have you tried the usual things such as saying you leave the car on the road or adding/removing a female which all can reduce the premium.

very true! Tough one with seating position, but your a bit restricted. I do wonder if there will be too much grip at the back with an adults weight on the back wheels to allow for drifting, but you wont really know until you try. Looking good though!

I am resisting the "a bit of t-cut" joke, but seriously that looks like a lot of damage, good luck with it.

Just read this thread thinking "alright for some, having time to play games", as it reminded me of how much I used to love gaming and since I got married all that was forced on hold and ive not hardly played any since...... .... and then I get to the end and find out since your married your selling it now. Glad its not just me!

This weekend I managed to get a spare couple of hours in the garage. I had seen these vented A panels online and thought they looked pretty good.... but the £375 + £75 surcharge price tag didn't look as good... Cant be that hard to make them surely? So I bought a pair of 2nd hand A panels from the scrapyard for £20 each... then marked out the shape with a sharpie.. I then got the old angle grinder out and cut the shape out... Which went a lot better than I was expecting! Bent it in a bit to make the vented section. I then welded in some small triangle bits of metal... Which gave it some support. Excuse the welding, this wasn't the finished item but gives you an idea. Then I found some mesh in the shed and cut & bonded that in like so.... They still needs some finishing, some filler & a lick of paint but all in all im pretty pleased with the result for £20 and a couple of hours work!

The motorbike chains I use dont have that circlip, they use rivets to attach the spare link so bit stronger, but you might be okay. Just make sure you fabricate some sort of chain guard to be on the safe side! Be good if you could fabricate something on the rear axle to take a motorbike sprocket, then you would have easy gearing adjustment to whatever you wanted. That shock you can adjust the preload using C spanner and turning the bottom bit around. Like you say, it looks like its on the lowest setting atm. Sometimes you can use a big screw driver and a hammer to knock that bottom bit around.

Looks familiar seeing a Mini with the front end off! And good to see the essential tool there too - the lump hammer on top of the air box.

That chain doesnt look very strong, would using a motorbike chain be better? Wouldnt want it to snap. Looking forward to seeing how this project progresses!

Last week I noticed that when I lifted off the throttle on the Mini there would be a bit of a clanging noise. It was fine under acceleration or braking, so I put up with it for a few days - just made sure I was either accelerating or braking all the time! The noise got a bit louder as the days went past and through process of elimination, I guessed it was the drivers side CV joint, so over the weekend I got the car in the garage and up on the ramps. Sure enough, turning both the front wheels by hand I could feel some play in the drivers side CV Joint, compared to the passengers side which felt fine. The CV Joint is very easy to replace and only costs £15, so once again the Mini is proving to be a cheap car to fix. The original joint had done 107,000 miles and I had been wringing its little neck since I got it, so it wasn't a surprise that it was a bit worn. To get to the joint, you undo the 32mm hub nut and undo the bottom ball joint nut. Only took 10 seconds with the impact gun. A couple of wacks with a lump hammer and the ball joint comes out of the lower wishbone and you can pop the CV Joint and drive shaft out from the hub - like so... Now, often you then have to remove the whole drive shaft, put it in the vice & knock the CV Joint off with a hammer. However I didn't fancy that, so a couple more clouts with a lump hammer and off it came.. You can see how old & rusty it is. New one knocks straight on, pack it with grease, reattach the CV rubber boots and jobs a goodun. Or usually it is... however for some reason I didn't knock the CV joint on enough and on the test run the shaft popped out of the CV joint leaving me stranded on the side of the road. Doh. I've done dozens of these and never had a problem, so guess there's first time for everything but I did feel like a right idiot. So I weigh up my options. I could fix it on the side of the road, but I wasn't really in a safe position to do that. I've got RAC membership which I have never used, so give them a call. "Certainly Sir, no problem we will be there in 3 hours". Lovely. I am only about 5 mins from my house. I then remember my neighbour has a towbar on his transit van, so I give him a call. "Be there in 1 minute". That's a bit better, quick tow home and 5 mins later Mini is back on my drive all safe. Quickly jack it up, re-attach CV joint properly this time and its all back up & running. Lesson learnt!

That was the green one wasnt it? The 309 in general though was a very "acquired" taste. I remember buying a 309 GTi for £650 back in the late 90`s (I guess) and fixing it up. I never liked it, preferred the 205 1.9 Gti id done up before it. But my brother loved it and he had loads of fun in it for 6 months or so before I sold it for £1200.

I would have thought it would be covered as very often people may not be able to park on their own drive occasionally, and I cant see people having to phone up their insurance company each time they park somewhere different. What about if you leave it at the airport whilst you are on holiday etc? If I remember correctly, the insurance company just ask "where is the car normally kept over night".

Well the scorching weather this weekend lent itself perfectly for a bit of painting. So firstly I got some new tyres fitted, ditching the horrible dunlop runflats for some new Michlean PS4`s... Then I sanded the wheels down, primered and sprayed.... Left them to bake in the sun for a few hours and then fitted them to the car... Not bad for rattle cans and they look a lot better on the car than I expected. Think I will more than likely do the roof orange as well as some point, but may have to get some paint & use my compressor for that, rather than rattle cans.

Maybe you can borrow @Keysers wife? Extra points to him for getting the wife to hoover the garage. Thats pretty impressive! The only time wife goes in mine is to dump some of her crap in there & take up my valuable space.

I used "Supercoat polyurethane heavy duty high impact floor paint" which was £43.99 for 20 litre barrel of the stuff, so loads cheaper than what you`d get from DIY shops. Got it off the bay and you can get it any colour of the rainbow (nearly). I went for mid-grey which looks like same colour as keysers. Prep wise, I basically swept the bare concrete floor, then pinched the wife's dyson and hoovered it all a few times to get rid of any dust ( & spiders, hahaha the wife wasnt happy!). Some people say you should seal the bare concrete, or do this or that, but I just rollered it on, nice thick coat. Gave the new garage extension a couple of coats and it looks a treat. No more dust, you can just sweep stuff up. So much easier to clean. I need to do the rest of my garage as that has old polyurethane paint on it which I put down 10 years back. That lasted really well over the years. It did chip in a couple of places, but its had a lot of heavy use with working on cars / bikes over that time.

Looks awesome, same colours as my garage/workshop, you may have even used the same floor paint. Mine needs another coat but it will be a mission moving everything out (or around) to do it, but I need to do it while weather is hot so it drys quickly!

I had an old man wave his walking stick at me in rage once when I accelerated past him at about 15mph. I think it was that the car sounded like it was going fast but it wasnt really.

They have a self locking mechanism which automatically locks in at 2 height levels as you raise the car up. Its all very secure and solid. I triple checked everything before I dared to go under it the first time.