coldel

Ease up on your alcohol intake its not doing you any good...

So how do you both go out together then? Serious Q, most of my mates have had kids in the last few years and its incredibly rare to see both halves out at the same time or TBF even to see the lads out on their own during the week. Not really contributed to this as dont have kids but probably will in the near future, whatever anyone tells me getting out of bed at 1pm on a weekend, going out for a drink with the missus until 10pm on a weeknight and taking holidays at 24 hours notice isnt going to happen anymore. Aye its a fair shout, we organised our child care so that part of it included my parents take Alfie from Monday to Tuesday, he sees lots of his family on those days now and loves it, we don't see him Monday nights. We both work so we wouldn't see him during the day either in any case. So Monday nights we organised it this way to ensure we have at least one night out together. We thought other parents might look down their nose at us for 'abandoning' him one night a week, but actually its the opposite and many think its a great idea. We also struck up good deals with neighbours, lucky that we get on with them but to be honest I am just a friendly guy and people fall over themselves to help me out - both those neighbours with kids (playdate) and without (no commitment pretend to be parents night) when we want to go out. We also have a babysitter when necessary. Interestingly in the first 6-12 months all they do is lay in buggies/on the floor/in bed and do not move - you can actually still go out to restaurants etc no problem. Yes babies will cry, you just deal with it (and you will learn instinctively how that works and have your tricks) and get on with eating out. Its when they get older and start talking that it gets a little bit more tricky!

I am using the Vorti's (sessanta replacements) on my GT-Four, so far so good, I probably do not drive in a style Dan does so probably havent tested the limits of the tyres but they are performing very well so far, very grippy and not much road noise compared to what I got from the almost new 452s I had on my Zed a few years back.

It is funny, I was reflecting on this thread last night on the train home, some few thoughts came to me... 'Freedom' keeps getting mentioned by people both with and without kids - mostly those without kids saying they don't want to lose the freedom to do what they want to do. I was thinking about what I used to do when I was 'Free' and remember travelling, eating out, beers with mates, buying stuff, generally having my own time. In terms of how much of that freedom I have lost, I would only say its that my time is dictated more by Alfie, and maybe a bit less sleep, but otherwise nothing has really changed on the other fronts. Don't get me wrong, kids take time up but so do cars, exercising, cooking, getting to work, seeing relatives, writing forum posts - we all lose freedom in some way, but I think there is a perception that you lose everything if you have never had a child and that's the expectation. My wife and I used to eat out 3-4 times a week, now its only 1-2 times a week...actually that feels much more special when we do. Too much of a good thing and all that. I still have beers with mates, I still buy and sell cars and have lots of fun fettling inbetween. I still go on two to three foreign holidays a year (and yes I am counting Scotland in May as a foreign holiday ). Absolutely, us parents have no right to tell other adults they should have children but conversely, I do not agree with people who without actually having had the experience imply quite overtly that parents have lost freedom by saying that they want to keep theirs. As said before, if you do want, have. If you don't, don't and I wont tell you anything otherwise. But if you don't its unfair to be assuming that all us parents have chosen to lose freedom and a way of life, it just isn't true, well in my experience it isn't.

I am not disagreeing, but when there are hundreds of dealers out there that seem to have at least or a better reputation, why put yourself through the hassle. Its not as if Zeds in that part of the country are hard to come by if you are in the market for one. Makes no sense to me to buy into something which has a consistent record of poor quality cars (yes you can get it checked but you will miss something) poor after care and blatantly ignore consumer rights - why subject yourself to the hassle. I seriously, have better things to do.

...of which they would ignore should you ever wave it in their face despite overwhelming evidence in your favour, then they would promise to do what was in writing and fail that and/or do it on the cheap or illegally, then you have to take them to court etc. Why bother?

I had a kid and first thing I did was buy a VX220...then an R33, which I modded, then the GTFour, which I have done so also

Hmmm yes clearly something very iffy going on there with plenty of money passing hands over and above the cost of the MoT no doubt.

VX220 NA version is just an S2 Elise with a more reliable and powerful engine 😉 look past the badge and its a better deal than the Lotus equivalent ðŸ‘

Mazda MX5 Mk3 and turbo/super charge it?

I don't know enough about TVR's to know the details, all I do know is that I regularly see a good mix of them on the side of the road with bonnets up, certainly moreso than Zeds of which the OP wanted something with similar running costs.

Dampers and lanyard FTW

Running costs...

Had to drive my VX220 home 180 miles, no problem at all, a great drive - admittedly was very excited but it was not uncomfortable. In terms of boot space, missus and I went on a trip and packed two 'carry on luggage' sized suitcases in the boot.

Supercharged VX220 and a travel card BMW 135i Seat Leon Cupra K1 Renaultsport Megane AR Brera

Gatwick is in a bit of trouble, landings aborting then heading off to northern parts of England to land. Maybe I missed it, but not much in the way of weather warnings about this yesterday?

...as in storm Katie for causing havoc, glad I parked outside my house last night, my neighbours car is not faring so well.

Make sure you clean that engine bay every week from now on! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I have a JapSpeed exhaust on my ST205 came with it. Sounds a bit drony and looking to replace it, but there is a very good post by a guy who use to work at RTP I think called Ray on one of the Celica sites where he bought a couple of them, cut one in half and checked the build quality and found the interior to be of a very good standard given the price and easily on par with other more expensive exhausts. The usual problem was fitment, so he fitted one to his GT4 whilst up on a ramp, putting each individual part on separately and found it all fitted perfect, until he tried to put it all on together one part went on which forced the rest of it to move out of place and foul on the underside of the car. So he cut about 3cm off the pipe and refitted and it all fitted perfect. His findings, were that quality for the £250 he paid was much better than he realised, the fit was poor but can be fixed with a bit of work. I thought it was a good piece of investigative work actually.

What you are referring to is Overcrowding, this is nothing to do with Overpopulation which is a different issue entirely. You can have overcrowding in a number of places in a single environment say a single country, like the UK and as you referenced London is over crowded, but thats not the same as a country being overpopulated.

It's not about space, it's about resources. For example, deforestation doesn't occur so people can live there. And I certainly don't choose to live in a crowded area - it's where I can make money, same as most other people that live in or around London. I'd imagine there's space for far more than 10x the current population, but that's not the point. The problem is that it is not allocated correctly at the moment, that is not overpopulation that is purely a planning issue of the human race. Famines are never an issue of lack of food, they are political failures. Famine is caused by political issues, war, poverty and poor infrastructure - none of these are overpopulation issues. There are also plenty of famous philosophers of the past that said we cannot sustain population growth due to food production capability, unfortunately they could only make that assumption based on the facts put in front of them - you can only make so much bread with my horse driven grain mill - basically as population grows, technology and capability does also which deals with it. Population numbers also show it growing slower than it was in the 50s/60s/70s etc. So, should 'population' be an excuse for no children, other than a tongue in cheek sarcastic comment on here, it isn't. Anyway, bottom line on kids - if you want them go for it, if you don't, don't - it really is just that isn't it.

Actually the world is not grossly overpopulated, I have yet to see any evidence it is? Who said? There is more than enough space to take x10 the amount of people, its just that some decide to live in very clustered parts of the world.

Ejector seat

Centre caps are £50 for a set of four as well

My goal of having the best OEM+ GT4 is going well me thinks!