coldel

Wanted a 350z, had cash on the hip, bought a Vauxhall Astra after listening too much to the sensible crowd, 5 months later sold the Astra and stumped the cash up for the 350z

Found a little time and enthusiasm to see what sort of cars are on offer for a budget of £10k or less as thats what myself and many people find themselves dabbling with in the 350z world. I used Auto Trader as a source as it was easiest to manipulate the filters and skip through the postings. I guess most new buyers have two things on their minds, Colour and Year. Going for a newer car is clearly important, but we are all individuals and will have a colour in mind. The first table below gives an overall view of the AT market (remember this is for cars under £10k). Silver 04s will be everywhere, surprisingly the next biggest group are Black 04s. But Silver under 10k really dominates the market. I have to say I avoided Silver personally but having seen a few clean ones at a recent meet really liked the look of them. The two-line tables under the main one show how the spread of each colour occurs across the years (of manufacture) 2002 to 2006. The cars tend to be most popularly available in a 2004 model except for Blue and Orange which tend to have more available on a 2003 manufacture date. Quite a few 2002 GM on there too, trying to think as I noted down the results but I think these may have been imports. I havent had the time to crawl through the data to classify Imports vs UK cars unfortunately. As a guide there were a few other quick measures, Nearly a quarter of all cars under £10k have less than 40k miles on them, so don't be afraid to push for a low miler if it really is important to you. Lots of cars coming through trade channels vs private, maybe people selling arent getting much joy and just trading in, certainly on here I often see comments that its a buyers market. If you can't drive a manual or prefer automatic, you are in a bit of stuk!

I might be tempted to come down to Port Solent, lived in Portsmouth for a year many moons ago so be good to pop down that way again...

Indeed, could be a June purchase...

It was good fun actually, i had a few bits from a previous car I took to a wrapping company in Redhill...the guy gave me all the off cuts and a plastic card with a soft and hard edge which helped. Imagine wrapping around the triple gauges might be a bit more difficult...

Maybe Monday nights are just one of those nights these sorts of things get done...only did it because I went out to fire up the Z and have a tinker when the wife stuck a RomCom on the TV

Sorry, what I mean was the cost for the follow up work, so its £402 for the initial work, then if I added a new exhaust etc in the next year and came back in 2012 what would the cost be to run the dynos again?

...1 broken ashtray, 1 off-cut of carbon fiber wrap, the wifes hairdryer and 10 minutes of free time. Don't think I will be doing the rest of the console though!

Similar MPG, not so similar average speed! Most miles are a 30mph limited run to work and back, with the occasional run round the M25...

Diesel generator or hotwire it into a street lamp I was thinking more along the lines of a scamera, surely there'll be plenty of those nearby? No need for cameras near me, the average speed is about 6mph in London traffic...self regulating!

I live on a main road in Zone 2 London, if someone has a 50m+ extension lead I could borrow it might do the trick...

Back to the machine... These polishers, do they have to be plugged into the mains or can they be plugged into the car cigarette socket? I cant park my car within distance of my house so this is a key issue to resolve before splashing out, its not clear in many adverts for these machines what you have to plug it into...

Thanks guys, just as a ballpark figure (will not hold you to it!) for a typical dyno session to reflash it? I need new wheels, tyres and a front bumper really so the engine mods come after that, but am tempted by an uprev initially if the dyno session at a later date is reasonable enough.

Just a quick question on this (as people at the Grasshopper seemed to be raving about the uprev tuning) - it seems you purchase a license/software to be applied to the car, the guys at Abbey etc work with it to modify the cars ECU. Question is, if I got my stock car done, then at some point in the future added parts such as exhaust etc and wanted it done again to work better with the additional parts, I presume as I hold the license it be a case of just paying for Abbey etc's time to do the reprogramming again? Is that right? What sort of cost does that entail? Cheers in advance...Col

I have seen the guys at Totally Dynamic debadging using heat guns and its pretty awesome, whipped off three badges on the back of my old Astra in about 3 minutes flat with nothing left on the bodywork. Still, would be a bit nervous using a heat gun...not that I got the choice, I can't park near where I live so no electrical connections available!

I think we have a winner

"Not much left to paint blue...!"

Aha yep me in the black one, yes you did spot me, on my way to the inlaws that day...good pub that...

Some pics from the meet at the Grasshopper 8th May...enjoy! Some early arrivals, parking on the whole was a bit shoddy, none of us lined up! But hey, its the cars, its all about the cars! A rogue 370 in there... Caption competition opportunity I think! A similar BMW event going on a few rows down, Quantity but not the Quality

Horsham, what company?

I think I am yeah! Should be there... ..yeah it does need some work, but getting it all fixed, gradually!

I got a dent in my front bumper near the reflector...tried pushing it out myself but it just goes back to where it was. Also there is a fair amount of welded insects on it so a respray is probably the best option...cost estimates for dent removal and front bumper respray? Apologies in advance for nicking the thread!

New Exedy clutch and flywheel in the Zed, as the clutch has been knackered since I bought it for the first time got to feel the power of the Zed, and it rocks Only thing though, is that gear changes sound a lot more clunky, and there is a little click noise when the clutch is pushed up and down. Nothing to stress over, just wondered if that is normal? It feels like there is a tiny bit of play in gears or something... just the previous utterly knackered clutch probably hid this...

Good stuff, its a popular thing to do but very rarely do you see an illustrative guide to it Something I do when de-badging is to spend a bit more time on clearing up the paint after removal. I used an old credit card to get the badges off rather than a knife, softened up with a sponge and some boiling water. Once off I spent about an hour with some polish just tidying up the badge area. Letting it dry up fully before putting the badges on, just makes for a tidier final result. For the marking up, I just used masking tape on its own. I also moved the 3 5 0 Z badges to the centre of the car, so spent a bit of time getting that straight!

I think air intakes are something of a placebo effect, looking for extra performance and convincing yourself that there is when you swap the air filter over. In the grand scheme of things the standard airbox I am sure is pretty damn good and any performance filter is 0.1% an improvement...also, keep an eye out, I am not sure on the 350z filters but they generally catch particles using the oil in the filter, this oil can make its way into the elements in the air filter and mean changes are required after a while.