ChrisB

^^ I agree. BBK you are not alone Winters work fine during this transitional warm period, so it does not matter if they stay on temporarily above 7C, (our winter tyres speed rating is V, so perfectly OK for normal speed road commuting), but they work undoubtedly better than summer tyres in cold times. Test cars for reference are my zed and her Civic 2.2 with its 'interesting' diesel turbo torque wave. We both have big commutes. Both myself and wife have had practical experience of enhanced grip in the cold last year. We live in a mildly hilly area, and have both completed journeys without drama compared to carnage around us. The only time when the envelope is completely collapsed is black ice. Frost and snow performance is better. Everyone should always drive to the conditions, but a tyre's job is one of feedback, grip and ultimately safety, and these are enhanced with winter tyres in cold conditions. Seems silly to keep summer ditch finders on in the winter if you can afford to swap.

Well I'm happy.. OK, the dishes are not totally polished/mirror finish (cba tbh), but I like a soft brushed metal effect anyway. This photo was after wet/dry but before ocd and metal polish: And, for a total outlay of £3.64 for 3 sheets times 3 grades of wet and dry from eBay (of which I only used a single sheet of P600 wet), after polish I now have.. I already had some B&Q P80 grit (which was way too fierce in hind sight) and frogtape, plus Autosol, Megs Metal polish, Poorboys wheel sealant and a million microfibres which was part of Precious' wheel/exhaust/headlight cleaning kits anyway, so didn't count as outlay. The wheel refurbishers never reponded to web-email (no doubt too many Audi's to do in St Albans than deal with aftermarket Nissan ), but by all accounts 2 wheels would have been £160 ish. Works for me Will swap them for the winters in the next couple of weeks if this fine weather holds.

It works fine for me Bucks. We have 30Mb basic broadband combo package which works brilliantly, even under moderately heavy use. The TV can some times be patchy though. In January, we had a few issues with TV service, but that appears to be resolved - perhaps upgrades going on. I once wanted a TV coax extension cable - they must have miles of spare cable - but Virgin helpline said buy from eBay or face £99 install fee. Stuff that. Telephone is average quality but reliable. 0.2Mb/s is way below par if you are on cable (like us). Their AUP is pretty generous, so you may be suffering some kind of outage or server limitation - they are in the throes of upgrades again it seems according to the advertising. Only gripe I have is that its all a bit expensive (circa £50 a month). I'd like to dispense with all but broadband, but the packages available don't let feasibly let you.

How about turning the bitch into an Abbey style drag monster thing? That would be a huge project, low mileage, but every 1/4 mile a blast? You've plenty of other cars available for normal driving around in

Snow foam is a bubbly pre-wash. It's not all its cracked up to be, but it does soften dirt, and add a fun element (in my opinion )

+1 regarding the K2. Got mine from B&Q on special a year ago. It's been fine for snow foam fun and general blasting. Just don't blast it when the car is still dirty - prewash and low pressure rinse, then normal 2 bucket wash, then turn up the force but stand back a bit further. Seems to give a wet but dry effect then, easy for toweling.

Hmm. Looks good. I like the black spokes, polished rims combo. Is your's blade or GM (it's hard to tell with the sun and HDR photo)?

I agree, the white streaks and powder from rubbing lacquer is annoying, but looked around the house for some for 20mins and couldn't find any.. Anway the lacquer eventually stood no chance against the grit paper! Well, brushed effect is good. That is quite enough of that for today Polishing and fine grit can wait. Managed to run a wheel over tube of autosol, so that is now in the lounge carpet. (the wife is away today :) ) Already 100 times better, regardless of bad photos. Cheers guys.

Gulp.. Well, I'm currently rocking a rather fetching brushed aluminium look with wheel number 1. I think it should be a must have for this season I must admit I missed your last responses and had got cracking straight away with some Oakley superflex medium which we had left over from house decorating.. My god, the surface lacquer scratches easily! So, the corrosion comes off readily enough (although quite a bit of thumb pressure was required in some cases). I went in with both feet... Here is where perseverance will need to set in to retrieve the carnage! So far it's not looking too desperate - and if I end up with a polished but uniformly scratched brushed look, that maybe a good bail out. (well that will be my story) I need to now buy some fine grade stuff.

^^ Thanks Lexx/Jetpilot. Looks like I just need to man up and get rubbing (and save money in the process). I suppose with enough elbow grease and perseverance I can't make it any worse :) I will have a look for boxes of multigrade grit on eBay/Amazon pronto. My comfort zone is more electro/mechanical than making things look pretty (rubbish at art/craft)

Removed boot weight as a temporary relief to soggy boot struts. Sliced little finger and bled, so it was a proper mod.

Hmm.. maybe it's not such a disaster then. I previously used normal hard car wax. Poorboys wheel sealant has been purchased since. It was the fault of the militant vegan cyclist running Bucks highways causing stone damage, honest guv! They look like this: Of course in my mind they look like: I've emailed for a quote from the wheel specialists for a diamond cut via dropping off loose wheels in the mean time.. Google does suggest a large box of 3M rubbing paper and a lot of polish.. but various commentary suggests easy to massive PITA. :) My choice I guess.

Firstly, holy thread revival, but what was the outcome of this process? Was it as good as hoped? I just checked out my 2 year old (and a 1year old replacement ) silver/polished Rota GTR-Ds (dish - rears), and unfortunately I have the same alloy corrosion as above in the lip. I run OEMs as winter wheels and keep the shiny Rotas for the summer. My garage maintains average dryness for storage, and I did clean and wax then before putting away, but last year a major resurfacing of the main part of my commute caused mega stone chipping to the dishes. Stones rattling around have clearly played havoc with the surface clear-coating. Interestingly my 2 year old GTRs (non dish - front) are absolutely fine. I was tempted to try and scratch off the corrosion with grit paper, then metal polish.. tried this on a small area and promptly lost my bottle. Seems a shame to paint them, as an alternative, if the polish could be salvaged (eg diamond cutting), but is costly refurb as good as it looks? Should I persevere with wet/dry and rattle can lacquer? :scare: I can imagine that would not end well.. ..again

64 miles a day round trip commute A41/M25 and back roads, all weathers and times of year.

Yes! Pmsl! Regex..

Renault 5 turbo? edit duh! 4 doors required..

Ditto Bilt Hamber - S50, UB and UC are all great products

Yellowstuff - brilliant all rounders, very positive hot or cold. Braided lines for around £70 are a great upgrade too.

^^ what he said, KW27 work well.

Ahh, yes. My car's purchase price was £6.2k when I bought her in early 2011. I keep a complete spreadsheet record of presents, parts, services, tax, petrol etc, and total cost of ownership at last summation was ....£19.9k.... only £4.5k of that is petrol and £2k for all taxes, insurance etc. My baby, she gets a lot of presents amazing how it adds up! I also have a wish list and an alarming figure for one certain ..cough.. FI with supporting mods contemplation (should have taken the plunge and bought Octet's vortech at the time - although zeds are plenty fast enough) Totally worth it, and what else is money for?

If it's any help I have 4 out of 5 steels and 1 out of 5 aluminium locking nuts (Richbrook). I inflict the same standard 108 Nm torque on all nuts, as the force holding the wheel to the hub should be the important thing (not withstanding differences in material contact friction). I figured if there was a problem with the alloy nut longevity it would show up in a safe way, with the wheel retention protected by 4/5 steel. Result is that I have never had a problem with the alloy nuts in 2 years of repeated wheels on/off for mods and winter. They do say in the alloy guidelines not to use an air wrench to put them on, ie they are easily destroyed by cross threading. So I take it from that, that they are fine until they are not fine I can't definitively reference D1 nuts as I don't own them, but I imagine they are made from the same 'aircraft grade' alloy, and as such fit for purpose. Cheap copies would likely be a completely different kettle of fish though.

Yup 108 Nm it says in the user manual. 80 ft lb in old money.

Between the antenna and the receiver, there is an RF amplifier (mounted behind trim in the boot) and a coaxial transmission line. You've probably got a loose connection somewhere. Strip down, wiggle (or in an extreme case replace the coax line or resolder any related connections) ..or don't worry It could be RFI from something arcing - there is a headlight pitch sender connected to the ARB, amongst other wiring in the boot vicinity - which, if faulty, would be picked up with AM. If there is no interference on FM then suspect these external sources whereas if there is interruption with all modulation types, suspect the RF circuit as above.

I agree with this. I was recently convinced I had somewhere along the line knocked tracking out as the car was fidgity and drifting left - until I checked pressures and found one rear tyre (a Michelin MPS2) 7psi softer than the other 3. Pumped all tyres back up to 35psi and everything was fine again. Of course the MPS2 was a recently new tyre, so it remains to be seen if I have a slow puncture