brillomaster

seems silly to me to replace the rears if they're still perfectly functional, so i'd just replace the fronts with dunlops. or uniroyals, and then get matching uniroyals for the rear in a year or twos time. yes there will be a mismatch, but unless you're cornering on the doorhandles all the time I doubt you'll notice a difference.

my DTE reading was terribly inaccurate, as was the fuel gauge, so no, I normally didn't have anything showing! Also just like to add at this point that my new car (BMW 330d) has more torque than a zed, but manages 45mpg...

was hoping for something considerably more barge and shed like... an abarth is actually quite good!

no, that wouldn't make a car slip. you maybe needed to clean up the hub faces/insides of the wheels a bit before fitting them. Just how new are the tyres? are they properly worn in yet? i'd normally give a new tyre 200 miles of dry running before I expected them to be performing properly, but that distance is probably longer in the wet.

i'm gonna ghetto spray my track wheels, which are currently sprayed black. my plan is to give them a quick wash (faces only - aint nobody got time for the insides as well!), then rattle can on some primer, then rattle can on a few coats of ford electric blue. then replace the tyres. bish bash bosh should take about 20 minutes. I don't recommend this method if you want them to look good.

they're asymmetrical, not directional. so will have an inside and an outside. the two deep continuous grooves should be on the inside and then the diagonal sipes are on the outside. this will give the impression that they go opposite directions to each other, but that's correct! much like this:

so any thoughts on what race series you might be entering? is it still looking like a cheap track prepped MR2?

replace the battery. its old, winter is coming, for the sake of £70 you really should. its almost certainly the battery.

and also, to quote every pistonheads thread ever - MX5?

unfortunately whatever single car you pick its going to be a compromise. fast cars are not economical. diesels can be fast and economical, but not really suited to stop start driving, stuck in traffic. small petrol engined cars will be good in stop start traffic, but aren't fast, or particularly comfortable. comfortable cars aren't that good to drive. turbo cars are less reliable than NA cars. na cars don't have boost. and so on and so forth. do you know what, i'm gonna put a fiesta ST back on the table small petrol engine, so good for commuting in stop start traffic, but decent chassis and turbo for the twisties. as single cars go, its not a bad choice, erring slightly more towards the economy side than something bigger. this post seems to have a good amount of info in on a Focus ST: http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=129&t=1187972&i=20

back in the day, I went from a 330bhp 300zx to a 160bhp civic. at the time, I thought finally, a car that does more than 22mpg and is reliable, and vtec with 8000rpm is great, it doesn't feel slow at all. then after about 6 months and a roadtrip round devon, I quickly became bored of having a very meagre torque output, and having to drop 2 gears whenever you wanted to overtake, so started saving for a 350z, which I then kept for 3 years. sure a fiesta ST is arguably the best small hot hatch on the market right now, but at the end of the day, its a fiesta. interior is gonna be full of scratchy plastics, theres going to be a lot of road noise, and it wont really like motorways or rear seat passengers.

on the other hand, the new £3700 price is pretty cheap for a car with 80k on the clock and an MOT. the wing is ridiculous, but easily removable, as is the gearknob.

so what was it then?

it only really costs about £700 to run a second car... £300 max on tax since that still takes no account of actual mileage, £300 to insure a second car with limited miles, and £100 for its MOT each year assuming you buy something reasonably reliable. and then petrol, tyres and all other consumable costs are spread across two cars - if the weekend toy only does 2k a year it doesn't get through tyres very quickly. main concerns for running two cars are where to keep them both!

seems that like the majority or petrolheads, you need two cars. one for the day to day commute, and one for weekend/fun. the day to day should be comfortable, quiet and economical. the weekend car should be loud, great to drive with no regards to practicality or economy. you already have the weekend car, so just supplement it by adding a daily driver and you're good to go. about 2k should get you a perfectly functional bmw 320d, which will be perfect for wafting to work in. personally a hot ford fiesta still sounds like a compromise, it'll still get stuck in traffic jams, and it'll probably be a less comfortable place to sit than a zed.

well, I swapped in my zed a while back because it was getting old and rusty, and i'd had it for three years and fancied a change, so you can probably guess my position! could you maybe keep the zed and get a shed for the commute? sounds like you need a diesel auto for the commute, and then keep the zed for weekends.

does it have any toys, or is it poverty spec? i'll only award full shedding marks if its got leather, a/c, electric windows, cd changer and so on

mytyres as well. but personally I use tyreleader.

top shedding. its old bmws that really make me wonder why I spend ten times that amount on a car that's only a few years newer. and 74k is obviously really low mileage, should continue running for a good few years no problems! *goes off to search classifieds, again*

car is now SOLD! for a nice round £7k I might add, take that ebay lowballers who offered me £5,500 for it! now I have to follow through with my self made promise and buy an automatic diesel saloon mods please lock before someone talks me out of it!

my two cents... bosch S4

ahhh, the joys of parking under a tree... literally every morning a bird craps on my bonnet, sure the tree is lovely but i'm going to take an axe to it soon. my poor track car gets parked under a tree and partly in a bush, and doesn't move for a month at a time - every time I come to it its like unearthing a ancient artefact! luckily silver hides a lot of sins, but my next car is most likely to be black, which will be a nightmare to keep clean. hopefully the leaves will have all fallen before any hard frosts... last year there were a few occasions when I was driving to work with fallen leaves frozen fast to the bonnet!

...but for the love of all that's holy, don't put rear seats in a zed!

blimey... that is impressive!!!

it does happen occasionally, my 10 year old BMW just passed with no advisories. though if you wanted good build quality you'd expect to be buying Japanese or German.