Commander

depends where you go - around Reading / Guildford way it's about £7 a chuck if I remember

I used to, but out of practise by a couple of years now... Gravity kept picking on me because of my love of pies, beer, biscuits, and other such tasty things that aren't really compatible with my conquering anything harder than a 6b It's a great sport, especially when you get in to it - kept me sane and fit when I was going through some stressful times - when you're clinging on with your fingertips your brain gets to not think about the rest of the world! No idea where you are in the world, but most places aren't usually too far away from somewhere (although quality varies, and if it's in a school, it's may not be great in my experience)

Only £200 a ticket!! :-/

As a car, it's a better spec than the Zed, fewer rattles and squeaks from the interior, handles slight better, goes slightly faster, has 4 usable seats and a decent boot, and the SMG is great and I'd probably buy one if I had the money... BUT... It is a BMW, they're common as muck and generally speaking, they seem to cost slightly more to keep running.

A white 370 crawling south along the Basingstoke road in Reading a couple of hours ago, probably about 1830 ish. Nice car.

My old MD used to have BOOM (800M) on his Lambo

About £600 on fuel for just over 2000 miles of driving... Not too bad really!

Believe me I've tried, but as he's just bought a 4-bed detached house and his Mrs is pregnant with their first, I don't think he's really got the funds for a Zed at the moment. Thanks For anybody that's interested, this is what our original route plan looked like. It turned out that we underestimated the driving times for almost every day - TomTom did a better travel-time estimate than Google Maps, but even that was still out by the time we'd had our various (mis)adventures, Thursday: 158 miles 3.5hrs Bracknell ct18 8xx Folkstone Chunnel UK Terminal 6 Rue du 8 Mai 1945, 59760 Grande-Synthe, France (Best Hotel Dunkerque, Dunkirk) Friday: http://goo.gl/maps/ggAMm 467 Miles 7 Hrs Best Hotel Dunkerque 53520 Nürburg, Germany - Nurburgring (Lunch) Gasthaus Linde - YburgstraBe 79, Steinbach, 76534, Germany Saturday: http://goo.gl/maps/iqT8C 296 miles 6.75hrs Gasthaus Linde Route 500 to Kniebis-Alexanderschanze (kniebis, baden-wurttemberg, Freudenstadt) Davos Switzerland (Davos Platz, via konstanz entering switzerland and then via vaduz ) Lunch on Lake Davos fluela pass (fluelapassstrasse) stelvio national park via Zernez then Santa Maria val mustair, then south on the Sassabinghel road (Umbrail Pass) to Stelvio natioan park and the stelvio pass. Hotel Post, trafoi, Italy. (Trafoi 7,, bolzano, stelvio. 39029) Sunday: (various short-cuts possible if progress is slow / day is too long) http://goo.gl/maps/3QRZu 287 Miles 7 hours Stelvio Pass (back up and down the other side) Lago di Livigno (via south side of stelvio staying in Italy) st moritz (7500 st.moritz) Silvaplana julier pass Rongellen. Blue 13 Jiggle to: san bernardino. Blue 13 Jiggle to: arbedo-castione. Red 2 to: Wassen susten pass Innerkirchen. Blue 6 Grimsel Pass grimsel pas Obergoms - Hotel Alpenhof - Ifangstrasse 25, Oberwald 3999, Switzerland Monday: (Couple of short-cuts possible if progress is slow / day is too long) http://goo.gl/maps/Tfp1n 331 miles 7 Hrs North to Furka Pass to: Hospental. Blue 2 south (Saint Gotthard Pass) Saint Gotthard Pass to Airolo Airolo west towards Bedretto leading onto Nufenen Pass. (UNKNOWN SAT NAV) Nufenen Pass west towards Blue 19 (UNKOWN TOWN NAME) Head towards Martigny. Head Towards Sembracnher. Blue 21 (Route du Grand Saint-Bernard, 1933 Sembrancher, Valais, Switzerland) Route du Grand Saint Bernard (Blue 21) down to Aosta Aosta to Pre Saint Didier Pre Saint Didier to La Thuile little Saint Bernard Pass to: Val D'isere. Back up the pass towards: Chambery Best Western Alexander Park - 51 rue Alexander Fleming, Chambery, 7300, France Tuesday: 692 Miles 10hrs 25 min Chambery, REIMS (D27) Calais Home

The car is totally standard, it's even still running on BP RE050 rubbers. The only prep work it had before the run was a service - changed all the oils and filters. Thanks. Yeah, the RX8 was a bit poorly, we thought it was a malfunctioning secondary air-inlet valve but it turned out to be a clogged-up Cat. We got stuck in traffic on one of the passes from Switzerland to Italy and it took a wee all over the road while it cooled down. Fortunately, it died right next to an ice-cold mountain spring so there was plenty of cold water to re-fill it with, and after half an hour or so, we managed to limp it to the top of the hill for more water and cooling down time. Fortunately it only pulled this stunt once the whole trip - I think the combination of really slow moving traffic, pulling up hill and a warm day with a partially blocked Cat, was just too much for it. It actually got even worse for the RX8 driver because not too long after this, he got pulled over by the Italian Police for a spot check, which I gather was a pretty stressful 20 minutes as we'd all left him to it The irony is that his car was probably the quietest, slowest and least likely to break any kind of traffic laws whatsoever, but he got pulled and we all sailed through the checkpoint no problem Thanks Bems, we did, it was brilliant fun and I'd recommend anybody who's got half a chance of doing similar, to do so. My advice to anybody doing similar though - be prepared for all your plans to change! We worked out our route to the finite degree before we left, but various road closures, tunnel closures, navigational errors and traffic jams threw all that out the window on occasion and we ended up having even more fun as a result.

Over the August bank holiday weekend, me, my brother and a couple of mates embarked on our first Euro Road Trip down to the Alps... Just shy of 2,100 miles in total, from Thursday night to Tuesday night, via France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy... The cars we took were our daily drivers, so my 350z HR, an e46 M3, a Lotus Elise S2 and an RX-8. All in all, I spent about £600 in fuel (the M3 was the same, the Elise about 40% less and the RX8 about 25% more) and about £500 on accommodation, food, beers, etc... We set off from Bracknell after work on Thursday night and headed to France via the tunnel, with a hotel in Dunkirk as our target. It took less than 2 minutes of driving in France for our convoy to get split up (largely due to being split up on the double-decker train), not a great start, with the M3 (the only one who had a navigator on board, the rest of us driving solo) arriving about half an hour behind everybody else. In the tunnel I had time to explore more of my car (only having owned it for about a month so far), and I discovered that both in-door cup holders are illuminated, the centre storage bit is illuminated, and also that the Zed has the most pointless coat-hook ever! Once in France, I also discovered that the onboard Sat Nag's Traffic Alerting thing also works abroad, and even better, the alerts are still in English! This came in useful when trying to get out of a huge traffic jam we found ourselves in and we ended up adding a couple more mountain passes to our check list in the process too The M3 had reported brake problems (pads juddering and sticking) on the drive over but he had a spare set, so before we set out on day 1, we were up at 7am changing the pads, much to the amusement of the locals. The M3 didn't even have a jack in the boot, so it was my Nissan jack to the rescue (the handle for which, is crap by the way) While we were out there being laughed at, we also met an old boy who was driving down to the south of France in his kit car motor home thing. It looked as rickety as hell and I wasn't sure it'd make it, but at least he left the car park without having to undertake repairs... Here's the line up on 'proper' day 1, just before leaving Dunkirk... We left the cars like this for a bit while we checked out and faffed around - it soon became clear which car the local spectators preferred the most... ... the Lotus! (Well, at least it's an English car) We left Dunkirk and headed over to the Nurburgring... This was a bit of a 'hopeful' trip as all the calendars we found for the ring for this day didn't actually say if it was open, closed, or otherwise, so we drove over with baited breath, to find out that it was shut Because there was racing on So, after some food (yes folks, that is a photo of a 1m sausage devoured by just one man, lol) we went to see if we could find a spectator spot We've no idea what sort of race was going on, certainly seemed to be a multi-class event, but we didn't car much because the McLaren MP4-12C, Porsche GT3 RS, Astons (no idea which ones, they all look the same to me) and Merc SLS beasts that were dominating everything else sounded fantastic. The SLS wins in my book though - fast as owt and it sounded AMAZING! After the 'ring we took on Germany's finest Autobahns where I was pleasantly surprised to find that my "cheap little Datsun" did a stirling job of slaughtering the Elise and keeping up with the M3 98% of the time. Everybody wants to know how fast we went on the Autobahns.... let's just say we achieved more than double the UK speed limit, and then some! It was here though, that we discovered the RX8 was knackered - unsurprising to most, but disappointing to the driver who was struggling to get past 100 and due to the magical properties of the rotary engine, was still, somehow, using more fuel than either the M3 or the Zed. We ended our day in a small town near Baden-Baden in Germany's Black Forest - lovely scenery, a nice Guesthaus and a great spot for a well earned German beer or two before bed. The morning in Germany felt very similar to the previous day, with another car needing some TLC, but no amount of ECU resets and checking all of the electrical cabling, fuses, etc.. would yield a solution for the RX8, but onwards it would limp anyway. The Black Forest is a great place, lots of relatively empty and well maintained roads that flow and sweep effortlessly through the countryside. It was on one of our scheduled "let's wait for the Rex" stops that we hit our next breakdown, and about two hours away from our Hotel in Trafoi (which is just inside Italy via the Stelvio pass). Can you guess which car had the problem? Ok, I'll give you a clue! In pulling over to wait for the Rex, the M3 encountered an SMG problem which left the car in neutral, and not able to start. Apparently it's a common problem and usually electrical, but after checking all the fuses we could find, and even after borrowing 14v from the Zed (which we figured is a better 14v than the BMW ), we deemed it kaput and began the 2.5hr wait in the rain for recovery... An hour's drive later we finished up here, After 10 minutes with a multimeter we found the M had blown a 40Amp(!!) fuse that runs the SMG pump. A quick swap over and we were back on our way to go up the Umbrailpass and then down the Stelvio Pass, in to Trafoi for our hotel... Not before I had time to grab some more photos though; On paper this route seemed a good idea, but it was now night time, raining, and we'd been up for about 16 hours... It was quite a long drive and despite the rain, tiredness, and rocks strewn over the road from the bad weather, we made it to Hotel Post in Trafoi having completed the Stelvio with all cars in one piece again. We couldn't really take in any scenery driving over Stelvio the night before, but after a good night's sleep, today's route would take us back up Stelvio and down the other side. I got chatting to the receptionist as we were waiting for everybody in the morning and she looked horrified when I explained the days route - I didn't really understand why until she showed us a web cam of the top... 4 inches of snow had fallen in about 8 hours! We contemplated this, along with the prospect of crashing our RHD, FR cars, all running on summer tyres, and we concluded we'd have a crack at driving over it again anyway. I'm glad we did because the scenary was amazing... we even added a German E92 M3 to our little convoy as well Going up the Stelvio from Trafoi; In to the snow zone we go... Zero degrees at the top... In August! Our temporary new convoy, minus the still-ailing RX8 that was slowly winding its way up the hill Fortunately (Surprisingly?!) the Italians had been out all night gritting and clearing the roads, so although slushy in places, they weren't as bad as we had feared. The views continued to be breathtaking once we'd got over the summit and started to drive down the other side as well... Looking East towards the stelvio that we'd just come down And the roads just got better and better... Our route took us West from the Stelvio and we stopped in St Moritz for lunch, it having a posh reputation and all... Well after an hour of getting lost, losing the Elise in traffic and wandering around town, St Moritz was looking like a bit of a duff choice as there didn't seem much to do at all. Just as we were losing hope however, we stumbled across the Italian National Car Club displaying their cars in the town... We took too many photos to post here, but we reckon there was about £50m of cars out in the street. Here's a few for you; Feeling pretty happy with our selves, we left St Moritz and proceeded to crack on with the San Bernadino Pass, St Gotthard Pass, and Furka Pass (Videos to follow for most of these), and we kipped in Obergoms (Switzerland). All I can say is that all of the passes were BRILLIANT! They're all different, some very twisty and others more flowing, but BRILLIANT is the only word for it. We got lost a few times but I can honestly say nobody cared as the roads were all amazing. The next day (no repairs for once, hooray!) we did the Furka Pass again (the other way), St Gotthard Pass, Nufenenstrasse, Grand Saint Bernard, and avoiding the Mont Blanc tunnel, we took the SS26/D1090 in to Bourg-Saint-Maurice. (More videos to follow again). BSM is a dump, but the roads leading down to it were brilliant. We finished the day in Chambery (France). Our last day of driving, Chambery to home in one go (about 650miles), was a long day, made longer by crazy French drivers speeding in some of the heaviest rain I've ever seen. We got out of the storms eventually, the 'Bip and go' toll tags we installed making a huge difference at the toll points (you can do 30kph through them, instead of stopping and paying cash via the passenger window) and by the time we stopped at Reims for lunch, it was nice and sunny. And from Reims, it was a relatively easy drive to Calais, in time for some shopping and food around City of Europe before getting the train back to mightly blighty. Throughout the whole trip we only found two places that didn't do 98 RON. In the first case there was another place just down the road that had 98 on pump, and the other place had 100 RON An excellent trip that we're definitely doing again next year, and my (totally standard) Zed never missed a beat. Sure, the guys behind me complained that my brake pads stunk to high heaven when going full-chat down the twisties (but never any fade for me), and yes the M3 won the 'best noise in the tunnel' competitions, and yes the Elise get far more appreciation from the locals than the rest of our cars put together, but I don't care... 350Z FTW. (PS - Yes, next year may well see some HFCs, an induction kit, a new exhaust, a remap, some ARBs, 20mm spacers and 20mm lower, but don't tell them that!)

lol!

lol, phew! You had me worried about the split pin.. Yeah the bolt is coming out and getting replaced there's no other thing for it, I just don't want to waste another three hours on it if I can help it. The assembly is still attached to the car (via that last bolt) so I might try to loosen off some of the suspension arm components and see if that will give me enough wiggle-room to get a socket on tomorrow... Thanks Keyser.

Er, these ones (pic stolen from google); http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3085/3103213505_97fc169856_b.jpg

Mine doesn't have any kind of split-pin to remove on any of the bolts?! :-/

Evening all, I'm in the process of changing my front wheel bearings and I cannot, for the life of me, get the bottom bolt out. No amount of jacking the suspension up, hammering, WD40, patience, or even putting all the other bolts back in nice and tight, is working. All of the other three bolts came out very easily once I'd cracked them off but this last bottom bolt, which I only seem able to get an open-ended spanner to, is FUBAR. Every single quarter-turn takes all my strength and weight and the bolt-head isn't fairing well in the process. It's probably about 7mm out so far so not much further to go, but if anybody has any suggestions about how to get this bugger out, I'm all ears. Also, as it's pretty knackered, I'm hoping I can pick up a new one from the Nissan Stealership tomorrow without too much hassle? Any suggestions appreciated, you can save the abuse until after I've got it fixed! :-) Cheers, Rich

Er, I just bought my 2007, Grey, 313 GT, black leather, Sat Nag, original alloys, no rear parking sensors, 56k on the clock, FNSH, no mods and good condition inside and out for £9,500... You don't need to be spending £11k for one if you're patient!

For a 313, if it matters? New or used, not fussy, will need postage to Reading as well. Cheers!

Yesterday, I modded my kitchen cupboard with a mini-shelf for more storage to keep the Mrs happy.

+1 It's just common sense +2! You wouldn't leave it unlocked if you went shopping, why leave it unlocked on a forecourt?

I'm parked next to you right now!

+1! I'm not a cyclist myself, but there are loads around where I live and even those that have invested in lights are still near-invisible from the rear - the small, single red lights never seem very powerful (or maybe I just live near a bunch of cheapskates that won't spent £100 on a set? ). A nice set of hi-vis reflective clothing and plenty of reflectors on your bike (in addition to your lights, and not those ones from packets of Kellogs Frosties from the 1990s) and drivers will at least be able to see you.

Yesterday I changed my air filters, oil filter and oil, does that count?

Since buying my Zed I've started exploring the local b-roads a bit more and I wondered where people in the Reading, Bracknell, Newbury, Basingstoke, Didcot parts of the world do their driving?? I've found a few little stretches S and SW of Reading, but they tend to be quite narrow or have limited visibility. I also just discovered the B4494 from Wantage to Newbury which is a brilliant stretch of road early on a Sunday morning.. Where else is there to go?

Where do you all buy yours from??

Pff... some of them are pretty cringworthy!