Jetpilot

Good to see all the boys and girls at the shed today, just about to put the block in as I left

Although not on a 350 i have tried all sorts of aftermarket clutches (Exedy, Os Giken twin and single plate designs, hks etc) designed to handle more hp but there is always a trade off, they are all grabby and noisey, not so bad when directly pulling away but if your in slow moving traffic or reversing the car, they are not pleasant. Sure you get used to it, a few more revs and engage, but not so easy to slip if your trying to just creep along, they are either on or off, i also found getting off the line quickly more tricky as the bite point was so precise, unless your just nailing it.

Get them up on driftworks imho.

They do say money cant buy style or taste

I have gone for plenty of colour changes on previous cars and never paid more than £2k from reputable sprayers, that includes shut lines but not under the bonnet. I have paid as little as a £1k but look hard and it showed flaws (not surprisingly). With the cost of decent wraps etc i see no point, unless your wrapping something you want to be able to return to the original colour or a finish that isnt oem car manufacturer, imho of course. Having tried plasti dip i would not consider it for a full car.

According to this, i guess it could be on the cards! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/11308952/Opec-Oil-plummets-after-Saudis-says-20-crude-is-possible.html

A tank of 99 and my favourite roads, which are quiet for a change, well until i got there

Gorgeous, loving the concave coupled with huge dish look, very similar to Nessen, from memory a good fitment in 19's for a 350 from them was about $1k per wheel plus shipping and duties Reckon you would be into about £3 - £4k a set If i ever get my GTR thats what they will wear but couldnt justify it on a 350

And no one expected this

Thanks buddy, think i am lucky and the bricks i need are in stock

Mansion tax, stamp duty, gapital gains, even Inheritance tax comes into play now the average property is so expensive. My late father bought a small 2 bed flat as an investment back in the early 70's, even with the capital gains thresehold set at 1987 we would pay some £40k tax. I would say property Is already heavily taxed, I am sure Labour proposed to tax you if you had lived in a property for a considerable time because they were loosing out on stamp duty from you not moving. Your right though, property will be the next target to try to chuck money Into the black hole, what else Is left.

When you say "they", who do you mean as the gov or councils arent building social housing any more, they expect the developers (wealthy) to fund it! In Bournemouth if you build anything over 4 units, flats or houses, you are duty bound to allow 50% of those properties for social housing and i cant remember the exact figure but a % of those HAS to be allowed for minorities! Of course you can roll this over to another project but at some point a developer is taking it royally in my opinion. I am building my own house out of some good fortune, there is a council infrastructure levy, £4600 on a 70sq m property, i know some of the big places being built are into tens of thousands and another guy i know who is building student pods is up to £150k in levy. Its all madness if you ask me and i dont think it can last!

Incidentally its very similar in commercial property, decent places are very hard to buy as they have been bought as part of someones portfolio. A friend recently decided he had had enough of renting office space, business was good etc Took him 2 years to buy somewhere which ironically was the place he was renting, but he also had to buy the office block next to him, owned by the same chap who was selling up his portfolio.

If the average wage earner cant afford the average house price I would say they are unrealistic. I work in the housing sector so see many different scenarios and types of homes. I have just done a exterior refurb on a block of 12 flats, guessing each flat was worth 100 to 120k because of the area, all but one flat was a rental. I work for a client from Essex, in the few years i have known them they have spent just shy of 2 million on property, one was a holiday flat for themselves, one was bought in a new development as a medium term investment, one was bought solely to turn around for profit. They are cash rich but hardly getting any return from that in the bank, so property is a much better investment. Property prices arent driven by demand, its driven by investors looking to return a decent % on savings or investors looking to boost their pension so to speak when they retire. I see no way how a young couple will save a deposit and get a mortgage to fund an average property, even worse if your single, my niece and nephew as a case in point, both on their own and a fair chunk below average wage. When their Mum passed last year they had little choice but to rent, the only blessing was they had both been left some money giving them a good size deposit to be able to buy once the will was sorted. The stupid thing to me is the people renting are often paying more in rental per month than they would have to for a mortgage, but their earnings wont afford them the same capital to buy!

Proving interest rates stay exactly the same and housing continues to rise of course

Yes

Any brickies on here that could let me know roughly what to pay per 1000 bricks and a square meterage rate for blocks. Thanks in advance

The UK's average house price is roughly 8+ x the average salary. How do people afford houses, i have no idea especially now gone are the days of silly mortgage offers, i guess the only thing thats keeping it afloat is the cost of borrowing, once the interest rates start to rise i would expect to see a proper property crash like a good few years ago as people just wont be able to afford the repayments. I worked for a guy yesterday who has a place near Waltham on Thames, his flat has gone up 20% this year alone, not a bad chunk on 500k worth of flat.

Sort of on the subject of Lego, my nephew is a boat skipper (basic terms) and ended up working for the son of the Lego family this year on his boat and got to stay in his home in Denmark (i think). The photos he showed me of his underground car/bike storage, read man cave, were quite staggering. A hydraulic rotating lift that goes centrally to his board room to display whichever car he fancies at the time and too many cars of dreams, ex Schumacher Ferrari, countless exotica and even randoms like a brand new delivery miles 2cv and Mk1 Mx5 to name a couple. Nice to know he is a car man

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/dec/17/police-stop-plane-heathrow-girl-syria

Ah ok thanks If there is any plus side it seems like its unified the country against them. I also saw on the news they physically stopped a female british citizen travelling to Syria on some jihad quest, wouldnt have wasted the Polices time, simply told her if you leave you dont ever come back.

I thought they all operated under the same banner? Isis, Taliban etc

Yet more atrocities of how these cowards operate in the Pakistani school killings, if anyone can tell me what innocent school children have to do with the west i would love to be enlightened!

Seemed to go ages ago, although not sure why!

Now we're talking. This is the sort of vehicle I had in mind when I posted this thread. It is likely that it's performance was only marginally better when new I had an Allegro at the same time, positively luxurious and brisk in comparison However shocking they both were to drive, it was a great time to drive, if that makes sense, one minute your going literally everywhere by bmx, roller skates or worst still on public transport and then the next day, you were driving anywhere and everywhere, just because you could and what heaven the roads seemed back then. I remember coming back from London mid winter in a mates old swb landy, no roof, sat in the back in sleeping bags, i can see why the TopGear boys have such a laugh, however staged!