Marki

Micheldever had the best prices when I reshod my Minor 1000 in 1981. Nice to know some things never change!

It's a buyers market right now, given the fuel prices. Figure out what you'd have to pay to buy it, then grit your teeth and accept £3-4K less. That was what I had to do to sell my previous car to make way for the Z. Parker's etc. prices are way over optimistic. IMO

Latest on MY06 Ebisu GT Alezan Coupe is 21 June 06, 2 weeks slippage on previous 8 June date. No chassis no yet. Trying to time (private) sale of current wheels for smooth changeover. Anyone else waiting for similar spec? Any info would be appreciated

Attached is my Excel spreadsheet showing speed and torque @ RPM in each gear for MY06 and MY03. Upper table shows speed in mph @ RPM in each gear based on 88mph @ 6600 rpm (=93mph @ 7000rpm) in 3rd gear, from: http://www.testdriven.co.uk/print.cfm/news/914. Lower panel shows comparative torque figures read by eye off graph from Nissan Japan website, therefore only approximate. Comparative means that figures shown for 5th gear (ratio = 1.000) equal torque at crank, torque in other gears adjusted by gear ratio. MY03 redlines @ 6600 rpm, MY06 @ 7000 rpm, coresponding in 6th gear to 180 and 191 mph respectively, but stock Z engine will run out of puff long before that. If I remember righly, when Evo mag tested the MY03 for Vmax it didn't even hit the 155mph limiter. There I go again...

Just like buses - you don't see any then 3 come along at once...

All rather tedious, IMHO. Tedious ceremony, booring looking car! That's AUDI for ya!

:teeth:

OK, I know I'm boring, but I've nothing else to do whiling away the wait until the June delivery date.

The modifications to the GT4 / MY06 engine are quite sophisticated see here: http://www.testdriven.co.uk/news.cfm/nissan_350z_revised_for_2006_with_more_power The relevant bit is here: When it comes to the GT4/MY06 engine having less torque, there seem to be a lot of misconceptions around. The 03 engine has a pronounced torque peak around 4800 rpm; this is not necessarily a good thing: HP = (torque @ RPM) x RPM The desirable characteristic of a torque curve is monotonous, preferably flat, giving HP = RPM. At most other engine speeds the GT4/MY06 engine has the same or more torque. There are lots of dyno's on the web, although now I can't find a straight comparison of the two... I suspect the area under the torque curve is greater for the 06. How else would it have a faster 0-60 time? Oh, and while I'm on the subject, MY06 has Rays alloys and speed sensitive power steering. OK, it's official, I'm a grumpy old man!

GT pack £2.5K: Electrically adjustable, heated leather seats, cruise control and stereo upgrade to 240w and 7 speaker system (from stock 160w 4 speaker system). On other prestige marques you would pay as options around £1.2K for leather seats, £900 for electically adjusted seats, £300 for heated seats, £500 for stereo upgrade, £100 for cruise = £3K. IMHO GT pack is reasonably priced, and optional so take it or leave it as you like. I like leather seats, I wouldn't want to go back to a manually operated seat having had electric, and I appreciate the seat heating 6 months of the year! I use cruise control most days, and find it particularly useful for sticking to speed limits, for instance in areas with average speed cameras where a few moments inattention can easily see you drift above the limit.

Did any of the supposedly faster cars have sons in them? Could this be anything to do with +/- death wish on the part of the drivers, rather then something to do with the cars?

There's an RX8 in my household that I've driven occasionally. It's OK, but, I find my current wheels (204 bhp, 302 lb ft)* are a far more entertaining drive in the real world. The RX8 bears no comparison to the thrill I've experienced test driving the Z. *Ashamed to admit what, in this illustrious company of petrolheads - but yes, you've probably guessed, it ain't running on petrol and it has a Bavarian accent.

£20K sounds too much for 30K miles 3 owner 3 y.o. car! Sunset with orange interior? You know when you've been Tangoed!

My local Nissan dealer is hard selling Autosmart Silver Seal with new Z. My instinctive reaction is not to touch it with a barge pole, and I suspect same comments made above about Supaguard apply here. Would anyone care to enlighten me further?

Did you spot the deliberate mistake in the song?