ukdavew

I thought the pre and post tax-hike thing had gone away with this new regime next year?

a tank of fuel thats like £85 !! you might want to edit that

Haha I know the way to Zed owner's hearts

Optimax or Ultimate...name yer poison people!

Personally I'd go with a 2nd hand car. I think it's fair to say that residuals have taken a knock since the budget and the tax increase, certainly I've noticed an increase in cars when I search for my (lower) budget. That being the case why take the initial "new car" depreciation as well as the "oh no it's expensive to tax" depreciation.

Just my non-owner opinion.

Following my Driveway adventuresI now need to test whether a Zed will fit onto the driveway.

Do we have any owners in or around Bristol who would be willing to come along and try to stick their Zed on my drive? I reckon it's best to rule out any lowered cars as I think it'll be a close call as it is.

There's a BP and a Shell garage nearby and I'll happily buy the person a tank of fuel as a thankyou.

So no faffing, come along, stick it on the drive (or not) and get a tank of fuel either way...simple as that.

The other thing is that as you can see the local amenities love digging up our pavement, it's like a bloody patchwork quilt out there

I'm gonna post a thread to see if I can snag a local owner to help test it.

What a delightful mix of sarcasm and support

Hopefully it doesn't need to last too long till I can get the entire front garden professionally paved. But at the moment the choice is zed or paving...if the Zed still won't fit then it'll be paving and something less nice than the Zed.

So here's what's happened:

1) We cut a line across the drive about a foot down the angled part.

2) We borrowed a breaker and dug out the large block of concrete at the top of the drive and the sloped part up to the line we'd cut.

3) Then we noticed a huge hump on the roadside which we decided to "improve"

4) And now we've laid cold lay tarmac at the lowest level we could. I think we've gained about an inch or so, it's definitely smoothed it out.

Borrowed a breaker/jackhammer today and dug out the highest 18", going to lay some coldlay tarmac tomorrow...we think we've gained about 1-2" extra clearance by doing so.

*fingers crossed*

I don't think it'd fit on my drive

Congrats! Looking good.

For those who missed my post elsewhere my meagre ISTS pics are over at

Here it is...Stez posted it when I asked if anyone had pics.

Really sorry to hear this, my worst nightmare and something that I'm worried big style about for my own car when it arrives. My drive is steeper that yours but goes pretty flat at the top quickly so part of the car is down the drive and part on the flat. My Merc at the mo doesn't clear it by much.

 

Does anyone know what the lowest point is on the 350? Although I'm not sure how much that will help unless I suppose I work out the lowest point on the Merc and compare but then I imagine wheel base etc comes into it...

 

Would never want to leave on the road, not when there is a garage waiting for the car at the bottom of the drive!!

Someone posted a pic of the underneath of a car a while back when I asked. From eyeballing a Zed at the local dealer recently I think it's slightly ahead of the rear wheels although it looked relatively flat on the underside to me (unlike the RX-7 where the exhaust is pretty low slung beyond all the other gubbins...oh yeah I'm that technical)

Well I think you've provided a valuable educational service

Dont give up on the Z idea Dave!

 

Like Stew says, maybe you could do a lot of the labour work yourself and save some money that way. Also, is there any way you can get a Zed out on a test drive to try it on the current drive or have someone come round with their Z? I know you tried a Mazda on the drive but ideally you want to compare like for like - if you're thinking of a Z then its worth trying a Z on the drive.

I'm definitely not giving up. In stock form the Rx-7 is 1cm lower than the Zed at least at the lowest point and I've no way of knowing till I try with a Zed.

Here's some pics I took this evening to show the challenge I've got.

Sorry I didn't get to say meet anyone, by the time we got round to the open car park sections it was lashing down and everyone was hidden in their cars.

I hope to catch you at JAE or similar later in the year!

+1

 

I moved when I got the Z to a place with a garage as for me, the piece of mind having it locked up each night is priceless. Is there nowhere else you can park it, friends place, garage off the council? Failing that, what about a car cover?

I'll be using it every day, thankfully the car park near work has the highest safety award, but near the house it's the drive or the road.

5k for drive work is expensive! My folks made a drive, extended it from holding 4 cars, now holds 11! They didn't pay that and it was lock block!

 

What you needing done exactly? You might be able to do a lot of the labour intersive donkey work yourself!

I'll post some pictures at some point. At the moment we've got a 1 car width driveway that runs along the side of the house and an ignored house-width garden. The garden is quite flat but is about 3 or 4 feet below pavement level.

We want to pave the lot to gain off-street parking for the Mrs. It requires putting in a new drain along the front of the house, ripping up the existing concrete drive, putting hardcore etc down to build up the level and then paving it.

We've had probably 10 different quotes and they range from £3k (from a renowned disreputable company) to 10k for Anglian Windows' subcontractors.

A friend of mine bought his dream car, a Chrysler 300c and within the space of the first 10 days it had been keyed down both sides in the car park near his flat. While I've never had any problems with cars getting damaged by oiks, but ours is a bit of a rat-run that the local modded drivers have adopted as an unofficial speed-trial even though it's only 1 car wide...as such the Mrs has lost her wing mirror parked out there.

I'm trying not to be defeatist and will be attacking the transition between my driveway and the pavement with an angle grinder shortly...this is where the problem is.

My budget's probably around 14-16k...so not rock bottom but not too far from it.

Trouble is we've had quotes for getting the drive done professionally and we're looking at £5k for that (cheapest reputable quote)...leaving me below the sportscar poverty line.

My Zed dream is on the rocks. Tried a modded-suspension (but not lowered as far as we know) RX-7 on the drive at the weekend and it didn't come anywhere close to fitting on. Grounded out and looked like it needed a good couple of inches extra clearance.

I'm taking an angle grinder to the edge of the drive but it's starting to look more and more like the Zed dream isn't going to pay off.

The problem is that if I spank all my cash on getting the driveway done professionally then I've not got the budget left to buy a Zed. And I'm definitely not gonna buy my dream car and leave it on the road for the hoodies to play with.

So I'll do what I can but I have to say I'm pretty deflated at the moment

well there all yesterday and missed the bloody drifting saw some time attack today mind

tbh it was a bit pants...we were on the opposite side of the show heard the tannoys start to describe the drifting but couldn't work out where it was...no bloody signposts or guides or anything. Headed to the main grandstand to find that all you could see was the straight and the exit of the final bend and then happened across the first corner as we were leaving.

btw if you approve of the previous pics chaps then might I recommend my Max Power Live 2006 set

Oh and there are some cars too

Quick shot of some of the Donny drifting, between the rain and temp they all struggled and it was far more skidding than drifting at times!

Get it up! The other pic was better but I messed up the link!

Haha if I'd known the demand was this high I'd've put the other dozen or so pics of them up on flickr too

What can I say...I know my audience

Got a video of em both dancing, but haven't got round to youtubing it yet

My few pics between the rain are at