Be Excellent To Each Other

It is in my golf.. it is great.

I like i can have one phone connected for calls, and a different one for music.

You must be hugely relieved

I just open those.

that is indeed good news.

You're a human radiator!

The downside is that I have my music on way loud, and people think I've got the windows open so show off my "phat choons". But it's just so I can see.

Tbf he looks like Gru in every picture. BECAUSE HE IS GRU.

From the jonny cash song?

And show off your "Phat choons" though right?

Great news Choppers ! hope it's all sorted out soon

Heh.

I have to make a choice about the Ka. I know the driver's door handle needs fixing (£90), and discs and pads need doing (c £120) at least to get through the MOT. However, the thermostat housing is held on by 3 bolts (should be 6, 2 snapped off in engine block, other threaded) and Radweld (I suspect it will go 8 weeks after I pay the money for the MOT). With that in mind, I am more leaning g towards scrapping it sooner rather than later and getting something else. It'd be cheap as I am really only doing 30 miles a day between home and the factory. I think it'll possibly have to fit the new push trolley in the boot and have rear seats to transport two tiny humans short distances. With that in mind, I'be been making doe eyes at a soft top 306, but I might come at you with an offer on the Puma. I'll need to think some more about this though and work out quite how and when.

The Leaf has Bluetooth too and stops/starts the music - and I don't need to ever scrape the windscreens and side windows in the morning!

Is that because by the time it's charged up the sun is out?

Boom

I suspect it's not going to be big enough for your needs. You're more than welcome to come down for a "viewing", though. And it'll be far too much travelling to come down and go back in one day, so you might as well hang around and we'll go to the pub.

For the money, there's nothing wrong with a Picasso (except for the fact that you're resigning yourself to being middle-aged): http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/ ... &logcode=p

Hey! Fuck y... Yeah, alright

Thinking of leasing next.

But oh so practical!

Why the face?

All joking aside, the Picasso is an excellent family car. And mine only cost £300. It'll do 45mpg around town and much better than that on long runs.

And your tweed will fit right in

Because it'll cost more and who knows if I'll have a job for the next three years.

All of this. I genuinely loved mine.

Why are you thinking of doing it then?

Shinies.

I seem to be doing more miles than ever and want something more modern. I'm thinking about the Fiesta ST, and I can seem to get that for around £250pm, which is actually pretty reasonable…

But only if you can afford the payments for the term.

Well, indeed.

@DBSnappa, GJ, JC

Yes very relieved thanks My logical brain was telling me it would be OK as the chap is a long-established and well-regarded dealer on the island, but you can't help worrying about these things sometimes when illogical 'I'm going to fuck with your head' brain puts itself in charge!

I collected the Jazz after lunch and me and Mrs Hearthly drove back to Ramsey in it, the car is, erm..... Perfectly OK I suppose, it's a Honda so it's well screwed together and doubtless it'll work perfectly forever, but it's absolutely gutless (1.4 petrol designed for efficiency), doesn't really 'handle' in any conventional sense of the word, has loads of cheap plastics and fabrics all over the place, and is clearly a car designed for VERY OLD PEOPLE as all the buttons and switches are reassuringly big with nice clear text on them.

It doesn't 'accelerate' so much as 'make a bit more noise' if you let the revs build up, so I quickly gave up and decided to see how many MPG I could get out of it, managed 55mpg (!) for the drive back and a little jaunt around the north of the island.

Oh yes it does have a panaromic sunroof, which is quite nice, and it's got a USB slot so I can plug in some decent tunes.

I wouldn't pay £13,450 for it though! (And that's second hand, it's one of their ex-demo models apparently.)

A "viewing" mightn't be the worst idea, ever. I shall chatdiscuss.



That's the DavPaz vibe. DavPaz cool is the Ted to MaliCool's Bill. MaliCool and DavPaz cool intersecting could cause an Awesnado.

Reap the wind, Malia

So, things are happening. Does anyone want a 2004 Clio RS 182 in titanium silver for £1.5k?

No, they don't.

That's the lowest they go for! It's a bargain.

Arsenado.

Congratulations!

Good plan. Soft top Saab 9-3, then.

I'm replacing it with a similarly-sized car, so not quite.

Ooohhh look Cavey, it's your favourite Porsche just come up for sale here on the IOM!

Can you tell what year this one is by looking at it? Is this one of the earlier 'fried egg headlamps' ones? (They do look a bit eggy.)

Yes that's the one mate.
Looks very clean doesn't it? (Still don't like the headlamps though, the 997 was much improved)

Big, big gamble this. On the one hand, £16k is unquestionably amazing value for money when viewed in the specific context of the previous model (993) prices, which are four times that. But if you get one that goes bang - as they very frequently do - it renders the car worthless as it's £25,000 for a new flat-six engine. So, it's 'total bargain' or 'total disaster'. Hi-Lo on a 6!

(The 996 to get is the GT3, GT3RS or GT2, of course - these all have the motorsport 'Mezger' engine which is utterly bulletproof and doesn't suffer any of these foibles. Trouble is, prices for a tatty-ish 996 GT3 start at £60,000 these days, which is more than they cost brand new 10 years ago....)

I've been reading around on the 996 as the subject interests me, and it seems that it's the early 3.4s that you really need to watch out for, the later 3.6s had a lot of the issues fixed with them apparently, and even the 3.4s from 2000 onward aren't too bad.

One report reckoned that the 'catastrophic failure' rate was probably in the region of 5-10%, which admittedly isn't great odds but some folks might fancy a punt.

Also there are some pre-emptive modifications you can make for a couple of grand that can mitigate some of the main problem areas.

Far too dangerous for my money though, not that it's remotely practical for our family anyway, even the Merc has put the willies up me.

Interesting read here, and many more if you have a Google around - http://www.autofarm.co.uk/pdf/Total911_July06.pdf

http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/carbycar/po ... ction=good

So there I was on Friday at my local Ford dealer, about to sign on the dotted line to lease a Ford Fiesta ST-3 for three years, when the system went down and he couldn't print off the lease forms. So my plan was to go back tomorrow when the salesman had sorted this out.

Today I found out my customer are looking to exit the Nottingham data centres where I work by April 2018, so I've told Ford I'm backing out. Lucky escape, perhaps.

Blimey. That is a lot of car for the money.

Edit: the other stuff sucks.

Sorry to hear that Myp.
I love the Fiesta ST as well, it's my fave hot hatch. Low weight, not stupid money, agile & great handling

It's ok, two years is longer than a lot of people get! Me a few years ago would have said "fuck it" and done it anyway. But I can't justify it any longer.

Speaking of hot hatches, this caught my eye today. It isn't the VTS, and it only has 4 months MOT on it, but for less than £400...

They were decent cars, but finding a non-fucked one must be tricky now.

Not decent in a crash though. One of the worst passenger safety ratings of the time IIRC - I'd steer clear.

And even though it's comparable in a straight line to my Clio and the new Fiesta, it really doesn't handle very well at all.

Yep, it was a development of the Peugeot 106, which was in turn a development of the Citroen AX, and that was around in 1986. Back then, crumple zones weren't a big point in car design.

And that's why this happens.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3FdnWU5ecg

To be fair, for £390, how bad can it be? I mean, I know the guys here are mentioning NCAP ratings and suchlike (and fair do's), but for this kind of dosh - "don't crash" would be my advice! (Besides, even stuff like this is miles safer than the Mk 1 Escort Sports/Mexicos and Capris etc. of my youth, and we didn't give two stuffs about it.... plus you're a biker, how many NCAP stars does your body have? )

If it's got a year's MoT, isn't a cut-and-shut or nicked, doesn't smoke, there's no cam-slap and the tyres are good, haggling 'em down to £300 would seem like a very cheap route to decent thrills? Plus, these *do* handle surprisingly well; it's a near-clone of the 106 which certainly did handle (even the cooking versions did, let alone the hot ones).