Dear All,

 

 

After months of searching for a decent one, and having found one a couple of weeks back I finally picked it up yesterday. Black manual TT. It's great. :-) My mate and I have found a couple of issues with it but I'll get those sorted out under the warranty. I'm also planning to take it out later today and put it through it's paces for a couple of hours to shake out any additional problems as the traffic on the A1 was pretty heavy last night coming back from Watford so my opportunities to really boot it were fairly limited.

 

A couple of observations after driving it for a couple of hours yesterday. The first is that whilst the privacy glass looks fantastic from the outside, when you're trying to reverse into a parking space at night you really can't see a thing, as I discovered when I got home. On the plus side it means that when somebody's tailgating you you don't get dazzled by their lights in the rear view mirror. Related to this I notice that it does seem like every other person with a reasonably powerful car wants to race, which is kind of funny at the moment but might wear a bit thin after a while: on the other hand maybe the novelty of wasting Imprezas never really wears off, I don't know... and as for Mondeo ST220 drivers, I have only one word: no!!!

 

As I said there are a couple of things that are definitely wrong with the car. One is that the N/S wing mirror just doesn't want to fold in. The second is that, only when in gear, there's a fairly loud vibration coming from the rear of the car at around 1500 rpm, which is particularly bad in second, although it's also very obvious in first. Actually probably one of the reasons I notice is that it's got the world's worst stereo in it (the original I'm guessing although to be honest it looks circa 1985), which isn't wired in so you can't listen to it anyway. Back to the vibration: it's clearly not coming from the engine, and I don't think it's coming from the transmission since I'm getting nothing through the gear knob, and as I say it's clearly coming from the back of the car. My mate thinks it sounds worse than it is, and suspects a loose exhaust baffle or something. It got worse as we were driving back for about the first hour or so but wasn't evident when I originally test drove the car. Whatever it is though it needs sorting because it's making my really cool looking car sound truly appalling at low revs.

 

The other thing, which is something I'm slightly irritated with myself for not noticing when I looked the car over, is that the paint on the spoiler is cracking up a bit in a couple of places. It's not too bad, but obviously I notice. Martyn (my mate) knows somebody who does resprays and he reckons it'll cost about £100 to get sorted. Alternatively I could just have it removed because I quite like Zs with no rear spoiler in any case. With the respray I'm just a bit concerned about the colour matching as I know this can be problematic with them, although I understand it's more of a problem for the pearlescent colours (mine is just flat black). Can anyone give any advice on this please?

 

Another thing is the indicators. They do work fine, but the side lights come on when I use them. Is this supposed to happen? Again, I only noticed it because of it being dark: from inside the car it looked like the front indicator had come on but wasn't flashing. Previously I'd just assumed that these were some sort of additional fog light.

 

Something else I probably only noticed because of the absence of any music is the turbos. It was my understanding that you shouldn't be able to hear them at all, however under full acceleration you can just about hear the faintest of hisses. The boost level however seems to be fine, with the guage topping out just to the right of the third line above 0 (this is something I checked on the test drive). Is this cause for concern?

 

Sorry, this is turning into a bit of an epic, but I've only a couple more questions left (honest).

 

First off, where's the cruise control? There's one blank in the set of controls to the right of the steering wheel, which I'm assuming is where it's supposed to live... but it clearly isn't there. On the one hand I'm not so bothered if it doesn't have it, but on the other it's quite useful because there are a few dual carriageways around here with a lot of speed cameras so sticking it on 70 and then forgetting about it would be a great advantage. It's very easy to go a lot faster than 70 without really noticing. Again, this is something I didn't check on as carefully as I should have when originally looking over the car.

 

Secondly, I don't see any traction control anywhere. Now to be honest I'm just really NOT bothered about this, but I thought Zs had it so I was just wondering.

 

Last thing. Anyone know a good place to get mats for these babies?

 

That's it for now. I'm planning to post some pics a bit later, but I'm still sitting around in my dressing gown like a fat waster at the moment.

 

 

Cheers,

Bart

Nah, I'm not panicking yet. Now if this were 3 months time and the warranty had just expired THEN I'd be panicking. Zs: cheaper and more reliable than my old Renault (cost me two grand this past year).... well, perhaps not. But it IS a lot more fun to drive.

Cheers,

Bart

 

Make sure you get all you issuse put in writting to the dealer and keep a copy. This means A) you mean business B) he has to fix em all even if it takes 6 months of going back and forth, because the faults have all be raise before the 3 months is over.

 

Is this car a new into the county import by any chance? If so have the Tyre checked as they may be the sorce of the vibration. I the sit on the docks in Japan too long durring their summer. The tyres get flat spots and disformed with standing in the heat. If how ever it is the prop Well I have a complete Auto prop With a perfect centre bearing and if you want it its £120 and its about a 1 hour job to change over.

 

If I was buying a Z from a dealer then I'd expect it to be spot on and not as Christopherdavi says. These are not everyday shit we put up with.

Thanks Mark, that's spot on advice. I've written everything down so far. I spoke to the dealer earlier on as well and he was fine about it all. Oddly I noticed just a few minutes ago the ABS light has now gone out again. Gremlins, you gotta love 'em. :-)