m0n1xX3r

Joel, You might find this site useful: http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/before_you_buy/thinking_about/cars/ It says "before you buy" but there's all kinds of useful information on there about your rights. Cheers, Bart

Yep, I'm afraid I've got no sympathy whatsoever. Those things should be banned. I saw no less than 3 of them last Saturday evening in Cambridge and they're nothing more than a menace. Slow, gas-guzzling, large and dangerous, and they're generally not even carrying that many people (unlike buses) and again (unlike buses) they're not really designed for fuel efficiency.

That's a mess. I'm glad you got out of it pretty much unscathed.

Hmm... bit 80s for my tastes, although a good car by all accounts. I have a good mate who used to be really into Celicas and had a gen 4 which he was very fond of. Only thing (I'm told) you have to watch for is rust because the body panels aren't galvanised or something, but the one you've linked to looks pretty clean. There was a right shed of one outside the YHA in Cambridge the other day: three (!!) flat tyres and rust all over the place, particularly round the wheel arches.

You might well already have spotted this, but look who I found on the BBC news website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/6292354.stm Our very own PK1! Story's linked from the main front page.

LOL. I was starting to wonder that myself.

I used to run on F1s. They were great in the wet, never had any problems. The odd bit of lift-off oversteer sometimes, but nothing to worry about. If your back end is all over the place I'd suggest your tyres are the most likely culprits. Get some decent ones. If you were driving some little runaround with a 1 litre engine it wouldn't matter so much, but with this car you need something that can put the power on the road in a controlled manner, especially in the wet.

Grim, grim, grim.

That's absolutely incredible. You can tell it took them a while to film because on the first outdoor shot on the grass you can see the shadows moving. Truly amazing.

That is indeed a very nice looking car. I'm with Si on this one though: get some '99 spec tail lights on there and it'll be the perfect zed.

Yeah, it's a pain in the arse. I used to get it all the time. Best thing to do is learn to ignore it because that way at least you'll stay out of trouble.

It's a bloody nightmare and no mistake. Sorry to read what's happened to you. My zed's been off the road for a while now and I've actually just cancelled the insurance, but having read most of this thread I'm thinking maybe I need to SORN it as well (at the moment it's still taxed) in order to avoid similar problems. The whole system is bloody stupid because you can't even get road tax without: (1) an MOT, and (2) a valid certificate of motor insurance So the MOT expires and then you're basically screwed unless you've got a driveway or a garage you can keep the thing in because if it's parked outside your house it can't be SORNed. Utterly, utterly ridiculous, particularly since nowadays all this stuff can be checked by any traffic cop in a matter of seconds based on your registration plate. I suppose it means we don't have our streets littered all over the place with battered old vehicles with broken windows and flat tyres, but don't we have laws on littering to cover that kind of thing? I mean if an Australian district can fine the USA $400 for littering because a chunk of Skylab landed in their town I'm sure we could come up with some sensible penalty for leaving wrecked cars lying around. My other car's tax expired at the end of last month, and I'd basically forgotten about it because I had to go away on business for 8 days. So I get back, realise the tax needs sorting, phone up and buy 6 months worth and I'm waiting for the disc to arrive... and waiting... and waiting. After a week and a half I phone the DVLA who confirm that yes I've purchased the tax and it's all fine and since it's been that long they'll send me out a duplicate disc free of charge. Now it still hasn't arrived yet, and so every time I see a police car I flinch at the moment, because, and here's the really stupid bit, it's an offence to drive a vehicle on a public road without displaying a valid tax disc (unless of course it's SORNed and you're off to get it MOTed). Now I can kind of see the point of that 10 years ago or more because the police didn't have instant access to any kind of database that would immediately tell them whether the vehicle is taxed, insured and has a valid MOT, but nowadays? It's just stupid and pointless. Why don't they update the law to reflect the current state of technology? Why are we still burdened with useless and irrelevant rules that hark back to an age gone by that is NEVER GOING TO RETURN!!!! Ah, I feel better for that. I went off on a bit of a tangent there. Sorry about that. My point was meant to be I feel your pain, and if you were cynical you might think it was almost like the current rules are just designed to trip you up. All IMHO obviously.

I can't believe that hadn't been tampered with by somebody beforehand. It's kind of funny but also a shame because the car's probably knackered.

I know what you're saying, however believe it or not UK consumer law offers you some protection if you buy a car with undisclosed faults, including repair or a refund for the vehicle (the rules are slightly different for private versus trade sale, and you obviously get more protection with a trade sale). So if the guy says the car's running fine then it should be, doesn't matter whether you pay £1 or £10k.

Or you could have a James Bond style number plate that showed something different whenever you went through a speed trap. The other thing you could do is make it so your plate would only be readable from certain angles by aligning the crystals correctly when a current is passed through them. Anyone directly behind you or to the side could read it but to speed cameras it could be made invisible because they always shooting from slightly above. Oops, did I say that? You never heard it from me. >

Yeah, instant HUD for the car. Awesome.

I read about this last night on another site. I never met him, although obviously I've read his posts on here, but I'm really sorry to hear it. A good mate of mine died at 51 a couple of weeks back and I thought that was bad enough, but 27 is absolutely no age to die. He had his whole life ahead of him. A shocking and tragic loss is all I can say.

eBay's full of them isn't it? To be honest nowadays the minimal info on the listing and the fact that he can't spell targa would put me off, but maybe I'm just turning into a grumpy old man.

Weeeellllll, he's got the centre panel: 1 out of 3 isn't bad I suppose. No wait.... what am I thinking?!??

Before I say anything else: avoid Deane. I have a Deane acoustic which I paid about £300 for six years ago and it's very toppy. My current guitar is a L'Arrivee which I managed to get for £580 including the import duty (bought from the States) which is a bit more than you're looking to spend but if you know anyone going over there any time soon it's definitely worth asking them to get you something because it's so much cheaper and £400 would probably buy you something very nice. For my guitar over here you're looking at over £1000 new so like I say, worth thinking about. You might want to consider a second-hand Taylor or something like that. Best thing to do is to get yourself down to a guitar shop and play as many different guitars as you can to see what you like. And definitely shop around a bit. Takemine are very well regarded although I can't say I'm an enormous fan. I did play a Yamaha recently that was very good and didn't cost that much, £250 I seem to recall. Martin are also very well regarded but I doubt you'd pick up even a second-hand one for £400. I'd suggest avoiding roundbacks because they just slide around all over the place, particularly if you try playing them sitting down. Plus I've never heard one that really impressed me, plus they look a bit daft IMO. Best of luck with it. Cheers, Bart

That's got to be some sort of record there. My advice would be the same as others: just try taking it somewhere else. I'm guessing it'll still probably fail on something but maybe you'll only have one or two things to fix. Doesn't sound to me much like ALL the lights could suddenly have failed, unless all the fuses have randomly blown or something daft like that.

:shock: :shock: :shock: Isn't that what pre-flight checklists are for?

I don't get what the big deal is. Sure it was used in Kill Bill, but it's just a stock NA.

I should point out that this is the reason mine's sitting on the driveway... it's just not economical to repair it (trouble with valves) which wouldn't bother me except that I've recently bought a house so spare cash is now no more than a feeling of nostalgia for me. I was planning to sell up, but if I did repair it I doubt I'd get the money back.

Problem is at the moment that there are a ton of them coming over on import with not a great deal to choose between most of them, plus they cost a bomb to run. I can't see prices rising any time soon. It's funny really because I remember people complaining about the low prices when I got mine a couple of years back, but they've dropped an AWFUL lot further since then. You should be able to pick up a decent TT for around £4k nowadays, maybe even a bit less, but it was £5 - £6k when I was in the market. Ah well, you live and learn.