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You're ascribing far too much sophistication to me coldeyes: the only control I've got over my boost level is how much pressure I apply with my right foot. ;) It's an interesting point though: maybe if you had a boost controller and dialled it all the way down you could get better fuel economy. Incidentally, AndyP's point above. The speedo over-reading shouldn't make any difference to your mileage calculations. If you know the distance between two fixed points just divide that distance by the amount of fuel you used (you'll need to convert to imperial gallons, which are equivalent to 4.546 litres). The longer the distance the more accurate an impression you'll get. The only problem will be if your odometer is over-reading so the actual number of miles covered is wrong: mine seems pretty accurate TBH, or at least it agrees almost exactly with my previous car for the same journey. They could both be wrong but it would be a bit odd if they were out by the same amount.

Oh yeah, one other slightly subjective observation: if you keep the boost level below 0 then the fuel usage isn't too bad, however the problem with this is that you don't get much in the way of acceleration either. Hence urban driving uses shedloads of fuel because of having to stop and pull-away all the time.

Sorry, forgot to say, I'm not anywhere near Heathrow, but if you find yourself in the Cambridge area you're more than welcome to take a look at mine. Cheers, Bart

I've got a basically stock 2+2 twin turbo, which should apparently return 28 mpg extra-urban. However, what it will do very much depends on how and where you drive it. If I'm driving around town I estimate that I get around 12 mpg... consequently I don't drive it around town too much. If I'm blatting it around the countryside for the sheer fun of it I probably get about the same, but haven't done the calculation. However, I don't mind the fact that this costs a bomb because it's just for a laugh and I don't do it every day. Going to my parents, which is around 210 miles away depending on exactly which way you go I used almost exactly 36 litres of fuel, which I calculated as returning 26.5 mpg at the time. I can't remember what the exact distance was though because I just read it off the odometer at the time. So..... basically the fuel economy can be described as being somewhere between "not very good" and "completely appalling". ;) But then that's not what we all bought our zeds for anyway so it doesn't really matter.

Well I own a black Z but I'm not too militant about it. I reckon, since you've got the option of going either way, orange will look fantastic, so I'd say go for that.

Srrae, that just makes it so much the worse. :( I can't see that anybody will be better off and a lot of people are going to be completely punished by this.

Hi Chris, yeah that was the other thing that sparked this off in my mind: I read that thread earlier on. Poor bloke, that's going to cost mucho £££ to sort out. :( But my knowledge of mechanics is pretty poor (actually very poor) so I thought it was still worth asking around. Reckon I'll probably stay clear of them and stick with Simon's advice. Cheers, Bart

Oh, BTW, for simplicity I didn't include the standard road tax in my calculations because the amount this adds obviously depends on your annual mileage. For 6000 miles its something like 3p / mile, for an average-ish mileage of 12000 (which I was doing in my Clio) it's obviously half that at 1.5p / mile and continues to drop the more miles you do. This obviously means that the real tax cost for running my Clio increases to around 6.9 - 8.2 p / mile, whilst the zed becomes even more frighteningly expensive because I'm doing less miles than I was in the Clio. It's an interesting piece of government spin that they can take this fact (and it is a fact) and make it sound like people who drive further pay less tax though, because of course the majority of the tax that all of us pay for using the roads is in the form of fuel duty. Anyway, I've really finished now. Bart

The hilarious thing about all this is that, unless I'm mistaken (and let's be honest, I certainly could be), the idea of this tax is to replace the current road tax AND fuel duty, BUT the government is selling it as charging people who cover more miles more than those who cover less. Yeeesss, that's true as far as it goes, but... well.... duh... doesn't driving more miles mean that you use more fuel which in turn means that you pay more fuel duty (aka tax), which means that even under the current system this is exactly what happens? Honestly, politicians must think we're all morons if they think we can't join that set of dots. Now I'll admit that it's possible that we as Z owners could find ourselves a lot better off if (i) we drive at off-peak times, and (ii) we stick to country lanes (admittedly these are more fun anyway). But there is the slight issue of the amount you pay also being related to the engine size of your car so we could get fairly well stung. From experience (and slightly cynically) I have to say that even with the fairly minimal amount of driving I do nowadays I'd be incredibly surprised if this tax left me better off rather than worse. OK, now lets do some numbers. I reckon I get between 12mpg and 26.5mpg (that last one is reasonably accurate based on a 210 mile journey to my parents house and the fact that I put almost exactly 36 litres of fuel in to fill the tank when I got there, having started off with a full tank). Now I pay 93p for Optimax and of that around 63p is VAT and fuel duty... actually probably a bit more than that because the VAT will certainly be higher. The problem here is finding hard figures for the amount of duty we pay on a litre of petrol: I googled for it but I don't think the government necessarily want it published because people might get a bit upset. Anyway I did find this: http://www.bized.ac.uk/current/mind/2003_4/061003.htm; which suggest that the actual amount of fuel duty is around the 50p / litre mark. There are 4.546 litres in a UK gallon so that's around £2.27 in fuel duty per gallon. Right, so per mile depending on the type of driving I do I'm paying between 8.6 and 19p per mile (just divide the amount of fuel duty per gallon by my highest and lowest mileage figures). In my old Clio I got 34 - 42 mpg so I'd be paying 5.4 - 6.7p / mile (yowza!?!? This zed is expensive!!!). So on the face of it the 2p / mile baseline for the new tax is looking good. However we really need some more hard information from the government to make an accurate judgement on this because I strongly suspect that that figure represents a 1.0 litre Micra on a country lane at 4am and that when you factor in a 3.0 litre engine, driving on either B or standard A roads (ignore the motorways even), and a sensible time of day, the baseline is going to be a lot higher. Or even if you forget the zed and talk about my old Clio. Bottom line is that whilst you can get around the country on lanes and minor roads it takes a very long time to cover any serious distance, and I'd suggest that forcing people to drive in the middle of the night so they can afford to make a journey is just going to lead to a lot of tired drivers and more fatal accidents caused by people falling asleep at the wheel. Personally I think that whilst a minority of people will benefit from this tax, most people will end up paying more, and I consider it an insult that the government are attempting to suggest otherwise. I live in Cambridge, now think of all the people who live in the surrounding area and work in Cambridge who HAVE to drive to work along the A14 or M11 because there's no way they can afford to live in Cambridge, most of the jobs are concentrated in Cambridge (some aren't but most are), and that currently the local public transport is completely inadequate provide a substitute and you tell me that people aren't going to be crippled by this. It's absolutely appalling. I'm not even talking about middle-aged executives driving 6-litre Audis and BMWs (or us with our zeds for that matter). I'm talking about your average commuter in a sensible car like a Fiesta, Micra or Focus. These ordinary, hard-working people, who incidentally I'm pretty sure would prefer NOT to have to drive for 45 minutes to get to work anyway if they didn't have to, are going to get completely screwed. Anyway, rant over. Sorry, got a bit heated there. Cheers, Bart

Hi All, Just a few questions about engine flush and some of the additives I saw when I went to A1 Discount Autoparts earlier (don't know if they're a chain or not). I went in to get a few bits and bobs to enable me to change the oil (tray for catching the waste in and all that) and also some lubricant for the climate control sensor fan in the roof which occasionally starts shreeking like a banshee or something. So anyway I was completely boggled by the number of engine flushes, petrol additives, radiator additives (for blocking holes), transmission fluid additives (ditto) and the like. I'm following Simon's (oilman) advice on flushing the engine and changing the oil, so since I don't know what's in there at the moment I'm going to flush with the new oil and then refill. However, one of the guys in the shop tried to sell me some engine flush which I politely but firmly refused, so I was just wondering if people use this stuff and if it's any good? Can it react adversely with some engine oils to produce a solid precipitate or other chemicals that are harmful to the engine? I've gone for fully synthetic Silkolene Pro-S 10w50 (I know not everybody likes this but I can always change it if it doesn't turn out to be up to much... slightly expensive experiment though). Next question is about additives. My own personal and very uneducated opinion on these things is that using them to plug holes and leaks in whatever system you add them to is a bad idea: if they're thick enough to do that then they're thick enough to hinder the operation of the system (engine, transmission). Not only that but I can't see there's any guarantee that they won't react with your engine oil or transmission fluid in some way. These things do after all get pretty hot and as I remember from my days doing chemistry if you want to kick off a lot of chemical reactions guess what... just heat the stuff up. That said there are bound to be people on here who know a lot more than me so what do you lot have to say about it? BTW I drive a manual TT if that makes any difference. Cheers, Bart

Yeah that looks really good actually. What's the problem with it? Paint's a nice colour. How much did it cost you if you don't mind me asking?

There's a guy with one of their franchises doing regular business outside our building here. Was watching him do some work on a silver 406 coupe a couple of weeks back. Couldn't tell there'd ever been anything wrong afterwards. Still reckon I might give it a crack myself though. :) Bart

Got to agree with the others. Fast, and probably a laugh to drive, but seriously ugly.

Chris, been thinking about getting chipsaway to take a look at a few issues on mine for a while, but now you say it like that the worst that can happen is you need to do it again. If you've got any advice on this stuff it would be gratefully received... probably by quite a few of us. Thanks, Bart

Yep, it'll be the bloke in the funny (peculiar) suit and top hat waving the red flag walking in front of us all at 4 mph again before you know it. Very annoying.

Not sure of any further details because it was quite some distance away. You were heading out of Cambridge. Looked like the car might have been de-spoilered.

Man, that's truly awful. I wonder what it was originally?

LOL. Seriously though I think I basically agree. In any other business if you don't make money you go bankrupt but not agriculture. Grr. Makes me mad.

Gutted! At least you're still in one piece though.

Tough call between The A Team, Knightrider and Airwolf. Streethawk just didn't have it for my money (that bike is looks rubbish). But you forgot Miami Vice: now that was a cool piece of telly as well, although I didn't really catch it the first time around.

Like that a lot. The colour's a bit loud but nothing I couldn't live with: the only criticism I'd make is of the gear knob which looks too bulbous.

Mmm, like the zed. Very nice. I'm quite a fan of side-skirts but not so much of the Veilside ones: everything they produce seems to look well aggressive and overdone. But, it's whatever you like really. Only comment I'd really make is to make sure the alignment of the bottom of the skirts looks OK with the front and rear bumper trims. You see these cars driving around where the bottom of the side skirt is a couple of inches lower than the bottom of the front bumper and it really looks awful.

That's very wrong. :-(

Yeah, he'd have probably got more for it if he'd taken the spoiler off himself.

Erm... I think it's actually illegal to drive at all if you can't see properly and your vision can't be correctly to an acceptable level by glasses or contact lenses, or hasn't been corrected by surgery if you've suffered from cataracts or whatever.