Be Excellent To Each Other

even they want loving

Wish me luck!

Where's the rest of it?

[edit]Bloody rear-engined cars

Hooray*, only** £350 for the Octy's MOT, cambelt+tensioner, waterpump and auxiliary belt! That's a grand this month they've had off me.

Every time I speak to him, he hints more strongly that what I need to do is get rid of the M3, because it's a stupid car and I'm even more stupid for driving it to Manchester and back every day.

Bless.

* I do not mean this.
** Or this.

I looked into buying a Celica GT spoiler for the back of my car, to replace the standard one. Standard Toyota list price for this spoiler: £1,199!

FUCK THAT.

So I wait. And the garage do not call me to say "yes, your MOT is done". I'm hoping that that means it is done, and there are no surprises (there should have been one, seeing as one of the rear doors didn't open, but I don't mind if they've either ignored it or thrown a new fuse in to fix it for now). Luckily they have someone there till late so I can just mooch along and be ever so miffed if for some reason it's not ready but they haven't told me.

But anything that doesn't add too much to the £800 already spent on the thing this month is a very good thing as far as I'm concerned.

I seem to recall that you have to have an Octavia's engine out to change the water pump, so £350 isn't that bad at all.

Does the standard one not provide enough downforce?

Is it a crime to prefer the way the GT spoiler looks to my standard one?

Not quite, if you've nimble fingers, apparently (although I'm sure Skoda would say the engine needs to come out...). They charged 3.5 hours labour, so I'd say they managed it (or the engine is held in by a couple of elastic bands and some sticky tape).

Got any pics of the event? I was gonna buy an ST205 but I couldn't find a decent one around the time I was looking for a car to replace my Vectra

And yeah, the spoilers are basically useless - they don't generate enough downforce at even motorway speeds to actually help anything, I just like the way they look. My previous Celica didn't have a spoiler and it looked bare from the back.

The Celica's FWD anyway, isn't it? A spoiler for anything other than aesthetic effect would be completely useless.

Have you painted the calipers, yet?

Indeed. Toyota make spoilers to put on the bonnet though, which look patently ridiculous.


Yes, I've painted them blue. However, I've fucked up and the discs are now warped and scratched so I have to get the entire braking system replaced, I can't drive the car anywhere.

Fuck, sorry to hear that, chap.

I haven't really.

Oh, OK. I'm tempted to bid on this.

This is one of my favourite sites ever.

Good fucking God.

Well, if he said on the auction that "the car is a real head turner" at least it wouldn't be an understatement.

I once walked past this in Cardiff, did a double take, walked back home, got my camera, and came back for this pic:



Nice to know his 1.1 litre engine is nice and free-revving I guess.

I used to look at that a fair bit, but then I came to the conclusion that 99% of the posters there were deluded self righteous arseholes.

True, but most of the time they're right. I've not seen a car posted on there that I'd be happy owning.

Have you repainted your car, Ace? It looks a lot darker in that photo than it does in the other photos we've seen of it. Not sure about all the stickers either

http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm106/puntoollie2/100_2869.jpg - that's the spoiler I was looking for, not sure I like it now, it looks massive on that car. Could just be because it's all white though. The import-style number plate doesn't really work on it either.

I'll take some more photos of my car once I've got it washed next week.

I think that spoiler actually quite suits that car to be honest. Fucking expensive though, from what you say.

I previously wanted to get the Type-R spoiler and front grille for my Civic Type-S, but then I came to my senses and realised that in the long run it would just be easier to trade my car in for an actual Type-R. With a little luck, I may just do that next year.

I'm not surprised. It's hard to tell because of all the shitty modifications he's done to it, but that's probably the 140bhp Celica. Mind you, the Celica has never been known for having lots of torque so anything with more is likely to kill it unless there's enough room on the track to get up to speed.

How do I go about entering that Toyota Sprint Series, Ace? Had a look at the forum and it seems that the 2008 Championship has ended, yes?

I finally got round to having a man look at my rear wheel and tyre. Turns out it's coincidence two tyres in a row on that wheel have slowly lost pressure as this one has a nail in it (and it must've been there for most of the 11k miles it's been on the car!). Repairable thankfully; the last thing I need this month is another £100 spent on the thing.

So the spare's on, and boy it was entertaining accelerating away from the garage normally, having forgotten it's a cheap'n'nasty 225 compared to the lovely wide and very, very grippy Toyo on the left. Limited slip diff trying to spear me off into a building a-go-go!

Well further to this post, the garage didn't have any appointments for Tuesday, so I left it on the drive, hoping it would be OK to go to work on Wednesday morning.

As I've now come back in from the cold, I can report than no, it was not even able to move.

The engine started for about ten seconds before juddering to a halt.

I am fucked.

Shit in the carbs.

How will that fix it?

Ahahaha!

<Hi5>

Maybe I've blown a seal.

Could just be ice on your moustache.

I set 'em up, you knock 'em outta the park baby!

How did you miss this chance MaliA?



Tried that once. Don't recommend it!

Good point.

Masser rasser fasser masser.

£60 to get it towed to the garage.
£60 for them to just look at it and suck air in through their teeth.

At least I can go and get some Christmas shopping done while I'm in town.

Oh man. That sucks, hopefully it'll turn out to be something fairly innocuous.

I stopped to get petrol this morning, and before that balance the tyre pressures; I got there to find the air pump broken so never mind, I'll just get petrOHFUCKWHYWON'TITSTARTNOW.

It took about 5 minutes of turning it over 10 times (so not the battery then) then leaving it for a bit, before finally it fired on the first turn, exactly as it normally does. The attendant said I must've flooded it, but there was no attempted ignition at all before that. My suspicion is that I freaked out the fuel pump somehow.

Do you not have a buddy with a van or 4x4 or other large vehicle? Tow ropes are cheap!

maliBike break down on drive. mali push bike 400m (IIRC) then call insurers who take bike to bike hospital and make betterer. it has to be 400m or so as I don't have a homestart policy.

Myself and a chum merrily carried a "end of free breakdown assistance" sign at motorway roadworks past a stricken Mini at work one way.

I read that as Mimi and thought "that's not very nice"

"When the NHS goes bad"