GTAMADDOG

Originally tempted by Michelins, then Vredesteins, now I've ended up with these..

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x104/GTAMADDOG/IMG_0121_zps4f22bca5.jpg

I get the feeling I'll get to know the staff at the tyre fitters quite well with this car :)

My dad is getting a new car tomorrow which will be a new experience because he's decided to get a convertible and it's the first convertible I can remember being in the family. He's getting a 2007 BMW Z4 3.0Si manual, he said it needs a couple of minor things sorting on it, but it's very good other than that. Haven't seen it yet myself so I'll be excited to leave work tomorrow afternoon.

Unfortunately it means waving good-bye to the Alfa Romeo Mito which has been a garage queen most of it's life (11,500 miles since 2009!), but my dad has had the BMW itch since I got the 330d in January and haven't let him drive it :p It'll be his first BMW since his white E28 525e quite a number of years ago.

Been playing through GTA 3 again and really enjoying it. I think MSX FM has always been my favourite station from GTA 3:

Got the BMW back from having the front wishbones/bushes replaced. Guy who changed them (friend of my step-dad) said the rear bush on the left front corner fell apart in his hands after removing the wishbone, so it was well past it, but I could tell that just by driving over bumps slowly.

Car feels a bit tighter at the front now, steering feels ever so slightly more precise/sharp, it's actually almost caught me out a couple of times today. No more knocking noises either.

Think I need a 4 wheel alignment next because I've now got wheel wobble at 60-65MPH, but I read that I should probably expect that. Might just drive at 59MPH or 70MPH for now because I'd rather get the alignment done when I change the tyres :p

Might as well bump this thread with this:

Some highlights from the route I've started doing lately. Decided this year that I need to try and get use of the (in my opinion) quite expensive bike that my uncle handed down to me a few years ago because he wanted to try road biking rather than mountain biking. The bike itself is a Claud Butler Cape Wrath XC. I'm no-where near to the distances people mentioned earlier in this thread, but hopefully I can build up to some larger distances and maybe also try out some downhill tracks to make the videos more interesting.

Excellent. Time to get back to normality again. Fed up of seeing England flags everywhere :p

Never seen a MK3 Golf speedometer/rev counter move so fast*..

*I know it's in a MK2, but still :p

I bought a product which is meant to return the original finish on leather, but on closer inspection it'd be a waste of time on my current wheel because the leather texture finish has been worn off a bit at the 2 'o clock position on the steering wheel where a previous owner must've always held the wheel. So I've just decided I'll either keep an eye out for a better looking wheel, or get it re-trimmed using these guys

Up to 41.7 MPG from last weekend's 41.5 too :p

Pff, I pulled Algeria and Honduras out of the hat at work for the sweepstake. I think I might've been better off throwing the money in the bin, luckily it was on £1 :p

It is like the 360/PS3 release all over again, even though I know what the game is like and already own it, I'm still excited for this.

The dream ladies and gentlemen!

Booked the BMW in to have the front wishbones replaced on the 24th June.

Despite the mishaps with pieces of wood through the week I remembered that one of the UKs biggest BMW breakers is only ten miles away so I'll keep an eye on their stock and wait for a E46 Sport to come in and hopefully I'll be able to pick up a new grill quite cheap. Only one Sport there for breaking at the moment and the front end is completely smashed in so it's useless for a grill, but I notice it has a very nice looking black leather interior :mhmm:

41.5 MPG on the dash readout. Going up by 0.1 each week at the moment, and usually after I've poked the car with a stick, so I think the readout is just optimistic :p

Around £35 usually lasts about 280 miles, I fill up every Friday evening coming back from work so I've never seen the fuel light on. When I re-filled yesterday the needle was midway between 1/2 and 3/4 on the fuel gauge so I could probably do another weeks commuting without refuelling. Not too bad for a 3 litre.

Had two incidences this week where blocks of wood have been thrown in to the path of my car.

First time an ambulance was speeding down the middle of the road coming in the opposite direction with it's lights and sirens going. It picked up a long thin piece of wood from somewhere and sent the wood flying into the front driver's side tyre which has in turn damaged the sidewall of the tyre. I think the wood snapped in two at one point as I saw a piece of it fly up past my window. Not so bothered about this one because the tyre still holds pressure and will need replacing soon anyway.

Second time, following a van up a dual carriageway. Van pulls out to overtake a lorry, picks up a long thin piece of wood in lane two and sends it flying towards my car. Only just noticed today after inspecting the front of the car for the second time, now its not raining, that this piece of wood has damaged the front lower grill. Kind of glad it only damaged that and didn't go straight through in to the bottom of the radiator and fans, or even worse fly up and in through the windscreen, but annoying none-the-less.

No way of missing either pieces of wood, I don't tailgate, but both incidences happened so quickly there was barely any time to adjust the position of the car in the road to miss the wood.

Time to look out for a new grill I suppose.

I lold.

Brunette lass is something to look at while they're talking rather than showing the game. /inappropriate comment

From what I've seen of the game so far it looks pretty good.

Prefer this over the Tom Petty version...

Seen this posted on the internet a few times this week:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGybtBhVZXk

I was never a Bring Me The Horizon fan, but I think they did pretty well with Sempiternal.

It's been a while (years) since I posted in this thread.

Went for a walk up Pen Y Fan (Mountain in the Brecon Beacons in Wales) with T3hReaper and Mistermojo last Sunday and got a few photos of us. I'm not going to put one of all of us up though as they might not approve of that, but here's my ugly mug trying to see what's on the screen of my phone at the top of a mountain while being battered by gale-force wind and rain/hail...

Pretty much stood 5-10 foot from a very long drop in that photo. All of that behind me is fog/cloud/stuff, on a clear day you can normally see a lot of the Powys area of Wales from there.

I would probably go for Pilot SuperSports if they did them in the size I need for the back of the car, but unfortunately they don't. My mum has Sport Maxx RTs on her Golf, and they seem fine, but I've kind of been set on Michelins since before I even bought the car though. Worse case scenario would Vreds all round, which actually get quite good praise on the old E46 on owner's forums over here.

22 and quite a lot of my time on the computer is spent looking at tyre reviews, there's definitely something wrong (and very boring) about me :p

Couldn't have been a worse time to post that. I was looking at getting a machine polisher and some hex-logic pads earlier. This doesn't help me persuade myself I don't need one :p

I see that Michelin Pilot Sport 3s are back in 255/35/18 size in some places at the moment and I'm quite tempted to get a pair for the back of the car.

Other than that I've read Goodyear Eagle F1s have soft sidewalls and don't last as long and Continental SportContact 5s don't wear as well as the Michelins either which left me with getting some Vredesteins when the time came to replace the existing tyres. If only I knew how long the Michelin's would be in stock because I also need to tax the car this month, and I'd prefer to see how long the existing Avon ZZ5 lasts as it's about 1.5-2mm off the wear marker :mhmm:

Quite eager to change tyres really as the car seems to grip really well now so I'm interested to see what it's like on some matching premium tyres.

I'm still waiting for it and I have the PS3 version :p