iainc

Oh, and another one that bugs me... those who decide that, although you are already at the limit, if they try to climb into your boot they will either make you go faster or somehow be able to drive thru' you. Seen it ahead of me this morning, despite the roughly 0 degrees C weather this morning, the car in front of me looked like it was being towed by the car in front of them. Got out of the village and onto the NSP road, and they continued to sit that close, despite the fact that the road ahead was clear enough to overtake (which I did... both of them).

Not the way my driving instructor put it across... yea it's the limit but you should try (when conditions are right) to be close to it, and not drive at half of them. If you (or I) want to drive significantly slower than the limit (not talking 50 in a 60, but 40 in a 60 and less), then you (or I) should be prepared to occasionally stop and let the huge queue behind past. I know anytime I was in the old Landie and towing a trailer, I pulled in every so often to that the queue of cars behind me wasn't so large. Problem is, these days especially, you get one person at the head of the queue who wants to do 40mph in a 60, car #2 drives right up his/her *rse so there is no room for car #3 to overtake into, and they ram right up the bumper behind car #2, now you have three cars bumper to bumper, none of whom think they can overtake and you suddenly need a really fast car to have any chance of overtaking the three of them at once (or a very long road)... if people don't want to overtake, leave enough room so the person behind you car if they want, but that's not how it seems to work on the roads I drive. Agreed... again though, the number of cars I've seen take to the outside lane (or "fast lane" as some would call it), 5 or 10 miles before they need to turn right at the next roundabout and hold everyone up is unreal. Also, if I'm overtaking cars and find someone comes diving up behind me, I'll shift out of the way for them, then carry on behind them again... not like a lot of TDi drivers round these parts, who seem to think they are going more than quick enough and hold everyone up behind them. Got to say, that having the STi, and it being quick enough, I'm not as irritated as I would be in a slower car when I'd have no chance at all of getting past... much the same as I was in the landie when I'd have needed a good few miles of a straight (preferably downhill) to pass most things (even with it's V8)

Annually is a bit extreme right enough, but there's nothing to stop it being every 5 or 10 years. Okay, you fail and you can't drive to work, tough... learn to pass it again then and get shot of the bad habits... driving to work isn't a god-given right... Everything changes that much over the years, it's ludicrous to think that you pass your test at 17 and then can drive until you are 70 or older... a hell of a lot of advances are made in 53 years. Would help get the dodgy drivers off the road as well.

Not always the oldies at fault... followed and been followed by younger ones who seem to want to do 45mph everywhere... regardless of whether it's a 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 or even 70mph limit <shakes head> still don't understand the mentality of them.

Agree with all of the above... but the brake light thing gets me too. Very nearly got out and shouted at a Volvo XC90 driver who was doing this one night (traffic kept moving everytime I got worked up enough to go and speak to them )... some of the newer brake lights on these things are really bright and seem to burn the back of my retnas out.

From looking at house prices up north, they don't seem to have dropped by as much as the ones further south. We'd also been thinking of a possible move this year or maybe next so I've been keeping an eye out on prices in Moray. Plans for ourselves are to try and finish off all the wee things we've started around the house in the last few years and try and get at least some of them done

Late reply Finding them MILES better than they initially were. Think that they just seem to take a lot longer to bed in than other makes, but once bedded in, they work well.

Wasn't it... holy crap the road were "fun" to drive. Funny how I found the F1's "iffy" to drive with to start with but a few miles in and they are spot on.

Totally agree. Seen some sights on the road. Al mentioned what makes a good/bad driver. Have seen guys overtaking round bends... now I don't care WTF you are and how quick your reactions are, there is no way you can overtake safely around a blind bend. Also seen far too many people sitting waaaay too close to the car/van in front with absolutely no chance in stopping in time (esp at this time of year). A re-sit of the test would help as it would keep people "current" IYKWIM. Far too many people pass their test and never look at a highway code, etc ever again (I know I've only looked at it a couple of times since I passed and that was when mates/relations were learning to drive)... and I've "only" been driving 17-odd years.

Seen a thing on the TV where a couple had decided that they would flog their house this way. Basically you need to ask a few questions to make it a valid "competition" and not an "illegal lottery" IYKWIM. I think the difficult-ness of the questions also has a bearing on whether it gets the green light or not as well. Not quite sure how that differs from buying raffle tickets 'cos AFAIK no-one ever asked me to answer a question anytime I bought one.

Thing is... if it's to frame, size doesn't really matter If there isn't anymore available then I wouldn't want anyone going to anymore trouble... can always frame what I've got already... just thought it'd be quite good to do both (never really thought of it at the time I ordered one for myself).

Anyone know if you can still get those T shirts? Just I quite like wearing mine, but would quite like one framed too IYKWIM

Link wasn't working... found it by googling though. http://www.reallymeansounds.com/forum/showthread.php?t=83654 or http://tinyurl.com/5umwth incase my link breaks too Shocking behavior though... wasting a car like that (I'm not a ford fan but you can't leave something as good as that like that)

T shirt one with the sticker looks GOOD... still got to get my picture framed... not had a chance to get to a place with it yet. Had wondered about framing the T shirt as well though.

Aye... I went from a Scoob to a Cupra TDi, which was okay for a while... but always missed the scoob... decided I would do a "grown ups car" and got a 4.2 V8 S6 Avant... but even with 300bhp and a V8 under the bonnet it had nothing on a scoob... traded it for the 06 STi. Both cars had the same same amount of power but were VASTLY different cars. No question, I wouldn't be without a scoob now, even if it was the cheapest "crappiest" oldest one I could afford. Still got the Cupra TDi alongside the STi and it's a good combo IMO, Leon is cheap to tax, insure and run, STi... ummm... isn't, so between them we have the equivalent of two "normal" cars Would definitely say if you've done that much to the car you'd be daft to let it go for FA (which is probably all you'd get for it atm).

I'll take a pic of my UK STi one if you want? Didn't bother checking earlier when it looked like you were looking for a JDM one.

Nice looking motor. Splitter on the front makes a huge difference IMO as well. Found that you get a bit of burble with swapping the backbox, but swapping the entire system makes a huge difference... think the downpipe is ridiculously restrictive on the 2.5's.

What kind of 05 is it? Is it the one with the larger PCD of the wheels (ie a 2.5l STi)? AFAIK, the springs from the 2.5 05STi onwards are different (knew someone who went from an 02 STi to an 06 STi and needed to buy new springs again rather than swapping over the ones he had).

I wasn't there so can't claim anything, but surely without each individual turning up, then the record wouldn't have happened, therefore surely they all can claim "their" record? There's plenty of people in the record books for other records that haven't required them to be a complete athlete.

Superb... if the filter on a filter wasn't bad enough, he then tried driving about without any filters for a bit too

Ooops. Was gonna say that, as the photographer was obviously ready for it and it was a small single track road, that they'd maybe blocked it off to do the runs, etc so wouldn't be just as dangerous as you think... but then their lack of control on landing... just lucky an airbag and wheel is all they need to change. Lucky that the car didn't dig in when it went into the scenery. Would have thought if you were doing that, that you'd build yourself up in stages and not just try a full on WOT attack first time out

I wish I had been

...I will. Have never found something that is more bloated than even MS's software than Norton Have uninstalled it from a number of machines and always replaced it with something else, AVG has generally been okay whenever I've used it or installed on other peoples machines. It's McAfee on the works machines. I guess the biggest thing is to just be a bit more careful on what you download/install. Saying that, as the other guys up here will know, one of the local forums here was compromised (on a shared server) and while some of us were okay as our AV detected it and stopped it installing, a few others weren't as lucky. So you don't need to be looking for anything overly dodgy to get hit by it. Best bet is to ensure that you have a firewall, anti virus, spybot type programs and ad aware types as well... plenty of free or cheap ones out there to ensure that you are well protected.

Guess I must be lucky then... haven't had any suspension issues on my 06STi (2yo and 20k+ on the clock)... and it likes the occasional "back road blast" too so not being grannied about the place.

Had a few Pugs in the past myself, never lowered them though. IIRC you need to pull the bars out and rotate them in order to raise/lower them. It's meant to be a complete b*tch of a job to do though (might not be so bad if it was done last year though like you say). Might be worth hanging about the local car parks and finding some guy with a lowered Pug/Saxo and asking him where he got it done to see if there is someone local that can fiddle with it for you