MadManMike

And it's multiple bungee straps, not just one. lol

I didn't even notice that. Arseholes

That fits the bill perfectly, apart from being £125. That's what made me source this spare stick for £10 and set out to butcher it. My initial plan was to chop the stick as seen above, then continue to use my 3" extension so that it 1) looks shiny and 2) remains almost the original length.

It's made of Delrin, I don't want to risk damaging the knob.

Oh and some panels have the original paint which isn't lacquered, others have lacquer which is peeling. Or did have until now, as that's been fixed

Yep, that's the correct SU Classic Red. The car has clearly lots of touch ups over the years, so there's many different shades, but that's what it should look like. My plan is the respray the drivers door and see how that comes out, if it almost matches the rear panel, I'll do all of them one by one. The tricky bit seems to be finding the right SU Classic Red.

There's a few engineer types on here, so here's a brain teaser. Copied from MX-5 Forum on Facebook: So, here's one for the technically minded. A few of you may remember I posted about shortening a gear stick in order to fit a gearknob that doesn't fit the standard length.I currently have the knob fitted using a 3" thread extender, which makes the shift massively too long (The knob almost hits the stereo and feels horrible too). As standard, the thread on the stick isn't long enough to reach the thread inside the knob, as the knob is quite long and the tapered part of the stick hits the knob. I had the idea of chopping the top off the standard stick, as I was led to believe it had the same thread underneath, so that's what you can see in the attached photo. Underneath is what I expected to see, but unfortunately the thread is smaller than the original thread. It's not small enough that I could put some kind of adaptor in the knob, which was my first thought. The options as I see it are to either: 1) Chop the stick again nearer the ball at the bottom and weld on a length of threaded bar 2) Machine up a thread adaptor, but this will add length that I've been trying to remove, so doesn't solve the problem. Any other ideas? Maybe some sort of material I could fill the knob with and then tap the thread to match the thread on the bottom half of the stick? (And yes, the easiest way is to use a different knob, but this isn't an option!)

It is the correct red, yes. That's what my car would have looked like 26 years ago. If you'd like to know what the incorrect red is, see the bottom part of the door and the ducktail, that's the parts I painted with the later "SU Classic Red", clearly a very different shade. Unfortunately there's not an awful lot of paint left on it to be polished - it seems to shine up nice for a few days, then returns to this state. The bonnet is pink pretty much and it's had the life polished out of it. This has made me determined to get a proper respray now, so this is definitely just temporary

Just gave her a wash, these proper shots really show the difference in panels, especially the shot from the rear.

Just got my car back. Really pleased with it. The only negative is that the paint looks so good, the rest of the car looks even worse than it did. I'd love to have the whole thing sprayed, but I can't justify that sort of money really. A lot of the work was on the inner sills and under the car, but here's a close up of the cosmetic areas: I'm glad they did the whole panels, as there was a huge lacquer bubble up by the fuel cap. Total bill was £595, including the MOT work that was done, so I'm really pleased with that.

Ah, the classic "All men are the same" assumption. OK, basing it on that, you should get him: A bottle of whiskey, a season ticket for a football team and a few rounds of paintball. All of which I hate. I would suggest getting to know your male friends, relatives and partner a bit better, then buying them presents will be easy.

ps, I meant tb, not gb...

And mine. And yeah, I don't even have one

I got two 3gb hard drives for £100 delivered. Pulled out of demo machines. My machine now has 5 hard drives that are no longer packed full of stuff. Previously they were all red in "My Computer", basically telling me to stop taking photos. Happy days.

Cheers Joe, added to the list So, who's up for a beer then? @isitafox I think is. Can do the hotel bar or a little drive out somewhere, I'm easy!

Just realised I posted on FB, but not here, so some of you will already know... Anyway, I got a call to say my car is ready. It failed on nothing this time and nothing needed fixing, lol. Scamming twats basically realised I knew what I was on about and decided that all the problems were no longer problems. Obviously good news, but annoying that I've had so much hassle. I could have collected it last week if they weren't trying to con me.

I don't use ACC to relax or sit in the middle lane, personally, but I can see how people would. Personally I set mine at 70, then swap in and out of all 3 lanes as necessary. It's very slow to accelerate, so I tend to do that part myself and just use it as a way of keeping my speed down and maintaining the gap in front. Handy in 50mph limit sections of motorway. My love of the gadgets is purely because I do so many miles in the company car, I much, much, much prefer the simplicity of the Eunos.

My Golf goes at the end of the month and I'm gonna miss all those gadgets. I use ACC a lot on the motorway, it's very good. Keyless entry and start is so good too, I really take that for granted. It's a god send when you are carrying loads of stuff. In terms of comfort and toys, I can't fault the Golf (Other than the entertainment system being a bit slow, especially Sat Nav). The DSG is the real killer for me. It's just not nice to drive. If the manual GTD or GTI was a reasonable cost, I would have replaced by TSI with one, but for some reason they're way more than the 120d on a company car tax basis, unless I go for real base spec, which would be a huge downgrade just to have a manual gearbox.

Yeah but seriously, what year is that Mustang?

I'd be happy to, but I'm not sure what they're called. Once I get the car back I will, as I'll be collecting it from the garage. Yeah forteh, I'm sure the majority of garages will do what they can to bump the bill up a bit. There's no way to really regulate that kind of behaviour, other than a "mystery shopper" type approach I guess? I can't fault the welder guy, other than being a bit slack on communication, but the whole thing has been a big pain in the Yaris.

If I get my Eunos back in time, I'd be up for a pub car park meet when I'm up there - can take the mrs for dinner as an excuse

I didn't realise it was a joke, I mean it's factual, I am warm, joyous and brown most of the year.

Yeah my colleague who lives in Leicester likes to send me photos of the sign as you enter the town... He rides through on his motorbike fairly often.

Pardon me?

The welder went to the garage and argued for me, now magically the only thing wrong with the car is a snapped handbrake cable. Good news, but annoying that they basically tried to scam me with loads of random shit that wasn't wrong - I told them all the work I've done, so they couldn't argue.