dukest

if you want your rear arch half way down the tyre on a 9 inch wheel then you'll need a lot of arch work, even if you go for the smaller tyres!

yep 20mm front and 30mm rear adaptors + 205/40 & 215/40 + rear archwork will get you where you need to be

not that i'm probably much use but will be up your way on Sunday if a spare pair of hands or some motivation was useful?

:pale: i'm sure you'll work out a plan dude..

cheers Jim, had had a quick google but thought it was worth asking if anyone knew anywhere cheap. they said £15 per wheel which i guess is not tooo bad, but may try a few others. anyone else used someone they'd recommend?

anyone know anywhere? want to have a go at a diy refurb but would prefer to skip the stripping bit...

for the oil leak, given where you took the picture i'd be checking the oil cooler seals too

there's lots of threads with that information on if you have a look :)

what i guess i forgot to say in my comments where how/where i tend to drive. I live in the middle of london with a lot of speedbumps before i can get anywhere useful. this is the reason i've always held off going lower as i have to go slow down enough over them as it is to save the suspension (killed a set of koni dampers in 5 years/30k miles which for a quality make i think is not that good). the problem with that is that staying a bit higher (i guess its probably 35mm down) means that the centre of gravity is higher. so even though I've got front and rear arbs now, the issue with a soft sidewall for me is that if you go into a corner and the sidewall moves first to take the lateral force, then you turn a bit more the car then loads up the springs in a secondary effect, that can be quite destabilising/confidence sapping at speed. i'd much prefer everything to load up at the same time, or at least linearly, so that you can then just worry about the grip levels with everything else constant. its fine (and a lot of fun) playing around on a track in a less than optimally handling car, as you can just yank the wheel to make everything load up quickly and then see what line you end up taking, but obviously you cant do that on the road when you need to be staying within lanes.. so the point of all that was meant to be that I'm prepared to sacrifice some ride comfort for good open road performance whereas others may prefer the combination of harder suspension to get a bit lower, but with an easier going tyre as they're either on 17s already or at least not having to deal with the higher centre of gravity.

check home insurance as well for the stuff your car insurance doesn't cover dude

ouch, feel for you. hope you're back bigger and better very soon..

love it!

I've really only had 3 quite different sets of tyres on the VR (all 205/50/15) since I bought it: Dunlop Sport SP01s from when I bought it, which i thought were quite a hard compound with a soft sidewall Rainsport2s since early last year which i expected to be soft compound & soft sidewall, interspersed with, Toyo R888s for the 2nd half of last year - hard as f*ck sidewall and super grippy compound I didnt like the Dunlops so much when i had them as they were pretty awful when it was damp, spinning at the slightest provocation no doubt because of the compound (although i never had any issues in seriously heavy rain coming back from the lake district to london) When i moved to the Rainsports i hoped the damp performance would be better but to be honest, i dont feel that much difference and they dont give the amount of extra turn in grip i hoped for, again probably because of the sidewall to be honest. The Toyos, even in 50 profile, are a very hard ride, but the grip is legendary, you really have to act like a penis to get the fronts to spin on take off and everywhere else you can be unfailingly confident, including in damp conditions that i've experienced so far. They are a worry in the wet but only because of the lack of tread pattern - if they were brand new then I would still push them quite hard - its only because you only start with 5mm of tread to start with and get down to 4 or 3 with not too much effort that they then become a bit of a gamble. Again, this is only due to risk of aquaplaning, not because of lack of grip when in contact with the road. So, if i dont go back to R888s (because they just hiked the price hideously) after wearing out the Rainsports, i will be after the hardest sidewall i can find on a "normal" tyre, as frankly they all seem to be sh!t on greasy roads so you just have to live with that and make the most of all the other conditions. That said I am going to try 17s for a bit where the lower profile should address the sidewall issues a bit and i think criteria would be a bit different for that size.

LOL refund! do you know how much it would cost for him to dispute the money after he's paid? From experience with small claims court enless you've lost in the region of £2000 you'll never get your money back. Getting a solicitor to write a letter is £100! :shock: I think you're a bit confused! he's not talking about some cowboy clampers - it was a residents permit and for all council parking tickets there is a right to appeal. just because you get clamped or even towed away doesn't mean that you lose that. wardens may be told to give tickets and let someone else (the owner) ask questions later but councils have to be fair and it is proven that, in the majority of cases, appeals to parking offences are successful. so therefore as yeti says, do not be all impulsive and get arrested and a record for criminal damage by cutting anything off, but follow the normal process and then still call them c*nts once you've got your appeal approved....

just pay and then dispute it and tell them not to be c*nts in future. if you couldn't prove that it was valid then thats one thing but as you can then they have no reason not to refund you.

oh.. now your new wheels would make that quite an amazing car to look at!! very good news! 8)

of all the places to run out of brakes that wouldn't be the place i'd choose! but glad you got away with it and hope getting all your lines replaced isn't too painful on the wallet, mine was a bit of a shock!

what would you want instead of what you already have?!!

yes but isn't monkey in the uk forces over there?!

you can also get remotely adjustable suspension that isn't airride in the traditional sense, depends on your budget..

no, thats it, like it or lump it! we're all getting the same - there's only one insurer behind all these brokers = no more reduction.

no, thats why they are a good combination with the cams - you're already getting a power boost in that range from them and the schrick gives you more low end torque which gives the overall impression of more surge from 3/3.5k onwards. i'm not saying you should do it by any means - plenty of people will tell you to supercharge for an extra £1k, or save for a turbo etc. but if you're after a more driveable car without any engine/gearbox work or complexity for less than 1k you will defintely notice the difference. am sure you'll want to do all the other little obvious bits that there always are on a "new" 2nd hand car first though - all depends on your budget/enthusiasm for work!

it probably does a bit, and if not, the better top end they give kind of accentuates the weaker low-end that the car has. that said though, if you like revs then they are still a positive benefit to the car imo (had them on their own for about 2 weeks before getting my schrick put on). and again, like you said, if it had had a schrick it wouldn't have been £1600 either! I got mine for £600 - if you can get the one thats for sale on here for somewhere between that and its asking price that would be cool too :)

thought it was goldies for a moment from the number plate! only 3 away! anyway, have a look in here and hopefully there'll be some inspiration as to a level of awesomeness to aim for! :)

more importantly he's not in the uk but also in the forces! petrol in germany is even more expensive in sterling than it is here since the exchange rate's been in the toilet.