Easy. Price up a canoe. Price up an electric device with suitable batteries and motor to power it. An electric drill or two?

You're tapped.

No doubt an Elise is faster point to point than almost anything for the money. My point is that when you think of what goes into developing a hot hatch, it's a hell of a lot compared to using the same honeycomb tub for years and sticking Rover / Toyota engines into it.

Is the business plan a disseration? I've recently done one (25% of a module, group work), and we were only expected to produce a reasonable estimate of product cost (ie, this similar product is available at a landed price of X, these parts go into it, we reckon it can be done for…).

More important in the marking of ours was good financial projections and market research data.

I'd suggest he emails his lecturer unless it's in imminently, which I doubt it is, being the middle of easter.

it is pretty affordable. Here's some other prices (without adding on extra packs etc) of cars today

Vauxhall Astra Hatchback 2.0 CDTi Elite 5dr £22,890
BMW 320d Convertible M Sport 2010 2dr £37,655 (£38k for a 2litre diesel!!!)
Ford Kuga Crossover 2.0 TDCi Titanium 4WD 5dr £25,658
Citroen C5 Saloon 3.0 HDi V6 Exclusive Auto 4dr £28,295
VW Golf R 2.0 £32,190

Yebbut there's naff all in an Elise. It's just a honeycomb tub with a spiced up production engine in the back. Whereas stuff like the Golf GTI and R32 manage to be extremely fast point to point and a fairly quiet and sane family car.

I've already tried messing with the tyre. It's not having it. And I've already rotated the mech a bit. Think I'll go with the SLX – should be able to do the full 22/36 setup for £35-£40.

Sports cars in general are the slowest depreciating cars in my experience. Even the fastest in the range (ie, GTIs, RS etc.) hang onto their money really well.

Decathlon.

Bump for the lunch break STWers…

Jamie Oliver had one, or something very similar, last night on the telly. Surely that's enough to put anyone off? :lol:

For Magura pads, bedding in is important. They've got a forum where they've published a full explanation of why you need to bed in and the exact technique. Basically it's 20-30 stops from 30kmh, as soon as you've stopped, set off again, stop, rinse and repeat.

It really does work as Magura pads last me ages, whereas people who haven't done it have minced through pads very quickly.

My advice as for anyone starting out in motoring is to consider the car as a package – the cost of the car is what you have to spend to buy it and insure it. It's very easy to get a few ballpark figures with confused.com for a range of 10 or 20 cars. Some of the stuff is bizarre – 106s tend to be cheaper to insure than mechanically identical Saxos. Same goes for ZX / Xsara against 306s. A larger car that's faster and will do more damage in an accident is often cheaper to insure than a small group 1 car.

The other thing to remember is that insurance groups are based on how expensive that car is to repair. But your TPFT insurance is based on the damage you're likely to do to other people's vehicles. The result is that insurance groups have almost no bearing on the premium (unless you're fully comp, and even then it's not massive), but the likelihood of that car being driven by a div has a huge bearing on the premium.

I have a Vango double, came off ebay for £20 or something stupid. 5cm thick when it's blown up, and comfy.

I don't get through that kit at a great rate. I do run an old fashioned internal BB and brakes with pads that last ages though.

Hitler. If explanation is required, he's a Jerry ****.

Don't spend any money on your bike then. Some things are are unavoidable – you'll always break stuff, but if you pick the stuff that doesn't break much, you're much better off.

If you're really broke, sell up, get a hardtail with some open bath Marzocchis or rigid forks, deore kit, and ride less daft stuff. You enjoy riding just as much, and there's a hell of a lot less to go wrong.

why are bib "shorts" so special? i have bib tights and regular tights.dont see much difference so whats so great about bib shorts??

Bib shorts / big tights, whichever. Both great. They keep your back warm, and your arse crack firmly out of sight.

Avoiding upgraditis is easy. You just avoid reading any magazines and spending too long on here.

One bike isn't that much of a shocker either. If your bike breaks and you can't get it fixed, just hire a cheapy for the day or go for a road ride…

Going down the avenue of small cars qualifying for £35 / free road tax, you again end up with petrol coming out very well.

Here are the basic facts to do with diesels:
Diesel engines are heavier than petrol engines.
Diesel engines are noisier than petrol engines.
Diesel engines use less fuel to produce the same output as a petrol engine.
Diesel engines are considerably more expensive to manufacture due to emissions kit.

The result of this is that for small cars, diesel engines are a bit of a waste of time – the extra weight of the engine is a significant proportion of the car's total weight, as is the extra sound deadening, and the car costs more to make in the first place. The extra weight takes a chunk out of the fuel economy, so it really becomes a waste of time to have a diesel.

The place where a diesel engine comes into its own is for the bloke buying a new, largish car and expecting to do a lot of miles. You can then get out of the really punitive company car & road tax bands, save on fuel, but still have similar same performance in a straight line.

So do I. Had a bill for my Pug of approx £600 not long before I sold it. Completely wiped out any savings I'd made in fuel. I'd now much sooner pay an extra tenner a week at the pumps than have to find several hundred quid at short notice.

What he said. Swap the noodle pipe things and you change it from a front to a rear…

Petrol at that milege. By a country mile.

That anything sub-Deore level isn't worth having on an MTB.

Bib shorts are ace. I'd never go back to normal shorts.

Fitted suspension forks back onto my bike on Saturday and was amazed at how much difference they made. I like to ride rigid once in a while though, so I'd not say they're indispensable.

Octavia's same as a Golf/Bora, not a Passat. The Superb is a stretched B5 Passat / Audi A4.

Do the sums on diesel VS petrol – Diesel estates tend to command a good premium, and I'd not buy a leggy one unless the expensive things that tend to break had been done.

Turn the bars in the stem (rotate clockwise when looking at the bike from the driveside), try better bar tape. I'm not sure I see the point of those bars though – maes bars have enough "hook" on the bottom that there's no way your hands are going to slide round.

Not hollowtech? That seems a bit gash – my relatively ancient M510s are hollowtech, and from what I can find, not a great deal heavier than XTs.

The zefal type adaptors are fine, tiny and weigh naff all. Best of all, they cost a couple of quid. You screw the adaptor onto the valve, then screw a CO2 cartridge onto the adaptor. As you wind it in, it pierces the cartridge and dumps the entire contents into the tyre.

Apparently a 16G cartridge will pump a 2.1 up to 40 psi…

Nope, but I did spot a plastic pedal on the trail on Sunday morning, of the type fitted to Halfords bikes. I bet that was horrible moment for whoever lost it.

The tyre will be slipping on the rim under braking. Cures I've found is new tyres (and that doesn't always cure it), more pressure, or just letting the tyres down every so often and shuffling them back round the rim.

Dunno if it's weight related or not as my physics is ropey.

Are we talking an inspection 2 service? Derv or petrol? Fancy derv or the boggo kind?

£99 is the going rate round here for a basic service (which is probably less than an Inspection 1 specifies) at the Skoda dealer.

Really you need some specifics. I wouldn't be surprised if £300 was the dealer price for an inspection 2, but I can do one on our old Golf in a couple of hours, and that includes finding the spanners…

Non-folding knives are forbidden too. Anything with a point is – you could be done for having a screwdriver or a chisel in some circumstances.

The key thing is a) the circumstances you have the item in and b) the attidude of the police when they find it. Someone in a good mood might tell you to get on your way, someone in a bad mood / needing to fill a quota might do you for it.

Cardiotrainer is free, yes.

Locking puts it into the verboten category, no matter how short the blade. The law is that if it's not immediately closeable, then it's not a folding penknife.

Could you file off the locking tang?

Are you the Squiff that lived with tall Paul up by hunters bar?

My old work did a change of contract on us. I looked into it on one of the govt's "know your rights" type websites, and you had two options – either accept it, or get sacked and go to a tribunal. It had a few odious clauses – one in particular was that we were obliged to do overtime (overtime in our line of work often consisting of working all night).

After they'd changed the contracts, the same firm of HR consultants advised them on how to make about 50% of the staff on my level and the level above redundant.

So my advice is to do the complete opposite of what TJ says and keep your mouth shut. In the near future you can guarantee that they'll be getting rid of people, and they're planning to do it again (no reason for them to sack you and re-employ you EXCEPT to reduce your redundancy rights). I'd start looking in the job pages and jump before you're shoved.

Sorry, but the Just Giving page should have a before and after :lol:

I thought the 26 / 39 type ratios were fairly obvious – because you have a wider spread at the back, you have your double ratios move in a bit. You'll lose a bit of high end gearing but retain a decent spread.

Self inflating mats are WAY better than air-beds. I got a cheap 50mm Vango double one off ebay, and even my camping-phobic girlfriend was happy sleeping on it.

TLD – Top Level Domain. IE is Ireland.