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cost me £10 a wheel to have 4 new tyres i brought off ebay put on and have them balanced at kwikfit and thats with taking old tyres off

A lot of garages are Getting wise to tyre sites like camskill and tyreleader where you can make big savings. They have increased their fitting prices if they offer it at all which is annoying. Small independents who will fit them for cash in hand are best.

You need to find a little independant tyre fitting co that likes to handle a bit of cash now and then.

The give-away on using the pen technique, which you can clearly see in the video clip, is the ink will tend to pool on the lower outer edges of the stitching. When you wipe across the line of stitching, most of the pressure is on the top centre of each raised stitch, so that is where most of the ink will be removed from. The top of the stitch will look paler than where it goes down into the leather/fabric. I guess for standing back and looking at the overall effect, it will look OK. If you look closely - it may look like your child has gone round the seats colouring in

Those pleats in t-sport leathers makes them look like an old woman's skirt

Seeing as people want to know: The leather that Toyota used through the years is, frankly, crap. It does like to stretch and, after a while, the seats look crap as well. Alcantara does have a small amount of stretch in it, but only on one axis (whereas leather stretches in all directions). So using it on seat centres will lead to less sagging than using Mr T's leather. There's always a downside though. No matter what anyone tells you, Alcantara is simply not as durable or robust as leather is. So it will wear faster and it will look a bit tired faster! As for "colouring the stitching"... well, let's just say I use expensive thread because I want it to be colour-fast in all conditions...

GT seats VS coloured in stitching God loves a trier.

Headgasket failure causing asudden non start if it was running fine earlier in the day would be a first in my lifetimes experience, unless it was overheating badly when it was parked up. i suspect the problem is something else, may be worth going through symptoms and recent history on here for a second opinion.

I've changed my own tyres in the past - it's a killer, at the price a tyre shop will do it for, it isn't worth the hassle or burst blood vessels.