Askari

I've just brought this on ebay. I'm going to get a new tyre put on and use it as use my spare. Thanks for the advice chaps. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140939206479

Yes, sorry, I did mean a space saver wheel, of course.

So could I get a space saver spare tyre and use that instead? I know you have to drive carefully on them but it would take less space and save weight in the boot. Didn't gen 5 GT-4's have a space saver as standard?

Thanks guys that's been nagging on my mind for a while.

At the moment I am running 205/55R15 tyres on 215 alloys (from a gen 5 GT4) on my ST182. The different section width between the tyres and the alloys isn't a problem - double-checked this with my tyre supplier etc. However, the spare in the boot is a 205/55R15 tyre on a 205 alloy (from a gen 6). Question is would this be a safety issue if I ever have to use the spare?

I've just got the Shell loyalty card - it looks like you get more points for buying nitro+ and one of the reward options is money off fuel vouchers. Might make a bit of difference to the £4 per tank extra that the good stuff costs. There's also a Shell motoring app that looks interesting - anyone use it?

Is the spring bent?

I could do with the roof being an inch higher on my gen 5.

I like the look but I would try to find something a bit bronzer (less Roman?) just to get one shade further away from legionnaire's mud brown.

Radio/CD/tape player from a gen 6 - from Dublet, to replace the chavvy flashing light thing currently in my 5. Not quite original but retro-looking enough to fit in a 5 - with the added benefit of a CD player.

Front and rear strut braces for my gen 5 arrived within an hour of each other - the rear is second-hand from Black Knight (thanks) and the front from Jap Parts on Ebay. I am hoping to get them fitted tomorrow - work permitting.

Yep, you're right - I got all my calculations wrong - including my own mpg which as you say works out at about 38mpg. Apologies.

Are you sure you've got the maths right there? You said 23.64 litres for 214 miles? Divide by 2.54 would give 9.3 gallons surely, not 5.2 gallons. Therefore around 23 mpg?? Not sure I've done the maths right either. I've probably miscalculated it myself and I'm at work so I haven't got time to work it through again. Sorry. Anyway, I took my gen 5 round North Wales over the weekend - and did 300 miles almost exactly. I put a fraction under 38 litres of fuel in before starting - and the fuel indicator was almost exactly back to where it started when we got home. So that's 300 miles divided by 38 litres equals about 20-21 miles to the gallon! The database says that typical consumption on a gen 5 is 28.5 mpg - but I guess you've got to drive more carefully than I was doing to get that. Expensive stuff.

Should have received a set of the nut-head screws that hold the fascia under the steering wheel in place on my gen 5 - 6GBP incl postage from a breaker in Wales - but opened the padded envelope.... And it was empty! So I won't be doing that job this weekend.

Put them on the sale thread with some pictures - or a link to ebay.

it's all well deserved for the help he's giving me sorting out my motor. Anyway, plugs are free!

I see what I am about to say quite a lot on this forum, so I am sorry to sound like a broken record, but ams will know if there is anywhere, he's based in Smethwick and he really is a top man, he's helping me with a shed load of work on my celica at the moment. I suggest you drop him a pm.

A white Supra. I would probably kill for it. Go for for it, I say!

That's the model I drive. The big diesel engine does a good job, I think Clarkson described it as a 'warm hatch' (as opposed to a hot hatch) which is fair for performance but it's absolutely solid as well. Nothing has gone wrong on mine since I brought it. But then it's a Toyota. Mind you, there have been five recalls of one kind or another over the last two years.

Ooh, what does similar but very different mean - a Supra or another brand of sports coupe?

I suspect that the differences in times from 0 to 60 or 10 or 20 bhp either way are as nothing compared to the quality of the machine's operator.

Long story but worth telling:- When I brought my gen 5 in January it had a recent MOT fail and a pass from a week later, from October 2012. A few weeks after buying I took the car to a garage because I needed someone to certify that it has an alarm, for my insurance company. The only way the garage would do this was if I paid them something. They wanted £20 but as they were advertising MOTs at £25 I took one of them instead, thinking that I would push my MOT expiry back a few months with the extra fiver. With hindsight it was predictable that the car would fail and it did on the same things the first of the original MOTs failed on. Maybe the repairs that got it throughout the MOT the second time weren't done very well? Anyway, I'm now in a dilemma - I've got the MOT pass which the car came with, which is valid until October, and a more recent fail. Is the car road legal? So I rang VOSA and they confirmed that as long as a car has an in-date MOT it is legal until it expires and it is not superseded if you have another MOT that fails in the meantime. The fails are now being repaired (for the second time, I presume) in preparation for October's re-test.

Good news - the ABS is up and working. Now I only need a steering rack gaiter to get it through the MOT. I am going to take off the powerflow exhaust back box and replace it with a standard box - and there's a section of rusty sill that needs chopping out and replacing - but the ABS was the deal breaker, without that working there was no MOT and everything else would have been wasted. Big thanks to ams who is helping me get this work done. Well, more than help actually, he's pretty much doing it for me!

I got a wheel hub and ABS sensor for my gen 5 in the post today - and I hope to God it solves the ABS problem so I can get a new MOT when it runs out.

errr me (but I did get insured before drivin it away)