What have you done to your car today?

He has a point, if anything the residual will fall off a cliff much more sharply.

They make great used cars but I would never buy a new one.
 
the new mazdas actually come with great amount of kit, if you want a new car and like them then go for it! nothing wrong with them.

I've heard that leons are epic for the kit too so depends on which one you prefer, I'd find it hard to pick between them two and tbh I'd rather have more kit than a "premium" badge.

they will depreciate a lot tho and you're probably better off buying a year-two old one and saving a few grand ;)
 
grudas said:
the new mazdas actually come with great amount of kit, if you want a new car and like them then go for it! nothing wrong with them.

I've heard that leons are epic for the kit too so depends on which one you prefer, I'd find it hard to pick between them two and tbh I'd rather have more kit than a "premium" badge.

they will depreciate a lot tho and you're probably better off buying a year-two old one and saving a few grand ;)
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Both have leather interior, rear camera, sensors, upgraded infotainment, Nav, auto lights and all that jazz. The Leon has LED headlights and the Mazda has the heads up sign reading speedo thing (I forget the name for it).
It's a tough call but I think I'm leaning for the Leon even before the price difference.
 
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Cleisthenes said:
Tell me about it!!
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Decided I needed a cup of man up, so I got back out there and did what I should have done all along and changed that stupid O-ring. In the course of doing it I also had to drain the coolant and put fresh stuff in. And as the car was already on axle stands, I decided I may as well do an oil change too!

It wasn't too bad a job to do actually - in fact it was quite a nice one! Nothing was rusted, everything was relatively easy to access. I follow a guy on Youtube called ModMini who does absolutely brilliant videos of work he does on his R53, so watched that a few times and got on with it! As I said previously, it was plastic bumper, then metal bumper, then aircon radiator, then engine radiator/fan assembly. Once all this was off - changing the crankshaft o-ring was a doddle. A few pics:

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Rossi~ said:
Both have leather interior, rear camera, sensors, upgraded infotainment, Nav, auto lights and all that jazz. The Leon has LED headlights and the Mazda has the heads up sign reading speedo thing (I forget the name for it).
It's a tough call but I think I'm leaning for the Leon even before the price difference.
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The Leon is the better car, but I wouldn't buy a brand new one, especially with the facelift just around the corner.
 
Spent the last 3 hours trawling through receipts (both email and physical), and inputting the data into Fuelio to build up TCO.

There are small bits here and there I don't have receipts for, so it's not 100% accurate, probably more 90-95% accurate I'd say.

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- The bulk of the Maintenance figure is down to the rear end repair back in the new year
- Registration = Tax
- Insurance = 2 years worth + breakdown cover included

So that's not even a full 2 years of ownership, and not far off 30k miles driven. It's not even a daily commuting vehicle!

How comically depressing, although I have no reason to complain, as it's been a thoroughly enjoyable ownership period to date.
 
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On Sunday I had my driver's seat out to replace the upright bracket that mounts between the seat frame and the floor-mounted sliders. This was because there's a known issue with the hole for the pivot bracket - which operates the seat base tilting - wearing larger with use over time, causing the seat to rock up and down due to how the pivot arm is bolted to the bracket. Various people have tried all sorts of remedies with washers and plumbing compression fittings and whatnot, but the cure is to replace the brackets with new ones which have a re-designed stronger bushing.


Seat coming out:

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The bracket is the piece shown below, through which all of the colour-coded fasteners are mounted. The offending bolt is the rear-most green highlighted one. The others are all fine, strangely.

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You can see the state of the hole in the new vs old bracket below, and the passenger side (I did this a couple of weeks ago, no photos because it's a sod of a job and I was too busy swearing) was even worse!

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The worst part of the job was removing the rivets, possibly because my drill and/or drill bits weren't man enough - they only hold on two flimsy metal braces that go across the seat to hold one of the motors and the controller module. I don't know why they didn't just bolt them in the first place - ease of assembly, I presume. So I used some M6x10mm allen headed bolts with nyloc nuts when re-assembling it all. The rest of it was surprisingly easy, although getting it in and out of the car is a faff due to the weight of it.

The seats now feel much more stable.
 
acemastr said:
Why would you factor in the rear end collision if you didn't pay for it?
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Devaluation purposes from it being a cat D as a result of that outcome. Third party insurer paid me, minus the salvage fee to keep the car, I then paid for the repairs myself.

[TW]Fox;30188465 said:
Is fuel for the M3 free?
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See the tab on the left that says fuel? I know it's not an easy spot.

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Howard said:
On Sunday I had my driver's seat out to replace the upright bracket that mounts between the seat frame and the floor-
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Every time I have to take a leather seat out (albeit it's hardly often) I never fail to be amazed at just how bloody heavy the things are and come close to damaging all sorts of items on and off the car whilst removing
 
rodenal said:
Every time I have to take a leather seat out (albeit it's hardly often) I never fail to be amazed at just how bloody heavy the things are and come close to damaging all sorts of items on and off the car whilst removing
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Same! I know they're electric memory seats with heating and cooling but I do wonder what makes them so heavy. Inner metal strengthening/bracing I guess. I hung an old duvet over the door so the sticking-out floor mounts wouldn't scratch the trim.
 
mrk said:
Devaluation purposes from it being a cat D as a result of that outcome. Third party insurer paid me, minus the salvage fee to keep the car, I then paid for the repairs myself.
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...with the money the insurer gave you.

There's no way your M3 is worth £7k less now than it was before, so your figure is incorrect.
 
Howard said:
Same! I know they're electric memory seats with heating and cooling but I do wonder what makes them so heavy. Inner metal strengthening/bracing I guess. I hung an old duvet over the door so the sticking-out floor mounts wouldn't scratch the trim.
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Yeah they are ridic. Don't they weigh something like 20kg each?

And yes, rivets are annoying, but they're normally easily drilled out slowly with the right drill bit!
 
DRZ said:
...with the money the insurer gave you.

There's no way your M3 is worth £7k less now than it was before, so your figure is incorrect.
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This is true, I guess I was thinking about it differently, I have removed this.
 
Just taken it for wheel alignment. Annoyingly their printer was running out of ink but still... I think it needed doing...

 
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