Juan Barazi buys a new car

[termietermite]

........my ALfa 156 is a beautiful car but unfortunately the electrics were put in by a blind man on a particularly bad acid trip.

Ditto my 147.   

My mate has the same trouble with his Mondie.  Moral: Never employ an Italian electrician! 

[Jay (Team Cannonball)]

I'm desperate to get out of academia and into industry. I am fed up with all the bullshit about funding, they expect you to carry out cutting edge research on equipment that roled out of the ark. I spent six weeks at Pfizer and produced more good data whilst I was there than I was able to do in a year at the uni. Plus all the professors have egos the size of large houses and they don't handle critiscm very well.
I worked for GSK before I did my PhD and so I'm keen to get back into a nice well funded lab with the latest equipment then I can really start motoring. Academia in the UK is getting screwed a new generation of analytical equipment is being introduced and the only ones who can afford it are industry, when I was at Pfizer I worked on a Waters AcQUITY UPLC system with a brand new tandem MS on the end. The cost of that was essentially my entire departments yearly budget. The days of truly brilliant research coming out of uni's is long gone in the UK unless the governement starts putting money back into the physical sciences in a big way. I was in Ireland in the summer and the facilities and institues they had were amazing and made most of the UK university labs I have seen pale into comparison. It was all EU funded; why don't we get a slice of the pie or do we and our government invest it speed cameras and other crap. No wonder chemistry departments and physic departments are closing all over the place, the government is making teaching and researching good science nigh on impossible.

[Dave H]

Congrats on the new wheels Andy!  I've never driven one, but have generally good impressions of the ride.  This is a car that I was not so keen on initially, but it's deffo grown on me.

[Andy Zarse]

I can share with you my ownership experience if you like but wouldn't want to bore others on here with the minutiae so PM me if interested.

Well I did PM Pretzel and I have to say what I got back was way way more than I was expecting. What a terrific guy, I owe him a drink!

Andy - no problem, happy to help.

You're certainly right about the traction. You can take enormous liberties with the Scoob that you can't with the Z but the driving experience is all the more rewarding for it.

The Scoob, as you probably know in extremis (particularly on a track) is a bit of an understeerer unless you're really brutal. With the Z it's all about progressive  application of power. It can be quite easy to unstick the rear end if you're not smooth, and the original equipment tyres (Bridgestone) are not the best when cold or in the wet. This is true even with the traction control left on. I suppose it really depends how you feel about adapting your driving skills to meet the demands. It can be really good fun with the T/C off! Personally I leave the traction control on most of the time on public roads. When it does break away though it is quite progressive - unlike the S2000 for instance which can be difficult to catch.

The Z was recently updated - now 300BHP and yes snazzy new lights. The new lights are a bit Max Power for my taste but hey-ho. They also reportedly improved the quality of the interior but I didn't really see much difference between the revamped model and mine. Coming from a Subaru though you probably won't notice much difference in the quality of the interior plastics etc.

The rear strut brace can be intrusive but there is quite a lot of usable space in the boot. The other half and I can take sufficient luggage for a week at LM - mind you as we stay in an hotel we don't need room for a tent and all the other stuff. One recommendation regarding the boot - get a tonneau and an additional floor mat. The tyre roar at the rear is quite intrusive and this helps cut it down to acceptable levels. The tonneau fills the space between the boot floor and the strut brace and reduces the internal resonance.

My car has been very reliable but has has some remedial work done for a known fault. The rear driveshaft/hub bearing assy can develop a 'clicking' noise due to some poor quality tolerancing. I don't know if this has been corrected for the revamped car. A useful source of info can be found on  http://forums.350zukownersclub.com/. This is a discussion forum for 'Z' owners. A lot of the correspondence is puerile but there is also some useful info in there.

One other comment I have is the level of 'Service' from the dealerships. I don't know about you but in my experience the service I had from Subaru during my 5 years of ownership was exemplary. Nothing was too much trouble. With Nissan, as they are a mass market manufacturer, I have found it less good. For instance the clicking driveshaft thing - I had to bring it to their attention, and even when I did I still had to prove it's existence, even though it was known to Nissan as a problem.  Also they have no idea who I am - the Subaru guy on the service desk knew my first name! and no, that's not because it kept breaking down - it never missed a beat.

Still, the servicing costs for the Z are considerably less than the Scoob so there is a trade-off.

Talking of running costs I get about the same fuel economy as I did in the Scoob but it is recommended that the Z is run exclusively on 98 RON fuel. I run mine on Tesco 99 RON (part bio-ethanol) and it runs just great.

I'm surprised you haven't driven the Z yet but think that over time you will come to enjoy it, and it's nice to drive something a bit different. I loved my Scoob but had to scratch the rear drive itch and have no regrets.

Anything else you think I may be able to help with just drop me a PM.

Best rgds,

(Pretzel)