andrewd

Thanks for the detailed post ap0gee. After having a poke around the NSR seat, I found that mine had popped apart at location 2. I was able to reach in pretty easily with both hands - one over the back of the airbox pipe, and the other underneath it in order to reconnect the pipe. I knew my small hands would be a blessing one day.

I wish I'd done this when I had the front brakes replaced earlier in the year. The 288s - at least with OEM pads - really don't seem up to the job for fast road driving, let alone track. It's pretty frustrating to have to back off from a spirited B-road blast because the pedal is starting to sink.

The AC on my '05 Fabia doesn't seem to be taking to well to this bout of warmer weather either. Doesn't seem to have anything like the power it's usually had. I've also started noticing a pretty loud, constant hissing from behind the vents when it's on?!? Not sure if it needs a regas, or whether it'd benefit from a replacement of the evap sensor?

Yeah, that was my worry! Although it may just be me adapting back to the vRS steering after a weekend in a courtesy Fabia II ... So is the consensus that a post-console-bush-replacement alignment check should always be carried out by a dealership as part of the job?

That was my understanding too, even if just a basic front-tracking check? Car "seems" okay to drive and I didn't notice any issues on the 230 mile motorway commute to work last week, although I swear the steering is "weightier"?

Had my console bushes replaced just over a week ago at a cost of just over £140 by a Skoda dealer. They've fitted the newer type of bush which is cool. However, when driving on the motorway the steering wheel is now off centre while driving in a straight line. The guy at the dealer reckons that replacing the console shouldn't involve anything that would throw the steering wheel off-centre. This sound plausible? Should they have checked alignment as part of the job? My only guess is that either: i) the car had previously had an alignment job with the old, worn console bushes and now the wishbones are back in the right place it's thrown the alignment out? (I haven't had an alignment done in the last 20,000 miles of ownership though!) ii) they have disturbed something that's affected the alignment, e.g. removed the actual consoles? Just wanted to prepare myself with any info from you chaps as I don't want to be fobbed off, and I'm even less keen on being charged for something they should have done first time round if that turns out to be the case. Cheers.

Thought I'd post up a few of my photos from Sunday at Chatsworth. Despite torrential rain for the first couple of hours it eventually cleared out and we had a fantastic day. Highlight of the day was seeing the huge Quattro contingent! It was also the first proper outing for my new Sigma 50-150 f/2.8 and I was able to get some pretty satisfying results from it. Full Flickr gallery is here, but the shots I'm most chuffed with are below ..

Hey I know that car (the white K-plate 16v that is)! I remember it throughout the mid-90s. It used to belong to the owner of a business at the top of Denton's Green Lane in St.Helens and I'd drive past it on my way to work at Pilkington in my mum's Lemongelb Mk1 Golf. Have to say that Golf was 100% the inspiration behind me buying a string of Golf GTIs starting with an F-plate 8v in '95, follower by a J-plate 8v in '97 and again a J-plate 8v in 2002. Shame I never quite plucked up the courage to put a note under the windscreen wiper asking if it was for sale ... Having said that, I'd have never found the time, skill or patience to do what you've done to it though. An absolutely stellar job there dude!

Thought I'd share this pic I got of my mate's Octy vRS at the weekend on a snowboard trip up to the Highlands. Taken with my Sigma 10-20mm on my old Canon 400D.

Seem to have missed the Clio Trophy for some reason? Evo seem to continually bang on about it having been the most focussed and rewarding iteration of the little Renault! And can you really class the Escort Cosworth as a hot-hatch? For me, those 4wd rally machines (Integrale included) fall into a different group entirely.

Nice one. Be interested to hear your before / after opinions!

Sorry to hear that, but you never know .. might be some better deals around once the festive period is over! Couple more links that might be handy: www.dpreview.com - amazingly in-depth camera reviews & tests. www.camerapricebuster.co.uk - best place for finding the cheapest camera deals.

That's an interesting effect for sure! I'm very certain that some kind of adaptive tone-mapped HDR has been used along the way to generating it too. Actually, a true HDR image is just an image with extended dynamic range beyond that which your average monitor can display (even a RAW file is technically an HDR image). That is, it has data in the shadows that are darker than your monitor's black, and data in the highlights that are brighter than your monitor's white. In order to display these HDR images on a monitor you can map the tones to something that your monitor can cope with. Either in a linear fashion like your camera does in producing a JPG, or in an adaptive manner (i.e. brightening the dark bits, darkening the bright bits) like Photomatix, Dynamic HDR, etc. allow you to do.

Darn, I'm away during the week with work so that kind of rules me out for Wednesday nights.

The Rebel XS is known as the 1000D over here - it's an excellent camera and an excellent entry point to SLR photography. You can generally buy it as a body-only (no lens) at ~£320 (here) or with one of two versions of the 18-55 lens; one image-stabilised at ~£440 , and the other non-image-stabilised at ~£380. As you want a big zoom range I'd recommend buying the body-only and then putting the rest of the money towards a cheap, wide-range lens such as the Tamron 18-200mm (here) for about £165. A lens with such a wide zoom range at such a low price is never going to be perfect, but the Tamron is a particularly good one, and will give you a useful range from wide to telephoto in one package and is a good starting point while you decide what kind of photography you want to get into, and what lenses you may need in future. Hope that helps.