Come on the Brits
 

Hi there, I'm Nigel, just signed up to the board, thought i would say hello, and let you know (if your interested) that i am currently drying out my 98 audi a4after an internal water leak and am hoping to chop it in against a 318ti in the coming month.

My wife has a fiesta, and 2 cars is a complete luxury now we are married, we are going to get rid of both our cars and get something in between. Hopefully, the wife will get on alright with the compact as she isnt very confident in anything bigger than her fiesta. She has driven the audi, but at night in a contra flow it suddenly felt very big.

I am gonna look around the forum and see whats happening.

I used to have a 320i SE which i owned for 5 years, so hopefully i will be able to put something back into the forum later on.

Safe driving

Nige

welcome aboard Nigel,
try to get a 'sport' if you can. You get m-tech suspension,sports seats,bigger wheels & a body kit all factory fitted.

Your mrs will be fine with a ti, easy to drive & a peice of piss to park due to the chopped off rear.

I'm usually pretty good at deciphering brit-speak, but you lost me on "in a contra flow". :)

And yeah, parking a ti isn't too bad, because the car ends just a few inches past the glass. I can handle it ok, and I'm practically retarded when it comes to going backwards in a car.

LOL, most women here want a bigger car so they can feel confident. Or maybe just protected. Either way- welcome!

i'm english and i don't know contra-flow either ;)

Is it a bicycle lane?

A contra-flow is when they close one single directional carriageway/highway, usually for roadworks & direct all it's traffic onto the the carriageway carrying traffic heading in the other direction. Usually they put a line of plastic road cones down the middle of the road to separate the two streams of traffic. They can get a bit hairy when you get oncomming big trucks comming at you as the road width is reduced.

From when my family went to england we rented a Scorpio the first time which is a medium sized car in the US, but felt gigantic on UK roads. The next time we went back we got a Golf Diesel and it was about right for size. The golf was the inspiration for my dad getting the ti in 1995. Good old England can chaulk up the credit for me having the ti now. I would say the ti is roughly the same size as the golf diesel.

You guys have some two lane roads the seem like American one lane.

I saw semis out near Berlin on roads whose 'lanes' (if you can call them that) were more apt for a bicycle path.

cheers'

yep, contra flow is just like halek says. I have to say, the lane felt tight and i was in the passenger seat. We had just been on the other carriageway and when we crossed back over, the outer two lanes felt like 6ft wide, then a row of cones and then oncoming traffic, and it was dark. Poor lass.

If you think the general roads are tight, you should come for a ride round the lanes. Where i live in North Devon, there are plenty of single track roads and in summer, the hedges are brushing both wing mirrors simultaneously!!

Gotta be confident on your size down here.

Halek, i would love a ti sport, but am reckoning on a 5k budget and dont want something thats been thrashed. I have seen ti's and se's with 70k on but there all too far from where we live. : (

Thanks for the welcome. I am well pleased that my search for common problems hasnt shown up anything (unless you know different). Am checking for water leaks.

Safe driving.

Nige

We were actually around there. We drove down roads almost exactly like that. Some though had the stone fences instead of hedges.

Good luck finding that ti though. I think you will love it.

welcome..... i know i'm a bit late in saying but ive just got back from a lovely week in Devon. Exeter to be precise. but anyway, for 5k you will definately be able to pick yourself up a really nice Ti. ive got a '96 sport with M-tech kit and 90k on the clock, full BMW servce for £2700 so you should be laughing.

Nige, for that money you should easily find a decent model. I picked mine up my 99 m-spec in the summer for around 6k with only 52k on the clock and all the extras as seen. However I looked at loads before I found the right one. Be careful there are a lot of chav'd ones that have been thrashed.

Dave, where did you find that little gem? 2700 for a sport?! sounds sweet. It will definitely just be a case of waiting for the right one. i dont want to rush into this one, as i was kind of too keen to have an audi sport and in retrospect, wish i had never bothered.

Thanks for all the replies guys. This seems like a good place to be.
After browsing the forums, i have already been thinking about doing stuff to the car, i havent even got it yet.

Did you know hids4u(?) (advertised on this site somewhere) have got xenon kits for 225? thats a good price, currently its 180 quid plus shipping form the states.

Nige