hrd-hr30

unless the front end been significantly altered it shouldn't be any worse for bump steer than any other R32 - except for the amount of pitch its getting under brakes, which certainly sounds excessive from the descriptions. less pitch = less bump travel = less bump steer.

I'm saying its not a good idea to try and fix his stability problems by adding a wing. He's got issues with its mechanical setup. Don't try and fix that with aero. Treat the problem (excessive dive) not the symptom (rear end instability).

you think that's bumpy, you should see QR & lakeside! Apart from turn 4, they make OP GP look like a billiard table. as for the wing suggestions, that's just a band aid solution. At best. You're far better off working on mechanical grip first. Oran Park is a low speed circuit anyway.

sounds awesome in the vid! visibly diving under brakes and getting light in the rear end is going to be either too little front shock, front spring, or anti-dive geometry. Or a combination of the three. Shock and spring is where I'd be starting.

saw the TV coverage on the weekend. Love your work Ben! I can't believe you actually found a real life potato paddock to dig a couple of furrows in! lol

I thought they'd started a second series. they certainly had an event recently that was for people who weren't registered for the series. I was thinking about doing the next one of them, but have NFI when it is. Their calendar doesn't seem to have it on there. I might email Robbo next week to find out. I'll let you know.

Josh, at Mt Cotton if you run road registered class, there are no rules - happy times! If you run improved production they probably will be anal, but you'd have to have a restrictor as well so I doubt you'll be running in that class. Sport Sedans, I reckon you'll get away with it unless this is for the QHC. Marque Sports, I reckon its OK anyway. When are you going there?

I looked into this recently for my car. The answer is it depends what category you're in and how serious the event is. Improved production - no. CF not allowed. rules don't mention sunroofs so technically it has to remain as it left the factory. Sport Sedan - no. SS stipulates that you must have a replacement panel for sunroof, but it must be of a similar material to the rest of the roof. Sports car catergories don't make any mention of sunroofs. But,: Marque Sports allows removeable panels to be replaced by other of free constrution as long as they are the same external shape. If you can convince them that a sunroof is a panel, you're OK... Production Sports cars might not be so lenient. But they do say that components that are for decorative purposes only, can be made from carbon fibre.

cool! yeah, Lakeside has to be the best track I've ever driven! The new surface is a bit quicker. Still bumpy, but its a bit grippier and the turn onto the front straight is wider as is the kink, which is a bit of a shame as its taken a bit of the challenge out of it. Rest of the track is the same, just resurfaced. Here's my lap of Lakeside in my Supra (sold it last week) earlier this year on the new surface:

Great vid mate, and wel done in your first race! Nice to meet you out there too. Hopefully next time I can hang around a bit longer! I'm planning on making my race debut at Lakeside next month...

was just having a bit of a dig, not worked up. you Jeep owners are a bit over-sensitive!

man up and buy a Patrol. If cheap is one of your criteria an aftermarket turboed TD42 GQ can be had for less than the cost of the Jeep. Or the RD28 TD. GQ's don't rate highly in the wussy luxury department though. But if you are only hopping in it when you're about to race your car, a bit of hardening up won't f**kin hurt ya!

Something to be aware of if you are thinking of towing with Commodore/Falcon is the maximum tow capacity the factory quotes on them is with their towing packs, some of which included about 20 items! The legal tow rating without that pack is substantially lower and not adequate for towing a car & trailer combo. So just whacking a rated towbar on the back of a 2nd hand Commodore is not the best idea. Find out what was in that model's tow pack.

listen to this man! If you are buying something particularly for towing, get a 4WD. You wil not realise how crap a sedan/wagon is until you have towed with a 4WD. Petrol if you have deep pockets and emptying them at servos. Dual fuel helps the $$/km ratio back to diesel type figures but have useless range when towing. Turbo diesel is the go for the low down grunt and economy. My diesel Patrol get the same l/100km towing as my previous petrol Patrol did just driving around by itself! Whatever you get, DO NOT buy a ZD30 (3ltr TD) Patrol. They are still blowing up. Even the new ones and the ones fixed under warranty. Nissan are no longer accepting any responsibility for them either, so you're on your own. Outerlimits and Patrol4x4 forums if you want more info. The TD42 is the go, proper old school truck engine with over 10l sump and 2 oil filters. They'll still be going after a nuclear holocaust. TDs outperform their kW & Nm numbers towing on the highway. Don't overlook Pajero TDs either.

SOLD

I've always liked Webber, until this year when I tipped Vettel to show him a clean pair of heels pretty much everywhere. Now all of a sudden Webber has been far more consistent than ever before. bastard... Vettel had a shocker on the soft tyres. Far more trouble than anyone else had on them, and never had any pace despite being light. He obviously isn't gentle on tyres, or had a pretty ordinary setup, or both. But the season is only young and I still think Vettel will continue to out-qualify and return to out-racing Mark before too long. Monaco is a bit of an anomaly ni the F1 calendar. Liked seeing the Ferraris back amongst it. And watching the battle between the Brawns after Barichello's comments in the media in the leadup to Monaco.

buy it now, because I'm about to trade it... $18,000 for quick sale. 1993 JZA80 Supra twin turbo 6spd 145,000km Tein Flex (right rear is leaking badly. They are rebuildable) Rays 18*8.5" & 9.5" Gram Lights Big Jap exhaust (NFI what brand) TRD wing (and stock wing) Kuhmo KU36 tyres on it are fairly worn, but have ~50% Federals that were on it before. Car is otherwise in good condition. Timing belt, tensioner cam and crank seals, harmonic balancer replaced Front brake rotors replaced (and all pads, but the pads are probably 50% by now) rego runs out next month. Its in pretty good nick. I've had it for 18 months. Never had any dramas with it, apart from the shock that started leaking badly about 2 months ago. There is some wear on drivers seat bolstering mainly from my fat arse not being agile enough to climb in and out without squashing it to death... Car is very straight, but has a couple of minor paint blemishes and stone chips. oh, the auto front spoiler has never worked since I've had the car. Have tracked it 4 times at Lakeside (won the 2008 Sprint Series), twice at QR and Oran Park, once at Wakefield and Eastern Creek, so 10 times in total. Handles really well, even with the stuffed shock it ran 1:00.79 at Lakeside earlier this month. that is all. cheap TT 6spd Supra! buy me now before I loose even more money by trading it! Harry 0400 656 191

He certainly burnt his rear soft tyres up quicker than anyone else during the race! But he didn't really have any pace even in the first few laps before they would have gone off. I don't think he got his setup anywhere near right.

there it is again - "is Snell, is good" there is serious evidence to suggest that the current Snell standards which require the helmet to withstand multiple high energy impacts to the same area, where even the first impact may not have been survivable, results in helmets that are too stiff and therefore result in higher accelleration to the head in normal survivable impacts, potentially increasing the risk or severity of brain injury. The softer AS helmets will be safer in almost all real world impacts. Particularly for people driving cars who don't have to worry about flying head first into gutters and square edges of cars and trucks and stuff. Read the link in my previous post.

any update? he said it wouldn't crank over after it stopped. everyone suggesting its probably only fuel system seems to have missed that part. if you are going to try and start the thing, I'd pull the glow plugs out, disconnect the fuel line to the pump and crank it over to clear whatever fuel is still left in there before attempting to start it on diesel again. just for the record: glow plugs are used to help the diesel combust when the engine's cold. you can start a diesel engine without glow plugs but its not easy. and they're not needed at all once the engine is up to temperature. pre-detonation in a petrol engine is normally started by a hot spot in the combustion chamber. you won't find those conditions in a diesel engine - their combustion temps are far lower. but it's of absolutely no relevance to whether straight unleaded will combust in a diesel engine, which is what we're talking about. as for the engine not running long enough to cause sever damage... how could it have been run any longer? they ran it till it stopped and it wouldn't even turn over when they tried to restart it!

diesels fire their fuel purely by compressing it. petrol will not combust that way so it reamins liquid inthe combustion chamber. end result in the worst case is the same as if it ingested water in a creek crossing - hydro-lock and bent rod/s. the fact it wouldn't turn over after it stopped, suggests this is what happened...

I know there are some people doing it, but realistically, you need a towing capacity of 2000kg. A decent trailer will weigh around 550-600kg, most hire trailers will weigh more like 800kg. Then if you're going racing, you're going to have spares and fuel and stuff in the car as well, so there's the GVM to worry about also, which is always reduced when towing. You can bet the Stagea isn't rated to tow that much - alot of light duty 4WDs only just make it to that kind of towing capacity. I'm sure Nissan didn't envisage towing large caravans, boats or race cars around when designing the Stagea. Its a bit of a moot point anyway, you won't find a towbar off-the-shelf rated to that kind of capacity for it. If you must do it with a passenger car, the local offerings were built with towing caravans and boats in mind. Falcons always seemed to have the higher towing capacity than Commodores, but even then to get to the kind of rating they normally need the towing options pack of load levelers, trans coolers/HD clutches, HD radiators and the like. Some of the towing packs on these cars had up to 15 items! So just buying a secondhand Falcodore and whacking a big towbar on it isn't the best idea either. Do your research, but the best bet is a 4WD. My Aussie R31 sedan felt absolutely terrible just towing the empty 540kg car trailer around. You could feel the rear of the car get pulled around all over the place every time the trailer hit a bump, the auto didn't like it - had to keep it locked out of overdrive on the highway... And that's just empty! In the Patrol you never even know its there even with a full weight R32 GTR on it, except that its slower... turbo diesel 4WD FTW

no one is sayign they intentionally "stooged" him sh@un, just that they totally stuffed his race through poor strategy. Can't see how anything Vettel did f**ked his race though. the fact that they got out smarted in the pits by Ferrari only emphasises that point!

Vettel got as good a start as the fantastic Webber - if anything slightly faster off the line. Its just that the Ferrari with KERS just managed to pass him and Rubens got around everyone with an absolute screamer! Maybe he should have qualified slower like his team-mate and dodged the criticism of being passed on the the start? Fact is his launch was slightly faster than Mark's. I don't believe Massa didn't use KERS into the first turn regardless of what the television telemetry says. Track position is everything, particularly at that track. The start is the best opportunity to make positions. If you aren't going to use KERS there, may as well remove the button! all the drivers talk about how difficult it is to pass there. Only real opportunity is at the end of the straight, and when you are behind a KERS car, that's not an opportunity either. Only realistic way to pass was in the pits. Webber blew the restart which allowed Alonso to pass him in the first place. If he hadn't muffed the restart, he wouldn't have needed to make that desperado dive back inside Alonso. Sure Alonso has KERS and that would have helped him on the restart, by Vettell was dissapearing away from Webber up the straight on the restart as well, so it wasn't only KERS that got Webber, it was a poor restart. But Webber gets high praise for that. it was 3 laps from the end, and with only 3 clear laps in the entire race to show his pace, and on the slower prime (hard) tyre, Vettel managed to finish only 5sec behind Mark and do times that Mark was doing on the faster rubber. it was obvious that RBR had to do something in the pits to get their cars around Massa. All the drivers talk about how hard it is to pass there. And that was before you had to try and pass a KERS car! RBR did that for Mark, fuelling him long for the 2nd stint. It was equally obvious to the casual observer that their strategy of leaving Vettel stuck behind Massa for the whole race was not the "prime" strategy. I couldn't believe they didn't fuel him short to get track position, or fuel him long as they did for the other RBR car. Had they done that, he should have rejoined ahead of Webber... You can say Vettel was ordinary, but he only had 3 laps in the whole race to do anything with due to the good start by Massa. Mark had a great run of clean track for the best part of 30 laps thanks to his team putting him in a good position on the track away from slower cars and giving him alot more laps on the faster option tyre, and yet only finished 5 sec ahead of Vettel who was held up for the entire race! Mark's start was no faster than Vettels, and he damn near blew it on the restart after the 1st lap Safety Car. His Team put him in the clear track that allowed him to make track position on the 2 cars he passed in the race. He didn't pass Vettel because he out-raced him, it was all won and lost in the pits.

8-10 laps> wow. put him behind a slow car for 63 laps and see how he goes.