Kinks

Taiwan is generally a higher quality product. We deal with electronics suppliers from both countries and my general impression is that the Taiwanese are more skilled.

Beaten by paulr33, but Chinese manufacturing is all about quality control. If you have the parent company standing over the manufacturing plant watching every move and making sure the job is done right, it's fine. If there is no control then you get a shit product, but you get it cheap. Considering you get a motherboard that works for 3 days and then dies, you warranty it and continue on. When it comes to a turbo spinning at crazy speeds and possibly sending a compressor wheel through your engine the variability you get with Chinese products makes me steer well clear. You are putting a lot of trust in someone doing good QA, because the Chinese culture is to do it cheap. Japanese culture (by comparison) is to do it well, and that's expensive. Look at the premium brands for car parts - HKS. Trust. Apexi. On the other hand, Chinese radiator and bellmouth dump pipe? no problem. Got both on my car and they work OK.

Ross Brawn's rebuttal here: I agree with Brawn. The notification was "safety car in this lap". Safety car pulled in, green flags were shown. There's nothing in 40.13 that says if it's the last lap. The safety car was not deployed, it was pulled in on the last lap ergo it's normal racing conditions and Alonso (although full points for a great recovery) can suck it.

how convenient it really depends on how they drive them - remember bahrain everyone was taking it easy not sure how the tyres would last and they all worked great. but if you push them they last less, alonso used up a fair bit getting past some of the backmarkers so i hope they hold together for him and he gets some points this afternoon. been a clever drive by ferrari there to put him back in contention.

di grassi did himself no favours there. what a knob. schu about 1/2 inch away from the barrier first corner after the restart. nice.

got the good lotion out tonight did you chris? F1 tonight for me. drinking game every time webber's eyebrows twitch into a weird expression.

are you sure about that? $50 for 4 rims with tyres... what a joke. free bump.

Very courageous of you, Sheri Nobody should stop doing something they have a passion for. I almost went last week, but something came up. Will be there this week. What's the max brenners option about? Edit - I'm with Chris.. it's a cruise not a run. It's a social night out.

Meh, the intake plenum is bolted to the side of the engine and it gets pretty hot too. It would be a minor difference, at WOT the air is not spending very long in the pipe at all and I doubt it would rise more than a couple of degrees in temperature.

It's hard to find a performance exhaust that is still quiet - I went for a Fujitsubo catback, metal cat and JJR bellmouth dump and it is still pretty quiet but flows a lot better than the stock system. I'm sure if you heavily modified it would pose a restriction but for light mods they are a good brand to go for. Mine has an oval centre muffler and a big oval rear muffler - there's a canon type but I'm sure it would be noisier.

ferodo formulas squeak like a bitch on the back. I had them on front and rear and i swapped the rears out for another brand (TRX?) which were slightly better but still squeal. I'd try a softer pad on the back, they are not as critical as the fronts. I'm trying QFM HPX's next front and back (their street pad).

I've never had a problem with gearbox or diff oil, it should only smell bad if it's been burnt by burnouts or drifting. gearbox capacity is approx 4L, you should crack the fill plug (to make sure you can undo it), then undo the drain plug and drain it all. replace the drain plug and fill with new oil through the fill hole, until oil starts coming back out. let it settle for 30 seconds and then pump some more oil in there until it dribbles again and then replace the fill plug. you can stick 4L of oil in the gearstick hole if you want but rather than get oil all over the cabin, the fill plug on mine was easy to get with a breaker bar so I did it that way. Then you know you've got the right amount in as well. Beenar had it basically right but said "fill from the drain hole" by mistake

nope. dud battery. if you leave a lead acid battery flat it will start to sulfate immediately, and after a few days it will be cactus. it will never hold a charge again after that, the capacity will be minimal compared to when it was new. replace it. to thread starter with a brand new battery - you need a multimeter on 20 amp range in series with the negative lead going back to the battery. Only do this with the car off and no accessories running - it will tell you what is drawing current. tape the bonnet pin (for the alarm) down and arm the alarm. then disarm and see if it's any different. then start pulling fuses until you work out which fuses are causing your current draw and that will narrow down the problem. you can pull the fuses one by one seeing the impact on the meter and then put it back. and keep a note of which fuses dropped the current draw and the amount of drop. you can then work out what's responsible for sending the battery flat too quickly.

^^ 2 pieces are generally smoother driving. don't try and make a tailshaft yourself. people who do will charge like a wounded bull but if the balance isn't perfect then you're in for trouble. tailshaft turns at 4 x wheel speed (roughly).

to my untrained eye the first pic looks like a scorch mark (which would be insufficient oil pressure or really old oil). Not sure about the second pic, mainly just bumping the thread so someone weighs in with some more expertise

My standard rad (which turned out to be 90% blocked) was giving me 94C-104C. Replaced it with a 40mm cooling pro radiator and now it's 85C rock solid. The standard radiators on R33 GTS-t are a 15mm core, which is pretty piss poor if you ask me. If switching between red and green coolant make sure you flush ALL the coolant out. Mine was blocked because I was running red coolant and some f**king monkeys who serviced it in Balgowlah whose name we shall not mention publically refilled it with green coolant without flushing all the old stuff out and ended up sludging the system. I flushed it multiple times and put red coolant back in with the new rad. 90C is probably not too bad on the stock radiator.. any higher than that and I would rip it out and put a proper one in.

do u know how i know you're gay doofy?

nah.. he's no schumacher! (driving home in the rain on 3 wheels after coulthard lifted and schu went up the back of him)

Webber has never had any problem doing a single lap brilliantly, he just has a problem doing 50 of them well one after the other. Always with the grass and the throwing up in the helmet and driving up the back of a mclaren... Wasn't it a race or two ago he got monstered by his teammate off the start? Hopefully the Schu has a blinder and all the doubters shut up and think of someone else to harrass. He looked more comfortable in quali.

^^ both!

I'd love a UK proxy server invite if anyone has one

+1 would have joined you Ben but only saw this now

Terrible news, RIP two quality men and deepest condolances to all those who were close to them

subtle "check out my drifting bro" post.

yes. tailshafts are expensive it's the balancing that many places charge through the nose for especially for a 2 piece shaft (which the standard item is). that's the walk-in-off-the-street price anyway. if you "know someone" maybe you can get it cheaper but it cost me about that to get mine fixed when i destroyed the centre.