scathing

It's always cool to see fellow car enthusiasts acknowledge each other and wave when they see each other on the information super highway.

FTO for sure. The Tiptronic is a reasonable gearbox if she goes auto, and the car is pretty reliable. While swoopy, it still doesn't attract the wrong kind of attention like a F&F hero car does. As for FWD vs RWD, I'm with GTRGeoff. You can tell a lot of people are working off hearsay when it comes to the drivetrains. In the hands of anything but an advanced driver, or on the track, all else being equal in terms of setup the FWD will be at least as quick. Sure an Excel isn't going to keep up with an NSX, but at the same time a Commodore won't see which way an Integra Type-R went. And the FTO was a Type-R competitor, and more than held its own. They are a very good handling car and for someone who's interested in learning the art of corner carving it would make a great car to get into. Its quick and it handles well. And if she's not into that kind of thing and is just after a good looking around-town runabout, then who cares what wheels are getting power? The FTO looks good enough (the rear seems like a bit of an afterthought but with the right bodykit it works) and its a much smaller and more nimble car than the fat-ass Supra. I'd only get the SZ if she was driving long distances on open roads. If you were commuting up the Hume every day then the extra room, softer suspension tune, more sound dampening, and torquier motor would make it the choice to have.

The maximum width for a rim size is actually dependent on the tyre and its construction. A good manufacturer will post the minimum and maximum rim widths on their web site. Falken seems to recommend no smaller than a 245 for their 9.5" rim, and no wider than a 285, regardless of the tyre.

If you've never done it before and you're learning its fine (I'd probably turn the boost down, if anything). You don't need massive power, and bigger lag, when you're first learning how to balance a car on the throttle. As long as you've got enough power to break traction at all it'll be fine. I would have even suggested stock suspension. While it won't ultimately handle as well or provide you with the ability to do super-happy insane drift speeds, if you're not an advanced driver the progressiveness of the weight shift in a stock setup makes it easier for a novice to "feel" what a car is doing and get the fundamentals down. And it keeps a lid on your speed, so you've got more time to react. Just like people can't jump straight into an F1 car and expect to keep it on the track, you should learn to drift on lesser and more forgiving machinery before building a D1 car.

I'm with you on that. They should break down the times into specific distances so people can see where some cars get the jump and others can muscle back. I think 0-100km/hr times were great back when cars were relatively slow (I mean back in the 60's when the car culture really came alive and your average family hack struggled to even hit 100km/hr) and all of them were FR machines. It was a good way to show which had more power or better suspension since most other things were equal. But unfortunately as time and performance have moved on, the benchmarks have not. A quarter mile is a bloody long distance for a FJ Holden to cover. But its doesn't take that long even in a V6 Commodore these days. And you're splitting hairs when it comes to 0-100km/hr times, when you're talking decimal places. If you want to account for "inflation" to something equal to the benchmarks we used in the 60's, it should be 0-160km/hr and standing kilometre times. When you're talking 0-160km/hr times you take a lot of the initial traction out of the equation, and short geared cars will bang off their limiters and lose out in the standing kilometre when the more powerful / aerodynamic cars can continue to pull. Given that I'm at the top of 4th when I finish the quarter, I think I'd come real close to hitting my 250km/hr speed limiter by the end of a kilometre. I wouldn't reach it, but I'd come close. In the same way, I reckon an FJ would have probably run out of torque in top gear at the end of the quarter back in its day.

My mate ran ROH Drift-R's on his S15 for a couple of years. No issues with them. The finish was still as good as you could reasonably hope for, they didn't buckle or anything. They're just heavy (if that's a concern of yours).

$300 a corner for 18" tyres is not that much if you want to buy decent sports tyres, which you apparently do. The decidedly average Bridgestone Potenza RE040s that came with my car are almost $400 each in 245/45 R18. The best road tyres around, the Michelin Pilot Sports, are over $700 each in that dimension. I spend $300 a corner on my 17" tyres. The RE040s cost that much. The grey import Potenza RE-01's were around that price. As were the Dunlop DZ101s I previously used. Same with the Sumitomo HRTZ III's I am considering for my next set of tyres. You could probably get Nankang or some other shithouse tyre in 18" for that price, but I can't say too much about how well they'll work.

Its not impossible, but its going to be very difficult. Which means it will cost a fair amount. So you're going to have to choose when it comes to the cost / benefit ratio, which side you're going to err on if you can't have them both. Unfortunately most people will take the supposed handling benefits of ultra-stiff suspension or the look of lowered springs over comfort, so there's very little advice from other owners that have achieved what you're after. Progressive springs are a good start, but you'll need to find shocks that match. Its not impossible, but since no-one else we know of has done it you'll have to figure it out yourself. Which means trial-and-error with various combos until you find something good. Hence the cost, unless you settle for something that's merely OK..... If Bilstein or Eibach offer something for the R33 they'd be a good start. The Europeans understand the fact that ultra-stiff suspension does not a good handling road car make.

Why? Nissan managed to pull over 120hp/L from their SR16VE years before Honda managed it with the K20A. Then there's the KPGC10. NA, and I don't think it'd be a good candidate for a turbo engine. If I could afford to make one into a track toy and couldn't make enough power out of the S20, I'd probably look at putting in a worked RB25DE in instead. And there are plenty of turbo kits for Hondas out there, especially in the US. And they are making very impressive numbers. But there's something about a hard-tuned NA engine. Its response and sound at WOT is incredible, and its something that no turbo car can match. Its just not cheap to get there.

Did she sign a contract when she put the deposit down? If she did, I'm pretty sure the car yard will have to provide her with a car of similar condition at the agreed price (maybe Johnny Cash can let us know). It doesn't matter if they sold that one or not. If a contract was agreed upon, the sale is binding unless both parties agree to back out. For example, a while ago Dell was advertising 250GB hard drives on their web site for $1 each (or something like that, it might have been $10, but either way it was either a typo or they ported the development site with placeholder prices into production without checking). People ordered shitloads of them, which billed their credit card. Once money has changed hands the transaction is binding. Dell tried to back out and refund all the users without telling them, but the Dept of Fair Trading has basically told them that they can't without the consent of the purchaser. If the purchaser refused to get refunded, Dell would have to stump up for the hardware at the price they charged. Of course that was for the full amount, but I'd be quite interested to know if deposits would be enough.....

You're artificially increasing the amount of oxygen inside a given volume of air. I realise you're not using a compressor, but "forced" doesn't only mean "compressor supplied". And once you inject that gas into the intake, its pressure logically increases above that of atmospheric anyway (more gas in a given volume). Even if you choose not to call it "forced induction", at the same time I don't think you can call the injection of a nitrogen / oxygen molecule from a tank inside the car "normally aspirated", which is what Russ_T was asking for anywya.

Magman in Punchbowl seems to be most people's pick. I don't know if his prices are reasonable (I think its $85 a wheel, but I'm not sure if they strip the paint off to go to bare metal before laying the new paint on at that price) but everyone seems more than happy with the results of his work.

On an all-motor streetable engine (which is what Russ_T was asking for)? Good luck. 120kW / L from a NA engine that has to be flexible enough to drive around town, at least passable on noise and emissions, and reliable on pump fuel is not an easy ask. OEMs (even the guys who make exotica) have hard enough time getting to 100kW / L with their R&D budgets, even on modern engines. That you managed to pull so much power with bolt-ons just goes to show how badly designed and power robbing those ancillaries were on the OEM setup (especially without an ECU tune to suit), not how much power he'll gain if he gets everything running efficiently. FYI: Nitrous is a form of forced induction

No, Hondas are quite impressive. And so are Jaguars and Aston Martins now that they're owned by Ford. The new Roller isn't too bad either, unlike prior ones. But are we seeing a common thread here? None of them are actually owned by the British. So none of their QC procedures or top brass are local. But, have a look at the guys that are / were still local. TVR. Rover. (I'll leave out the kit car manufacturers like Westfield and Caterham). I could even point out Lotus even though they're owned by Malaysians. (As an aside, most of what I said above comes from the Brits I work with. When I told them I wanted a Tuscan or Sagaris, they laughed at me and were making bets about whether the car would stay together long enough to overheat in Australia's higher temperatures, considering how often they boil over in chilly England.) The Brits build great, fun cars. I'd have an Atom S2 in an instant if I could get it street legal(ish). The TVR Tuscan is just gorgeous, and the Cerbera I saw and heard a year ago still gives me a chubby. If I could afford an Elise 111R I'd sell my current car. But, without guidance from the Germans or the Japanese you guys don't mass produce cars that last the distance. Its OK, we Aussies aren't much better.

How do you figure? By the stats you posted, the TVR's I6 fails to meet the 100hp/L benchmark that BMW's M division has met since the E36 M3's Series 1 engine. And lets not get into discussing the reliability of that engine. Nor its fuel economy. TVR boasts that every last nut and bolt in their cars is British made, which anyone ever following the trail of bits leading to an overheated / broken down TVR will definitely attest to. I wouldn't mind seeing figures on their respective torque curves either. The M3's engines have apparently been remarkably tractable in the low end despite their high redlines and high peak power but I've heard differing stories from people who've driven them. Aside from having more displacement, what exactly does the Sagaris I6 beat the M3's I6 in? All the "wow" bits you've listed are still no-where near the M3's list of tech. Double VANOS. One of the world's most powerful ECU's. Lightweight internals. Carbon coated pistons for self lubrication and lower friction. Dual length intakes. Individual throttle bodies. Tuned length extractors. And they're all I can remember off the top of my head. Do you drive a Commodore or a Falcon? Because the last time I heard someone saying that an engine was "superior" based on its extra displacement, they got their arses handed to them at Bathurst.

You won't get that much more stopping power per se, since the limiting factor in any modern cars' braking system is the tyres. Can you lock up the tyres with the OEM setup? Adding more braking torque won't make them lock up any later.... But what Brembo calipers and larger rotors give you is more heat dissipation. The larger rotors have more mass to absorb heat, and depending on their manufacture and materials will cope with heat better. The larger pads will give you a larger swept area (which once again means the pad heats up less in total), and Brembo calipers tend to be designed with cooling in mind. This means that if you're doing track work you'll get more laps in at max attack before it overheats. Even with good pads, slotted / cross drilled rotors and nice fluid you can overheat brakes. Especially if you're running semi slicks. I ran in a supersprint in February at Oran Park GP, when it was about 35 degrees ambient. With A032R's on, I was literally standing on the brake pedal as late as I dared, since the tyres wouldn't lock up due to the grip on offer. Even with DBA Slotted rotors, Ferodo DS2500 pads and Motul RBF600 fluid I managed to fade my brakes out on the 5th lap...and that's only around 7.5 minutes. If I was there for a regular track day doing a 15 minute session, my brakes would have only lasted half the session.

A couple of years I remember hearing a story about this import car yard in Auburn (just down from Maccas). It was just after the first Fast and Furious movie came out. The yard had a bunch of GT-Rs and Supra RZs parked out on the edge of the yard so people driving by at night could see the hotness. Apparently some guys rocked up with a B-double and a crane. Rather than breaking down the gates (which looked trivial to pull down if you had a vehicle with the torque of a semi trailer, but perhaps they had shock sensors or other alarms) they hoisted the cars over the fence and onto the back of the truck. Needless to say after that they parked all the nice cars up the back every night, and put all the S13 NA's and Familia Turbos at the front of the yard after that.

Get a PO box. I don't put my physical address anywhere I don't have to. If they need to mail me something, they can send it to the PO box. If they don't need to mail me anything, they don't need my address.

I am a definite maybe. My bits and pieces should be getting installed next week, and so I need to get some track time to figure out how to set up the barge.

Which rotors? The Touring has 297mm rotors; the Track's Brembos are 320.

That paragraph makes little sense. If your aim is to have a really impressive braking system that will handle the rigours of your average track day, why are the Brembos a waste of money? Are you scoring a good deal on some other caliper / rotor upgrade? If you were only after a reasonable street / average track setup then it'd be overkill, but if you're planning to get something that won't fade out on your GTS-t no matter how hard and often you stand on the brakes in a 15 minute session then they'd suit the job.

I remember a while ago there were some thieves who managed to disable the OEM 2 point immobiliser in S15s quite simply. Would have paid to have had an aftermarket alarm or a custom kill switch, given the ease in which it was done. Oh, and PM sent Stan.

Modern immobilisers are generally good enough to stop randoms hotwirng your car. Of course, installers and mechanics tend to know ways around them after they poke around the car. And professionals will just tow it away if its too hard to hotwire, which all the hidden kill switches in the world won't prevent.

His folks lent him $50K for a car and didn't insist he insure it? I'd call the loss an idiot tax.

There's this main in Artarmon's industrial area that regularly bursts and dumps torrents of water onto the road. When I go visit a mate for lunch and see it, I just get tempted to bring a hose and my car washing gear. Its not like they can bitch at me for using a hose on my car if the water is otherwise just going to wet bitumen on its way to a stormwater drain.