scathing

It is the case....if the exhaust shop guy is clueless and doesn't know how to make a decent flowing exhaust. The factory exhaust is piss-small. If you got a mandrel-bent 3" exhaust with 2 mufflers (instead of the resonators) it should be quiet enough, while still flowing noticably better than stock. Get some higher quality mufflers that can flow as well as muffle, and you'd probably be hard pressed to pick the difference between your noisy setup and that one..

Brabus and Carlsson would beg to differ. And what do you know about his boss to say that?

It can always use more torque. If I can't coax any more than a slight chirp from the rears when snapping 2nd in the dry (with non-worn street tyres), more torque would be nice.

Is it not possible that your source was referring to the revised line-up with the suspension tweaks, standard 18" rims and the 221kW engine that was first released in the 35th Anniversary model?

My old man's 318i has Continentals on it too. A whopping 80kW at the flywheel through an auto gearbox, and it can still chirp the rear tyres in the wet. When I turn at an intersection at anything above walking pace, the car doesn't know whether to understeer or oversteer. In case you missed the point, what I'm saying is that just because a tyre company makes a great flagship tyre (Continentals, being German, are standard fitment on most Euro cars...including the lower spec Boxsters and 911s) doesn't mean their volume sales gear is any good. Look at Falken. Their RT215s are a great performance tyre, but I could eat a curry and defecate a better tyre than the Ziex 326's.

You don't even need it back to back. When I put on RT215s on my previous car, an otherwise stock Pulsar, it was night and day in terms of my braking points and corner entry and midpoint speeds. I drove on the stock Dunlop Sport 2000's, Pirelli P5000s and some Silverstone POS'....they were all pretty close in the dry (the Pirellis were standout in the wet). You could feel minor differences, but not like the first time you decide not to brake for a corner and the tyres don't squeal...actually they just shrug off your cornering attempt and call you a pansy for going so slow.

Any idiot who writes off tyres as being "just some black hoops" deserves all they get.

Yet you can afford the powertrain mods for 250rwkW, like your HKS mushroom filter and FMIC.....

My opinion is that Nissan should just twin turbo the V6 instead of putting in a physically larger and longer motor, if they want more power.

People seem to be voting for the S15 rims. Don't know how it'd look, but it would be quite ironic given the amount of S15s getting around with R34 GTT wheels. You could probably find a set of 200SX / R33 / Maxima rims for not much, as well.

And not necessarily in that order. A good strut brace, that works as engineered, will work on a car with a soft chassis. Its there to stop the car's body from flexing under lateral loads, and let the suspension do its work. On older cars it will make a noticable difference, since their chassis would be relatively weaker...even before several years of wear and tear have worked on them. Both of my cars have had factory strut braces, so I have no idea what its like without them. But, as people have said, it had better be bolted on solidly.

If you can't afford decent tyres or brake pads, pull of your brand name intercooler / gearshift knob / exhaust, put on a no-name brand one and buy them. Very little shits me off more than people who brag about their HKS intercoolers, Tein suspension and Trust exhausts...but then whinge about how they don't want want to spent a couple of hundred dollars on a decent set of brake pads or roll on shithouse tyres wrapped around cheap and nasty chromies.

So what you're saying is that your original assertion about our right to privacy being protected "by the Constitution" is actually wrong; this "right" to privacy is actually provided under common law instead. They say lawyers are always precise with their choice of words, since interpretations and thus judgements can hinge on how something is phrased. Hence why reading contracts tend to do the average person's head in, since its worded in such a way that brooks no misinterpretation. The link to the actual Australian Constitution is first year law, as you said, yet here you are, throwing two disparate concepts around as if they were interchangable.

Theoretically, a change in the diameter of your rims does not directly affect your ride height. What will affect your ride height is the diameter of your tyres, which is only partially dependent on rim size (obviously the tyre diameter can't be smaller than or equal to the rim diameter). And if your ride height changes after a rim / tyre swap, it means your speedo is going to be way off.

Have you ever come across any "shift kit" for a manual car that would permit you to change between the stock double-H pattern and a sequential setup?

People still pay $1000 for S15 rims?!?!? I suppose if it had near-new rubber on a set of immaculate rims you might get that price, but otherwise people are letting theirs go with used tyres for $300 to [url-http://www.silviansw.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19772]$400[/url].

Are you an Australian lawyer? Can you please tell me where exactly in the Australian Constitution our "right to privacy" is? I ran a search through this document for the word "privacy" (and this one too), and it appears as if the Australians' constitutional right to privacy is in the paragraph preceding the Australian constitutional right to freedom of speech....

Howso? The Saleen S7 is a custom built car, and the twin turbo happens to be a factory option that gets fitted when the car is built by its OEM. That's like saying an N1 spec GT-R is an "aftermarket upgrade" because it doesn't have the ceramic turbos etc of the regular GT-R.

Knowing that the cops are cracking down in an area that's been front page news internationally because of race riots, didn't you and your "ethnic-looking" mates reconsider driving your loaded up, hoon-infamous, grey import smack bang into the place? I don't wanna sound like I'm having a shot at you personally, because don't care if you're "wog looking" or someone who happens to just be dressed up to play for your Angry Anderson / Rose Tattoo tribute band, if you look like one of the two races involved in the riots and you go into the middle of the "trouble zone".....then I'm sorry but you deserve all the police scrutiny you get. Seriously, its like ignoring all 3 signs that precede a fixed speed camera in an accident black spot and blowing past it at 20km/hr over the limit, and then having a whinge about the revenue raising when the fine inevitably rolls in. You were warned it was there. You knew what to expect. That you walked into it goes to show that you either wanted to get busted, or you're oblivious to the world around you.

How much power does an RB20DE make? The highest number I found was here, which quotes at 165ps. Or I could get an SR20VE that puts out 190ps, and be a shorter lighter engine. An S13 Silvia is over 100kg lighter than an R32 Skyline. But yes, an S2000 or Lotus Elise / Exige would demolish either car and rule the roost, unless you're allowed to race Clubman style vehicles like PRBs or the Atom.

Agreed with the Baron. As I said, I had no philosophical problems getting knocked back by Shannons (or offered a highish quote). They're an insurer for niche cars, and so the fact that they can insure rare etc cars for a reasonable amount shouldn't be affected by high-mileage people like myself. I know a rival insurer (of the same ilk) that was insuring various grey imports, but since a lot of them were being driven by young and....headstrong....drivers they got written off, and the insurance company suffered as a result. Of course, I did have philosophical objections to smash repairers asking to quote for repairs based on photos on the Internet, which is why I told the NRMA that they lost my business....

Yeah. NRMA covered all my mods (bolt on light tune stuff) and had the cheapest quote when I first got the car, but their bullshit online quotes system turned me off them. Shannons won't cover me due to my mileage (FBT required) so I went elsewhere, but otherwise I would have gone with you guys in a second.

That's awesome. If I had something like that CD, I probably would have popped it on. All the kids were great. I had a couple of kids that were already a little timid and where I had to back off, and feed in the power slowly. I wish I could have just dropped my rear muffler and gotten some more noise out of it, to give it a racier feel. I also had another kid (a bit older) who gave me the "go faster" signal when I was carrying about as much pace as I wanted to in the conditions, since Brenton (the clerk of course) had laid down the law on going at a pace where there was even a risk of offs, screechies, drifting etc. I felt bad only being able to push a fraction harder, but rules are rules.

I'm pretty sure they got to test drive the Enzo properly. It would be a shame if Volkswagen didn't let them test drive the Veyron properly.

No worries, I'll be sure to pass it on. Hope you had a blast, your car looked awesome. I didn't get to take my car out until about 12ish, when the replacement marshalls showed up. I was on Flag 2.8 (the guy waving all the flags) all morning.