scathing

Good to hear, and thanks for the clarification. I may come along. Marysville is one of my favourite places to visit near Melbourne, and I was gutted to see the photos of what's left of the town on the news.

Pretty much, yeah. You always hear about this, that or the other new luxo sedan having the "best NVH of its class" or successive models reducing it.

Are there any VQ40DEs with a north-south mounting configuration, or is it easy to adapt to a FR gearbox?

Your organisers might want to send someone to check out your meeting point. I was out at Homebush last week for Top Gear Live, and P6 was fenced off with what looked like semi-permanent structures (the kind of metal fences with concrete bases that they use when fencing off construction sites) The last thing you want is a wide range of ns.com idiots trying to arrange a last-minute alternative meeting point and driving around the Olympic Centre, and then all the other idiots who read ns.com wandering around like stunned mullets trying to figure out where to go after that.

I get a fair amount of vibration through the driveline in the Z33. I can't say I feel any specific pulsing, but it does make a noise. evo magazine recently published a 350Z buying guide online. The site's down right now, but I am pretty sure the checkpoints say something about a noisy driveline as well. Have a look later. With shared componentry, I can't see your car being immune to it either.

Holinger FTW.

Don't WRC cars also run anti-lag? If they can do it, what possible long-term harm could come of it for people who don't have multi-million dollar budgets?

In the S-Comp range, Michelin offers the Pilot Sport PS/2 in 20" sizes. Not sure of the diameters etc though. I don't know of any R-Comps in 20" yet. Those tyres are good enough to get a ZR-1 around the Nordschleife faster than the GT-R, so they can't be all bad at gripping. For 19" wheels, there are more choices. Michelin's Pilot Sport Cups come in 19", as do Pirelli P-Zero Corsas. I can't find info on any other R-Comp in 19" though, aside from your mentioned R888s. The Sport Cups are meant to be one of the best R-Comps on the market, but damn you'll be paying through the nose for them. They're the OEM tyre for the old M3 CSL, and the Porsche 911 GT3 and sometimes on the GT2....and apparently the CSL's tyres were a grand each. Pirelli's P-Zero Corsas are meant to be on-par with the Michelin Sport Cups, and I expect they're priced to match, and they offer a P-Zero C which, from the literature, appears to be a more focused dry-weather circuit tyre that happens to be street legal (not sure if it's street legal in Australia, though, the brochure is from an overseas site). RE55s are noticably better, performance-wise. The RE55s have stiff sidewalls, which would make them more suitable for heavy cars. As for the rims, any RAYS reseller should be able to source them directly from the factory in Japan. SAU has got plenty of sponsors - I'd assume at least one would be able to order them in. I personally got my Volks from mxfly.

Does this trick work with VLSDs? I just figured the fluid was so slow to react that a hand-turned wheel couldn't make it harden. I never tried it with the stock VLSD so I wouldn't know.

I thought it was boring, but maybe my standards are too high. The "drifting" wasn't even drifting. It was just random skids. It was the kind of thing you see VL drivers do on Today Tonight's stock footage of hoons.

It is? Is it because its also hard to find in the forests of Tasmania?

Yeah, I'm all for contrasting backgrounds. Hence why I hate shooting my silver car - all the walls in every carpark ever made seem to be flat concrete grey.

I'm not sure if they're the exact same part. The V35 and Z33 have different springs and dampers, so it is quite possible that the swaybars are different too. However, what I can tell you is that they are completely interchangable with no other modifications needed (hence why the aftermarket bits suit both cars). Chances are neither the Z33 guy, nor his prospective buyers, are going to notice a difference either in appearance nor handling if they aren't 100% the same.

I'm everywhere That's pretty impressive. My Z stock couldn't manage that kind of economy. I'd be 10-11L/100km around town, and that's with me working night shift so there was a minimum of braking.

He owns an IS250, according to his sig. Get it Danny. Come back to Nissan.

Considering how expensive the R35 is going to be, and how anal Nissan has been regarding mods, you can expect them to fight tooth and nail on warranty work for cars with mods.

His car is black, but I concur. I forgot that I took these pics of my girlfriend's car when I was scouring my gallery: You just need to find some graf that is a really light colour - my side on "Sin City" one isn't ideal, even with the stupid flash reflecting off the paint.

Yeah, Nissan should build a uber-fast wagon to take on the BMW M5 Touring, Audi RS6 Avant and that AMG nugget.

Really? The whole subsection? I clicked on the Search button at the top, typed "Snow" and made sure the box entitled "Search this forum only?" was ticked, and of the 7 results returned the bottom 3 all cover your questions.

Someone's already done it. Have a read here. I had a long chat with Kevin Davis about it, and he sent me some diagrams. He's got the regular, manually operated one using that valve. Just a switch so you can set it to open or closed. When I build my custom exhaust, this is the one I'll be getting. The next model up, which has both a switch and the option of taking an another input. You can plug it in to an ECU that has can do outputs, or I suppose you could modify a shift light to send the appropriate signal to the unit when you hit a certain RPM. The one you're interested in detects exhaust backpressure and self-regulates to hold it at a constent level. It'll also take inputs from the TPS and RPM, so if both conditions are met it'll open the valve and let the backpressure drop (and the noise rise) at a legal RPM. I suppose you could configure it to only use one if you wanted. That'll allow you to downshift and engine brake without waking the neighbours, but if you're up it for the rent you can configure it to open at a legal RPM. It's switchable between open, closed, and self-regulating, but for legality you could remove the switch and have it permanently on self-regulating.

Do you even know what Top Gear's criteria for the cool wall even is? A cool car is basically a car to impress chicks, something the R35 does badly. Everything that the GT-R does well is not only of complete disinterest to women, but probably something they'd actively want to avoid. Try and pay attention to what they've actually said over the last 12 seasons of Top Gear, because it's a point they repeatedly ram home. You'll see they put plenty of cars they all personally like uncool, because they know that it'll make you look like a dweeb and/or repel members of the opposite sex. This decision matches their cool wall criteria. False fail call = epic fail Thanks for playing.

I found this to be an interesting read: http://forums.nicoclub.com/zerothread/270721

Isn't that greater than stock? If so, yes. I'm pretty sure that's on GT-Rs only, unless these GT-t owners have really thin wheels.

I'll be there on Saturday at 5PM.

Hey, I am a GT-R fan too! Or otherwise I wouldn't be here. It's just that the R34 was out of my price range when I bought the Z, the R33 too ugly, and the R32 too old. If I were to be in the same position now, chances are I would buy a mint condition R34 GT-R over a brand new Z33 or Z34.