scathing

Most carparks will do. Solid grey is a non-distracting background, and black comes off pretty well against it. If it's got bricks and mortar, it should come out OK.

Well lit concrete tunnels The Rocks (requires late nights during the week, and there are only a few areas this well lit)

Yeah, night shots are a pain in the arse. At least with black, the car comes off concrete backgrounds. Let me see what I can find in my gallery.

Considering Clarkson thinks pretty much every GT-R is awesome (he rated the R32 in his 50 greatest cars of all time, the R34 in the best handling cars ever, and he adored the R35 in his epic race) it is a pretty strange comment. That he doesn't think it's cool doesn't mean he doesn't like the car. Some people just seem a little insecure, I'd say.

Wrong way round, dude. 37% more P platers in NSW died in the year after car restrictions were introduced. Not 37% less. That's 37% more fatalities as well, not just 37% more accidents. Since the vast majority of car accidents don't kill people, it would be a safe bet to say that more p platers crashed after the rules were brought in than before. It's why I originally arced up when you said that the current banning policy has helped things. It didn't. Things got worse. Hence why I think that the NSW government's simplistic determination of what constitutes a "safe" car for a young driver to drive is a complete joke. The rules have taken away good handling, safe to crash, cars while still leaving young drivers with plenty of death traps to pilot. Philosophically I don't agree with the current passenger restrictions either. Instead of 4 idiots in 1 car all gee'd up to do something stupid (we are talking about fresh HSC graduates around this time of year), you have 4 idiots in 2 cars with stupidity in mind. When you've got 2 hoons and 2 cars, inevitably you've got a street race. You can't have a race without at least 2 cars, and so these new restrictions have basically just made it more likely to happen.

What colour is your car? The colour of the car determines what backdrops work. Not getting hassled, especially in a flash car, is a pain these days. Have a read of this blog post by Charles Kha, editor of AutoSalon Magazine. Industrial parks are the best, as they're generally deserted on weekends. Unfortunately almost all of them are concrete grey, so if you own a monochrome car (especially silver or white) it doesn't come off the background properly. As a silver car owner, it's something I constantly struggle with.

It doesn't affect gear ratios as the construction of your differential is independent of the ratios. The ratio for each gear in the gearbox is obviously unaffected. Inside the differential is a final drive gear, which affects your actual speed relative to the engine speed in each gear. This gear has a certain ratio. You can make it any ratio you want (within reason), so whether you keep it stock or change it is up to you. A mini-spool is a locked differential. Both your driven wheels will spin at the same rate, no matter what. It's great if you just want dry weather traction above all else, especially in a straight line. Track cars, like drag cars V8 Supercars, run fully locked diffs (but they'll probably use a full spool since it's stronger). The bad sides are that the car will understeer more, you'll skip the inside tyre around bends so life is reduced, and since both wheels spin the same way chances are both will break traction at the same time. That can be problematic in the wet. If you must have a fully locked diff, I'd suggest a "Detroit Locker" instead. While under power it behaves like a completely locked diff, but when not on the throttle it unlocks. That means that you can coast through a corner without chirping the inside tyre, or spinning out in the wet. It's a very compromise kind of system. Tearing up to a bend and turning in with a reasonable amount of speed so you can coast through it, and not touching the gas until you're practically straight, can make you look like a bit of a git. Since it goes from fully open to fully locked the transition can unsettle the balance of the car if you get on the gas before you get it reasonably straight. If you were building a drag car that you had to street drive to the venue I'd suggest it. Otherwise, I just don't see it as being a particularly good idea.

6850RPM is where the cutout is. The markings on the tacho should be for 6600RPM. Yes. I am pretty sure the Technosquare product is what Pro Concept has, and my 2003 350Z has been flashed with a 7200RPM redline. You won't see much. I had my redline bumped up to 7200RPM, replaced the lower plenum with a Motordyne MREV2, fitted TopSpeed extractors and Crawford High Flow cats (previously I had the catback, plenum spacer, Popcharger & Unichip) with the ECU retuned after all the hardware changes, and to the new cutout. From my old 6600RPM redline to the retune to 7200RPM, with those extra breathing mods I picked up around 10rwkW total. CRD noted that after 7000RPM my power curve plateaued, and so I asked them to tune the engine conservatively. I didn't want it to try and make power up there, but just give me a few extra revs in case I needed to hold the car in a lower gear either at the end of a straight or coming out of a corner. I suspect that the MREV2 is a modified 2003 lower plenum (since Motordyne offers a rebate to customers who exchange the stock piece from a 206kW engine with their MREV2, but won't exchange the lower plenum from a 221kW engine). Our stock ones are meant to choke the engine above 7K, and the MREV2 behaves in the same way. The MREV2 is designed for the 221kW engine, and it seems to bolster the midrange (lost with those shorter runners) while not choking the engine to its 7000RPM cutout. I've got mates who've fitted the 221kW lower plenums to their rebuilt engines, and the shorter runners don't come into their own until past 7000RPM. As an aside, if you do rebuild your 206kW engine to aim for an 8000RPM redline doing a straight swap of your lower plenum for theirs might be beneficial to both sides. I haven't seen numbers to prove this, though. I haven't had any problems, but due to the lack of power past 7000RPM I change gear at 7K anyway. I also only rev it out there on the track; on the street I still shift below 6800RPM. The stock gudgeon pins won't tolerate any more than 7200RPM before slowly stretching (which may be why Nismo sells their own to permit a higher cutout on otherwise stock internals). They will apparently snap instantaneously at 7800RPM. The extra revs do help. Not that it's much use to you in Melbourne, but at Wakefield there's a couple of places where the stock cutout would be tripped but the extra redline allows me to full throttle the gear. I was chasing a mate with another Z33 and I'd pull a significant gap on him in those places. They either had to back off to avoid the cutout, or change gear.

So as someone who's owned both a Z33 and an R34 GT-R, which one did you prefer as a sports car and not just something to look at? Jeremy Clarkson also regularly announces that he prefers cars that handle badly over cars that handle well, because of their "soul" (a euphemism for flaws) so his opinion really doesn't carry that much weight. Most of his bitching about the 350Z is also about the flat engine note and crappy interior plastics.....criticisms that the R34 isn't exactly immune to either. The guys from Fifth Gear, who are all actual race car drivers, think the 350Z is a great car. Actually, Clarkson is about the only journo around that doesn't like the car. The Z34 is also a newer car than the Z33, so most of the comparisons against the R34 are against a car a generation old.

I don't think the GT-R is cool, under their definition (which is basically something for impressing chicks). You'll note they highly rate Euro hatches, which are unevitably "cute" in the eyes of females. They also rate cars which carry an air of class, like Aston Martins. Show-off mobiles like Ferraris and Lambos tend to get scaled way back, and anything a Top Gear presenter owns is automatically uncool (with the probable exception of May's Fiat Panda for the reasons above) so it's not like they try to pretend anything they'd plonk down their hard-earned for is automatically awesome. The car doesn't have to be quick, or great handling, or anything like that. But it has to be something that appeals to girls more than guys. Stereotypically, the GT-R falls into the latter.

I'll prod the Z33 owners to see if they can think of something.

Stroking the VQ35DE will technically only get you 3.8L. You need to resleeve the block and bore it out to get 4.2L (technically 4.15L). A crate 4.15L motor from GT Motorsports in the US will cost you USD$15,000. I'm not sure if this is the company Carl sourced his engine from, but either way the right build up can handle 500rwkW. I can't find the URL (BLISTC sent it to me) but there's a normally aspirated 4.15L VQ making around 260rwkW on a US dyno in a V35. That's practically VQ35DE+TT power. I just can't remember how legal it was, exhaust-wise.

? I have a mate who's a cop and when I showed him my wheels the first thing he asked me was what offset they were, to work out if the track was illegal. His rim is 1" wider than stock with an offset 12mm lower (stock R33 GT-R wheels are 17x9 +30) so he's legal as long as he gets the tyres with the appropriate circumference. Just. He's on the width increase limit an 1mm below the track increase limit.

The Aprilia RS250 was banned due to its power/weight. For me, anyway. I can't remember if the power/weight limit included the rider, but since I'm a pretty small bastard I couldn't get one. I fell in love with those things after seeing a guy riding one on the Old Pac and absolutely blitzing everyone. At any rate, I'll probably have a massive long rant about P plater prohibitions at a later date in a column I write.

If your stock wheels are 9" wide, then a 10" wide rim is legal without certification. The offset for the new wheel can't be less than 12mm below the stock one either.

What wheels before and after? If I remember correctly Evos come stock with either Enkeis or BBS rims. Both of which tend to be reasonably light and strong already. So going "lighter", unless you managed to score magnesium or carbon fibre rims, isn't going to be as big a gain as with the same-as-a-Maxima cast wheels (or pig iron Tempe Tyres nuggets). Any single mod that can pull a few tenths is still a good gain. In a car that's already reasonably well designed, you'll only find a little time per mod. As an aside there's more to wheel performance than just weight. Rigidity can make as much of a difference. Have a read of this.

Brakes FTW. Also, there's more and better rims available in 5 stud.

Nismo sells hard rubber bushings for the Z33 / V35. Noltec sells polyurethane ones.

Yeah. Carl's car has been on sale for a while. It's a well turned-out car, and his R35 is sweet. ActionDan got a drive of it soon after Carl got it. Carl has already expressed interest in doing an engine swap (with cash adjustment, obviously) to someone who wants that powerplant in their car.

Unless kinks is a mad hectic street drifter, he won't really be "looking where he is going" out of his side windows. Front windshield tinting is illegal, aside from the sunvisor strip at the top. Yes. It's f**king hideous.

I'll start off by apologising for the combative attitude. I'm all for the appropriate car restrictions, but unfortunately the pollies just want something simple because they're not smart enough to deal with the complexities of real life. The Victorian government screwed the pooch first by implementing a power/weight ratio cap. Of course, they realised that banning P platers from driving Australia's best selling car, the V6 Commodore, would have been political suicide. So they set the ratio accordingly. Unfortunately for them, WRXs had a worse power/weight than the Commodore and so they could still be driven. NSW decided that they could out-stupid Victoria and just said "No forced induction, no V8s". So kids couldn't drive a supercharged 112kW/1500kg Mercedes C200K with its 5 star NCAP crash rating, a billion safety feature TLAs, and traction control that can't be switched off. Same with modern Saabs. P platers also couldn't drive the ultra economical 600ish cc Smart ForTwo or Suzuki Cappuccino, or any modern Saab. However they could still drive the more powerful 150kW V6 Mercedes C240, a 140kW/800kg Lotus Elise R or a 180kW/1100kg S2000. Turbo diesels were also exempt, so P platers can still drive the Toureg R50...with its 8.0L V10 twin turbo diesel engine. The typical bogan blindness of the NSW pollies that thinks fast cars only come with 8's or blowers also ignored the fact that every normally aspirated Porsche 911, the NSX, and BMW M3 would have been P plate legal until everyone with half a brain made fun of their stupidity and they added more restrictions. It took them a few years to take the ForTwo and Cappuccino off the banned list, but those ultra-safe and pretty slow Euro cars are still banned. Your modern fast car also has better handling, braking and safety features than your cooking model econobox. It honestly didn't surprise me that P plater deaths increased after the restrictions were introduced. Pushing people out of cheap but good handling cars like R32s and S13s meant they were stuck driving wallowing Falcodores or nuggety hatchbacks. Basically, I agree with the principle of car restrictions but I think the actual rules implemented are a joke. Absolutely. That has saved lives. The NSW government has recently removed the 250cc restriction. There's no displacement cap, but there still is a power/weight cap. The fact that people can now ride VFR500s and the like means they're no longer on bikes where you have to wring the tits out of the engine to go anywhere, and making bikes easier to ride also makes them safer. As a citizen of a country that claims to be democratic and free, I believe it should be. Not just me, obviously, but you know what I mean. Back on the original topic, I don't think that just taking cars away from people (regardless of age) and just telling them "it's bad, m'kay? You shouldn't do it because.....it's bad". They need to know why. They need to see the possible consequences. Punishment is required to hammer the lesson home, but there has to be a lesson there. That's the difference between discipline and abuse. People also need to be given a legal outlet. I'll admit to slightly exceeding the speed limit on occasion, and going for drives, but generally after a track day I'm too knackered and over being behind the wheel to drive that hard for days afterwards. Having to replace all my worn out consumables also keeps the car off the road and forces me to drive gently too, but at least my car is off the road for a good reason and not bad. Between watching people die, or get air lifted to hospital with broken limbs, in car accidents and enjoying my sports car on the few race tracks we have anywhere near Sydney has done far more to slow me down than the infringements I've copped from the police.

Dude, they were FTOs. The cops' shift would have been over before they managed to hit those speeds.

I've got Nagisa Auto front camber arms, and SPC Performance rears. SPC Performance are an American brand, but they have a really good rep. They're also about half the price of the Nagisa Auto ones.

It depends on the direction in which it reduces light. If it only reduces light going from the outside world into the housing (like a 1 way mirror only stops light passing through in 1 direction) then I reckon it's great. I've seen cars with tinted lights and it looks tough. If it reduces both ways, I'd be inclined to agree with you.

If that whinger on NAGTROC who shat his gearbox after 50+ full bore AWD launches is anything to go by, or the mentally retarded shit-talkers who think the gearbox is "weak" as a result, I don't think the US market is ready for the regular GT-R either.