warps

This guy He knows.

This! Since buying a new trailer I've never loaned it out and have no intention to. Previous trailer was damaged each time someone borrowed it. People have no respect for others' property.

Yup Siddo has been dominating his class for as long as I can remember. Not sure if he still has his workshop on the gold coast but he's good at setting up suspension, and obviously knows datsuns well.

I have played it plenty. Never felt the immersion that proper games bring. I always drive with all aids off - it still feels artificial. Now I have my gaming PC (4 yr old laptop) working again I haven't bothered with gt6 for many months.

The HistorX mod on Rfactor is pretty good. The 60's and 70's v8's are a handful around bathurst. You have to be careful with the throttle - even to the point of having to lift on crests to avoid ridiculous wheelspin spitting you off the track with the more powerful ones (eg 73 corvette). Nothing at all like the poor gt6 effort at realism. You can also download the 1972 car set (gtho, e49 and xu1) or touring cars of the 80's and 90's. Nothing's as good as the real thing but these are pretty good. I play with a g29 which is a huge step up from the g25.

I bought a meguiars headlight polishing kit. It's just some sanding pads (various grades), and polish and the uv protectant. Did the first headlight with it and it turned out ok for a lot of work. Then had to remove the headlights to change bulbs (yes, really) so I attacked the other light. Started with a sanding block and 320 grade wet and dry. Then repeated with 800, 1500 and finished with 2000 grade. After that I hit it with the polisher working through 3 grades of polish and finished with some of the uv protectant from the kit. the second light turned out heaps better - similar amount of work but much easier just buying the right grades of sandpaper. It helps if you have a ROP for polishing though. It's worth getting a bottle of the uv protectant though. Everything else is just normal sanding/ polishing stuff.

Fair call on depreciation. Never too old for a hot hatch. i needed a cheap runabout I could park at train stations and airports and not gaf about wear and tear, so picked up a well used fiesta xr4 for $5k. Not fast by any stretch of the imagination but it's the most fun I've had behind the wheel in years (next to track days and rallying). If I had something faster (eg amg or rs focus) I'd probably lose my licence. I'll probably replace it next year With a used fiesta ST when my daughter gets her L's. She can either have the xr4 or we trade it for something more sensible for her. Apart from the whole hot hatch image they have a lot to offer. Then again I've always liked smaller nimble cars. rallying a civic cured me of fwd phobia.

Sorry I reject your "no hot hatches" rule - it's stupid. Focus rs ftw. /thread.

If it's an adm car as you say, then it can be registered anywhere in Australia as it's been complied for Australian delivery. The mods may cause grief with getting a pre-rego roadworthy. Things like coilovers, exhaust mods, bovs, intercoolers, hid lights etc. could cause problems. Best of to check those things with your local authorities as I'm not familiar with Victoria regs.

A civic did that to your car then managed to drive away? Wow these nissans must be made from recycled cheese slices.

Is the smooth part (called beach marks, or crack propagation zone) towards the top / bottom of the rod when in normal position, or towards the side (i.e. is the line at the edge between the smooth and rough parts horizontal or vertical with the arm in position)? If the beach mark area is towards the top / bottom then it sounds like the bush is binding. Poly bushes are notorious for being sticky (hard to rotate around the pivot ). That's bad in a suspension system for a lot of reasons, one of which being the bending loads they can place on the arms. As you suggest, it could be bottoming out, which could be overloading the arm too. When you refit the arm, make sure that the arm is free to pivot through the full range of motion before you refit Springs and the rest of the suspension.

That's fatigue failure. Started at the thread. Are they rolled or cut threads? Looks like it's been loaded in bending. If the bush in the pivot was binding it might be enough to cause the fatigue to start. Bolts hate bending stress.

These screws actually do a very bad job of locating the disc. They don't pull it anywhere near the centre. If you're using oem discs that Centre properly on the hub then throw the screws away. If you have after market rotors that don't locate properly on the hub then use a dial gauge to correctly Centre the rotor and then use these screws to locate the rotors once it's in the right place. As an aside many race teams throw these screws away because they can cause problems.

Oil analysis is a fantastic tool in the right applications. It actually tells a hell of a lot about engine health. Depending on the contaminants, it can tell what parts are wearing eg Cr, Pb, Al, Cu, Fe, Si etc. Will tell you whether you have wear in rings, bearings, bores, journals, contamination from fuel, coolant, dust etc. Having said that it's less useful on seldom driven cars - more for fleets of engines running 6000 hours a year. It's normally the trends that they look for, as this tells you more than the raw data. Another good option is to cut open the filter and examine the wear particles under a microscope (shape, size etc.) You need to know what you're looking at though.

Lol if you only knew. Harry's set some obscenely fast lap times in utterly unremarkable cars in the dozen or so years I've known him. In fact I'd wager his lap times in a relatively stock daihatsu charade a few years ago would embarrass whatever it is you throw around a raceteack. I think harry's comments on the merits of competition tyres carry more weight than most others here.