warps

Yeh looking at those wider 4 posters. Do they have the ability to lift the car off the suspension? The majority of work I'll be doing will be suspension work, so I'll need the ability to lift the car off its wheels. Long term storage is a bonus (have a 135m garage to park the cars in, so not exactly short of space - unless I start accumulating toys). The main reason I want the hoist is to make life easier working on the car.

Aah he's in Japan (whether that makes a difference) Yes, Cowboy - that's the first site I found through a quick search. 240V 4 poster is easy peasy - 240V too. As far as being concerned about storing a car on a 2 poster - well if I were concerned about storing a car on a hoist, I'd be concerned about working under the car on the hoist in the first place. Whether the car sits on the hoist for an hour or a year isn't going to make a lot of difference. A static load on steel / concrete isn't going to cause much (any) time related creep, so it shouldn't matter how long the load is on there. Perhaps things like corroded anchors might effect it over time, but that's about it. Pity that 4 poster only has 2350mm between posts. I'd like a setup that allows me to park the rally car on trailer, then hoist the whole lot up out of the way. 2 posters will struggle to find a good pickup point on the trailer chassis, and 4 posters might struggle to get the required width (my trailer is 2410mm wide). Need to keep searching.

Don't waste your money, There are plenty of 240V hoists around - do you need a 4 post? (i mean need, not want). A good 2 post hoist will do what you want, and probably cost a lot less. Basically, a single phase 2 post hoist might take 60 seconds to raise the car, whereas a dedicated 3 phase hoist might do it in 45 seconds. That's it. Unless you're raising and lowering it 20 times a day, spending money on the industrial duty hoists is a waste of money.

Xtrails won't be happy towing - they'r all kinds of shyte. If it's a very light car on a very light trailer (say total 1300-1400kg) you might get away with it. If you're considerint towing up to 2 tonne then forget it. Xtrails only just make the cut as a family car. They're not designed to tow.

Nothing wrong with Rexes - I've owned them as my main daily for the last ten years. In fact I traded my R32 for a WRX and have never looked back. The horror stories are true only if you abuse them. I tracked my 02 WRX in totally stock form and never had a problem. Try doing that with a GTR. Evo's are another good option Just be prepared to shop around for a nice clean unmolested one. I'd say the biggest problem with used WRX's (or skylines, evos etc) is the dickhead owners who abuse them and don't maintain them.

wait OP's first post on this site is about the sound of a M-B V8? What is he / she selling?

C63 AMG sounds horn straight out of the box. Better than any skyline ever will.

Steady hands are a must. I think that's where the experience comes in. Wherever possible, I also use surrounding bench / vice , structure to steady my hands and it makes a huge difference. I look at some of the work the boom welders at work are putting out (solid wire) and it's pure art. The photo below shows dragline boom lacing to chord welds after capping. These are 6" and 8" pipes being welded onto a 14" main chord. Some of the modern DC TIG machines also have a HF start. My cheap ebay unit does, and it makes it very easy to strike the arc. I find TIG the most fiddly, but it gives good welds. Stick is pretty straight forward, and can give you very good welds, specially if the work piece is properly prepped, correct orientation etc. I bought myself a MIG a few months back and that thing is cheating. It's just point and shoot, and I wonder why I didn't get one sooner. Now actually looking for welding projects instead of shying away from them.

Some of the 4WD hire mobs have tow bars fitted to the cars. Try someone that hires mine spec vehicles - they usually have tow bars fittes. I think you normally pay around $120-150 a day for a mine spec vehicle (usually a Prado / Hilux or Landcruiser). Pricey, but still cheaper than having to buy one, and you travel in relatively modern comfort. Quick google search turned up this mob. Places like Mackay or Newcastle will have an abundance of mine spec hire places, but Brisbane might be a bit light on.

Amen brother.

In case you were sleeping, Gp A was around long before the GTR started dominating. IMO GP A was a step backwards from the Gp C - they might have ultimately been faster than the Gp C, but too refined. Gp C were over powered, under chassis'd monsters. Beofre the GTR domination there were all sorts of cars battling for the top spot - BMW (M3 AND 635CSi), Jags, Camaros, Commodores, Falcons, Sierras, r30 / 31 SKYLINES etc. How can you say that was boring motorsport? Of course there were phases where some marques had the advantage but nothing like when the GTR came along and made it boring. I actually hated the GTR at the time for what it stood for. Can't blame the GTR entirely though - the Sierra were very dominant until the GTR came along, so the writing seemed to be on the wall a couple of years beforehand. Back on topic - I thought M-B pulled out of the V8 Supercars, because they don't want to be associated with the bogan-ness which is V8 Supercars.

Yeh I suppose they might go a few weeks without breaking down. One owner I spoke to gave his service rep a spare key, so each time it broke down he just called the service rep to come and get it.

Probably true. Just the horror stories I heard from Clio Sport owners when I was considering buying one a few years ago turned me off the Renault Sport gear. Hella fun to drive but wouldn't want to have to pay for owning one. Ha it'll take more than a car to help you, bud! (No, I don't know you - you just left yourself wide open with that one)

It'll smash 90% of skylines around a racetrack But yeah, the servicing / reliability of Renaults does worry me. Still, I'd happily add it to my collection.

Don't know what planet you're from but the diesel 4WD's I've driven have been massively more economical than the petrol equivalents (10L/100 vs 15-16 typically) That aside, the Falcons are pretty good value and hard to go past.

Kept falling asleep in front of the tele. Did I miss anything good?

When you think about it, 40km/h is bloody fast on a tight roundabout. Skinny tyres are far better in the wet. Wide, cheap, worn tyres in the wet will grip as much as a bucket of eels in whale snot.

BMW X5 M50D 3L triple turbo diesel. 280kW, 740Nm. 0-100 5.3 sec, 7.7L/100km Something to keep everyone happy. Only $150k + O/R Do want

Well, given the cost of quality bearings, I'd imagine it's hard to use quality parts and then sell them cheap. The welding on some of the pics looks a bit ordinary too. Never experienced the stuff personally, but if I were a betting man I'd say you're getting what you pay for. Even engineering stuff myself and getting it machined / fabricated at mate's rates has cost me a lot more than those parts, Maybe I don't know the right people?

Exactly as Elite Racing said. It's all to do with natural (harmonic) frequency. The longer the shaft, the lower the harmonic frequency (which will happen to correspond with the RPM it will see on the road / track). Ford used to speed limit the Falcons to 180 because of the long tailshaft.

How big is big? The gear shown below is straight cut, and no harmonics to speak of. Also, what do you mean by the gears trying to separate each other? If you mean radial load, then that's a function of the pressure angle, not whether or not it's helical. The pressure angle is generally between 20-25 degrees (rule of thumb) If you're talking about axial thrust, then this is one of the problems already discussed re: helical gearing. Big torque loads will cause big thrust leads, which can cause a problem

Naah I'm sure the design was good - just poorly implemented So who did you work for then, Jiffo? I run shutdowns on draglines, and we buy gears from Bucyrus (made locally under licence), as well as all the pirate companies in Oz and O/S. Monthly changes? Man, what were they doing? I've found that when properly set up, the normal lifespan of the internal gears is anywhere between 30,000 hours and 150,000 hours, depending on application. We saw one of the Marions with incorrectly aligned bores in the hoist gear case was spitting out input pinions every 2-6 weeks until we rebored the case. This is going back a few years though.

Finally someone with a clue!! Straight cut have lower transmission losses, and can be used without sunchros (eg gear engagement as opposed to dogs / clutches). There endeth the advantages. Oh, the most highly loaded gears in a dragline (propel) are spur gears. The helical gears (usually double helical) are used mainly in internal gears (hoist, drag, swing). Thes propel gears are responsible for skull dragging a 7,000 tonne machine through the dirt.

I wouldn't do it. I towed a rally car with a Forester XT (rated at 1800kg). It had plenty of power for the job, but felt anything but comfortable doing it. I think if I had a better quality trailer (was using a very short, twitchy piece of crap trailer) it would have felt a lot more comfortable. I still don't think it would have been ideal though - specially in any sort of emergency.