warps

1)Feel symptoms - power on 2) Gets worse - pump body full of codral 3) Power on for couple of days, symptoms gone 4) ? 5) Profit

Dear electricians lol at you From society

Are we still arguing about this? It doesn't matter Vettel DNF'd. He cried. We laughed. End of story

How the hell was than not vettels fault? I only saw it once, but it looked clear that vettel cut in too soon and paid the price. stop whinging ya farkin sook. At least button's man enough to admit he screwed up.

Bridgestone used to sell a 16" rally tyre - don't know if they still do. They don't regularly import them to Oz, but if you can get hold of a friendly Bridgestone dealer they may be able to find out for you. There was a whole stack of brand new bridgestone rally tyres being sold cheap on ebay a couple of years ago, after a failed attempt to make Bridgestone the ARC preferred supplier (or something like that). Brand new tyres were being sold off at huge discounts, including 16"

I have an immaculate white, one owner 2009 WRX with 43,000km on the clock Perfect, except it's a hatch.. Your loss I guess

+1 on HD sucking badly What time does the race actually start? I'll turn onthe Teev to watch the race. Until then, I'm playing in the shed with rally cars, radiators, trip computers and fire (not necessarily all together )

Roy, while your comments on the 050 costs are valid, the feedback I'm hearing from the IPRA guys is that they heat cycle very well, and maintain grip almost down to the canvas. In those terms, if you look at $ per useful km their cost isn't that bad. Compared to the 048, these are cheaper, but they lose tremendous grip after only a handful of heat cycles. A lot of guys will get rid of tyres once they start going off, often with lots of meat still left on them. If you can get useful life out of a tyre, then its cost over a season might not be as high (specially if you want to be at the pointy end of the field) Food for thought.

Dam straight Remember SDU well. I joined it in around 1999 - 2000. Still had my R31 GTS2, and was starting to shop for my GTSt. Fondest memories were arguing with the chequebook racer from hell who claimed that all his developments were his own design / idea (even made some claims insinuating that his ideas were taken up by Cosworth when he got them to do some development on his GTR). Of course back in those days if you dared to question anything he said you'd get shot down (and banned) by his fanboi club. I won't mention any names, but I'm sure those from that era will remember him well.

It's got Bender's teeth I wonder if it also has his attitude?

Good work - I need a project like that to get my teeth into now I have a nice, shiny MIG (my god those MIGs can turn a hack like me into a decent welder!!) Do you intend to make the droppers (from the pivot bearing) adjustable? Reason I ask is the pivot point looks a long way from the COG. I imagine it would be a fairly hefty effort to turn that thing upside down as it sits - or am I missing something?

But it's famous. It's gotta be worth double any other M3 out there. Some sucker will probably shell out $200k for it.

Hey Harry - Remember Ruaraidh from the Daihard days? He's working for the Mercedes engine team and travels to most of the races with them. He's heavily involved in the KERS development AFAIK. Been following them a bit through his exploits, although I haven't talked properly to him for ages.

Really? Wormald / Chubb et al do installations into mobile equipment all the time - must be thousands of installations around the country, ranging up to a couple of hundred grand for some of them. Surely they'd be qualified to service and charge onboard systems. As for their pricing - well I have no idea what they would charge for that service (several grand a pop for mining gear)

Dem's fighting words, fella. Agree though - FWD's don't seem to have the same "advantages" in other forms of motorsport as they do in gravel rally. (apart from some very quick Civics in U2l IPRA) Even the rally communities are divided on the FWD vs RWD debate. I've seen some basic spec FWD's carve up much faster and more powerful RWD's (turbo RX7's, Silvias) - even taking driver talent into consideration. Even my own stock engined EG civic, which gets hosed at LAkeside to the tune of 10 sec a lap can hold its own against the RWD's on dirt (I have always managed to finish ahead of all but 1 RWD car in dirt sprints so far) Will be interested to see how this pans out though. I hope it isn't one sided, or doesn't turn into a "one make series". Whether you love RWD or not, you can't deny that the sight and sound of a well driven NA RWD in the forests is poetry in motion indeed

They were indeed. Had to make do with the real thing

Yeh - that was kinda my point. I was just breaking it gently to the kiddies who don't know of a world without teh interwebz

And 30 years ago it was guys in HQ holdens, XA falcons, Toranas and RX3's getting the same biased treatment. There just werent as many internet forums in those days to spread the news. I was targeted for driving a modified 180B in the late 80's - at the time I thought it was police harrassment. Now I realise it's because I drove like a dickhead.

Yeh, Harry - I think it's a draft at this stage - there's still a few copy and paste errors in there. eg how they quote minimum weights for cars with an engine capacity of 5 litres (what multiplier are they using for that?) 1.6 turbo would put it into the over 2L category in all other CAMS rally regs, so I can't see how they would lump the 2 together - which makes your point even more significant. I don't know how much a 30mm restrictor would...errr....restrict a 1.6 turbo engine, but that may be what they're trying to achieve. I think that would limit power to the vicinity of 250hp, which is easily achievable with NA 2L (obviously massive difference in torque curves)

No, not another FWD vs RWD debate. I know that this topic polarises most opinions, so I really am not interested in hearing uninformed "I drove my cousins Vtec CRX and it felt like a bus compared to my 350hp GTSt" discussion. I know there are some educated / experienced people here who have very strong views (with engineering knowledge and hard facts to back up their claims) about the benefits / otherwise of FWD. I was reading the regulations for the new ARC G2 class (basically reads like round 2 of the old group G formula). Essentially it's 2WD only, and wither 2L N/A or 1.6L forced induction. It sounds like it's geared for the small shopping trolleys (Jazz / Fiesta / Polo etc) with engine transplants, and a lot more freedoms than the boring old Gp N (and even PRC) used to allow. Anyway, to my point. I note that the FWD cars get hit with a 40-50kg weight penalty (depending on engine size). If FWD is so inferior, why do the RWD's get lower weight limits? I know that it has been said that FWD is beneficial in very specialised cases (motorkhana - low speed on slippery surfaces) but the ARC these days is much more high speed than the tight twisty stuff where FWD is supposed to have a benefit. My own experience with FWD vs RWD tends to support the beneifts of FWD on dirt. Interested to hear some (educated) views. The full regs can be found here http://www.camsmanual.com.au/pdf/04_rally_road/RR17_Group_G2_2012-1.pdf Regardless of whether you prefer FWD or RWD, I think that a bunch of light weight 250hp 2WD rockets in the forest (with manufacturer support at some level) can only be a good thing.

I just picked up a game called "Race Injection" by Simbin last week. It's based on their Race07 game, with all of the add ons that have been released online. For $30 I figured I couldn't go too far wrong. So far it's been a hoot to play - much more of a sim than the GT stuff on Playstation. I find it much easier to get immersed in the experience. The graphics are the biggest letdown (I believe they're using the same engine as when the race07 game came out). Physics are definitely a lot more realistic than GT4 / GT5 I've been playing lately. It's G27 / G25 compatible too. So far I've had a blat in a few of the cars (Caterham is a sweet ride) but am doing some races in the retro Cooper S (good FWD fun - models the FWD handling pretty accurately). The 400HP old Corvettes and camaros are a big handful to drive, and brakes almost non existent - brings back fond memories. Anyone else had a play with this? For $30 I reckon it's well worth a try. There are around 38 tracks (admittedly some are just different year versions of the same track) and all kinds of cars from WTCC to F3000 to retro BMW 2002's, Volvo P1800 and Cooper S's.

Tempe are normally pretty competitive with their prices. HAve you tried Paul at Option 1 Garage? They do some great prices as well, and might give you an SAU discount

Hitting 99l/100km isn't the challenge - it's maintaining that fuel economy. My RX2 rally car (51mm Weber) used to come awful close to these figures in stage. I budgeted 1 L/km during competitive stages, and 20L/100km for transport, and usually got it pretty close to that mark. My mate's old Ser 4 RX7 rally car averaged nearly 1 L/km for an entire rally, including transport. those Rotaries are damn good at converting fossil fuel into heat and noise

I've hired about 50 Falcons in the last 3 years (usually do between 300-1000km per trip - mostly highway driving). Lately (last 18 months) I normally end up in the high 7's for average fuel economy on all of my trips (7.5 - 7.8). This is the average that the trip computer shows (which I have set to display constantly, as I like to keep an eye on fuel consumption). Every time I fill the car, I calculate the consumption, and it normally comes to within 0.2 - 0.3 L/100 of what the computer shows (depending how full the tank was before I got the car, compared to how much I fill it, etc.) About 2-3 years ago I found that the Falcons were in the 9's most of the time. The Commodores I've driven (about 30% of hire cars I get) have struggled to get much below about 8.5 L/100 Note I have not kept detailed records of these figures - it's just what I note each time I drive a hire car. Certainly not conclusive proof, but the consistency of the figures I regularly see give me the confidence that the Falcions aren't too far off the high 7's for highway driving. Last week the trip from Sydney to Mudgee (via Bells Line of Rd) had the average in the mid 9's by the time I got to Mudgee. I'll admit I forgot to set the computer before I started, so I have no idea what it was reading before I picked up the car. I reset it in Mudgee, and by the time I returned the car at Sydney Airport (via hunter Valley, Wollombi, Peats Ridge etc) the average was showing 7.8. Make of that what you will - perhaps it's just confirmation bias, and if I kept detailed records the numbers cold be very different. I don't think that they'd change significantly though. Interestingly when Ford were pensioning off the Fairlanes (about 3-4 years ago IIRC), I managed to get mid to high 7's from them each time I got one (they were actually about $4 a day cheaper to hire than the Falcon at the time, too). Note this is the 6 - the V8's while sounding much sweeter - chewed a lot more fuel, and didn't actually feel any faster. At the time, I couldn't get any better than 9L/100 from the equivalent Falcon. I had about 7-8 Fairlane hire cars, and about 6 Falcons in that same time.

Personally I wouldn't bother with a chip. I chipped my (07) Pathfinder, and regardless of what setting I have it on, I can't feel any difference in power, and no measurable change in fuel economy.