warps

I wasn't disagreeing with you, Harry. Just adding some history to where the rule came from, and how it has been misinterpreted in the past. These latest changes make sense, as secondary restraints were redundant on unmodified, working OEM catches. Still, if an event demands it in their supp regs, I don't think you can get around it, regardless of what the CAMS manual says. You might convince toe organisers to change it in the future, but you have to comply with the Supp Regs at the time.

Possibly - as Marc said it comes down to each car's areas of weakness. In the case of the Magna, the rear muffler was quite restrictive to keep them quiet (at the time they were reknowned for very low NVH levels compared to other cars in the class). If you're going for a less restrictive muffler, then larger volume tends to help keep the noise down while still flowing OK. Juet be careful you don't end up with something droney. Talk to the Lancer guys to find out what results others have had (just be prepared to wade through the stories of how a canon and shiny 4" exhaust turned a stock lancer into a GTR killah) At any rate, I think on a 1.8 lancer, any exhaust changes will only have a marginal effect, and the benefits (if any) will most likely only be there at higher revs (ie peak power where flow will be highest), not for normaly day to day driving.

Remember, part of the reasoning behind demanding secondary bonnet catches is when people used to fit bonnet pins to their race / rally cars they'd remove the standard catch completely. This is fine, but given the number of times bonnets get opened between stages / track sessions, a lot of people forget to do the pins up properly (I've seen it happen a lot of times). This is why leaving the standard catch is a good measure - it offers some protection. In the case of a standard road registered car, I don't see any benefit in adding pins in addition to the standard (working) catch. If the rules don't require a secondary catch on a modern, registered car then this makes perfect sense to me, when you think wbout where the ruling came from in the first place. The bonnet pins on my Civic were alloy, and had been through hell and back. They were about to snap, yet were still considered OK (standard cable release has been removed, but the secondary latch is still there). I've replaced the pins with Aerocatch pins which satisfies road and CAMS regulations (not that the car is ever likely to be registered during my ownership) That ebay strap you showed looks as good as anything I've seen used on registered road cars with properly working standard catches. If you're being forced to use one, then that should do the job IMO

I think you can logbook it as a PRC rally car too . I haven't kept up with the latest rally regs, but I know that last year the ARC cars were able to run without the turbo restrictor (which for a 2.6L GTR would absolutely kill performance). If you could run it sans restrictor, it's be a hell of a lot of fun on gravel. Maybe not the fastest thing out there, but lots of fun and spectacular!! As for dramatically increasing the value of the car - I kinda agree. Certainly will make it more desirable, as it is considered to be more of a race car, rather than an ebay parts special covered in stickers (which some of the track day cars can be). How much actual value it adds can be debated though. Personally, if I were wanting a race / rally car I'd certainly be after one with a logbook.

The VS/VT commodores had a habit of catching fire when towing (a mate of mine was QLD / NSW service manager for Holden at the time). His reports were that the majority (if not all) were due to people towing without a trans cooler. This is a MUST if you want to tow a heavy load with a Commodore.

You kidding? I've cut 2mm (down to 1.6mm) with oxy plenty of times without any deformation / distortion. Just have to have the right flowrate / torch speed. There can be a lot of clean up to do though, as the slag bead gan get pretty messy. A good operator on an oxy can achieve some fantastic results. I agree the really thin stuff (1mm and less) is a different story, and I wouldn't recommend oxy unless you're just cutting it up for scrap. The plasma cutter takes care of thin metal pretty well though. Again, the end result can be messy, but less likely to distort from my experience.

At the risk of derailing this thread, and admitting that I was once a Magna tragic, I have to ask whether you tried the muffler upgrade? At the time I had my TH, the word on the street was that the rear muffler was a fairly m,ajor source of restriction, and replacing it with a bigger (not necessarily a ricey fart cannon) made a reasonable difference (around 10-12kW IIRC in the 3.5 TH). Never ended up changing mine (couldn't see the sense in hotting up a Magna) but there seemed to be a few people claiming it made a reasonable difference. Interesting to hear about the extractors though. At the time I got mine (early 2000) there weren't any off the shelf units, and my exhaust guy offered to make a set of stainless extractors for $500. Again, I couldn't justify spoending those $$ on the boat. Normal programming will resume now.

They've fixed the enduro save issues so you can now save games at Tsukuba Also, 200% bonus on credits and xp today Woot!! Picked up over 20 mil and bought the 67 Fez race car and Ford Mk IV (when you get 8mil for a win in the Le Mans B spec race it doesn't take long to rack up the $$)

Guillotine the best bet by far, but 1mm cutting disc on grinder will cut through 2mm sheet like a hot knife through butter. Just don't try to use it for grinding - plenty of body parts have been lost by fools using grinders in a way they were never intended. Jig saws suck balls for cutting steel - don't even bother. If you want to cut quickly, then oxy / plasma cutter will rip through 2mm steel, but you'll have a lot of clean up to do.

Aah another GPL fan I see. those were the days.

Just got a Dick Smith catalogue in the mail yesterday. They're advertising the G27 for $299

take equal parts of baby puke, wet dog, cigarette butts and stale chicken nuggets, add the smell of petrol from the perished seals in the whole fuel system, and let it fester in the sun for 40 years. Then add mould That's what old cars smell like. I should know, I've had enough of them

Had another go at an endurance race, with the same result. Bugger On another note, has anyone else been having trouble logging into the PSN? Mine struggles to log in, and when it does, the game takes forever to load. Is there unusually high load on the server, or is it more likely a problem at my end? (network / internet is otherwise working fine at home)

Yeh that's probably one of the things they don't look at when they compliance a car, and to be honest, it's probably not something that cops look at too closely unless you happen to blind one at night. There are a few different styles of HID globe, so you might find something close to what you had originally. I retro fitted some HID's to my Light Force spotties for rallying, and ended up finding a globe very close in size and configuration to the original globe (IIRC the filament of the original was even oriented the same way as the arc in the HID). Also, you can focus the Light Force lights by moving the globe relative to the reflector to fine tune them. Despite all this, I still couldn't get a decent light output from them, so have shelved the lights for the time being. Will try 50W, 4300K lights in it and if that's no good will convert them back to 100W halogen (the other pair of 100W halogen's put out far more usable light than the HID's do)

That there looks like an R380-II If you do a bit of a search around the site you'll find heaps of history on the old Datsun race cars of the 60's and 70's, back when Nissan were serious about motorsport.

6000 is not the lumens, but the temperature rating, or colour of the light it emits (equivalent to a 6000K light source). 4300K is about the closest to natural sunlight, which is what our eyes see best. Hence the best light output will be in the 4000-5000K range. Anything higher will look bluer and "crisper", but won't offer as much useable light. You're right - being made for a halogen filament bulb, your reflectors and lenses will scatter the light more with a HID globe, since the position of the discharge arc will be different to where the filament normally is located. You can get different types of globes with the arc in different positions, so some will be better than others. Just in case you care, retro fitting HID lights into an OEM halogen housing is illegal for this very reason. Many people here don't seem to care about legalities, and usually come back with the same old argument that most of the mods on imports are illegal anyway, so what's it matter whether the lights are legal or not?

Has anyone used this? I tried on the Roadster NA race last night, and when I came back to the race, the PS3 took over driving my car. It was like a B spec race but I had no control of anything (pit stops, aggressiveness etc). Luckily it was lapping at a good enough rate to win the race, so i left it to its own devices. Problem was that it didn't pit - ever. Even after 2.5 hours when the fuel tank ran dry it just kept puttering around at 80kph (tyres had long since gone bald, and lap times were almost 15 sec a lap slower than before). Farking stoopid computers

Nice Foz I had the same model (and colour) for 3 years and it never missed a beat. The handling improves markedly when you get rid of those horrible tyres - I ran the Bridgestone Adrenalin's on mine, and it transformed the handling. Great, fun all rounders.

He's a Finn What more needs to be said?

fyp

I've got a 10" and 12" fan (had them on my RX2 rally car - swapped them for a Skew blade SPAL 16") , but they're not skew blade. These are both Davies Craig units, so still good quality. I'm on the Gold Coast too, so you can have them cheap if you're interested in coming for a look.

For Terraphone money you can get a Graytronics (they make military comms systems). Infinitely better than terraphone poo. This can run off a 9V battery or the car's 12V system. It's light weight and easy to operate / install. You're looking at under $250 delivered (from UK) for a full setup. Sound is crystal clear http://www.rallyintercoms.co.uk/ The Stilo stuff is the ducks nuts, but you need the helmets to go with it. They have a lower spec that is interchangeable with other brands, but this is nowhere near as good as the fully integrated stuff.

Not suggesting it's a difficult conversion. That has absolutely nothing to do with engineering it. If it's easy, then more power to you. It still needs to be engineered. Can't hide from that. I suppose the 30 year old stock brakes and suspension didn't need any work either, cause they work properly, eh?

The van is rated to 1400kg, yet you want to tow 1900kg. Not legally possible. Just know that your insurance is null and void if you exceed the towing capacity. There's a lot more to towing capacity than power. My pathfinder is the least powerful car I've towed with in the last 15 years but it's by far the best suited (and funnily enough has the highest tow rating).

Get it engineered. Do it right or don't bother. there's enough dodgy kunce out there already. Don't be another one of them.