warps

Do the Nissan rear calipers have the funky screw in handbrake adjuster post inside the piston? I've just rebuilt a pair of Honda DC2R rear calipers and the handbrake assembly is a bitch to get apart without the correct Honda tools (was going to spin up a mandrel on the lathe, but then need the long nose circlip plliers as well - in the end I cbf for a one-off job). In the end I just rebuilt the main part and washed the handbrake mechanism with a toothbrush and brake fluid. It's only going on a track car so the handbrake isn't that critical. If they don't have this screw adjuster, then the rebuild will be easy peasy. It takes a bit of time (I sandblast the caliper and thoroughly clean it with brake cleen / 2k thinner) hence possibly part of the reason for the cost. Of course you can rip a caliper apart and throw new seals in there in about 20 minutes, but you won't end up with a better job than what you started with. Interestingly, I paid $30 per seal kit from Honda in USA, whereas the local dealer wanted $100 a pop. fkn ripoff merchants.

That's not camber wear. Camber wear happens on the inside of the tyre when you have too much negative, or outside when you have positive camber. It happens when these settings are used on the road over a long period of time. Similar wear occurs much faster if you have excessive toe in (outside of tyre) or toe out (inside of tyre) as this is actually causing the tyre to scrub, which wears it out much faster. What you have there is normal outside wear from cornering on the limit (as you guessed). Increasing negative camber will reduce this, again as you have guessed. Whether you can dial in enough camber to eliminate the wear, without starting to induce other problems (such as braking traction) is doubtful on road tyres. -2.75 camber is reasonable for a street / track driven car, and you will obviously reduce the edge wear with higher camber settings, but that then will effect the wear rates for normal street driving, and possibly affect the way the car drives on the road. To eliminate it completely, you have to have the camber dialled in such that at maximum cornering force you have an even tyre load on the road. At anything less, you will have excessive camber, reducing the available grip. Like anything, this is a balancing act and a compromise. As you probably know, castor and roll will have a big impact on how much dynamic camber the tyre sees under cornering. These can easily offset a couple of degrees of camber, so your static camber might not be the cause. Dialling in castor or reducing roll will both have an effect to reduce this wear pattern. Is this what you need? Can't tell as these might be optimum for giving you balanced handling already, or they might be completely off the mark. Might be time to spend some track time with a suspension specialist who can help you dial the car in properly. Reading figures on an internet forum can only go so far to giving you the optimum balance. The temp gun will only confirm what you already suspect, ie the outside edge of the tyres is getting hotter.

Very likely this. Although warped or incorrectly seated rotors can cause uneven wear, which also contributes to uneven thickness of the rotor (google brake rotor DTV). When seating a rotor, it must have a face runout of less than 0.1mm (0.004" for us old farts and you poms) which you cannot see by eye. You need a dial gauge to set up the rotor properly, which I guarantee most mechanics will never bother with. I've experimented with rotor assembly, and a tiny speck of dirt under the rotor can be enough to cause excessive runout. Don't get cross drilled rotors - you don't even see too many race cars using them anymore. Guaranteed to crack. Slotted are OK as long as they are a proper performance rotor, not just a "top shelf bling" version of the standard road rotor (some manufacturers found their slotted rotors performed worse than their blanks).

Ah arcade racing then. Glad I didn't waste my money on it. Bit more to physics than tyre wear.

What other sims are you comparing this to? I haven't tried Iracing, but from all accounts it is reported as having pretty good physics. Which cars are you talking about? In the sims I drive, I prefer the older cars that move around more. Maybe that's just because a sliding car has always felt more natural to me from gravel rallying. I'm currently running a historX series in RFactor. The 1970 Camaro was a lot of fun around flowing tracks (like Amaroo, LAkeside, Warwick Farm etc) although it was easy to overheat the tyres with too much sliding. The Phase 3 Falcon is also lots of fun around Bathurst. When I get into a modern sports / supercar the grip is too foreign to me, and I find the driving style is unrealistic (IMO) to be competitive. I rarely drive anything with lots of grip (won't even touch an open wheel formula car - *yawn*)

Absolutely - AWD will be a good thing on these. My point was, is the extra cost worth it to me? I'm comfortable fanging FWD's (despite growing up on a diet of RWD) so lack of AWD isn't a big deal for me. If it were only $5-10k dearer than the FWD, then it's a no brainer. There have been some astonishingly good FWD hot hatches over the years - RS (and now ST) Focus, EP3R civic, DC2R Integra, GTI golf, Megane RS, Clio Sport. None of the above is going to break any land speed records, but for pure driving fun, they are hard to beat. They also all punch well above their weight when it comes to lap times.

Can't you buy copper and alloy washers from other places apart from Nissan? Just need to match the diameters and thickness. Try brake specialists, steering specialists or even bolt shops. I doubt they'd be any exotic material.

Unless you were competing in the WRC, I don't think there were any AWD Focus (Foci??) 6 years ago. I'm happy to be proven wrong, though. The performance model of the Focus (XR5 turbo most likely, judging by the time period) has always been extremely capable in the twisties, so it doesn't surprise me if one of them. The last iteration of the RS was a rip snorter, and very quick around a race track - despite being an understeery FWD shitbox. I've owned a few AWD turbos, and yes they are quick. Not going to get into an argument about that. My comment was more along the lines of will the AWD bring a significant power imcrease, to make use of the AWD, and at what cost? The FWD's manage to tame 184kW, so you'd be wanting mid 200's to be able to exploit the AWD system. What does the extra weight do to the balance of the car? Undoubtedly it will be faster, but will it be useable on the public road? More fun? How much dearer? These are my own opinion, and I respect you have yours. However, remember there have been some truly horrid AWD turbo performance cars over the years. Bolting an extra diff into a car does not automatically make it better, although I'm sure with FOrd's track record with chassis tuning of the Focus, they'll make a decent car out of it. Would I spend the $$? That's a hard one as it's a very tough market segment.

Which? The ST or the RS? The ST has already received rave reviews for being as much fun as you can have with your pants on, as did the previous incarnation of the RS. I thought that the ST's retailed for around the $40k mark? (been on the market for a couple of years now) Not convinced that AWD would necessarily make it that much better. For not a lot more money, the AMG Benz would snot all over it (unless Ford manage to squeeze a hell of a lot more power out of the ecoboost donk) Don't get me wrong - I quite like the Focus they're great fun to throw around (mine's just the NA 2 litre Sport). Not sure if the ST would get under 6 sec for the 0-100 sprint either - that's a fairly big ask of a FWD shopping trolley.

LSA FTW

If you're only towing a few times a year, hire trailers will most likely work out cheaper, and you don't have to worry about storing it somewhere. HOWEVER, hire trailers are like hire cars - nobody loves them, and they get severely punished. Also they are designed for muppets who decide to load a landcruiser onto them, so are built like the proverbial brick sh*thouse. This means they weigh heaps too (900kg is not unusual for a hire trailer). You can buy reasonable brand new trailers for $3k and up, though IMHO a good quality one will probably cost you $5k or more, unless you know someone with good welding skills. There are some good second hand trailers around, and if you know what to look for, you should be able to get a useable one for $2k (bargains come up every now and then). I wouldn't buy one for any less than $2k, as it will most likely be shagged. You can occasionally get fairly cheap good trailers for small / light cars, but for something like a Skyline you want to make sure the trailer is well built and it needs to be more robust, which in turn means heavier. Just as important is what you're going to tow with. There's a very long thread about tow vehicles - it contains lots of good info about trailers, tow vehicles, and regulations surrounding towing. Finally, once you get a nice trailer, NEVER loan it out. They have a habit of coming back damaged.

Yup K24 Euros are pretty solid units - built back when Honda still made real cars (hey, I have 4 Honda civics - yes I'm tragic). Probably worth your while doing full fluid change, although having full Honda logbook history have a good look to see what's due. Well maintained, this car will do 400,000km no worries at all.

You young whipper snappers with your ultra modern red sixes. They grey's are where the action is. My first car (EJ) had the grey 138 power house. 4 crank bearings, no oil filter (yes, really). Lucky to rev that old girl past 4000 RPM. I learnt to drive in that thing (3 in the tree with no synchro on 1st, 4 wheel drummies) - no wonder I still have good mechanical sympathy for every car I drive - except hire cars - they need to be punished) I'm loving this old school talk - takes me back to the twin webbered 180B I bought when I was 21. What a way to learn about jetting and balancing carbies!!

Yes. More importantly it sounds like you now understand why.

I'm far from an expert but 2.4 sounds awful big for such light gauge (I'm talking about the rhs). Also looks like you're not using a filler on that weld. Possibly a bit light on with gas flow by the look of the Burning / soot at one end of the weld.

I just sold a set of used Cusco coilovers for $200. One was known to be leaking, rest felt ok on the car (note my ad clearly stated that they needed a rebuild). That's realistically all second hand coilovers are worth unless you know the history of them. I might pay $800 for a set of MCA gold second hand (even though they'd be thrashed to death on a rally car) because they can be completely rebuilt, and they are top notch gear to start with. If you can get coilovers new for $1100, then second hand ones are not worth anywhere near 50% of that price, unless as I stated you can prove their history and condition.

I was thoroughly enjoying Kimi's race. Different (forced) tyre strategy meant that he would have been interesting to watch in the closing stages, when others were conserving tyres (assuming that fuel wasn't going to be an issue). Of course he wouldn't have challenged for the top 2 spots, but he might have given the next few places a shake up. Until that muppet forgot to tighten his wheel nut.

I remember aus gp has always had a high attrition rate. First race back there in 1998 only had 9 finishers out of 21 starters. Only 2 were on the lead lap. Both mercedes powered, interestingly enough.

Noice Makes me lament the missed opportunities of $5k XU1's I passed up in the early 90's because they seemed "a bit rough"

Yeh it's probably a mindset - as soon as they see naked terminals they get nervous. My first impression of your photo was the same, despite there being nothing nearby that can short the terminals. I guess it's very low risk, but I have always strapped some poly or insertion rubber around the clamps out of habit. Takes fk all time and is one less thing that a scrute can pick on.

The insulated battery terminals thing is when the battery is close to sheet metal (usually bonnet), and slight deformation of a panel can short out on a terminal. If the battery is tucked away in a box, then this isn't as critical.

Looks pretty good. Other things that scrutes have looked at (in rallying anyway) are battery terminals correctly insulated (in case of accident / rollover) - Do the valve caps matter? I was once told I had to have metal caps - WTF? Must have been in the sup regs for the event, because it wasn't a CAMS requirement - Do you need to test the kill switch? I haven't got one so don't know whether it gets tested - Why do the harnesses need to be in date? Is it a requirement for the type of event? I know that for higher events it is a requirement, but didn't think that track days came under those reg - Fire ext - stamped and in date? (this one always opens up a can of worms) - Do they need to run catch cans? - Bonnet fixings - ie secondary catch if running modified latching mechanism - Cage is a bit of a funny one - if one is fitted, how will you know whether it's appropriate? - If any QLD registered cars enter, they must carry a CTP extension for the event. Taking the plates off does not count!! Cant think of too much else. Main thing is if the car looks fairly well presented, generally these things will be well looked after.

Just use the lithium grease Shouldn't use a petroleum based grease on poly - many petroleum greases have moly in them, so I'm surprised that just a "moly" grease would be any good. Lithium grease is made for situations where petroleum greases are not suitable, so perfect for poly bushes. . Edit: just had a quick search, and it looks like some (maybe most) moly greases are used in a lithium grease base. These would be OK. I know that they used to put moly into petroleum based greases (when I first came across moly greases 20 odd years ago) so guessed that this was still the case. Just make sure that whatever grease you use has a lithium base and all should be good.

Sounds like you may have found the problem. To answer your earlier question, the dust boots have no bearing on the sealing of the piston. They just keep dust and moisture out, which protects the piston assembly from corroding and getting jammed. It's there for longevity of the caliper, rather than performing any sealing / operational function.

My bad, sorry