warps

I just bought myself an Aircat Nitro 1200K Kevlar composite rattle gun. 1295 ft lbs of nut busting torque. OOoh yeah!!! A million times better than the cheapo Supacheap crap I had before, and not a lot dearer (less than $250 shipped from USA)

Do you actually need new pistons? Have you pulled the calipers apart yet? Might find they are OK to reuse - they're usually pretty long wearing, as long as the brake system hasn't been full of moisture.

2mm? Really? What was it made of - Uberexpandium?

Squealing brakes because race car

I have similar on the pathfinder, though only in reverse at low speed (it's a bitch when I'm trying to quietly reverse out of the garage at 4am). Did all of the above and nothing helped. Meh I just keep the windows up and crank the tunes a bit louder - that seemed to make the problem go away.

Hahahha... Nailed it...

Sweeeet!! Me rikey

Does that mean no more live streaming of the 12hr? Sounds like if you want to watch any motorsport, you'll have to get pay TV if V8's have their say.

Honda still used them in 2000 ITR's. Dunno about the later models though.

You've heard wrong They are a good, budget pad, but there are plenty of better products out there. Do some searching around here - been discussed eleventy times already

Rear calipers? Do the pistons have a pair of slots in the face (like a big cross)? If yes to above, put a big fat screwdriver into the slot and screw the pistons in like a big fkoff screw. This is part of the park brake adjuster mechanism. Note I see you have an R33 with twin piston calipers, so they probably have the drum style park brake. In that case, the above won't be applicable (it works on R31's though)

Woot In on page 1 again GO Honda!!!

Correct Also be careful of what you buy on Ebay. Wheel studs are not something you want to be taking chances with cheap, poor quality unknown spec materials.

As long as it's out of harms way and tied down it will be OK. Most stripped out competition cars have wiring harnesses running along the floor in various places. As the minimum, make sure that the harness is taped up (ie no exposed coloured wires visible) and then preferable to wrap in in spiral wrap or conduit, mostly to protect the insulation from damage (not hard for an errant spanner to be forgotten under the seat. This wont take much to damage the insulation if it starts bouncing around the floor in your car) As Anafee said, best to tidy it up and have it tied out of the way (p-clamps if the factory clips don't do a good enough job) The factory location for the wiring is generally OK to leave, but if you have to relocate, then along the base of the tunnel on the passenger's side, or along the base of either sill is usually pretty safe, and out of harm's way. That's how all of my comp cars have always been set up, even the ones that have been doing race duty for over 20 years (in various owners' hands) have been fine.

Yeh I pushed that barrow at the start of this thread, but it seems that the OP is more interested in arbitrary straight line performance specs than actually having fun in a car

Good to hear you're happy with the setup. Just a note on the Bilstein Fanboi thing. In my 20 years involvement in club rallying, Bilsteins have been the go-to brand for people building custom suspensions for gravel rally cars. This was when we had to design and build our own coilovers, years before the market was flooded with aftermarket coilovers from a dozen different companies. Bilstein have been making the shock hardware for these applications for a very long time, and have always offered to valve the product to suit your application. Even today, I see their gear under a lot of rally cars, and it's a great budget alternative to the remote canister mega $$ kits available today. One of their strengths is that they are rebuildable (I know a few rally guys who rebuild their own, for little more than a few $$ per unit) Maybe I am a bit of a Fanboi, but you can't argue their quality. I know there is potentially better gear out there, but believe me, there is a hell of a lot worse too.

noughties 'ooies as in 2000+ But yes, people have been downloading pr0n on dialup since well before the 21st century I remember it well

dafuq???

I'm not 100% certain on this, but I believe that seats don't "expire" like harnesses do. Maybe at international level events (or possibly even national) they might, but apart from that they have no use by date.. Oh, and harnesses currently have an additional 5 years after the use-by date on the label.

No problems, In that case it sounds like your seats are fine to use as they are. As long as passing through the hole in the seat keeps the harness in a fairly straight line, all should be sweet. Just pay attention to the rest of the harness installation instructions - I've seen a lot of dodgy installs. Also don't buy second hand harnesses (in case you're wondering). You never know the life a second hand harness has had. Good quality new harnesses aren't that dear.

As I said earlier, if the harness is mounted to the floor, and the angle of the harness to horizontal is greater than 20 deg (as per the Schroth guide) then this will put excessive vertical load onto you, or the seat. In that case, if you have the correct seats (designed to withstand that type of force) you can get away with the harness angle closer to vertical. This is the least optimal way to do it - best to have the harnesses coming into the seat as horizontal as possible If you have the harness correctly mounted, ie less than 20 deg, then you don't need any special seats, and the harness is supposed to go over your shoulder. The small vertical component of the load won't be enough to cause any damage to your spine. Also, having the harness rest on your shoulders means it's not rubbing on the edge of the hole (I've seen some seats with pretty rough edges on these holes). This protects the harness from abrasion. In the first scenario above, if there is a slight gap between the harness and bottom of the hole, this won't cause any problem as your shoulders will easily conform a bit (half a hole height) under the load of the harness, and won't put any excess load onto your spine. If you're really concerned about it, call the harness and / or seat suppliers and talk to them. Send photos if you need to. If your harnesses are mounted to the floor, and you haven't got the right seats, then you'll be in a world of hurt, regardless of whether the harness goes over your shoulder or the edge of the hole in the seat. I can see where you got your idea from, but am concerned that you have misinterpreted the reasoning behind it.

Sorry for the late reply - only just saw this. Don't know where you got this misinformation but it is WRONG. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the strap running across your shoulder and not touching the seat, in fact this is better for the harness. There are exceptions to this rule, but only if the harness is located low, in which case the seat becomes a structural part of the harness load path (which requires seats specifically made for this purpose). Here's one good guide for harness installation. I'm sure there are plenty of others out there. http://www.schrothracing.com/sdocs/2009_Competition_Instructions.pdf Don't start modifying your seat. Just think: will the mods you make be capable of withstanding a 20G deceleration with your body weight?

Wheel bearings? Lifetime of vehicle? You've never owned a Subaru, I gather. But I digress Dan, Couple of questions: 1) What is your definition of performance? If you're chasing sub 6 sec 0-100 (ie straight line acceleration) then you'll be disappointed in any of the current hot hatches on the market. Personally I reckon a good measure of performance is lap times around a track, and any of the options I gave in my first post will be pretty handy at a race track. In fact, I'd wager they would all give your R33 a shake up around a track (depending on the spec of your current car, that is). Based on that, these cars still make a hell of a lot of sense. Maybe you need to drive one before dismissing them completely. In fact, on slippery stuff (khana, autocross) I'd say even my focus has a better than even chance of being quicker than your R33. Don't underestimate the value of late braking and cornering speed 2) Why do you need a new car? It's nice to be able to write new cars off as a business expense, but buying new really doesn't make good financial sense. If you can go for something 3-5 years old, it will really open up the market to you. Even getting something 1-2 years old can save a few $$, and still give you the balance of new car warranty for peace of mind.

All depends I guess. I went from an 09 WRX to a new Focus sport. The Focus is cheap and cheery (virtually a straight trade for an almost 5 year old Rex to brand new Focus) and fun to throw around, but nothing like the buzz of some decent power under the right foot. I don't really miss the Rex, but I'm not one to fang around on the roads much anyway, so I found that I wasn't really using the performance of the Rex that often. What do you want? a "performance" car or a fun car? There are plenty of cheap (<30k) fun cars with reasonable performance (eg Fiesta ST, Polo GTI, Clio RS Sport, Toyo 86). None of these will win too many traffic lights grand prix, but can still be a hell of a lot of fun to drive. I have a gravel rally car, as well as a tarmac car in the build (if I ever get it finished!!) so don't see the need to spend lots on a fast road car - it will only tempt me to do stupid things anyway. As for RBrennan's comments - yeh I agree. I think if I had to drive a Camry I'd probably be suicidal. There's only so far one can lower one's standards

To be honest, for a race car the scientific way to get the right spring rate is to work out what rate the tyre has been designed for. You will need to talk to the technical department of the tyre supplier to get that info. From there, work back through your car's suspension setup to calculate what the effective spring rate at the wheel translates to in your suspension setup (lever arms, fulcrums etc.). That will land you in the sweet spot for starting your setup. Then you have to get the damping right to suit the spring constant and weight of the car. Then you have roll stiffness to consider (as mentioned here already, I believe). This will have an impact on your spring rates, as you don't want the total spring rate at the tyre to change too much. Then you have the geometry to consider, and more importantly, how that changes through the full range of motion. Changing geometry (camber, caster, toe, roll centres etc) will have a massive effect on handling. Then there's the corner weighting, which is essential to make sure that what you have fitted in the car actually works as designed. Then we come to driver preference - some drivers prefer a softer, more compliant ride, others like it hard and jittery, oversteer, understeer, etc. As you can see, there's a lot of black magic involved, and if you're not fairly experienced, you can easily end up with a steaming pile of dog poo, even if you have bought good quality stuff, but got the setup all wrong. The reason so many are suggesting MCA, apart from the quality of their stuff, is that they know about setup, and are usually very helpful. If you can spend some face to face time, or go to a driver training day where experts drive you car and tell you what changes to make, you will move ahead in leaps and bounds, and will be less likely to waste a lot of money on trial and error.