mad082

how about you tell us how many litres you are classing as a "tank". that will give us a better idea of whether your economy is just ordinary or extremely crap. also, what sort of driving are you doing (city driving/highway driving) and how do you drive? if you do city driving and boost it often then you will get pretty crap fuel economy and no amount of changing sensors will help much.

changing the auto trans fluid is much harder than doing the engine oil and is best left to the professionals if you don't know what you are doing. it is also something that doesn't really need doing. just check the dipstick. if the oil is black then take it to an auto transmission specialist. if it is red then don't bother. there are plenty of auto cars out there with over 200,000kms on the clock and still running the original trans fluid. i think the service intervals on most modern auto transmissions are something like 100,000 to 150,000kms

it will be as loud as anything. the cops will hear you coming from miles away

i know of a rb30 (single cam) that got into the 13's. the most power it put out was just over 170kw. was seriously worked. reved a few thousand rpm higher than stock.

hahaha, i think you are forgetting all the shit he did much earlier in his career

as said, 1000 people requesting e85 won't do squat. maybe if you were all in the one area and were going to all go to the one servo then maybe you could convince that servo to get e85, but to get them to put it in hundreds or thousands of servos to serve a handful of customers at each servo, the fuel would be stale before they had to order more. you also have to remember that while a lot of new cars, such as the new commodores, will run on e85, the majority of owners are too scared to put it in their cars. a mate of mine just bought a new v8 commodore ute. i saw the e85 badge on the back and said something to him about it and he started going on about how he'd never put it in his car and how bad it is, etc. all the crap that the general public has heard through the rumour mills over the years. long story short, this will have about as much effect as the emails that go around telling people not to buy fuel for a few days because it will send the fuel companies broke and make them lower their prices......

driving style and type (city or highway) will make the biggest difference to tyre life. drive in the city alot and take corners at speed and you will chew out tyres much faster than someone who does a lot of highway driving and drives like a nanna around town. the missus pulsar is on it's 4th set of front tyres (2nd set of rears) and it's only done 75,000kms, but they have all been around town with the odd trip. also just had to change the front brake pads a week or 2 ago. my commodore on the other hand, i've put 37,000kms on it driving just over 60kms to work each day (125km round trip). it's pretty much all highway driving. i only just replaced the tyres the other day because i hit a big rock on the highway and destroyed one (and a rim). the rear tyres were a bit scrubbed out on the inside edge from it being lowered when i got it, but the fronts (one of which was the ones that got ruined) still had probably 70% tread left (had 5mm left above the wear indicators, new ones have about 7mm above the wear indicators). on the other hand, the rear tyres i had on my 33 were worn out before it needed an oil change....... of course tyre compound will play a part as well. some are softer than others, in the same way that some will also grip better than others. tyre life often (but not always) comes at the expense of grip, and vice versa. race slick compounds are an exagerated example of this. as for the head gasket, etc, you can't base your opinion on one example. do enough research on any car and you will find examples of lemons. i'm sure there are BT-50 owners out there who have had plenty of issues and are probably never going to buy one again. of course some cars will have more issues than others.

i bet when the fezza big wigs heard there was a fire in pit lane, the first thing they thought of was how to send massa down to help fight it, but with an empty fire extinguisher

yeah as above, really hoping you made a type with the engine and mean rb30 block with rb25 head. why not just simply drop a rb25det into it? will make stacks more power than just a rb30et will (unless it has serious amounts of work)

wonder what maldonado was paying to win the spanish GP this time last week? or even after practice and quali. anyone who put a decent sized bet on would be rolling in it right now.

if it has a compliance plate on it

and they sound pretty shit hot. one went past work with a decent exhaust on it. has a similar sound to the RB (sounds better than a natro skyline though)

I'm not saying I'm perfect and never done anything wrong. I once drove straight through a stop sign (treated it like a give way sign) on a road I'd driven hundreds of times. Got about 10m past it and went "oh shit, that was a stop sign". It's the only time I've ever run a stop sign. But I acknowledge that it was all my fault and I wasn't paying enough attention. You appear to be posting in order to try and justify yourself. Just admit that you weren't paying enough attention and move on. You may honestly think that you were paying enough attention, but the fact that you didn't see the orange light till you were right on it proves that you weren't. I doubt you will find too many people who disagrees with this Edit: I didn't read all of your last post till after posting this, so take that into account before replying to mine

yeah the usual half an hour of fluff before the race

yeah gotta agree with most peoples posts above. no point fighting it because you were clearly in the wrong. if it is a notorious intersection then you are obviously familiar with it, so you were approaching a set of lights that you know are there and simply weren't paying enough attention to your surrounds to see that the light was orange earlier. put simply, if you try and fight it and the judge feels like being an arse, you may end up also being booked for driving without due care and attention.

he is usually a little bit hard on tyres (better this year than previous years though), but he should have a good bank of tyres to play with, so he should be able to push a little bit harder than some of the guys who pushed harder in P2 and P3

Yeah different pedals won't help. different shows might though.. I have big feet (size 12) and I have a bit of trouble. Barefoot it's easy.

What about the fuel pump?

A mate of mine has a 380. Hasn't had any issues. Goes well, decent to drive.

Cold air is more dense, so the ecu compensates. As for running 9psi, as I said, your gauge may be reading 9psi, but you may be running more. Comes down to the brand of the gauge (some more accurate than others) and where you have it hooked up to. I'd start by cleaning the afm, then if that does nothing, wind the boost down

+1 for winding the boost down. I'd put money on you actually running more than 9psi (despite what your gauge says). cleaning the Afm may help the situation, but the problem is that the ecu is seeing too much airflow for a given rpm and load. I used to have this happen to my 33 on cold mornings.

i think that as the season progresses and the teams get a better understanding of the tyres then you will see things get more interesting. having said that though, for many years now f1 has been one of the more boring racing categories as far as overtaking goes. v8 supercars is more entertaining for that (2 races so far this year have gone down to the last lap, including the second race on sunday just gone). f1 more comes down to pit strategy and making gains with the undercut than actually passing cars on the track.

if there are bubbles in the coolant then it may be a headgasket (but there should be other signs, such as the exhaust pumping out steam), but it may also be that the water pump is cactus and is either not working properly or it is worn out and is causing cavitation (resulting in air bubbles)

i don't mind the current tyre profiles. they add that extra dimension (strategy) into the racing. as for drivers having to conserve, i don't think they are doing that much conserving. if they were holding back by large amounts then someone could just save their tyres in quali a bit and then in the race just go full noise the whole time and just pit whenever the tyres run out.

i'd look at both, but i'd be more inclined to look at the cheaper one if the general condition of the car is similar.