Beer Baron

hmm. now i'm not sure. anyway, check out the pic it should help figure it out a bit. I'm curious why you need to know anyway? if you are getting some just wait till they arrive and then have a look. if you are planning to copy them how about just paying the small amount of money they cost and giving the company that designed them some credit. when people start copying parts eventually the people who design them have to start charging more money as they get less sales volume. this in turn makes people even more likely to buy the copies and eventually the original maker can't carry on. then we loose another company that makes new innovative parts. try and get the people who copy the shit in china who have never even seen a GTR in the flesh let alone built and raced them to design an improved cam cover baffle system..... these are not exactly a bank breaking part of an RB26 build. PS: if not planning to copy them please excuse the rant above!

fair enough and when you explain it like that it's hard to fault what you did at all. clearly the guy misled you at best and straight out lied to you at worst. in that case I'd say be thankful it was 'only' $400 (probably $100 or $200 over charged). the way some guys operate it could have been double that. but he probably chose the maximum amount he thought he could get you to pay without kicking up too much fuss or really looking into things. I know it's hard when presented with a bill that you know is over the top to really do anything on the spot. I understand that. most people are not exactly looking for a confrontation and most mechanics if called on a bullshit bill will get their back up and call you all kinds of flamin mongrel and liar until you pay them. so they put you in an awkward position and count on 90% of people to just take it and pay. especially if it's only $100 or so over of course it's not worth the time and stress to try and do anything about it. it sucks and it happens a lot. I've been screwed before too and for small amounts of money which aren't worth time and aggravation to follow up you just have to kiss the money good bye and then vote with your feet and never go back to the place again. and tell all your mates what happened so they don't go there either. I hope at least his welding was nice!! that will be some consolation.

it's not that hard at all if you are sensible. I have sent modified cars to SA. and done the reverse too (had a car complied there then sent to nsw) there are lots of heavily modified cars there. 90% of the mods on your car are not visible mods either. nice stealth low mount turbo, cooler than uses mostly factory piping, stuff like nistune, injectors, fuel pump all impossible to tell really. all your suspension gear is legal too and also subtle, body kit is also quite restrained. my one piece of advice would be to make sure the car is 'roadworthy' ie. don't give them any excuse to look at it too closely. make sure the tyres have plenty of good tread on them and no uneven wear or damage, make sure all turn signals and brake lights work properly etc all the basic safety oriented roadworthy type things. don't give them a reason to look into it and they happily won't. it would take a genius inspector to pick a nistune, injectors and a low mount turbo. plus the car is so neat and clean most of the guys are sensible and know a decent car when they see one. I really don't think it's an issue.

from memory yes they go through.

I would talk to http://www.chequeredtuning.com/new/?q=node/21 Trent is a power FC master and should be able to repair it for a reasonable cost.

for $400 you should have just dropped it off somewhere and let them do it. instead you spent 5 hours of your time, 5 hours of your mates time and 2 hours of the other blokes time and $400 to get what should have been a $300 job done. of course he's going to charge you $$$ for working in his shop. that's his job, not yours. no workshop takes kindly to people wanting to come in and use all their stuff and do their own work. it takes money out of their pocket, it ties up their stuff which further costs them money and it's actually a bit insulting as it implies you don't trust them to do the work properly or to charge you fairly for it. in future if you want to do it yourself I'd say do it at home or a mates place don't go to a random workshop and expect to get the royal treatment while you use their stuff to work on your own car. seriously if you thought about this logically you could have saved yourself both money and time by just dropping the car off and letting them do what was needed then picking it up later. you would have saved both time and money and still had a good relationship with the shop involved. they are running a business after all. the first guys welds are about as bad as I have ever seen in my life. what he did was not that un-common in not bothering to use a flange at one end of the cat but my god the welding work was horrible.

geoff what you want is the nismo diff upgrade kit. it's a kit of new disks for the diff. they add different combos of friction plates etc to get the desired characteristics. there are two kits available for stock GTR diffs with different initial torque settings. when installed properly in a 32 GTR diff it makes it very tight and very predictable, consistent lock up behaviour.

hmm, I personally would not be running a tomei pump without an extended sump. check the flow rates for the tomei pump and you will see it can empty the sump pretty quickly... JUN Tomei etc all strongly advise against running their pumps without increased sump capacity.

not 100% sure on second hand tyres as I've never imported the tyres seperate to rims but I can't see why? they may sometimes require them to be sprayed with poison to kill bugs eggs at the time of importation but I can't think of any rule stating they must be fitted to wheels? in fact I'm sure there isn't. I know of people who've imported stacks of tyres sans wheels. definitely no problem importing tyres on their own new or used.

very sad news. sorry to hear of two young guys loosing their lives. anything can happen in a car at any time and it's not necessarily a reflection on them or us that tragedies like this happen. it can and does happen to people all the time on our roads. my condolences to their families and friends, it's so sad to see another's life cut short.

it will be a fair bit of work to fit. like mentioned above the floor mounting points are not all level so there are different levels of height needed to get the seal to ultimately mount flat. plus the rear inner mounts are on the tunner not on the floor.... it's a fairly unique style of mounting. sure the seats may only cost $150 but the cost of having a competent mechanic or engineer weld up the appropriate adapters and mounts to make the seats mount safely will be probably $300 or more per seat. with that in mind suddenly $600 for 32 GTR seats looks like good value. they bolt straight in and mount as per factory so are perfectly safe and legal. 33 GTR seats do too and so do 34 GTR seats and they are really nice. yes they cost but they are all miles better than WRX seats and will take 10 mins to fit, require no custom work and be 100% safe.

yeah it is interesting that ITV had speculated early in that stint that by going out too hard early on he would reduce the tyre life/performance. but punctures are such hit and miss things. he could have picked up a small piece of debris or perhaps there was a small imperfection in the tyre construction or perhaps he did cause it himself by overworking the tyres. It could be anything really. It's impossible to blame him or exonerate him for that matter. It's just one of those things.

if the ship sinks you will most likely loose the car and you will be required to pay a share of the salvage cost. you can insure against that salvage cost liability. it's called general average insurance. personally I think it's a waste of time. if it worries you then look into it. it does occasionally happen. a business partner in japan has had a ship sink that he had some cars on. not nice. but that's the only one I know of personally. of the thousands and thousands of voyages per yer carrying cars I would say less than 1 sink.

you won't need to do any emissions testing etc. being a pre-88 vehicle they don't have to be complied as such. just a few small mods to meet basic roadworthy/state rego requirements. they differ slightly from state to state. anyone with experience registering pre 88 imports in your state should be able to help and it should be fairly cheap compared to SEVS compliance.

firstly there is no such thing as 'v35 tyres' mate. even when new there would be a variety of tyre models fitted to different year and spec V35s based on options and wheel choice etc. and given how old V35s are now it's very unlikely any have their original set of tyres still on them and if they did I would strongly suggest replacing them anyway as they would be bloody old and hard and just plain un-safe. like jspec said you should be replacing them. buy something decent mate. there is nothing worse than a nice car with shit cheap tyres. tyres are about the most important consumable on your car for both safety and performance (enjoyment). open the wallet! not sure what mr eps is on about though about importing tyres? you can import tyres without wheels. lol, how do you think tyre shops do it? they don't mount every set of tyres onto wheels to send them from japan or wherever. buying some good tyres from tirerack in the US is a viable option but it's only worth it for high end tyres. the savings on cheap tyres will be bugger all. may as well just get those ones here.

dunno about the last point. personally I think it's a bit tacky for a business to ask for donations/tips. I mean jspec is a business. their site is there to service their customers and to gain new customers. sure it's useful to non-customers too but that's not it's main purpose. having donations makes it look like they have their hand out or are on hard times etc. i wouldn't do it personally. site is awesome though. I agree on that point.

thanks. I had a feeling hamo had got it towards then end. of course the itv numb nut proclaimed that webber had 'taken the trifecta of pole/win/fastest lap'.... webber apparently second fastest though, and he had set fastest lap a shitload of times to that point.

yeah but if webber can put a jaguar on the front row at monaco surely he can get the RBR there even with it's puny renault engine? come on troy, don't loose the faith now. webber is a king (prince?) at monaco! he had his first podium there too in the williams from memory? if I was a commentator I might even say he was a 'monaco specialist' whatever that means...

oh, and webber pulled out exactly the kind of result he needed. fastest through all 3 quali sessions, won the race and fastest lap too (I think?). it really was a commanding performance for once it was vettel moving backwards and then suffering some bad luck to go with it. still not bad when your 'bad day' ends with a 3rd place. shame for webber than hamilton didn't finish as he would have been much better off with vettel in 4th instead of 3rd. webs now back in the hunt for the championship and looking like he could make it happen too.

well done brisby! you picked it and I picked it too. I had my cash on webber for quali and then put some on for the win. only got 2:1 so it was really a stupid bet but I had a feeling mark was going to come good after reading my post about how this weekend is so crucial to him securing another drive next year. I had some cash on schumacher for a podium too and thanks to hamilton and vettel it bloody nearly paid off. that one would have been a nice payer too. ye of little faith!!! how could you! got to waive that aussie flag boyo! shame on you too benny! that's right. troy kept the faith!! lol, I have to admit I saw that and thought someone in the crowd must have shot out his tyre to get dirty sanchez a better finishing position. lol, they all hate hamilton so much.

make perfect sense and as a bonus looks hilarious! also might baffle someone stealing your car when they go to shift from '4th' up to '5th' and find themselves doing a 5th to 1st downchange instead.... yikes!

yeah I have a sinking feeling on two fronts. 1, if webber doesn't do well for the remainder of the season and start finishing ahead of vettel now and then that red bull wont give him another seat for next year. and 2, if red bull don't give webber a seat next year he might walk away from F1 rather than take up a lesser spot somewhere like torro rosso etc. It would be sad to see our only aussie in F1 gone. who is there on the horizon to be the next aussie in F1? Roy maybe? possibly me? any other prospects out there?

ok, lol. speaking of boxes, for some entertainment check out this vid of a nice RX3 from 09 TT. check out the wacky shift action! it seems to me like 1st gear and 4th gear are in the same spot. which is where 3rd gear would normally be?!?! cause it goes first in the top middle, 2nd is top left, 3rd bottom left, 4th top middle 5th bottom middle. although I guess 1st is actually way over where 5th would be normally but in the vid it's hard to tell. certainly pretty confusing!

i didn't say it was or wasn't an improvement. I said it's irrelevant whether it's an improvement or not. the car was excluded because the gearbox it ran with is illegal under the rules not because it's more reliable, or because it's painted pink or because you put tenga egg sponsorship on it. none of those things matter. purely is it legal? yes = ok. no = exclusion. 100% I agree it should have been excluded. it broke the rules. I agree standard 6th gear is useless for this kind of car and event. it makes your top speed purely academic as with the roads and the limited power you are never going to get there. but a close ratio 6 speed with stronger gears and geared to a top speed of say 260 or so is miles better than a 33 5 speed or a standard 34 getrag and is currently allowed under the rules (as I understand them a new gearset of same number of gears in standard casing is ok). my point was perhaps things need to change a little. evo guys can run 5 or 6 speed cause RS and GT models had the 5 speed CR box. it would be nice if 32 guys could run the 33 5 speed and let 34 drivers run either the 33 5speed or if they have the dough run a $$$ close ratio 6 speed. as I said the CR 6 is always going to be better than a 33 5 speed. but they are two separate debates. to make it clear of course if you break the rules you should be excluded and it wouldn't matter if the gearbox improved things or not. if it's against the rules you have to cop it.

yeah webber really, really needs to a get a result this weekend to keep himself in the hunt. so far it's been pretty dismal for a bloke in one of the top 3 cars. especially with all the good qualifying and fastest laps he's had. needs to start figuring out how to turn that stuff into wins. come on webber, you've faced darker times than this mate!