Wacky Dee

quite to the contrary actually.. I hate ricers. I'm just sick of the yobbo attitudes displayed by most tradies and other people who work for cash. It's as if their time and effort is worth as much as a specialist doctor's even though most of them work without having to employ any brain power. Just today I was quoted $700 for a (privately arranged) cab ride from canberra to sydney when our car broke down. Are people f**king insane? After fuel costs that's more than $600 profit. It's the whole "unless I can make a full weeks wages worth in one day it ain't worth the effort". $600 to drive for approx. 7 hours, what a joke. Same shit with most tradies.

thanks for the info mate, this will come in handy any day now

yes working flat out for 3 days ... no one does that!

hey if one guy can do it in 2 days, yes it is a rip ...most tradies are overcharging, esp. considering most work for cash. It's not rocket science or some dangerous job. If one guy can spray paint a car in 2-3 days and paint costs less than $1000 and you're billing $3k, you're a greedy mongrel. That's $2k pure profit for 2-3 days work? That's twice as much as average weekly wages.

150 hours? what's that like 4 weeks of 9-5 for one person ? My dad's mate's son is a smash repairer and I've seen the work he's done on his car by himself in 2 days. Some old banged up shit box, looking like a show car with the nicest paint job ever. Where's this 150 hours coming from ? I didn't say I want to take it to some slackers out west who drink half a carton of VB during a single shift.

Adam, how much would you charge in total to respray a black R34 GTT incl. all prep and paint and labour ? I keep hearing $3k+ for a good job but to me that sounds like a complete rip.

welding it up can't be that expensive .. it's just a bunch of tiny holes ?? I can't imagine it taking a panel beater more than 10-15 mins. And if you decide to put it back on, just drill through. I'm actually thinking of doing the same to my GTT once the body kit goes on next week .. I'll see what it looks like first when I take the wing off (is it hard to take it off?) Cool thing is, Justcar have arranged for me to get this done for free (ie. boot welded up/painted) if I want to instead of getting my factory rear bar painted after a recent fender bender.

As per topic .. replaced my belts twice now due to slippage. Now on genuine Nissans and even after readjusting tension on the fan belt, its still screeching on cold starts. The belt tension seems very tight so I don't wanna tighten it any further so as not to damage the bearings or have the belts snap. So yeah, anyone got a tension/deflection guage or know a shop in Sydney that has one? I realize most mechanics just check tension by hand ... but someone's gotta have a guage somewhere!

just a quick question ... if I overtighten the fan belt and there's eventually damage to the bearings, what sort of $$$ would I be looking at to get the bearings fixed/replaced?

the new belts are all genuine Nissan ones .. cost me an extra $100 even though I paid for the original ones and labour, but anyway.. The belt tension seems fine ie. tight as it should be (its def not too loose) ...and the whole 'any mechanic would know' is a load of bollox imo. There's so many young apprentices who wouldn't think twice about overtightening the belt just to get the belts to stop screeching (I know because previous belts were tightened way too much by a young local mechanic when the whole screeching started.... $20 3 min job, I guess you can't expect much more). The only real way I will ever be sure about the tension is if I can find someone with a belt tension/deflection guage. I have the Nissan spec sheet so all I need is the guage but no one seems to have it. On the topic of belt speed / revs - that kinda explains it then. When the engine is cold completely and I start it, it hits 1500 rpm at idle (and drops off to 900 in the next 2-3 mins) so this might be why it only screeches when its completely cold and only at startup. I just need a tension guage now to confirm wtf is my tension and if I can go any tighter ... I have the guage part # so I'm just gonna call nissan and see how much it is. Sick of this shit and everyone (not you guys, the mechanics) not getting it right.

that's the GTR ... GTT is different, slightly I think, in that all the guages are 3 dimensional not flat but rest of it looks about the same

17" / 7.5" and +38 if they're the stock wheels ... IMO these rims look better than half of the aftermarket rims I see on skylines everyday. Gl with the sale

ouch that looks ugly I'd take it to a trimmer to get it fixed up

what do you mean ? like an alternator overload at startupd due to some fault making the belt spin too fast and cause slipping?

the belt sprays don't last for long and need to be reapplied ... and as you said, they can mask the fact that the belt is still slipping and hence being damaged. this is totally starting to shit me ... does anyone know where to get a belt tension guage PLEEEEASE? I have the manufacturer specs for how tight the belts should be so the only safe way to further tighten the alt belt is to check my current tension with a guage

what makes you think it's realted to the water pump? I'm pretty sure I had the water pump replaced at the 100k service. How much would alternator belt bearings cost? I'm still not sure it IS the bearings though, because from what I've been told previously if the bearings were shot they'd squeal all the time, not just on cold startup.

well ..it does matter, because if I tighten the belt nice and tight it stops screeching .. but that's tighter than it should be. Is this the "tensioner bearing" for just the alternator belt ? (is there more than one tensioner bearing in there??) that you refer to and is there any way to confirm it's the bearing that's kaput? It only does this when the engine is completely COLD on startup..

just reading the '100k service' thread and noticed people mentioning that idler/tensions bearings should be changed at 100k service. I've done the 100k service when I got the car (even though the odo said 65000, which I'm 100% has been wound back) but the idler/tensioner bearings were the only things I didn't get done. Do these have anything to do with the alternator belt and could they (due to old age) cause belts to squeal even with the right amount of tension?

Had my belts replaced a few months ago and shortly after .. the alternator belt started screeching on cold starts despite being tightened twice after the initial break in period. So I took it back to Unigroup who replaced all belts with genuine Nissan ones. The new alternator belt from Nissan started screeching 2 days after install which was expected (as they stretch out a bit) so I tightened it a bit and it stopped. But now again, a week later it's screeching on cold starts. If I tighten it any more it will be 'too tight' aka. I might risk damaging my bearings. I mean what the f**k ? Has anyone run into this issue before ? Any way to fix other than continually applying that belt dressing crap or overtightening the belt?

Everyone's already seen the fake leather trims from Ebay (Ultimate Auto Trim etc) but does anyone actually make/sell seat covers/trim replacements made out of other materials ? eg. some woven, durable fabrics or similar? Not a big fan of leather myself (or vinyl for that matter) but I'd like to spice up my interior a bit, if only the front seats.. Would a custom retrim by an auto trimmer be the only solution?? If so anyone know approx. costs for front seats in an R34 GTT ? Cheers

good to hear .. yeah I thought it'd be simple which is another reason why the whole thing shits me .. Since it's an insurance job the repairer will try to milk it for all it's worth and treat it like a big job, ie. won't be able to squeeze it in for repairs until mid january when it could probably be all fixed up in an hour or so with the right tools.

not really .. you can't get more than $200 or so for the factory GTT rear bar when selling them on SAU from what I've seen and the aftermarket rear bar I got cost about $900 supplied, painted and fitted. But I'm going to keep the old bar as a spare just in case anyway. I just hope the panel beater doesn't give me a run around for a few weeks as it's really not a big job, which is why I was even considering trying to straighten out the beaver damage myself.

Yeah there's a bit of damage to the factory rear bar but it hasn't cracked .. one of the reverse lights has a small 3mm crack in it. But I'm not really fussed about either of those things and couldn't care less if they fix/repair them. I'd just like everything to line up properly and go back to factory-spec so that I can install the new rear bar without any issues. The damage to the rear bar and reverse light isn't bad enough for me to lose any sleep over it, especially if I can put the new bar on without any gaps etc.

I don't need it smashed "in", I'd like to repair it... the smashing's already been done. Unless "smashing in" is colloquialism for fixing ..? Yes, I am easily confused.

I just ordered a new rear bumped 2 days ago (it's being painted now) and day later, an old blind-as-a-bat bloke smashes into the (stationary) van behind me and the van hits me - but not very hard. The car shook violently and from all the crashing sound, I thought my whole rear end was gone .. but it looked fine, not even the rear bumper got cracked. However the beaver panel (the metal bar behind the plastic rear bumper) got pushed in and now my right tail light is a bit pushed in and doesn't line up to the boot lid. Also there's a bigger than normal gap (about 8mm) on the left hand side between the bumper and left tail light (on the underside) All parties were insured and I've already gotten 2 smash repairers to send in their quotes to Justcar to fix the whole sorry mess but to me the damage seems superficial to be honest. I mean the rear beaver panel doesn't look that sturdy and I'm sort of tempted to try and straighten it out myself. What sort of tools would I need to use to straighten out the metal (beaver) panel ? The reason I'm even contemplating trying to give it a quick fix myself even though insurance would pay for a smash repairer is because it's gonna take a while before they can do this (probably mid January) and my new rear bar will be ready in a week or so and i've already paid for fitting. When we trial fitted the new rear bar before the accident, it lined up perfectly... but I'm sure it won't be the case anymore due to the beaver panel damage. Has anyone here fixed up the beaver panel before ? What did it take ? Was it hard and how good were the results? I'd just like to try it and if it doesn't line up correctly afterwards, the smash repairers can do it as part of the insurance job..