JimX

No, it's how thick or viscous the oil is at cold (former) and hot (latter) temperatures.

I'll remember to not take my car above 1 metre off the ground until I get this sorted

Automotive paint would be better than plastic model paints, because the former is designed to resist UV rays from the sun. 2pac paint works well with plastic, but I don't know if you can get it in chrome. I think plastic model paint would just start peeling before the end of summer.

There are cars with mechanical fuel pumps in the engine bay AND knock sensors?! No way!

Mine's stock, not even sideskirts Well, it has the bigger front bar, that's it. Of course if it looked ugly when stock I might have done something about it sooner.

I think for $80 it's probably better quality than say Castrol 5W-30, but I'd still want to be changing it every 5000km and that is a hell of a lot of money to be spending every 5000km. Also at $80 I don't know how much of that money is going into quality and how much into the name. With the Castrol oil a lot of it is in the name, which is why I think the Motul oil I bought is better even though it costs around the same as Castrol's cheapest synth. Yours should be ok, but I wouldn't flog it too hard on a hot day in summer. But then, I think I wouldn't do that anyway with any type of oil in the engine unless I had an oil cooler. I've heard a few people say that "Gold" Mobil oil is overrated and overpriced. If you wanted to swap it, maybe try their 0W-40 or 5W-50.

Got rears?

If you didn't see them do it then you've got even less chance of getting them busted, don't waste your time. Also, it could have been an accident but then they are just arseholes and thought it was funny to see people drive through it. If they wanted to be REAL bastards they could have thrown it over your car instead of under it.

Lower numbers are thinner. So 30 is probably too thin Well as I've said I've been using 30 for most of this year without any problems. It's mainly the extra heat of summer that's making me want to go thicker, and also now the extra power output I have.

I seriously doubt you'd be able to make any vandalism charge stick, unless you had an independant witness. And even if you did, because there was no accident involved I doubt the insurance companies could do anything to chase up payment from them, so I don't think they'd give you a no at fault claim.

Possibly, but I've had a good look around there and wriggled lots of wiring to no effect. If the guy can come out and fix a simple loose wire that may do it again in the future, I think it'll be well worth the $70 (oh yeah, this guy guarantees his work and will come out and fix it again for free if it plays up). Oh yeah, something else that happened yesterday, not sure if it's related. My passenger door central locking stopped working. I hope my whole wiring system isn't on its way out

I got quoted from Unigroup $160 to fit one of these. Considering that I wouldn't want to be driving my car very far without tuning it pretty much immediately after installing it, I'm considering just paying the bucks and letting these guys do it before they tune it. Also to go in are my 550cc injectors so I think I'll just book it in and hand it all over for a few days. I dunno, I'll think about it. If I find myself unable to afford the tune and parts install for a long time (total price is close to a grand), I might give the cam wheel a go myself. I can always set it to 0 degrees until such time as I can afford the tune, and then the whole thing will be $160 cheaper as well

Ah, looks excellent! I've been meaning to do this for a long time now, just haven't gotten my arse into gear. I spoke to my mechanic ages ago about this (well, panel beater but the other guys there do mechanical work in the same shop) and he said to do it best you should tape it up before painting, so that you get perfectly straight edges and only have to worry about the rounded corners. Can I ask what paint you used? Do Autobarn etc sell chrome paint that works ok on plastic? I've got some leftover silver paint from my respray I could use, but I'd rather have it done in chrome. The colour will be more uniform and I think it'll look nicer.

I decided to not pissfart around with it any longer and ask my mechanic if he knew of any good auto electricians familiar with Skylines. He said he did, and showed me his Cordia which had a brand new full custom wiring setup recently done by this guy. It looked better than factory, it had that black serpentine stuff covering all the wires in the engine bay and looked like showroom material. It took him a couple of days and only cost $400. So I gave him a call to see if he could help, and he said it shouldn't be a problem. He does work onsite, and it's $20 call-out and $50 an hour. I don't imagine it'll take long for him to sort out, he's done a lot of Skylines in the past. He's booked out until next week but after he visits I'll update again and say how it went. My mate said that one of his specialities is re-wiring GTS-t's to take RB26's

The previous owner of my car said the turbo on it was a 450hp T04. The guy at Garrett told me it was a T04E when I asked him what it was (I didn't say "Is this a T04?") Since then though, I've discovered that most other people with T04's have an external wastegate. Mine is internal, so now I'm thinking I just have a T04 compressor cover and who knows what exhaust housing, which looks too small for it. Small exhaust housing and internal gate aside, it goes really well. Starts spooling at around 2000rpm, and full boost (15psi) at 4500. Which is a little laggy, but not terrible by a long shot. It still feels quite responsive, and I hope to improve it some more with an adjustable exhaust cam gear in the near future. It's doing well enough now to max out my AFM, which actually surprises me. I'm now thinking about increasing the exhaust housing size to fatten out the power curve a bit (not necessarily increase it).

The engine is more sensitive to power than boost. You could run a small turbo at 18psi and give it no problems (aside from maybe the head gasket), but you might top out at 10psi with a bigger turbo, once they both start putting out around 250rwkw. If it's the stock turbo, it will die before the engine at high boost (14psi and up). I'm currently running my T04 at 15psi, and when I get it tuned I'm going to see if it's worthwhile tuning it for 18psi. I think I might need to increase the size of the exhaust housing first.

The Motul 5W-40 oil I bought was called "8100 X-CESS" and was $55 from Autobarn. It's 100% synthetic and says that it's good for turbo cars on the back of the bottle. It's got a high level of detergent and so should be good for keeping carbon buildup off the inside of your engine.

I was running 5W-30 up until now because it was close enough to factory spec. But the guy at Chatswood got me thinking, even though I didn't trust his advice of running 15W-50. The factory spec of oil thickness is for a stock standard engine. Up the power and at some point you need to increase the viscosity. Not to mention thicker oil is needed for our hot summers. But even with that consideration I think the 5W-40 was a good choice, with 0W-40 or 10W-40 being ok as well (as is the general consensus). I now think that 30 is the bare minimum thickness, with 40 being pretty good and anything more either there for track work or desert driving, or just a waste of power. If I was going to run a 50 weight oil it would be 5W-50 too, not 15W-50. Oh and yeah thanks for reminding me of Victor Bray's name cul202

I'm far from an expert on turbos, but of all the stats I've seen it seems that the turbine AR is generally bigger than the compressor AR. I can't see any AR numbers stamped on my exhaust housing, but it looks physically smaller than the compressor housing (see pic). The compressor AR is 0.6, and the compressor blades are of those double fin type (I don't know what that's called, someone tell me?). Is there anything I should change on the turbo at all? I would like it to flow up to around 500hp. If it's just the exhaust housing that needs doing, does anyone have a rough idea of cost including labour of the rebuild? Also some advice on who in Sydney can do this. I was thinking of ringing Garrett and asking them for a quote. Edit: I can't attach the pic, but I've put it on my webspace here: http://members.optusnet.com.au/jimx/stuff/...jimx_turbo1.JPG

I love the 180. I thought about getting one instead of the R33, and probably the only reason I didn't was because of the extra refinements on the Skyline (eg nicer interior and climate control and even just the sexy-arsed look of it). If I was poorer and wanted more bang for buck out of my car, I would have definitely chosen the 180 over the 'line, but I would still think the Skyline was a nicer car. If I was richer I'd own both cars. I'm even trying to convince my gf to buy a 180SX when she can afford it in a year or 2, just so that I can effectively own both

I've read several oil articles, some contradicting the others, and some talked about in here. But I think we're about due for another one especially with the server crash and all This came about because I went into Autobarn in Chatswood looking for some 10W-40 synthetic Motul oil, which a guy at Auburn Autobarn who also owned a Skyline had recommended for my car (mild R33 GTS-t). In the end I could only find 5W-40, but the "40" was the important number and I'm already running Castrol 5W-30 and I just wanted something a bit thicker for summer. So I took it to the counter and asked for a filter as well, and the guy said "You're not going to put that oil in your Skyline are you?" and I said yes, and asked why he thought it was a bad idea. He said that it was too thin and I should be running at least 15W-50 oil. I told him that I had been running 5W-30 for the past year or so with no problems. He still seemed wary, and he said that the 40 oil should be ok as long as I don't do any track work or too many mods. I bought the 5W-40 oil anyway and I'll put it in soon. So anyway it got me thinking - I have known for awhile that thicker oil is necessary for really powerful engines, but aside from that the thinner you go the better. But now it's got me thinking - where is the cutoff point to where you need to run thicker oil? I know that the drag racing tomato farmer guy (forget his name) runs Castrol 15W-50 oil (the only mineral Formula R in their series) and his car is like over 1000hp. So I'm guessing that 5W-40 oil will be fine for my car which is The funniest thing here is - Two different stores from the same franchise, and completely different advice from each store!

Also the spring in the arm gradually causes the pivot mount to kind of press in the direction of the spring tension. Try applying gentle opposite force for a bit when wriggling it off. Like push down the arm side and lift off the other side, if that makes sense.

Are ringlands prone to metal fatigue? Or are they generally an all or nothing thing when they break. I ask because say the car had been detonating a bit because of the previous owner, would that make the car now more likely to lose one or more even if tuned properly afterwards?

Ah good so it's not just me then. I only just noticed that people had replied because I keep forgetting that I'm not getting any more SAU emails

I got addicted to reading this confessions site. I had previously looked at it and gotten over it, but then with SAU down I got too bored with nothing to do at work so I went back there. At home, I got a lot more online gaming done I still went out no more or less than before, but whenever we did leave there was never any "hang on a sec, just gotta check my email" before we left, like usual.