djr81

You are far better off getting some tyres for the drags & running on the road on normal road tyres. Semi slicks & radial drag tyres are rubbish on the street. Not to mention uncomfortable & fiendishly expensive. Don't bother going to the drags with semi slicks - they are rubbish for that too. Get some drag tyres for the drags. If you want to do some track work use Bridgestone RE55 semi slicks. Get them from the local distributer.

The strain on a locked diff doesn't come from different tyre grip levels it is caused by the different speeds the tyres need to travel at and can't because you have a locked diff. A locked diff on a road car is not legal & is a bad idea. So you are worried about the tyres making it unroadworthy when he is running a locked diff?

Nice shot of the car in the current issue of race magazine. Good work.

The Nismo rear lip for the R32 is soft. Like the lip that goes on the bonnet. They are usually also warped, cracked & generally stuffed. This is one of those instances you are better off getting a copy.

No it doesn't. A slipping clutch does so because it is failing to transmit the torque of the engine. A torque converter works to increase the torque available at the back wheels by letting the motor develop more revs, power & torque and then transmitting it. Lock up autos are used because once the motor revs beyond about a couple thousand rpm you are better off having it all locked up.

Really? Wow.

Yes there doubtless are. Eg Motor 1 puts out 500Nm at 3000rpm. Motor 2 puts out 250Nm at 6000rpm. They both have the same power outputs - just that motor 2 is spinning twice as hard to produce that power. Yes it does work. Torque can be falling as power output is still rising. Motors never make their maximum power at the same revs as the maximum torque. That is why you see two figures quoted in car brochures, for example. Yes you are reading it wrong.

If you want the torque output of the motor it is easy. Divide the powah output by the engine speed. Powah measured in Watts (Watts equals kW times 1000) Engine speed measured in radians per second (Which equals rpm times 2 times pi divided by 60). That will give you the number in Newton metres. 9.81 Newtons is the force exerted by one kg of mass under the influence of gravity. So there is your year 10 science lecture for the day. Tractive effort can be best understood as the end result of the engine torque after it has found its way through the gearbox/diff/tyres. It will be at is highest at peak engine torque in the lowest available gear.

Just from my experience (& this an observation only) the 600 degree fluid )Motel) that gets flushed out of my calipers/lines comes out black. As in dark as dogs guts black. But even at that I have never managed to boil it. The pads (DS2500) go away before that happens. Atleast Ferodo publish a chart. Others like Project Mu only quote a lower & upper friction coefficient. Which is completely useless. But you are right - figures can lie & liers can figure. What a chart will tell you is how consistent the pad friction level is across a given temperature range. Which can tell you an awful lot about a pad. I am a big fan of the Ferodo pads. But be sure you get the right ones you need. The stuff Repco sells is not the motorsport product & even at that the DS2500 & DS3000 many people use are at the low end of the range.

My favourite other term is carbon fibre seat covers. By which they mean arse burning vinyl. Just like you Grandad's HQ Holden. JDM: the new sex spec.

I am trying to remember why my 32 lines did not fit (or seem to fit). They were a bit different. It was easier for me in the end to get some new lines seeing as I upgraded everything else. The Brembo bots are 1.5mm pitch, the Sumitomos are 1.25mm like most of the other Nissan stuff.

Your price of $1k may be a little high as even the obvious importer lists them at a discount to that figure. But you are right in that $3k for an TE37 in 18" is a non starter given the current exchange rate. Other of the Volk rims are doable within that budget. I would be happier paying a bit more than that for the real thing than paying for a knock off.

A few things about the rears that I discovered doing the conversion: The inner pads wear like a bastard if you don't remove the stone guard. The upper outer link on the rear suspension is pretty close to the guard so be a bit carefull that you don't get too much heat onto the bushes. I taped mine over with some metallic tape so help reflect the heat. The guard (from memory) hooks in under the hand brake shoes so you can't remove all of it. Oh and the hoses from the R33 are too short for the 32's.

You sure? DBA list the povvo pack R32 GT-R rears as 297 dia x 18 thick. The R33 & R32 Vspec are 300 dia & 22 thick. The other thing you need to do when bolting up a Brembo rear to a non Vspec R32 is bash the stone guard to get it out the way. The bit near the hub fouls so bash it gently - with a hammer.

For $3k you can buy genuine & new - import them but be prepared to wait a while to receive them.

IMHO for the money, no. If you are out of adjustment you can probably find a sway bar that is both lighter & sitffer. Eg Cusco. Other than that they work fine with the ordinary bushes.

Look I would be last person to defend Dotars, but realy, so what? How many people are going to live overseas for 12 months or more then want to return (permanantly) to Oz with their car twice within 5 years? Yeah I can understand the frustration with the lack of communication (not just Dotars but most govt departments) but how many people would the change actually affect? Or is it just targetted at the, ummmm, "prestige" end of the market?

Well the way the FIA are messing about with the rev limits you will probably get to hear a 1.2 litre four cylinder petrol motor pulling 4000rpm by about 2012.

The thing you need to be carefull of is the hype the drift %#^$ers come up wtih in regard to castor. Yes it helps. But at small angles and in small amounts of lock it is far less influential than people think.

Now that I think about it I am not even sure they have a drivers airbag. Half of them have steel wheels & povvo pack brakes. On the upside you get no active rear diff & a decent set of ratios in the 5 speed box (Not 6) plus some other fun stuff. At the end of the day they come like that (stripped) so people can use them as race/rally cars. for which you don't need compliance. Which begs the question - what do you want it for?

AFAIK one of the noteable things that the RS lacks is side anti intrusion bars. This may be a sticking point with the SEVS/RAWS compliance.

Please don't confuse damper settings with spring settings. The spring will define how much roll you have in mid corner (along with sway bars etc). The damper won't. Adjustable shocks aren't worth a pinch of sh!t unless you pay huge money to Penske's etc. I am not advocating buying shit Chinese rubber. I am simply stating that with second hand tyres you are inheriting the previous owners wear patterns & then superimposing your own. Which is less than usefull. For what it is worth the inside of my tyres wear too. Mostly on the rear as it is wheelspin that kills them. Are the fronts you have fron the back end of someone elses car?

A few things: 1. Find a photo of your car cornering & then look at the outside wheel/tyre. That will tell you what is going on as much as anything. 2. You wont learn anything running on second hand tyres. 3. 2.5 degrees camber is not much nor for that matter is 5.5 degrees castor. The effect of 5.5 degrees castor is not great when you have a quarter a turn of lock on the car. 4. What are your front toe setings? 5. 8kg is stiff. 6. Everyone you speak to will have a theory. Most of them will be wrong. Mine included.

I had a hunt at idle in my R32 GT-R. The highly technical solution was to adjust the screw on the front of the AAC valve, ie turn it clockwise to lower the idle speed, turn it anti clockwise to raise it. The hunt went away & it now idles at the setting the ECU tells it to. Which is about 1100rpm for a power FC. Basically the valve does two things: Allows more air in for a cold idle. Controls the air (hence the idle speed when the engine is warm. It is buried under the inlet manifold next to cylinder 4 or thereabouts. If the motor is hunting it is usually that it is getting too much air for the desired idle speed as programmed into the ECU.