djr81

Big call! But you are right, 2007 may well be a high water mark. Bit like the late eigthies F1 entries. Given that Holden & Ford are starting to wind back on their largesse there will be less money in the category. Whilst this won't affect Team Wankinshaw or the likes of 888 some of the teams further down the grid may well be in struggle town. But motor racing has always been about those with the biggest budgets winning the most races. I hear what you say about the ticket prices - but there again $100 dollars or less isn't huge money to pay for a sporting event any more. That a number of the events are sold out (Wanneroo, for instance) makes it hard to criticise the circuits for their pricing structure. It usually just means one less $20 pie to be eaten on the day. I have been going to the touring car series for more years than I care to remember. Hell one year not long after the start of the category I ended up standing nest to Tomas Mazera in the que for the pisser. Is that what you mean about accessible drivers? For my 10 cents worth more than anything the cack handed way channel 7 is going about the tv broadcasting will hurt the category. As for DJR well they struggled for money ever since the dodgy brothers over at Westpoint shafted them. Hopefully there are enough bogons out there wanting the Jim Beam merch to keep the mob formerly of Daisy Hill up front. Voltaire famously said of the holy Roman empire that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. In the same way I wouldn't call the racing exciting - putting the wet races to one side most of it is processional. The offtrack politics & goings on is more interesting than the racing....

Well I don't know about everyone else, but it doesn't come as much of a surprise to me that channel 7 is making a complete dogs breakfast of the broadcasts. You can bet your house the the remainder of the season being messed about to allow them to broadcast the AFL.

How big is the PWR cooler?

Well I take the viewpoint that they are paid huge amounts of money for a reason. Teams also spend huge money on getting a few tenths advantage - so why hand it to team Wankinshaw just because Kelly can't drive? By the way - during the podium presentation he looked like someone had run over his dog. Any truth to that rumour? BB you are probably right about Ingall. He looks for all the world like he has lost his mojo. Can't qualify worth a spit. Current rumour is he may sign for Holden again. Dunno for whom, however.

He stuffed up. Had he done so on any other corner he would have lost (many) places. To get an advantage out of it is just plain wrong. A drive through would have been appropriate.

Just as an aside if anyone wants a free weekly motorsport newspaper/magazine try www.mnews.com.au It is the old motorsport news fortnightly magazine/paper published elctronically. Err, it's free. As BB said, Skaife had a dog of a weekend. Not sure what has happened to him. Maybe the stress of the ownership debacle is taking more out of him than people realise. Lastly, did I hear Gary Rodgers right when he passed comment on what he was going to do to Lee Holdsworth when he got back to the pitlane? What odds Ingall for an SBR drive next year? Not good I suspect.

The bit I still fail to understand is how (P)Rick Kelly got away with missing four corners of the circuit without penalty. I understand the reasons behind the stewards allowing it to happen (safety reasons basically) but I fail to understand why anyone should get away with such an error without any penalty. Murphy was going off his brain on the radio. Secondly, was it just me who missed seeing a yellow flag before the last corner in race 2?

Yeah, look, please don't get me wrong. I am not for a moment saying don't install a cage. Infact quite the opposite. They are of huge benefit in making a car safer on the track. That & a good seat. But I am simply saying that 40kg of weight can be felt & measured in your lap times. If you want to save the kilos start by chucking out your fuly sik subwoofa.....whatever that is. In summary I would suggest spending the extra bit of money for the higher strength steels & to think carefully with regard to where the tubes go near the driver, ie your proximity to them. The other point is that roll cages which pick up on the suspension towers (or subframe mounts etc) are massively more effective than what a half cage ever could be. The diagonals in the cage are the important bits for giving you torsional rigidity.

If anyone watched the race from Winton on the weekend you would have seen the brief highlights from the '85 ATCC race. It was nice to actually see the drivers in the cars. Damn cars nowadays you can't see anything because the poor schmuck behind the wheel is sitting on the floor somewhere behind te B pillar.

Thought: Nissan generally didn't put stuff in the car for no reason. The module on the passenger side is the ATTESSA computer - so by all means if you are tired of AWD then bin it. The other computer is the HICAS unit. If you want to remove its function the easiest way to do it is get a Tomei HICAS canceller or a bar that replaces the steering rack. Don't remove the computer if your rear steering rack is still active otherwise you will be on your way to the mother of all accidents......

Think of the chassis as basically an undamped torsional spring linking your front & rear suspension. Chassis stiffness is measured in Nm per degree, ie how many newton metres of torque do you need to put into the thing to get it to deflect one degree. Typically it is in the realms of the 10s of thousands of Nm/degree for a car like a Skyline. Compare this to spring rates of a few kg/mm & you should see it has less effect than what you may think. The reason that race teams chase chassis stiffnes is simply that it makes tuning their suspension easier. Sometimes it makes it work BETTER, but most commonly it makes it easier to tune. Again it goes back to the chassis being an undamped torsional spring. It is a bit difficult to allow, say, the rear suspension to transfer load to the front by a change in roll centre if it has to go through a heap of sloppy chassis. Also it is harder to get the dampers working correctly if they can only control some of the movement of the vehicle.

40 kg is very noticeable - chuck a couple bags of cement or something in the car one day & go for a drive. It doesn't have that much of an effect on lateral grip, but will reduce the longitudnal gees your car can kick out. You will easily tell the difference. If you want a lighter roll cage you need better quality steel. This was doubtless covered at the talk fest/night thingo but the general principle is as follows: The different grades of steel make little difference to the stiffness of the cage - the design is the important factor here. But the different grades of steel can make a big difference to the weight of the cage. A stronger (higher yield strength) material can be made as strong without being anywhere near as heavy. Essentially this is because the yield strength of the steel changes much more than the youngs modulus. With regard to spring rates front & rear they are almost always softer at the back to give the car traction. It isn't really related to front/rear weight distribution as much as you might think.

If I remember rightly some of the Euro chassis caused their Australian owners no end of trauma. Things like relocated suspension pick up points, modified inner guards etc etc. Stuff that is difficult to put right in a hurry. Yeah info on the ETCC is hard to find. If you can get a copy of Brock/Moffat On the road to Spa it is a worthwhile investnent for the Group A tragic. But try www.pitstop.net.au http://www.pitstop.net.au/view/dvds-car-touring-cars/ Have a look at their DVD selection from Duke videos. Covers the ETCC for 83, 84, 85, 86 & 88. Obviously with the '87 WTCC is wasn't so interesting. They are $40 each, but & run for a couple hours each.

Hey Baron are the gloves for driving, or is it just a gay pride thing? Don't forget take something to drink & something to eat. Take a hat firstly to hide the helmet hair you will be suffering from & secondly to stop the widows peak getting sunburned. The rags are handy to mop up all the PS fluid that Nissans habitually piss all over the engine bay. Oh, and try not to stick it in the wall as that can tend to ruin your day.

1) new rotors +pads front and rear (had to replace them anyways) Make sure they are properly heat cycled & bedded in. 2) Bought some 5.1 dot brake fluid. Chuck that shit in the bin & get some Motul RBF600. 3) new engine oil and plugs in already (well tomorrow) Clean your air filters. Go with a FULL tank of fresh petrol. You will be gobsmacked by how much it uses. Get a GOOD tyre pressure gauge & use it. Take some blue insulation tape. A few basic tools (Spanners etc) can come in handy as can a small supply of oil/coolant & particularly power steer fluid. Also rags & some window cleaner is usefull more often than not. Put a coat of wax on it before you go because it will finish the day covered in sh!t. Makes it alot easier to clean afterwards....

Check that the outside air temperature sensor is working. It is in front of the radiator. Put a hairdrier or something on it to warm it up and/or use a thermocouple to check it is getting atleast a half decent air temp measurement.

Ah, ok, my mistake. As far as I know Frank Gardiner's M3 owed pretty much all the mechanical stuff to the factory. There wasn't much of what you might call local development - just tuning. As for the Sierra, well in '87 ours were an embarrasment (Other than Mad Andrew Miedecke spelling!) but by '88 DJR & others had their act together. Moffat's were always imports, ie Rouse built for '87 & Eggenberger from then on. Brock's were Rouse cars. A mate of mine worked for a dealership owned and/or managed by John Clelands brother. He bailed him (john) up one day about the 92 or 93 Bathurst race when Brocks tailshafts leapt into the cabin & scared 7 shades of shite out of him. The in car of that is priceless. Cleland also tells a very good story about him winding Kim Jones up about having to drive in piss stained overalls.

Yeah I sort of had thee feeling that they deliberately specced it so as to not threaten the M3. But it won at Bathurst, which the M3 never did....

Well for my 10 cents I don't think that the Gibson cars gave second best to anyone in terms of build quality & speed. The 32 proved that & the 31's were produced by the same people. Plus Freddo's cars had some useful cheater components, like the dodgy front spoiler & the intercooler as a start.... It must have been '88 that Grice turned up to Bathurst driving a Commodore in a Nissan racesuit! My vague recollection was the the Bathurst yearbooks (Not the Great Race annuals, the other ones) had a brief rundown of the ETCC, but not a great writeup on the Nissan's. BTW, how is Win Percy nowadays. Last time I heard he had badly hurt his back?

Get your hand controller & go through the settings menu to the maps. They are, like Baron said 20x20 maps. Just record the values in each box for each map.

Pros? They are fully sik, bro. Cons? They are illegal & entirely unnecessary. Do they do any damage? To the atmosphere, yes. To your eardrums, probably. To everyone elses serenity, definately. do you still use exsisting 02 senors? If you want. Do they increase performace? Relative to a proper system, not really. Also do they require external waste gate? No, but they are much more common on an external gate. Im just using the standard dumps with twin 2860r turbs and I think they just have internal wastegates.... 2860's have an internal gate & a half arsed divider between them. If you get yourself a half decent dump pipe (eg a HKS or some of the longer types if you are going for a new exhaust) you will get the most of the benefit of a screamer pipe without all of the hassle. It will be legal & wont compromise performance. You have two turbos - you need a pair of dumps. I have a question. How did you decide you wanted something you know nothing about?

I don't think he means he has no sway bars currently - I think he means would aftermarket ones help? The answer to that is - a bit, but not as much as you would think.

Can you please provide some more info on the control arms - ie what brand/where did they come from etc?

Front one full soft, rear one full hard.

I find it interesting that everyones focus appears to be on the longevity of the turbo & the exhaust manifolds. Has anyone bothered to enquire about what this stuff does to the life of your exhaust valves? Burnt valves, anyone?