djr81

Yeah cause Frank Williams has had no success and no hurdles to overcome in his lifetime.

This ^^ is what is wrong with F1. Other than the few front running teams no one is getting anywhere near enough funding to run. Sponsorship is almost non existant - take a look at the teams: McLaren - some Mexican randomness for next year and little in the way of mid level sponsors. I would imagine they ran at a big loss this year and will be even worse next year. Williams - Basically nothing. Lotus - Only secondary sponsorship and how many tens of millions of losses this year? Sauber - Again basically nothing other than what the pay drivers bring. Borderline going bust. Force it India - Sponsors are the owners companies. Red Bull - see above other than the Nissan money. Ferrari - Dirty cigarette money still despite them signing agreements to do otherwise. Marussia - enough said. Caterham - The have GE but not sure what that is worth. Must be losing bags of cash too. TR - shows how much coin Red Bull have to piss away. MB - Petronas and Blackberry. Cant imagine Blackberry are long for this world. As one of two car companies with teams I dont imagine they care how much they lose. Make it up by selling sht cars with truck motors to people with too much money. Anyway point is that the distribution of prize and tv money is so unbalanced it means teams down the blunt end have basically no chance of dragging their way out of it. All because the F1 bergers are hell bent on shoving cash Ferraris way. The whole system is nuts and reinforces boring, predictable races and results.

The old system used to be better. Basically you had the numbers assigned to the teams. So Tyrrell was 3 & 4, Williams 5 & 6, Lotus 11 & 12. When you won a drivers championship the champion got to use #1, his team mate number two. The team that lost the WDC got to inherit the old number. So back in the day Williams ran 27 & 28. They took the WDC from Ferrari and Ferrari inherited 27 & 28. Which is why Villeneuve ran it a couple of years later and then for many years afterwards. Anyway the system used to work because there was some stability.

No Brian Hart stickers? Nah, not so much.

Chris is from WA. We dont do AASA racing in these here parts. Think Im correct om saying the restrictors bolt straight to the turbo inlets?

They are slightly shorter and push the top of the upright slightly further forward relative to a stock items. I have the missing inserts if that helps. I bought these ages ago and was going to convert them to a bush arrangement but it got too hard and I ended up making my own. Anyway there are two in the shed at home unmarked with inserts but no bearings.

Rotors and hats or just rotors? You need to check the rotor equivalent of offset and ensure it is the same for whatever other rotor you may choose. Project Mu do a 343 rotor. It is about $2k for the pair. Stop tech do one I think.

Random, trainspotterish question. Does the amount of money the teams get from the whatever fund depend on their position in the table or the amount of points? So Williams actually scored some points last weekend but are still in the same position. So do they end up with more coin?

Well I dont really either but from what I understand - if you look at the old group buy thread he "specified" them - which from what I can remember ended up being/was the same thing as what you got from Bilstein when you ordered them anyway. Just that some people appear to have conflated this with whatever else he was doing at the time and come up with he revalved the shocks or that they were special in some particular regard.

For RAWS it will have to be taken back to stock. 89 was less constricted. Go under the old scheme if possible.

You need to find out a few things and think about a few others: 1. Can you even get it complied now? You need to check that the old scheme is still useable for the GTR. If it isnt you would be under the new scheme - if the car complies. It may not be ok under either category. 2. You need to figure out what you need to spend to get the car registered (If it can be) 3. You need to think about what it will be worth once it is registered. 4. You need to think about whether all that is worth the hassle or whether you would be better off just buying a newer, better car and wrecking the 89. I am so glad that 15 year loop hole was closed down. What the brokers were up to then was pretty ordinary.

Did he? Or is that something that was inferred. Because I have tried to find out and cannot confirm if they were ever opened.

So Bilstein now make PSS-9's for 32 GTR's? Not that they are any good anyway. Duncan out of interest what are the differences between the Bilsteins from Gary and the ones you would normally buy? Other than the extra circlip rings. But yes the fixed Bilsteins are good shocks.

I havent had time to look properly (got to love shutdowns) but the HKS oil cooler may have enough spots on the mount to plug in either the temperature sender unit or the pressure switch. There is another thread elsewhere that mentions pressure relief valves and this reference: "but you have to use a toyota filter (z418) or any with a relief valve in it)"

I have six in a motor just pulled out of my car and stripped. No rings, however.

Oh and Rb30s appear to mount the filter straght to the block a pressure switch/transmitter just behind it.

Attached are photos of the RB20 (Thanks Troy) oil filter mount. Note that there is no way to attach the oil pressure switch nor the oil temperature sender - these have to go elsewhere so its not just a straight bolt up.

Well Maldanado may yet end up at Sauber or Force it India.

Money aside, the difference is in the tracks and in the support. Broadly at a street race you will see less of the cars and what you do see will probably be slower. On the flip side the support at last years Melbourne GP was Can Am cars, V8's, Porkers with drivers you have heard of and the Living End played. Overseas support races tend to be at a lower level or of categories that you give no fk for and the concerts are nonsense that you missus may like. The unfortunate part of the GP being in Melbourne is that you then have to go to Melbourne and the track is rubbish. There is more to see but you will see less of it. Malaysia you will see more of whatever there is to see - which wont be as much. But if you smuggle some drugs home with you things will be sweet. Or just pick somewhere else and go for a weeks holiday off the back of the race.

The problem is they need coin as they dont have any other sponsorship worth much. I had hoped they could follow on from last years results but clearly this years car is a dog. Its the old story - poor car leads to no sponsorship or winnings, leads to no money spent leads to poor car etc etc etc. They have been talking it up year on year ever since BMW did the dirty on them. Got it right once, last year, but other than that it has just been slowly getting worse. You go to a GP now and you only really see a few teams being supported. Redbull & Team Cheater Adu Dhabi are there in spades. Followed by McLaren (Mostly Brits) and MB. Lotus tend to have quite abit of support but I guess that is mostly because of Kimi rather than the confected heritage. Of the rest you can barely find merch. There is a tiny bit of Caterham and Force it India about but at the races you cant even buy a team Willy tshirt if you wanted one. No one even knows who Marussia are. It is one of the bullshit things about F1 is that some teams get more in winnings for the same results as others. Mostly RB & SF given the current agreements.

Plus it will give them a much needed boost to their tech department. Time to buy Williams shares?

Well the common view of R888's on GTR's is that they suck the balls of a dog on account of there being insufficient sidewall stiffness for the weight of the vehicle.

This. In spades. There is a trade off between suspension geometry, spring and anti roll bar rates. Put simply your geometry will give you camber compensation in roll (because it has wishbones rather than MacPherson struts). How much depends on arm lengths top and bottom. The higher your spring rate and anti roll bar rate the less the car will roll (obviously) and the less the camber compensation in roll will come into effect. The more grip you have the more roll you will get. You need to balance all of those things to achieve what the tyre wants. If it is a S spec tyre (I think that is what they are calling them) like an AD08 it will be in the middle of a road tyre and an R compound in terms of camber requirement. I suspect that the reason Japanese track biased suspension is so hard is not because of the smooth circuits nor because they dont understand roll bars but more that there is no easy way of sorting the front suspension on an R32 to get the camber right and have it liveable on the road on road tyres. Be interested to hear Troys thoughts on the RE55 vs A050 differences. My impression is that the Yokies are: Less one dimensional in term of grip ie they will turn and brake/accelerate more happily than the Bridgestone. Less sensitive to suspension changes than the Bridgestones - mostly due to the crown on the treadface. Quicker by atleast half a second a minute. Need much lower pressures.

Not arrogant so much as lame. Anyway Tool is too busy redesigning his helmet every 5 minutes to worry about counting points.

Yeah but they are drug money given they are just stock components drilled or bushed differently and painted silver. The castor rod is 5mm or so shorter with a harder than stock bush The LCA has the outer mount 5mm or so further out. Is same casting. The bracket has different drill points. See the attached drawing. Pretty common for production style racers to weld/redrill and generally butcher these things. May be an option - I think Fatz did it to his 32.