djr81

Most service stickers are for kilometres or time. Eg get the thing serviced every 10,000kms or every six months. Does it necessarilly mean the car has done 100,000kms?

There are four of the covers that sit over the cams (on caps 3 & 4 as counted from the front). These are supposed to be moved to the back positions ie 6 & 7 but does anyone have any clue as to why?

Yeah if you have a Japanese car there is no point getting an imperial spanner/socket set. http://www.sidchrome.com.au/product/7443/33-piece-12-drive-socket-set-metric Dunno how it stacks up price wise but it should be ok. About $200? Also a good product are these: http://www.toolworks.com.au/sp10334-14pc-stubby-flexhead-metric-geardrive-spanner-set.html Never seen that combo elsewhere. Shame about the price, however. These are also well owrth having: https://www.alltools.com.au/shop/index.php/350/1337_TPI_Thread_Gauge_Metric_&_Imperial_

They changed the speed limiter from 180kmh to some unobtainable number. Also for what it is worth the highest octane unleaded you could buy in Australia in 1992 was ......95.

From memory the Sumitomo calliper had a 1.25 pitch and the Brembo a 1.5 But get a thread guage and check it because my memory is shot to hell these days.

1.25 or 1.5?

Maybe if people understood the difference between a facelift and a new model things would make more sense. The VB/VC/VH/VK/VL's are all basically the same car. The VK was the major mid life face lift and took the side profile from the up spec version of the Opel it was based on. If the VN (acompletely new model) looked like a VB they may have a point. The R30/R31/R32 etc were all new models. The Nissan model cycle was sufficiently short so as to not need anything much in the way of facelifts. From memory the R30 stopped in the mid 80's, the R31's in 1990 (earlier overseas), the 32's in 1993 etc etc. So they only lasted about four or five years. The local products model cycle is more like 8 - 10 years. The VB through Vl was from 79 through to 1988. The VN/VS was 88/89 to about 97/98. Numbers are all from memory so may be a bit dodgy. But the point remains a facelift is not the same as a new model. Nissan model cycles are shorter so it is therefore logical that the new model Nissans look more like each other than the new model Commodores.

Well for $20 it is not going to be top notch production. As long as it has some content I dont really mind if it is stapled together dunny paper. I get sick of buying supposedly brilliant books that have nothing new to say. Yeah the Senna book has brilliant photos & anecdotes etc all through it. Lots of good content too - a world a way from the sort of coffee table shite you so often see.

THis turned up in the Pitstop bookshop spam today. Does anyone know anything about it? Aussie Godzilla - The R32 GT-R Arrives Downunder By Damian Kringas Paperback, 148 pages Code 24532, $19.95 A great little book full of stories and anecdotes about how Nissan brought the awesome R32 GT-R to the Australian market and the feathers they ruffled in Australian touring car racing, ultimately causing the governing body to change the rules to exclude the model. Australia would be the only country outside Japan to have the honour of racing it, and for Nissan Australia it was a period of corporate turmoil and they, as a brand, would also never be the same. The R32 GT-R was dubbed Godzilla, after the city stompin' monster and culturally was compared to as an invasion - it was. The production of this little gem isn't flash, but it's an interesting part of Australian motorsport history that any touring car fan should read.

They have to have the same outside diameter otherwise the ATTESSA system thinks you are getting wheelspin all the time. Stop wanting. You should run the same size tyres front and rear. GTR's understeer and too much rear tyre will make this worse. There are a heap of threads on both of these subjects so maybe try a search.

From Grand Prix Week Our spies in the Red Bull motorhome tell us that despite informing the world at large that he wasn’t disappointed with P3 in qualifying, Sebastian Vettel may have been in tears after the press conference ...

Stop your pharken whining all of you. We get to watch it on Win. In glorious fuzzy analogue, 4:3 ratio so you cant see the drivers names down the left hand side of the screen. Broadcasts usually start at about 2.30 AM on a Monday. They dont show qualifying at all. Pharken win.

From the hat colour I would suggest Biot. http://www.biot.co.jp/

Basically an R32 is overweight and pretty hard on its tyres - particularly the front. So you could live with alot more tyre than you can fit on the (standard) things. Also you have to filter out all the fitment spam. R compounds dont need or want stretch. Also they tend to be a little larger than a nominally same sized road tyre. If it is a track tyre then you have to decide what kind: eg a proper slick or a semi slick or something else. An R32 will run a 255/40 r comp on a 9" +22 rim with a little scraping on the rear. Roll the lip of the rear guard like everyone does & you will be ok. You must adjust the suspension to make the tyres work & not to make them fit. But understand (as an example) that a 235/45/17 is cheaper than a 255/40/17 which in turn is cheaper than an 18" tyre. Also that not all sizes are available in all brands. Bridgestone dont make a 255 width in an 18" RE55 for example which is probably what you would run if you could. Anyway to answer the short question in short: Use 17x9+22 & a 255/40/17 rim. An r comp with your ride hight will foul on the lip of the rear guard so get them rolled.

I have used hose spanners for brake work. You usually end up rounding the nuts anyway. The are better than open ended spanners buy not by much. http://www.sidchrome.com.au/product/7473/5-piece-metric-flare-nut-spanner-set Now I just use vice grips for undoing stuff. Irwin have a huge range of them. Find the right size with a straight end & you will be fine. eg: http://www.irwin.com/tools/locking-tools/fast-release-locking-pliers-sets

The conventional wisdom is the Toyos (as a range ie including other than the 888)is a better tyre on a light car (relative to a hard SR2 compound RE55) and less suited to a heavy one - the sticking point is the stiffness of the sidewalls. I would reckon a GTST as being heavy but each to their own. I dont know anyone using them that prefer them to the Bridgies on a GTR put it that way. If you want to get half pregnant with regard to tyres you should include the new Yokohamas Advan Ad08 (?) on your list of stuff to look at. With regard to tire rack and motorsport tyres you have to be careful about the age of the stock. For road tyres it doesnt matter if they are a couple years old but I would be well unhappy to receive two year old R compounds for example.

It is amazing how many threads there are about semi slicks that dont talk about semi slicks. The first two tyres are not semi slicks. The third tyre is but doesnt suit heavy cars like Skylines. Go and look for some SR2 compound Bridgestone RE55's. The problem being you wont find them (or any other semi slick) in a large enough size for the money you have listed. 255/40/17's are just under $500 but 235/45/17's are cheaper and are probably what you should aim for. 18's are more expensive. In the long term if you want to save money you need to spend it on getting the suspension set up right so the tyres will live.

Really? Falcons have been running on 5W30 since the AU? Not sure about the Commodes either but I would expect something similar.

Cant argue with any of that. In its day the R32 was head and shoulders above everything else. Now it is largely just another out of date car. New technology and engineering practices will always best the old way of doing things. Which doesnt mean the old school stuff is useless by any means. I have an R32 R because 1. I love the things, particularly the engineering & 2 Because they can still be made competitive. Mystique/hype etc is fine. But when have you ever seen a Ferrari driven hard? The last lot I saw en mass was at the Perth Festical of Speed. The F40 on display looked like it had never been driven. Those on the track were driven in the same way that my Nanna used to drive. In contrast the NSX I was looking at on the weekend had over 100,000kms on the clock.

They have different cars for the short & long ovals aswell. The technology in Nascar is actually right up there. People look at the cars & sneer but the workshop engineering and preparation is every bit as good & beeter than our local stuff. Shaker rigs, predictive software the whole lot. They just cant get feedback from car sensors so there is no closing of the loop.

It used to be that every time a new model was released the journalists would confess that the previous one handled terribly but this time it is different, honest. I dont think you mean the original testarossa. I think you mean the mid 80's one. Which was horrible. I was actually looking at an NSX on Sunday. You look at it and realise the thing is really well engineered. No comparison to, say a 328 or 348. As for the McLaren I dont reckon it will sell. It doesnt have the styling to sell well - too conservative. Brilliant car but & there is nothing wrong with the McLaren brand. My argument is if the brand factor is so important what the fk does a Ferrari Segway exist for? Or bathrobes with prancing horses on them. It is just commerce nowadays.

So what you are saying is you dont actually care how good or bad they are. Which isnt much of a foundation to claim the thing is the greatest car ever made.

Back in the olden days when we wanted to check the calibration of a gee sensor we would tip the thing on its side. By doing so you imitate 1 gee lateral (or longitudinal). 30 degrees = 0.5, 45 = 0.71, 60 = 0.86 gees. If it is linear you could comfortably extrapolate from that up to 5V.

Yes it appears I am. Things people know about the F40. 1. It looks pretty. 2. It does 200MPH. 3. It uses carbon fibre/kevlar. Things most people dont care about: 1. It has a horrible 1950s technology steel space frame chassis. Welding is done by Mr Blobby. 2. The carbon does stuff all - no different to the fibreglass Ferrari used for many, many years. It is not structural in other words. Basically Ferraris are, historically, poorly engineered, poorly built, unreliable and handle badly. What I cant figure out is why so many people think so highly of them. Put the engineering of a McLaren up against a Ferrari & Ferrari gets thumped. Put the innovation of Lotus against them, same result. Put the build quility of a Porker up against them - same again. And so it goes. The only car maker with such a deeply flawed product is Bugatti. Ok maybe Maybach aswell but that is beside the point.

Well I reckon they will dump it if it keeps being unreliable and/or if rule changes mess about with the diffusers & rear end aero which may or may not make the whole thing pointless.