TheTunersGroup

Hi handbrake, we were talking about R35 GT-R wheel options on another forum tonight - thought you may find this of interest ... here's an excerpt from that discussion ...

Hi All, I had a meeting last week with a company who we are thinking of getting to do some fabrication work for us, and in their workshop I found this ... How cool is that ?! - Adam

Hi Michael, We have the green - amber - red straight model in stock ready to ship. If you go to this page on our site, just select that model in the pulldown menu at the top of the page, add it to your cart then proceed to the checkout, and you're good to go ... http://www.tunersgroup.com/Online_Store/Sh...ght_System.html - Adam

Hi All, Following our announcement today that we have been made an official supplier for Shift-I shift lights (click here for more info ) ... we are now also able to announce that we have now been made an official supplier of the full range of AP Racing products. AP Racing is based in the UK and has been on the podium constantly for the last 30 years. Some of their innovations include 97mm multi-disc clutches that transmit close to 1000 bhp, and their mindblowing carbon brakes range. In Grand Prix Racing, AP Racing's success started with the incredible Auto Unions and has continued uninterrupted ever since to the championship winning Williams, McLarens, Renaults, and Ferraris. At the end of the 2007 season AP Racing had notched up an incredible 616 Formula One GP wins for cars using its brakes and/or clutches. We are now able to supply the full range of AP Racing road and competition components - this includes the AP Racing brake components, brake calipers, brake rotors / disks ... .. the AP Racing Formula big brake kits (pictured below is one of AP Racing's Skyline GTR kits) ... ... the AP Racing metallic clutches, and AP Racing carbon-carbon clutches (drooling here at this photo ) ... As part of the same agreement, we are now also able to supply the full range of road and competition brake pads from Endless, Performance Friction, and Ferodo ... So as you can probably tell, it's been a lot of work to get these supplier agreements put together, but we're absolutely psyched to now be able to supply AP Racing, Endless, Performance Friction, and Ferodo's winning products. - Adam

Hi All, We've been working our tails off the last few weeks here, and one of the things we have been working on has been getting appointed as an official supplier of Shift-I shift lights - it's now official so we can announce it. This is the Shift-I shift light installed on a tacho ... They are made right here in Australia, and are without doubt the best engineered and best thought out shift light system I have ever seen. Here are 3 animated demos of how the Shift-I works ... There are 4 models of the Shift-I ... Shown above are the two versions with green - amber - red shift lights, with the straight version at top and the curved version below. Shown above are the two versions with blue - red shift lights, with the straight version at top and the curved version below. You can mount the curved version around your tacho or mount the straight version virtually anywhere. Here are two photos of a Shift-I unit mounted on one of our demo display stands. It is shown here mounted to a CNC machined perspex mount used for display purposes only - do not use perspex in any steering system on any vehicle ... They are simple to install too - it only requires three wires to be connected to your car - a positive wire, an earth wire, and a wire to a tacho signal. We're stoked to be able to sell an Aussie engineered and Australian made product, and since they are made right here in Australia, there is no import duty or currency fluctuations to deal with. Plus shipping on them is great value coz they don't have to be shipped to Australia from overseas. The absolute icing on the cake though is the price - retail pricing is just AU$176 including GST We have a link to an online interactive demo of the Shift-I on our site. You can find the link to the interactive demo, full info on the Shift-I and order one for your own car here ... http://www.tunersgroup.com/Online_Store/Sh...ght_System.html And yes, I have bought one for my own car Like I've said many times on the forum, "If I wouldn't fit a product to my own car, you won't find us trying to sell it to you". - Adam

Hi All, We have just added the Works Bell Column Shifter to our catalog. The Works Bell Column Shifter can be used with the factory Nissan steering wheel. Originally designed by Works Bell for the 350Z and Infiniti G35, we have had a number of enquiries from customers with Nissan Skyline V35's who want a paddle shifter but also want to keep the factory Nissan steering wheel. So knowing how many parts are shared between the 350Z, Infiniti G35 and Skyline V35, we asked Works Bell if this system can be used on a V35 Skyline. It turns out that it can be used on some V35 Skylines. If you want to use one on your V35 Skyline, drop us an email with the exact month and year build date of your V35 Skyline, and we'll check with Works Bell's engineers if it will work on your car or not. For more info about the Works Bell Column Shifter, please see this page ... http://www.tunersgroup.com/Online_Store/Wo...mn_Shifter.html And of course the Works Bell Paddle Shifter NEO (for use with aftermarket steering wheels) can similarly be used on a number of Skylines. Works Bell manufacture the Matchless Crowd Racing paddle shifter for MCR (see this post for more info ... http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/Wo...er-t240837.html ), so Works Bell have a lot of experience with Skyline Paddle Shifters. See this page for more info on the Works Bell Paddle Shifter NEO kit... http://www.tunersgroup.com/Products/Works_...addleshift.html CONTACTING US PLEASE NOTE: If you want to contact us about this product, please contact us via the email address listed on our contact us page below, not via private message on the forum. We have had to turn off private messaging on the Skylines forum because we had no way of keeping track of which PM's we had replied to and we do not want our customer service levels to suffer due to missed replies etc. Our contact details can be found at: http://www.tunersgroup.com/Contact_Us/ - Adam

You'd have to check with your local authorities regarding the legality of using of quick releases on road cars on public roads. - Adam

HEADROOM ISSUES ON OUR TIME ATTACK CAR We're having a similar problem with headroom on our time attack project car. We're lowering the roofline to cut down on frontal area, but of course that reduces headroom with the seat in a more upright position. The photos above are of the same short windscreen and roof which we'll be running. The post with photos about our headroom issues with the lowered roofline is here ... http://forum.jdmstyletuning.com/showpost.p...mp;postcount=41 The thread about our time attack project starts here ... http://forum.jdmstyletuning.com/showthread.php?t=10852 Lowering seats and custom seat mounts is definitely the kind of thing that needs to done by a professional engineer especially if it is going to be road registered. The seat mounting system needs to be absolutely rock solid. So what we're looking at is reclining the seat (by using a side mount seat) and mounting it as low as possible, but with the side mounts attached to rails for fore and aft adjustment. The seat we are looking at is the Recaro Pro Racer HANS SPA - full carbon kevlar jobs which only weigh 4.5kg. We're looking at using some late 70's model 911 seat rails which are very very compact and almost flat in cross section, so they will allow us to get the seat very low since we don't have the added height of a thick seat rail to deal with. From memory they are less than 10 mm thick but i'd have to check the exact thickness. We have a trade account with Porsche if you want a set - as far as I know Porsche still have new stock of them. The issue on our time attack car is the width between the stock mountings for the factory seats - we'd prefer not to cut them out, so we want a seat that can fit between the factory mountings so the bottom of the seat sits lower than the factory mounting points. If you look at this photo of a 911 seat setup, you can see how there is quite a bit of height between where the seat rails attach and the floor - we're trying to get back some of that space ... So our thinking is that we'll attach Porsche or Recaro low profile rails to the stock seat attachmentment points on the chassis, then get a U shaped cradle made up that bolts onto the top of those rails with the bottom of the U as close to the floor as possible. The seat's adjustable side mounts will then attach to the cradle, and then the seat attaches to the side mounts. Or we may attach the runners to the U shaped cradle under the seat, but we think that by attaching the runners to the cradle then the seat on top the runners, the height of the seat would be higher since the runners move the seat upwards by the thickness of the runners - whereas if we attach the runners to the factory attachment points on the chassis, then attach the cradle to the runners and the seat to the cradle, then we can cancel out the thickness of the runners by designer a deeper U-shaped cradle - the depth of the cradle can then cancel out the height of the runners. That way we end up with both fore and aft adjustment on the sliders, and angle adjustment of the racing seat on the side mounts, so we can tweak the seat position as much as we want, and get the bottom of the seat as close to the floor as we can safely get it. Here's a photo of a Porsche seat rail ... Or Recaro also do a nice low profile seat rail - here's a photo of one ... - Adam

Hi Scathing - I didn't know you were on this forum too Yeah you're exactly right about Aussie parts on cars overseas. I didn't know they run Tein gear on the Herrod's ute - interesting. We are thinking of adapting some Tein gear for use on our Time Attack car - I don't think Tein makes an off the shelf kit for a '71 911 - Adam

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Hi All, We now have the Works Bell Toshiki Yoshioka ToshiKing Gear Knobs available as fitted to Yoshioka's AE86 D1GP car ... This is a photo of the ToshiKing Gear Knobs ... More info is at ... http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/Wo...io-t242712.html - Adam

Hi All, We now have the Works Bell Special Edition Toshiki Yoshioka ToshiKing Gear Knobs / Shift Knobs available as shown below ... This is the exact same model of shift knob as used by Toshiki Yoshioka on his Toyota AE86 D1GP car. These shift knobs are 100% made in Japan. They are manufactured from high quality Black Polyacetal and available for Nissan and Toyota fitments (and may also fit other vehicles depending on the size and thread of your gear lever - see below for gear lever thread sizes). It features the exclusive Yoshioka ToshiKing logo at the base of the gear knob ... These gear knobs are part of Works Bell's collaboration project where new products are developed in direct collaboration with and with design input from leading Japanese drift teams and drivers like Team Orange and Toshiki Yoshioka. This is Yoshioka's AE86 ... MACHINED ALLOY INSERTS - NOT CHEAP PLASTIC SLEEVES Instead of cheap plastic sleeves like many gear knob manufacturers use, each Works Bell Yoshioka ToshiKing gearknob includes 3 machined alloy sleeves (shown above) that thread into the body of the gear knob to allow you to fit the gearknob to your car's shift lever. Alloy sleeves for the following gear lever thread patterns are included ... * M12 (12mm metric) x 1.25 pitch * M10 (10mm metric) x 1.25 pitch * M12 (12mm metric) x 1.5 pitch I have one of these gear knobs myself, and it's a great fit in your hand. It is slightly smaller than some other gear knobs on the market, so if you have small hands and find larger gear knobs uncomfortable to use, it is excellent. My hands are largish, but this gear knob is still very comfortable in my hands - it's one of those sizes that is equally well suited to small or large hands. It's very lightweight too for the lightweight freaks HOW CAN I GET ONE ? More info, pricing and online ordering for these gearknobs is on our site at ... http://www.tunersgroup.com/Online_Store/Wo..._Shiftknob.html MORE INFO ABOUT TOSHIKI YOSHIOKA If you don't know who Yoshioka is, please see this video about his monster win in Las Vegas where he turned up with his AE86 and beat all the Americans in only his second ever trip to the US ... Click here to play the video ... http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=AM-g7gmd0i8 Here is a video of Yoshioka in his AE86 outperforming a much more powerful car in the Japanese D1 Grand Prix Series in Japan ... http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=bUBDi0zpU-A And this is a video of his AE86 being warmed up ... http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=JGnwIHeZdsI Here is an article about his monster win in Las Vegas ... http://speedhunters.com/archive/2008/07/13...g-in-vegas.aspx YOSHIOKA'S NEW DRIFT CAR And for those of you who haven't heard about it yet, this is Yoshioka's new drift car - a Lexus SC430 with a complete aero kit by the iconic Japanese tuner Tom's, and a turbo 3SGE built by Prime Garage (who also did the engine work on Toshi-king's 86) ... More info on his new car is at ... http://speedhunters.com/archive/2008/06/11...-drift-car.aspx You can find the Yoshioka ToshiKing gear knob on our site at ... http://www.tunersgroup.com/Online_Store/Wo..._Shiftknob.html - Adam

Hi funkymonkey, Yes I don't consider this a spam thread either, which is why I posted it in the general automotive discussion section rather than the parts for sale section. Thanks for your kind words - the Skylines Australia forum is definitely one of the best forums out there, and we're more than happy to be an ongoing sponsor of the forum. The forum members on here are very knowledgable and seem to really appreciate the advantages of genuine, real deal JDM parts, so this forum is a very good fit for us. - Adam

Hi Iron Chef, I had actually removed the final paragraph of my post before you posted your reply. If you want to leave it in your reply, that's up to you. As you may be aware, there are currently some issues with various companies producing quick releases that are not genuine Works Bell quick releases, and there have been some recent issues where when we have posted in some forums about that, negative comments are posted in reply ... so I assumed that your post was just more of that. So apologies if I misinterpreted your reply. I didn't mean anything personal by it. I normally just post a link to this article in response ... http://www.bespokeventures.com/blog/?p=1002 And then this one ... http://www.tunersgroup.com/TunerWire_Live/...eit_Wheels.html We had some success this week when we managed to have some quick releases which were not genuine Works Bell quick releases removed from Yahoo Japan. Any thread in which products are mentioned which are sold by the people posting the thread are always seen as commercial by some people. Of course many forum members on various forums simply don't understand that without companies like us who provide revenue to forums thru sponsorship, there would simply be no forums. Any posts from forum sponsors are often going to have some overlap between editorial content and product info - it's simply unavoidable. It'd be ridiculous if we said ... "Un-named parts from an un-named Japanese manufacturer fitted to V8 Supercar" Great to hear you're happy with it They really are an absolutely top quality bit of gear. Yes I agree completely ! - Adam

Hi 2rismo, Our prices change regularly depending on the exchange rate of the Aussie dollar vs the Japanese Yen, but the current price is always on our site. The version for 6-bolt Momo & 6 bolt Nardi road car style steering wheels is called the GTC. You can check the latest price on it here ... http://www.tunersgroup.com/Online_Store/Wo...ck_Release.html The version for 3-bolt competition steering wheels is called the GTC-R. You can check the latest price on it here ... http://www.tunersgroup.com/Online_Store/Wo...ilt_System.html I'm not sure which steering wheel you are asking about. You can check the latest price on the Works Bell Steering Wheels here ... http://www.tunersgroup.com/Online_Store/br...ing_Wheels.html RELEASE HANDLES The glove friendly release handle from the GTC-R, and the smaller release handle from the GTC are interchangeable, so we are talking to Works Bell in Japan at the moment about the options to have the 6-bolt Momo & 6 bolt Nardi road car style steering wheels compatible version (the GTC) available with the glove friendly release handle from the GTC-R. If you look at the photo above of the GTC, you can see where the left side of the modular release handle bolts to the release lever, so it is pretty simple to unbolt the GTC's standard release lever (shown in the photo above) and bolt on the glove friendly release handle from the Rapfix GTC-R (see photo below). This is the glove friendly release handle as shown on the GTC-R ... So that way, we'd have a version that is compatible with 6-bolt Momo & 6-bolt Nardi road car style steering wheels but with the glove friendly release handle. The end of the Rapfix GTC that attaches to the steering boss / hub has a 6 bolt (PCD 70mm) bolt pattern, the same bolt pattern as used on Momo steering bosses / hubs, so it can be bolted straight into any car with a compatible Momo boss kit / hub. Works Bell also makes a short boss designed to compensate for the additional length of a quick release and prevents setting the steering wheel too close to the driver. Here's a photo of it ... And if you have a Nardi boss kit / hub, Works Bell makes a Momo <=> Nardi Conversion spacer, so the quick release can be attached to a Nardi pattern boss kit / hub. The conversion spacer is a very useful product which allows you to fit compatible Momo bolt pattern products to Nardi bolt pattern products and vice versa. Here's a photo of it ... Yep our Works Bell Rapfix II Quick Release and Works Bell Original Steering Wheel giveaway is still open. Details on it are here ... http://www.tunersgroup.com/win.html - Adam

And by the way, Neil Crompton's comments in the TV telecast were not solicited by us - I met & spoke to Neil Crompton for the first time last Wednesday, at a product launch for another manufacturer which Neil was the guest speaker at, 11 days AFTER the Bathurst telecast. Morris & Ingall's team called us prior to the L&H 500 at Phillip Island wanting to get a Works Bell Rapfix GTC-R for their V8 Supercar. One of Morris' engineers had heard about Works Bell's products and they wanted to fit a tilting GTC-R because Morris is taller than Ingall, and Morris was having issues getting in and out of the car with the car set up in a driving position that both Morris & Ingall could use comfortably. The simple fact of the matter is that when you are a company like ours that only sells the very highest quality products available, it is inevitable that those parts are going to end up on race cars at the very highest levels of motorsport, and when those parts provide a competitive advantage to the teams that use them, they get mentioned in TV coverage. You simply can't buy that kind of publicity - the only way to get it is by making the highest quality quick releases in the world. - Adam

Hi Iron Chef, With the greatest respect, we are an official business trader / sponsor of the Skyline's forum (see the "Business Trader" icon on the left under our username), so the revenue we provide to the forum helps the forum pay their bills and cover the massive costs of hosting a forum this large. The topic of this thread is "JDM Parts On An Aussie V8 Supercar" not "Buy A Works Bell Rapfix GTC-R Quick Release". The reason this topic was posted is because JDM parts being fitted to an Aussie V8 for a race like the Bathurst 1000 is both newsworthy and of interest to forum members. Some forum members on a number of forums seem to be very quick to criticise anyone posting any posts which mention products they sell (even from official business traders / sponsors), but without the revenue provided to forums by companies like ours, many forums would simply not exist. So arguably without support from companies like ours who sponsor forums, forums would have no revenue, and potentially there would simply be no forums. Unlike magazines, many forums' only source of revenue is from official forum business traders and sponsors like us. - Adam

Hi 2rismo, We just got a reply from Japan on FIA approval. Works Bell spoke to the agent of the FIA in Japan and were advised that the FIA do not have any rules on quick releases. FIA rules are more about which parts are homologated for cars in FIA championships etc. FIA production car homologation is why you see "homologation specials" as in many cases FIA Homologation is all about homologating parts to set a baseline for how cars can be modified in certain classes of racing (particular classes where cars are supposed to be as close to stock as possible). So it looks like regulations on quick releases are handled on a racing class basis, either by the national governing body, or in some cases the management of a particular series if that series sets their own rules. We have sent detailed tech specs of all the Works Bell Quick Releases to both ANDRA and CAMS today for their technical people to look at (see the info that ANDRA sent us today in my earlier post). I'll let you know as soon as we get any info back from CAMS or ANDRA. If anyone is unsure if you can run a Rapfix GTC or GTC-R in your particular racing class, best thing will be to contact the people who manage that class or racing series and see if they have any particular rules on quick releases. - Adam

I just received this from the technical department at ANDRA (Australian National Drag Racing Association) http://www.andra.com.au ... - Adam

Hi Adrian, We have some info about that on the Rapfix GTC-R product info page on our site ... http://www.tunersgroup.com/Online_Store/Wo...lt_System.html

Thanks 2rismo ! Yes it's definitely a very well designed and thought out product. Plus it's just great to see JDM gear on an Aussie V8 - Adam

You can view the video of it in the V8 at Bathurst & Phillip Island and see what Neil Crompton had to say about it here. Click on this link to play the video ... http://www.tunersgroup.com/Videos/Works_Be..._GTC_Video.html

It'll be based in Sydney but more than likely will be transported to various events interstate too. - Adam

I've just posted an update on the "super rare parts" changes hinted at yesterday ... http://forum.jdmstyletuning.com/showpost.p...mp;postcount=43 - Adam

Which Porsche are you talking about there N1GTR ? A friend of mine owns the Supercharged 911 ... See http://www.supercharged911.com for more info This is our Time Attack project - another early lightweight 911 ... See http://forum.jdmstyletuning.com/showthread.php?t=10852 for more info It'll look a lot like this (but won't be pink !) ... We have a really exciting change planned for that project - we're just tracking down some VERY hard to find parts then we'll post an update And this is the "car of the month" from last month from our TunerWire Live blog ... See http://www.tunersgroup.com/TunerWire_Live/...Meets_West.html for more info. You can find our TunerWire Live blog at http://www.tunersgroup.com/TunerWire_Live/ - Adam