MLCrisis

Hi guys. I got a set of 5 mats, complete with badges, from Just Jap back in February this year. They were used but in very good nick - although the buggers didn't bother cleaning them before packaging them off to me. I suppose I paid extra for the authentic Nissan dirt. I can't remember how much they were, but they were about half the price that UAS wanted for a set. The Just Jap guys were friendly and quick to reply on the email too. Hope this helps, like like like. (Sorry, I forgot to say "like" every other word, so threw in a few just to make you feel at home, sorta, like.) Cheers.

Oh yeah - first company car in Oz was a 1992 Pintara T hatchback. The only manual in WA, according to the dealer. Unfortunately, the "T" didnt stand for turbo - not sure what it stood for ..... But it was a good car, kept the family happy and away from Commodores for 5 years. Didn't realise at the time that the Pintara was related to the Skyline.

I think I may have started a tad before one or two of you, being an old git. Learned to drive in an RAF Landrover on a gliding field - lots of muck and towing. 1965 Mini Countryman (the wagon without the wood) - bought it for 80 quid. My brother stuck it through a fence. 1969 Mini van - great fun for 85 quid. Managed to get 9 people in it on several occasions between pubs in Cheshire, UK. 1973 Vauxhall Firenza 2.3 Sport SL (with 7 dial dash & go fast bits - rare & good fun). Fantastic fun in the snow and ice! 1978 Datsun 260Z - great fun on winding roads. Rusted to death. Then heaps of company cars in UK, mostly Vauxhall Cavaliers, but included brief periods with a Renault 20, Range Rover, Jag XJ6, Rover 3.5 V8 SD1, VW Passat wagon. 1988 Suzuki Vitara soft top - first car in Oz (other than company car) - great fun on the beach. Kids loved it. Kept it for ten years!1997 R33 GTST - current toy. Definitely satisfying the mid-life crisis - hence the name! Most fun time in a car ever (apart from the back seat!) was in an Austin Healey Sprite Mk 1 - the Frogeye. Now one of those with a turbo motor would be interesting .......... !!

Driving a Ford Boredom hire car in Scotland in the winter, I hit some black ice at about 70 mph going into a fast bend on a major, but fortunately empty road. After over-correcting at least twice, with the back end going all over the place, I ended up going backwards along the road, still skidding, at about 40 mph. I remember thinking "Which way do you turn the wheel when skidding backwards?". I eventually came to a rest, embedded boot first in a hedge, just above a big drop into a field. I had never seen black ice before, the tarmac just looked slightly wet. When I got out of the car, it was so slippy that I fell straight on my backside. It was like an ice rink. Shortly afterwards, I got a lift from the local postman back into the nearest town and had a fun time explaining all to the hire company. Not a problem I am likely to see in WA!

Funniest accident I know of was a mate of mine back in Manchester UK. His Dad owned a chain of butchers shops. They were taking delivery of four new vans from the Ford dealer and stuffed up on numbers of people - they all went in one car and they needed his Dad to sign the cheque. His brother had driven them there and wouldn't let his Dad drive his car back (whatever it was, his pride and joy) 'coz his Dad was such a crap driver. So his Dad gets to drive one of the new vans, which was not planned. So they all go in a line to drive off the dealer's forecourt. The first guy sees big gap in traffic before a bus coming, so pulls out OK. The 2nd guy sees the gap and pulls out OK too, followed by the 3rd guy who sees that the gap before the bus is narrowing fast, but can just nip in. Their Dad, ace driver that he is, thinks all is fine and just follows the first three without looking. The bus removed the front end of the brand new van, writing it off, while the back wheels were still on the dealer's forecourt. I have always been impressed by this achievement!! Their Dad, only mildly stunned by events, blamed the three in front of him for leading him out when there was not enough room!!! Wonderful.

Hi Guys. I was brought up in the land of the rusty car, the UK, and I have fought many long battles with the stuff on various cars, including a beautiful 260Z, which dropped to bits around me. So I can tell you that the only way to cure it is to cut it out and replace it with good metal. All of these things that claim to convert rust back to good metal are crap. I know 'coz I spent hundreds on them!! And I diligently brushed and painted and coated even beyond their expectations - and it still didn't bloody work! I know the UK is a harsher climate than sunny WA, but if the stuff has set in you will be very fortunate indeed if such a surface treatment will be effective. Theoretically they should work, but in practice they never do. Just don't spend too much time by the ocean on windy days! Cheers.

Hi again. If you want to get heavy in the engineering, take a look at this paper, dated 1941, from the Langley Memorial Aeronautical College in the States. It gives all you ever wanted to know about calculating intercooler efficiency. Cheers. http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/reports/1940/naca-tn-781/

sfitzy & all, The only other effect that will give a reduction in temperature (ignoring water sprays, etc) is if there is an expansion in the gas, e.g. a 2" inlet pipe and a 3" outlet pipe. However, for a gas mixture such as air, this effect is only likely to be marginal. As for measuring the temperature in still air versus high flowing air, the velocity of the air has no bearing on the temperature of the air at any one point. All that happens is that the moving air gives better heat transfer to the measuring device and you get a more accurate measurement - the temperature of the air is not different (and any difference in measurement between the two would be minor in any case). Wind chill is simply an illustration of this: if you are standing in still conditions with an ambient temperature of -5C, you will feel fairly cold, but the heat transfer from you to the air is inefficient, because there is no movement. If there is a wind, or if you are running or riding a bike, then the air is moving past your skin and the heat transfer is increased significantly. So although the air temperature is still only -5C, you feel a lot colder. There are two effects, one is more efficient heat transfer due to better heat transfer coefficients and the other is the mass of air moving past and taking the heat away. What this means in terms of your intercooler, is that when you are driving along at, say, 50 km/hr plus, you have good turbulent flow over the i/c and you get good heat transfer. Stand still in traffic and you get bugger all flow (in a stock i/c) plus crap heat transfer coefficients and so get bugger all cooling. An FMIC isn't as bad, because the fan maintains some flow even when you are stationary. There are some turbo calculators on the net (e.g. www.turbofast.com.au) which may help you, otherwise you need some engineering text books!! As for air/water intercoolers, I believe that the reason they aren't used is that the power drain from the water pump would more than remove any power gains from increased cooling. Also, it would only really be of benefit when you are stop-go driving - hardly worth the effort! Hope this helps ('coz if it were simple, monkeys would do it!). Cheers.

Hi guys. How come GT wings get yellow stickies for supposedly being unsafe to pedestrians in a traffic accident when bullbars abound. There are utes with huge ladder attachments on a bullbar and they don't have a problem. People have roof racks for carrying God knows what that look like antlers and countless other prominent crap fitted to the front and top of cars that would splice and dice a pedestrian long before they rolled over on to the back, but they don't have a problem. But stick an aftermarket wing on a car, especially an import, and you are likely to get a ticket. I don't understand it. I read the article in the latest Autosalon mag about what's legal and what's not - the NSW cop in that stated that such wings are illegal because they are unsafe to pedestrians in a road traffic accident. Compared to all this other rubbish on 4x4s, utes and everything else, this is a specious argument in the extreme. Anyone any thoughts? Is this something that could be raised with the legal eagles? Whatever the situation, next time any of you are threatened with a sticky for this, ask the cop why and ask him to compare it to bullbars, ladder holders, etc. What a load of bollocks. Sorry - just had to rant. Cheers.

Hey, neat car. I used to have a 260Z back in the UK (stock motor, gold 16" rims, red, with gold stripe, black rear spoiler). But being the UK, it fell to bits with rust. Great car, though. Had some fun, fast driving through winding roads in the Lake District. My girlfriend at the time objected to seeing a dry stone wall coming towards her, sideways, at about 80 mph, but she can't have minded too much - she has been my wife for 18 years! Have fun with it. Cheers.

Hi guys. Another engineer - couldn't help but chip in. For any heat exchanger (i.e. intercooler) to cool incoming gas to the same temperature as the coolant (i.e. ambient air) would require an infinite surface area. The most efficient heat exchangers, using fluids with good heat transfer charateristics (i.e. liquids, not gases), will at best give you an approach temperature between the two streams of 5 degrees C. Gas to gas heat exchangers are much less efficient, because the heat transfer coefficient from the gas to the metal and then metal to the gas is very low, even with turbulent flow on both sides of the metal. Expansion of a gas will give you some cooling effect as well. Going from 2" to 3" pipe more than doubles the cross sectional area of the pipe, so it is a significant expansion. But the temperature drop due to such an expansion I would doubt would be significant. Anyone fancy doing PV=nRT calcs, while allowing for compressibility? Such fun.

Hi guys. Take my eye off the forum for a coupla days, and ... wew. Spirited discussion indeed. I have had my problems with cops in the past and generally found a couple of general things apply: If they know you and your car, they leave you alone, if they are happy with what they know (if you see what I mean!!). So if you are outside your normal area, in a high profile car, then expect attention (and btw, this applies to guys my age too - I am 46). Once stopped, be polite. Even if you are unfortunate enough to come across a vindictive, self-important, uniform collector, or you're having a bad day. Deep breaths and smile! "Can I help you, Officer?" Incidentally, I usually am as polite to them as they are to me. I even once had one cop ask me why I was being so aggressive and when I told him it was because he was as well, he calmed down and things went much more smoothly. I know this is likely to make some of you groan, but most cops are OK people. They don't have two heads and really are just doing their job. If you think about it, when they stop someone, they are probably all uptight and authoritarian because they are expecting a bad time from whoever they have stopped. If you are relaxed and helpful, they are likely to relax too and you may even be able to get across to them that you feel you are being unfairly targetted. But if you use it as your opening line, you have simply given them the confrontation they are expecting. And when I say "you", I mean "one". Meanwhile, it seems that in WA we can get permits for pod filters and other kit (not sure how much other kit). I assume from the gnashing of teeth that this isn't the case in NSW? Cheers.

Aybee, thanks. I did think about that. But there is nothing in my signature to identify my car, or me come to that! If this forum is going to work, as it has done up to now, people must still be able to talk about mods and say what mods they have. They just need to be careful how they identify themselves, same as they need to be careful not to speed where they know speed traps are likely. Cheers.

Hi all. Just read the news item on cops and EPA checking on websites for modified cars. Then I read the thread on the Melbourne CCR, or at least as much of it as I could stand. Cops read websites ........ wow, that's a surprise! Kids with cars and more money than sense then rant off about bombing cops and other bullshit. What a load of crap. The lead item in the thread was the most incoherent, self-contradictory, rambling argument that I have seen in a long time. The inane and childish tirade that followed was so immature it was funny at first. But putting such rubbish on a forum could well attract much more attention from Mr. Plod and others, muttering such things as "incitement to violence". It might make the spotty youth feel a thrill from a rush of testosterone, being able to write such garbage, but it is hardly pushing forward the debate. Clearly one or two of the correspondents might struggle with that concept, but I would hope that there is a more mature debate about the issue on SAU. My view is that if you modify your car and then advertise, don't be surprised if the cops knock on your door. If you are responsible in what you do and how you drive, generally they will leave you alone. Cheers.

Hi, Docile. See your pm. Cheers.

Kiwi shoe polish works fine for me ........... !!!! Hey guys, why's everyone so touchy in WA at the moment? I've been reading and watching for a coupla months before I felt I could offer anything sensible. And in that time, it all seems to have gone down a coupla notches in quality, with people sniping at each other. Is there too much iron in the water or something? Cheers. P.S. OK - sorry - off topic, I know. Mea Culpa.

James, I bought my Skyline from Down Under Autos in Jan this year(www.downunderauto.com.au) and they provided a good car and a good deal. They have some Skylines in stock (I've just checked) and they are members of the RAC Dealer Check set up (i.e. all their cars are checked by RAC). If you want any more details, then pm me. I am sure that there are other good dealers around, but I can't comment on those. In the end, it comes down to whoever you feel comfortable with. However, you should get a good enough deal with the specialist dealers who have Skylines in stock, compared to going through an importer. Also as the other guys have said, it is all changing at the moment, not too many people have compliance plates and prices are going to go up as supplies slow down. Good luck with it. Cheers.

Thanks, guys. One thing I am still unsure of is whether such oil additives are appropriate for turbo motors and for Australian conditions. The oils recommended are all thin as anything and these additives are very viscous, and tend to leave a thicker film on the moving parts. Is that an issue? Any ideas? Cheers.

Can you get STP oil treatment products in Oz? I haven't been able to find them anywhere. I used to use STP oil treatment in all my cars in the UK. My mate had an incident where he lost his sump and the STP was probably the only thing that saved his engine from seizing. Is STP suitable for Australian conditions? Or is there an alternative available here if you can't get STP? Cheers.:headshot:

Sorry, mate. Couldn't resist it!! ;-)

Hey, Gradenko. I thought it was just me But then I began to think Perhaps its his IQ that's higher 'Coz maybe he is a literary type Using word patterns and structures beyond your hype Or maybe he is a technology tryer So, careful to what you let yourself sink Grammar Police, ... well ... maybe! Cheers. P.S. The sentiment is fine, but watch your own grammar too: "well constructed sentences IS ...". Ahem. Perchance this should be "are". And "sepArating". Let he who is without sin cast the first stone!! Off thread I know, but hey .....

Doh! Just seen t'other headlight thread. OK - I can get pretty blue lights.

It sounds to me like a relay set up is the way to go. I would be surprised it there weren't existing relays in the headlight wiring as it is. It should then be just a matter of connecting the two relays, but I would have to see the wiring diagram (but not being a sparky, I wouldn't set too much store on my opinion!!). Still trying to digest the wiring diagrams from Megala's site .... I also agree with Majanal, that if you are fiddling around with the lights and wiring, you could take the opporunity to upgrade to Halogen bulbs, even the new high intensity type. Can you get the sexy blue ones for Skylines?

It seemed wierd to me - but I would doubt that the alternator wasn't up to it. I can't think how much a pair of headlights uses, but it won't be that much compared to the difference in, say, fan settings between 1 and 4, having you AC on or not, etc. Lights use stuff all compared to them. Is there some regulation in Japan against having double headlights? I've always preferred the double headlight look. So if your mate invents a thingymawotsit, I would be interested too - I am assuming he knows what he is doing? Cheers.

Thanks for the feedback, benm. The kind of rwkw you're putting out is a fair test, too. However, unless I am tempted to go to the drags (if I can fit in the time!), I doubt I will really need it, until she starts slipping. She's been fine now for over a week, so I'll see how she goes. I will do some more research on the types and makes of clutch to go for in the meantime, so thanks for your experience. Cheers.