scathing

Off boost at a cruising speed, a turbo car will generally be more fuel efficient than a NA car. OEMs tend to gear turbo cars to use that extra midrange torque. Keep it off boost, and it'll be doing a lower RPM for that speed. Of course, once you get up on boost its a different story.

It turns out that its not only Skylines, WRXs, Silvias and Evos that seem magnetically attracted to telegraph poles. Just because you've got dollars doesn't mean you have sense. (Borrowed from here) Lets see The Daily Tabloid blow up about street racing when it comes to this one....

All the money that Toyota will spend getting their Camry to go round and round an oval track at high speeds will shave valuable tenths off the ability of the road car to do laps of the shopping centre carpark. And, as any carpark racer knows, a few tenths can make the difference between getting a parking spot and getting beaten by someone in a Commodore who has driven against the painted arrow signs to sneak in.

If you can find someone with the same brand of lock nuts, in most cases they're compatible. I've had a mate lose his RAYS lock nut, and borrowed mine. Otherwise, hammering a socket onto the lock nut and taking them off is the other option. With no key the lock nuts are useless anyway.

TWR sold HSV to Mark Skaife in 2003. He's back managing it, but he's certainly not the owner anymore. Does your ignorance know any bounds?

Which is pretty impressive since its a FWD car.

Also, have you considered a Silvia-oriented forum? There might be a lot more SR based knowledge on there.

The back end of the Gallardo runs twin calipers. This is the only shot I can find that clearly shows the Gallardo rear brake setup, so apologies for the huge size.

You also increase your unsprung weight.

Yeah, and if everyone just pulled out of the race Lowndes would more likely have won too. Or if everyone just pulled out of the way and lifted off the throttle whenver Lowndes approached, he'd more likely have won. Please. Have a whinge. Last time I checked they were racing for position, not running in a time attack. And when you race for position, you have the right to defend that position. If the the contact was anything but a racing incident, the stewards would have done something during or after the race. From my perspective (given that I don't follow V8 Supercars, and I couldn't give a toss about Ford nor Holden but I do like motorsport, is pretty independent) it looked to me like Lowndes drove into Kelly. If you look at the side angle shot, you can see Lowndes angle across the road to avoid running into the back of Todd. When you see the in-car footage from Rick's car, the white line marking the edge of the track is right next to the car (showing that he's at the extreme edge of the track), and doesn't change at all. So Rick never deviated from his line all the way up to the moment of impact. And, at that point in the track (high speed and deep into the braking point of a pretty tight turn) there's very little margin of error to steer around in at the best of times, let alone being on the wrong side of the track for the race line. With Rick at the extreme right of the track, and Lowndes occupying the middle, there was nowhere for Rick to go. If he'd gone any further right he'd be on the grass, which would have had him either spin out or lose grip in the braking zone. If he'd gone left, he would have clipped the tail end of Lowndes car anyway. The difference being that, in that situation, he actually would have been at fault. So he held his line, and Lowndes tried to cut in and ended up clipping him instead. Lowndes got blocked by a very slow moving Todd, pure and simple. And instead of passively allowing himself to get ganged up on by the opposing team, he decided to try and muscle into a gap between the two Holdens that simply wasn't there. An aggressive move, one that I'd expect from a racing driver in championship contention, but evidently the wrong one. And paid the penalty for his error in judgement. You have to actually be, you know, fast to get all your cars up to the front. How the f**k do you get a slower car in front of a faster car, unless they're being lapped (which wasn't the case here). It sounds like you have little to no idea about how motor racing actually works. So, QED when it comes to my comment about Ford not being able to string a decent team of drivers and cars together since evidently Holden was dominating the top of the field.

Mating call of the loser. Holden won within the bounds of the rules. That Ford wasn't in a situation where they could box Kelly in just shows how far behind the pace their cars or drivers are. Aside from Ford's star driver, they couldn't get enough competitors up into the pointy end of the field to advance their team's cause.

Yeah, but they won't use less grippy tyres on the front. They'll run semis all round. But I'd concur with checking the suspension. Make sure the back springs / dampers / swaybars are hard enough, and maybe get some more toe out. If you can rotate the tyres and put the RT215s up front and the less grippy tyres on the rear, that will also help.

While Lowndes might have had the better car, clearly Kelly had the better team.

That's true. The Elise is a cult car (as are most Lotuses). Same with the MGB, Austin Healey Sprite, MX5 etc. But a good power / weight ratio makes for a quick car. And The GT-R didn't become a cult car because of its sublime handling and amazing response chassis response - it did it because it was quicker than anything else, even twice the cost.

I reckon most of the cops in Australia are tight. The culture here seems to be very anti car enthusiast, and it doesn't help when tabloids write shit in their newspapers. Talking to the guys I know in Brisbane / Gold Coast its not much better. Up north its even worse. If you're young and you're not in a sports car that's either a Falcodore or some classic American car (I realise that they're not sports cars, but I'm just repeating their mentality), you tend to get the short end of the stick from everyone.

Perhaps on the South Circuit, where the race cars and the bigger street cars (like the Lamborghinis) were running, but I was marshalling at the North Circuit, where the street cars ran, and we ran like clockwork. There was a pretty good turnout of cars. Not massive, but at the same time we didn't have people queuing half way back past the dirt course either. Paul's GT-R was pretty popular with the kids if I remember correctly (The Wiggles in the CD player notwithstanding), as was the Ferrari 360 Spyder F1 that also ran for a half a day. Liz, if you want to do some non-car related assistance we'd really appreciate it as well. I realise its not as glamourous as driving, but every little bit helps. Even helping to load and unload some of the kids from the car, given that some are movement impaired, would be really helpful. Otherwise, come do some flagging.

Might be time to move to Europe. The OEMs over there do "dealer specials" (can you see Mitsubishi Australia modifying Evos to FQ spec, or Nnissan Australia offering anything like the 350Z GT-S?), the government still understands that modern cars can safely do more than 100km/hr, and you can get quality made cars on the cheap. And if you move to the UK you can remain in an English speaking country, with the steering wheel on the right, and live only 3 hours away from the Nurburgring (if you manage to pry yourself away from the B roads in Wales, Scotland, or the Isle of Man), as well as having some fantastic circuits in your own country.

Its the dark horse in the race, then!

You see, that's my issue. If they sold the article as "unpopular drivers" then I'd concur. P platers, old farts, Asians, and Volvo drivers are hated on the roads. It doesn't mean they're the worst drivers, it just means they're not liked.

You can add something else to your "The Silvia Hates ....." part of your sig.

Melbourne cops are probably bigger pricks than Sydney ones. With that 3km/hr speed limit leeway, and the "only one intake mod allowed" rule, they're more likely to pull you over and more likely to defect you.

That's something I've noticed on my multiple trips to Melbourne. You just don't get the same kind (both in terms of number, and "quality") of modified cars than in Sydney. I use "quality" very subjectively, given the shitboxes some people think are cool to drive through the CBD of Sydney on a Friday or Saturday night, but having gone through Chapel St or St Kilda on a Saturday night its nowhere near the same in terms of the number of bodykitted, lowered, chromied-up econoboxes you see crawling past the shops and clubs.

Well....lets get a R390 GT1 and compare it to a Ford GT.

I might drop in tomorrow. I wouldn't mind seeing if they have a CF bonnet in stock for my car, or perhaps some other bits and pieces.

That sucks. I'm so sorry to hear, but glad to know that you're at least able to walk. Getting squished could have ended up a lot worse.