scathing

Hmmm............really? Old Pac "flat out" run, anybody?

Considering how much it would cost for you to do the bottom end of your engine, I'd just save the cash and use it to save up for an RB26 instead (unless you're planning on doing it yourself). Its not worth doing internals unless you've broken something and need to do it anyway, or you're planning on keeping the engine. It would be financially silly to rebuild a motor as a "stopgap" measure while waiting for an engine swap.

Kel - I'll be marshalling for a half day, and punting my Z around for a couple of happy laps too. There should still be spots.

As people have said, pretty much all JDM cars have a 180km/hr limiter. Not sure if its a legal requirement to speed limit to 180km/hr, a gentleman's agreement similar to the old 280ps power cap, or a dodgy way of fitting shithouse tyres to them (most countries, Australia included, have a law that says your tyres' speed rating must cover the maximum possible speed of your vehicle). The Euro delivered R34 GT-R was speed limited to approx. 155mph (250km/hr), which is in line with most European cars bar Porsche and Italian supercars.

How long has Shannons been offering coverage for driver training? NRMA has been offering it since at least the beginning of the year, to my knowledge. As long as you tell them that you're doing an advanced driver training course (which of course is going to be off-street) beforehand, then you're covered in case of an incident. Not sure if other insurers offer this, but I know that AAMI will even offer you a discount on premiums if you take advanced driver training courses from one of their approved trainers. If they don't offer you coverage while you're attending that course I'll be surprised. So its great that Shannons is offering it, but its hardly groundbreaking.

If you're building it for track work, unless there's a specific reason why you need to use an RB20 I'd just f**k that motor off and put in an RB26DETT or bigger. It'd be a lot cheaper, and a lot more effective. And if you have to run something in a 2.0L class, and money is clearly no object, put an SR in. Same power (mod for mod it might even be better) with less weight, with a smoother power delivery, and its shorter so it brings your centre of gravity closer to the middle. It also allows you to run a V-mount in an engine bay designed for an RB. As the old racing adage goes, "Horsepower sells cars. Torque wins races". There's no point having your engine revving to 15,000RPM if it only develops power from 12,000RPM. In circuit racing you want a wide band of torque. It doesn't have to pull off-idle, but around half your rev range should be usable. If you have a look at the video of the Mine's R34 "Ultimate GT-R" video that all the BMI guys almost shat themselves while driving, while the car is pretty doughy under 4000RPM (or around half of its rev range), once it hits that point the thing has power and response all the way to redline. Even the F1 cars have a nice wide torque band. Sure they rev to 19,000RPM but they'll still pull from below 10,000RPM. And for a 3.0L NA motor that revs as high as a 250cc sports bike, it still makes a good amount of torque from low in its rev range.

Strong lightweight internals to lower your reciprocating mass while being able to handle the speeds you're putting them through. A big set of cams to let it breathe up there. A short stroke engine will also have less inertia since the components aren't moving as much, allowing you to rev harder. (There'll be a lot of support stuff you also need to do, which I'm not aware of, but they're the basics) None of which is cheap. If you want a car engine that revs and revs, you'd be better off buying a rotary. Why this is in FI performance and not NA performance is beyond me, though.

I will be marshalling and driving at the Kids Race Day this Sunday. Its a charity event for handicapped kids, to give them a taste of the track. If you've got nothing else on, you can always cruise on down to Oran Park and have a look. There won't be an entry fee as such, but donations would be nice.

Damn straight. Reminds me of this episode of Scrubs I was watching today. Colin Farrell was guest starring, as a guy who was in hospital looking after someone else. Turns out the unconscious guy was someone he knocked out in a bar fight. When the main characters got upset over it, he just said "Where I come from if you knock a guy out you hang around until he wakes up and make sure he's OK". When the guy finally does wake up, Colin's character apologises and the other guy accepts it, saying that he did throw the first punch. Which is what being a young Australian male used to be about. Not anymore though. In the old days if you knocked a guy to the ground, that was it. If he didn't stay down you let him get back up. None of this head stomping thing that's so common these days, or pulling weapons, or calling a bunch of your mates to back you up. Even the older bouncers have said that the young guys these days don't respect the "one on one" honour system like they used to. In the past when bouncers got into a fight with patrons, other bouncers only stopped other guys from joining in...they didn't get into it themselves unless a brawl broke out. Unlike now where 3 or 4 will gang up on one guy.

At 400hm/hr, you're not going to have to worry about flashing blue lights in the Veyron either.

Only if you rev the engine out, or value your pistons' life spans. The fact that higher RON level means you can run more timing isn't as important for the retune, but the fact that its oxygenated means your engine will run lean comparable to your 98RON tune is why your current setup may not be good for the engine. If you've got it tuned close to the edge on 0% ethanol fuel, the E5 Optimax Extreme might push it to a point where you get detonation.

One of my mates has a set of Nankang NS-2's on his approx. 170rwkW S15 - he says they're not as bad as their reputation would have you believe. They're no RT215, but compared to other street tyres with a reasonable lifespan they're not that bad. Ziex 326's, on the other hand, equal Silverstones as the crappiest tyres I've ever had the misfortune of using. No grip, wet or dry, and squealy. The only benefits they have are that they're cheap and long lasting, which means that should the government ever get semi-serious about road safety and ban re-treads, the 326's will become the new taxi tyre of choice. Of course, if they got serious they'd ban these tyres too.....

You don't even have to search to find this thread, which is a sticky in this forum. Good track tyres and long lasting are pretty much mutually exclusive. Even the popular T1Rs, Michelin Pilot Sports, etc tend to go off quickly in a track session, and the more hardcore street tyres like the RT215s don't last very long at all. As for suspension, if your requirement is height adjustment then that shouldn't rule the HKS out. You can get height and rate adjustable HKS coilovers - the only thing Tein offers that few others do is the EDFC (although Cusco has a competing device that works on some of their coilovers now).

A 1.5 way LSD will understeer a little more on turn-in than an open diff, but it will be noticably better than a 2 way. As other people have said, you can probably dial out most of that turn-in understeer by adjusting your other suspension components and the benefits of having a LSD outweigh the turn-in response of an open one.

I guess that means we can expect to see Crocker line up against Richards and White at Targa Tasmania next year. There aren't that many "big" tarmac rally events I'm aware of in Australia - East Coast had a dearth of competitors this year.

The way I see it, Defi gauges are like GT wings. If you actually have a use for the extra functionality, then yes there are benefits to them. But, for 99% of people using them on the street, they're purely for wank value. Having warnings, peak holds and replays are great for tuning / track work where you might want to see what was happening with your engine but you had to keep your eyes somewhere else. Unless your ECU has full logging / telemetry (full house drag cars would, hence them not needing gauges that can recall...just gauges that can display) then this would come in handy. I'm not referring specifically to the BF gauges with the wanky "startup dance" - but just Defi gauges with a control box in general. Other Jap gauges can offer the same setup, so in the end it just comes down to personal preference or what matches your interior...

This part of the episode can be seen here.

A PowerFC will have the tunability to maximise those mods, and more.

Come again? (Second tab in the top row on that page gives you the available colours)

Your car's still light-tuned and in ways that are really hard for a mechanic to stuff up, so personally I wouldn't go get one unless getting hassled by the cops was happening on a regular basis. Aside from the bonnet, my car's mod list is almost identical to yours. But because my car looks and sounds stock (at around town speeds) and I don't drive like a tool all the time, its never been an issue. But if I were to get a cannon exhaust, FI kit or something that makes it quite obvious its not the same as what Nissan released I'd definitely get it engineered.

Could you fit an aftermarket RB25 sump onto an RB26, or do things just not line up? People always need to baffle the RB26' OEM sump to avoid oil starvation anyway, so rather than arsing about with the OEM sump when you can just stick a nice baffled, finned and possibly winged sump instead?

You're probably the first guy I've met who has bought a replacement ECU before dropping the factory exhaust.

A PowerFC is pretty flexible. You'd have to have done some serious mods to get to its limits, or be doing something pretty uncommon to find holes in its ability. I find that most people tend to replace their PowerFC only when they need data logging or telemetry.....which pretty much means a well funded race team.

Not sure where you're living, but can't say that happens around my neck of the woods. Around here, road works start at around 20:00 - 21:00, and they're usually done by 02:00 - 03:00. I'd think that they should work through until 05:00, which will still give them time to clean up before the morning traffic comes in....and do a proper 8 hour shift.

Its OK to love me.