scathing

Reminds me of that quote from Collateral: Max: You killed him? Vincent: No, I shot him. Bullets and the fall killed him.

That's not entirely true. It'll depend on if your ECU has a learning function, and how close to the edge you've tuned it. Running a high RON fuel in an engine designed for lower run can be just as bad. Because the higher RON fuel burns at higher temps (allowing you to run more advance / boost because of its resistance to detonation), at lower tunes it may not ignite at all. If your engine is pumping in a certain amount of fuel because of the air going into it, and the fuel won't ignite......it runs lean and has bad fuel economy / emissions. One of my friends had this problem with an early Excel. They tried running it on Optimax (back when it was the only 98RON around) for a while, and noticed that it was audibly pinging and smelled like shit. Tried several different servos, etc, all the same. Eventually they took it to the Hyundai mechanic, who said the ECU in them was so shit that it couldn't cope with fuel that doesn't ignite easily, and since it was tuned for regular unleaded the results speak for themselves.

If the car's your typical 10-15 year old thrashed out Jap import with an unknown service history, you'll certainly get a lot of bang.

Whoops. I also posted about it here (with a list of Victorian dealers)

I sold mine for around $500 with scratches. I know someone on Silvia NSW got about that, too. They should bolt straight on to a Stagea. The V35s and Z33s share the same underpinnings.

And for the Victorians, one of the guys from another forum I'm on got this announcement from Coles Myer:

I drove past a Shell in Neutral Bay, NSW, yesterday and I noticed that they were advertising their new "Optimax Extreme" at 100RON. I use BP Ultimate, but I might have to give this Optimax a go to see what its like. But, if its a nicer, cleaner fuel...it might be time to bump up the compression / boost / advance

I think that the Z32 is a nice car if you want a grand tourer. Its got plenty of poke, and its cabin is quite a nice place to spend time. And yes, it does have a reputation for blowing things up so much that writing about all the ways in which they could fail would probably get you arrested under the new anti-terror laws. And while yes, if its been well maintained it'll be OK but then that's true for any car. Even something as breakage-prone as a pre-Ford Jaguar will generally not shed bits if its been "maintained". The question is, if the average person owns one and treats it like a car, rather than with the loving tenderness akin to their own genitals, will it fail? Not every Z32 was bought by people who took great care of the cars. You had a lot of mid-lifers who bought them as a status symbol rather than performance, then you had a lot of young people who had to stretch to afford it and couldn't afford to maintain it. And, in those circumstances, the Z32 TT tends to be a lot less reliable than most. Such a cramped engine bay and all that heat adds up to mechanical and electrical failure. The cars are also getting on, and any work is a major effort.

What is it with people's obsession with being "different", at the expense of logic and reason? I'm not necessarily saying that a Z32 is a bad choice, but "spending extra every time" for no appreciable gain (aside from this insecure need to be "different") just strikes me as a waste of time and money. If you truly wanted to be different, get your hands on an R34 coupe shell and do a CA18DET conversion out of a Nissan Exa. You don't get any more different than a FWD Skyline with a 4 pot, so you can brag to all and sundry about it.

(9) Thou shalt remember the overtaking lane, and keep it holy. i.e. If you're not passing someone and I am, get the hell out of my lane.

Thou shalt use indicators before changing / merging lanes. Indicators are there to show others you are about to change lanes; trust me when I tell you its quite obvious when you are actually doing it.

I got Sol-Ace F1 tints on my car, which were their best product at the time. Not sure if they were the darkest legal, but I thought they were when I got them. However, when I visit their site now it doesn't mention anything about that. They do mention it on their "Midnight Express" product, though. I've had 2 cars with Sol-Ace tinting (owned them for 2-3 years each) and neither has bubbled or faded, or had any other issues.

Still waiting on chrissso to get back to me on his experiences. But what you're saying is what I've also heard about non-BOV cars. Before people reply back saying that the big, f**k-off, drag cars don't run BOVs...they're also set up a lot differently to a street car, and since their gear changes tend to be flat throttle and a lot quicker, they don't have to worry about it as much. My understanding is that the OEMs started putting BOVs (as opposed to no BOV) to reduce turbo lag, which is what you experienced. They chose recirculating valves as opposed to venting ones because of the emissions due to AFM setup and noise issues.

What d00dz said. I love driving through tunnels. Find yourself a friendly, long, tunnel with no speed cameras (I can recommend the Airport tunnel that runs under the runway, or the M2 tunnel), put yourself into the right most lane if its up against a wall, pop it in second and floor it. You can either pop off at redline to let it overrun before getting back on the gas, or snap it into third and get back on the power to go with the echoes and doppler effect. There's nothing quite like the sound of a free flowing induction / exhaust note echoing off the walls. I swear my fuel economy halves every time I go near an enclosed space.

As Craved noted when you guys were leaving the parking area in Wollongong, she's taking off more smoothly than sl1m

http://www.au-z.org/gallery/sau_20051113_gong Pix.

Shame so many people missed it. Its a nice hillclimb.

The only times I've ever been pulled over is if I've done something dodgy in front of them. While I was f**king annoyed at getting busted for speeding or pulling screechies out of a side street, or the massive powerslide I did in the middle of a busy intersection semi-by-accident, they all had me dead to rights.

It seems my new wheels are delayed, so I'll have more time to wait for you to drive them around and let us know what the wear rates are. ;-) I am very interested in them (I ran RT215s for a while and loved everything but the fact that they were wearing the tread depth indicators at 11,000km) but I'll have to see how they cope as a commuter tyre.

You know, you're right! Buying a car he can't legally drive will definitely attract less attention from the cops! Any other bright ideas? Maybe he should hollow out the cat and run a screamer pipe while he's at it..... And since you got "defect after defect", even after the first time you got busted you clearly didn't heed the warning and get it all fixed to a legal condition. So while the first one might have been bad luck, with the subsequent ones they're completely your fault. You know its happened to you before, yet you did nothing about avoiding it in the future. I know a couple of people whose cars aren't remotely legal. Whether it be cars that have had most of the interior trim pulled out and a full cage installed, or another that pulled 120dB at full noise on the dyno, these guys have never been defected. But then their cars' exteriors look near stock, and the visible mods don't look like a punch-drunk apprentice installed them. And they don't drive around like complete f**kwits. Something that quite a few people on here have also backed up. The guys that don't act like complete tools tend to not get done by the cops as the wannabe street racers.

m&m - how soft is the rubber? I realise it's not going to be quite as tacky as the Comp-Rs you've run in the past, but relative to your regular streeters how are they? I'm up for new tyres in the not-too-distant future, and I want something sporty, but tyre life is a bigger factor since I'll have rims for Comp-Rs.

I'll bet it takes even longer than 21 seconds. With the Christmas school holidays, you'll have to granny it off the line and do the speed limit unless you want to get pulled over by the cops and asked to pop the bonnet on that thing. As for power, I'd say at least 280ps at the flywheel.

Stock AFM is fine, but the Z32 AFM is a better unit for tunability and future proofing. If your stock AFM wasn't playing up I'd say leave it for your 200rwkW target (or until it becomes a restriction), but I'm going to take a guess and say you're not going to want to live with "only" 200rwkW forever. At which point, your replacement stock AFM is going to be a waste. And its not like the car is going to perform worse with the Z32 AFM at your current level of tune because it can't cope with the lower airflow, so there's no technical negative to it. Be a man. Do the right thing.

Good car to learn on. I'd rather make all my beginner mistakes on a lower end car, that I'm not going to mind pranging or thrashing the crap out of. And its easy on fuel and insurance, and not a complete cop-magnet, things which are also good in this day and age. I look at all the car enthusiasts whose first cars were turbos or V8s, compared to the guys getting around in old bangers, and the latter can generally punt a car faster around a corner and a lot more smoothly than people who've always lived with a lot of power under the right foot.

Radar detector detectors work. From what I've heard, even though they are passive devices....when they pick up the signal they modify it somewhat (relative to hitting a "normal" object), so the detector detector picks up that change and reports it.