scathing

The ADRs are the Australian minimum standard, but since the roads and registration authorities are state-based they have the option of including a higher minimum standard. If the ADR for noise is 90dB (I don't actually know off the top of my head), a state government can introduce an 85dB limit in their state, but not a 91 dB one. I was listening to Spoonman on the Austereo network a while ago (its a talkback show, but on FM) and he was saying that state governments were pretty much useless. They're like your typical middle man - just a waste of money, and add nothing positive to the mix. He proposed having a regional government to supercede local government (so maybe it'll encompass several of your current shires / wards / etc) and a federal government. What does state government do, really? Policy for transport, education, health, etc should be done at a federal level. And the day to day operation / maintenance of this infrastructure should be done at the local / regional level. So you have a federal government for policy, and regional governments for implementation. That way the rules are consistent, no matter where you go, but the guys actually out there doing the work and who can see its effects first hand and quickly are relatively local.

That's a nice looking Z. Needs an aero kit like this, though:

Does the sticker count, if its genuine?

That's..............shit. See, that I don't agree with. There should be a clear path for compliance. As long as they hook the thing up to those gas spectrometer things and it passes emissions, and it passes noise, that's it. It shouldn't matter if its stock, or not.

Other residents could complain about the noise generated by the business' customers. I know that a few workshops in Sydney have had "issues" with their neighbours when running dyno days for clubs, and having overenthusiastic drivers pulling burnouts or drifting in the industrial park complex itself, and out onto the street. I'm not sure how liable they were, but its not good for business or for relations with the people around you to be inviting hoonery into their neighbourhood.

I forgot that I'm in the Victorian forum. You mean to tell me that you guys don't have an Engineering Certification system to pass your mods? I can technically run a lot more mods than "springs, catback" in NSW and get the car certified so its 100% street legal.

A friend of mine bought an ex-chaser VT Series 1, which had a mandrel-bent catback on it. Not sure if it was fitted before the cops put it up for auction or whether it was there the whole time, but it sounded nice.

They're not forcing all the cars off the road. They're forcing the ones that aren't road legal. The guys willing to obey the law and either modify their cars in a road legal manner, or trailer their off-street vehicles to the events, would still be left alone. To the guys that were there, did every car get canaried on their way out of DragTag? Its a common catchcry that we should "think about the children". Does that mean the cops should stop arresting pedophiles? After all, they "think about the children" (probably more often than your average lawmaker or law enforcemer does) and they only want to make them happy and feel good. An admirable principle, so the fact that the way they implement it may not be legal should be excused....

Hey asshat. They're bitching about basically entrapping people whose cars may comply with the spirit but not the letter of the law. They're not out there committing fraud, driving a car that's got major problems with it, and repeatedly acting like a complete f**kwit behind the wheel and on the Internet. Bitching about this, and applauding them for busting your arse, are two completely different things. You know you've hit rock bottom when the idiots at ns.com start bagging you out for doing something stupid.

As you say, its nothing to do with driving an illegally modified car. The police are promoting an event to get people "racing" off the street instead of on it. I don't recall them ever saying that they'd let you break other laws because you've decided to do something right. Just because they're promoting an event to stop street racing doesn't all of a sudden make it OK to drive a defective car on the street. If you want to build an off-street vehicle, tow it. If you can't afford to get a tow car, you can't afford to build an off-street vehicle. Simple as that.

They may be trying, but if people are still driving on the street in cars that aren't road legal then its a half-arsed effort because they're still blatantly failing. Being "legal" means more than not street racing nor doing burnouts.

Do you know what catalytic converters do? They help convert poisonous chemicals to non-poisonous ones. So in other words, people driving around with punched cats or test pipes are actually poisoning themselves and those around them. And you don't need to breathe that much of it in for it to affect your body, unlike carbon dioxide which isn't technically poisonous and you'd need a low oxygen content in the air for it to be dangerous. At least with a dedicated track car its not being driven every day. There isn't a chance of it sitting in peak-hour traffic poisoning those around you. And, relatively speaking, there are few track cars out there. The ones that do exist don't sit in kilometres worth of bumper-to-bumper traffic, idling away. If every car on the road ran without a cat, a significant number of people would probably die during the morning and afternoon jams. So yes, busting people for cat-less cars is a safety concern. As for loud exhausts, off-street they've generally zoned the area. Most race tracks and drag strips will have a generous buffer or sound baffling to stop the neighbours from being unduly stressed about the noise these cars generate. Your typical suburban street doesn't. No its not about safety, but its about consideration and respect to the people whose homes and places of business you happen to be driving past. I thought you fooil sik modifying types were all about respect. Its more than just a bunch of randoms thinking your wang is big because of some number printed on a sheet of paper.

The difference between you and them is that it sounds like your body has completed puberty.

You expected rationality from a egocentric child molester? The only communication I'd ever give Alan Jones is if I was to tattoo "f**k off" onto my fist and give him a close-up look of it.

Bilstein's Ride COntrol Cockpit Adjustable Coil-Over Kit Not sure if they make the system available for any other cars (for example, Tanabe's ultra-funky speed sensitive TEAS is only available for the Sustec Pro SEVEN. And since that was developed in the USA and not Japan, its only available on cars available in the US. If this thing didn't cost around AUD$1500 more than Tein Flex, I would have gotten it just for the gadgetness that is speed sensitive damper controlling.

Not essential, but they are quite useful. Unfortunately there's no way I can get access to the rear strut tops in my Z33 without drilling holes in the trim and rear strut brace; that's something I'm not prepared to do. That lack of access meant that I had to get an aftermarket coilover kit that offered an in-cabin adjuster. Mind you, Bilstein is about to offer an in cabin damper controller for their coilovers so perhaps you could wait, and then get suspension SK approves of that's also adjustable If I drove a car where I could get access to the strut tops from the boot or by unclipping some trim that I can later re-clip then I wouldn't bother with a controller.

There's a factory VQ30DET out there, according to my service manual.

The G35x (which we don't get in Australia so few people here know about it) would be even easier still. Its a V35 sedan (so same platform as the Z33, making transplanting a lot easier), but the engine is mounted longtitudinally like in the Z33 and has ATTESSA ET-S. Its a shame I can't find the flash video of when the V35 came out on the Infiniti site. They show the different modes it works in. Off the line it uses a 25:75 F:R split for maximum traction, which shifts to 0:100 when cruising. In "winter mode", the power split is 50:50 off the line. The system, like the GT-R's ATTESSA, is also dynamic. It'll shift power front and rear depending on the grip, so it'll turn-in, power out, and hitting loose surfaces like feel like the GT-Rs we're accustomed to. If I had big budget, I'd import a G35x and rip out its drivetrain for my Z33. I'd twin turbocharge the engine if it would physically fit, but otherwise I figure a VQ40DE out of a Pathfinder being inducted by a Stillen Roots-type supercharger would give me plenty of get up and go.

The data is in the physics. Replacing a compact all aluminium V6 with a long cast iron inline 6 pushes your centre of gravity forward. The 350Z already has a front biased chassis, so your car will be even more nose heavy. What do they say about the handling of front heavy cars again....? The VQ35DE already sits half way between the strut towers, so the RB26 is going to have the vast majority of its mugh higher weight in front of your axle line. And that's before we include the weight of the intercooler, radiator front driveshafts, front LSD, etc which you've had to push forward to fit in front of this engine. There goes your polar moment of inertia. Then there's the suspension, which has also been engineered with a specific weight balance in mind and you've just gone and f**ked about it. Its not just the spring and damper rates - the entire geometry will no longer suit. There goes your handling. You keep crapping on about the Zele car. That was built for rallying, by a big engineering house with connections to Nissan and Nismo engineers in Japan. You've got a couple of apprentice wrench monkeys from a dealership on your side, and we all know how......qualified.....your average dealership mechanic is when it comes to working outside the company three-ring binder. The Zele car is going to want to oversteer, because that's how they design rally cars to work. And with a surfeit of power, its not difficult to get it to power over. In the BMI video, it was quite taily, especially under power. And since Zele has Nissan factory support, they'd have access to guys who could reprogram the ATTESSA processor and calibrate it for the different weight and distribution of the new car. And, to be quite honest, BMI isn't the be-all and end-all of technical knowledge. If you have a look at their various battles, they'll line up stock cars in multiple races and get multiple results. In some cases you can tell that they're "pulling" faster cars back, especially if the edition in question is about that vehicle. I remember seeing one Tsukuba battle where the Supra TT beat the NSX, R33 GT-R, FD3S, etc. Another video, the NSX comes out on top. Of course, the GT-R can nevar lose in another vid. All on the same track, all dead stock. If you're building a car for Hot Import Nights or some other car show, just import a GT-R wreck and use a big mallet to make the stuff fit. Of course it won't run, but when you've got the car raised up on a plinth so everyone can see your AWD driveshafts and the bonnet raised so they can see your chromed engine cover, everyone will know you're hectic. You could just connect the rear wheels up to the engine, so you can win the dyno comp "in RWD mode, for less drivetrain loss", and you'd have the perfect "different" dyno queen show pony.

You also can't get it by not doing something. You have to wonder about the intelligence of some people when their solution to "fixing" the dangers of inexperienced drivers is to do everything you can to stop them from getting said experience. I know the government didn't implement curfew, but I'm talking about the people who did. I wonder how these people manage to survive with that kind of logic process, but then I look at how f**ked up some parts of the world are and I realise that its because of their stupidity that they feel the need to legislate common sense, since if its not written down and enforced by the police they're incapable of doing it.

Typical drivel from people who think that everyone should be saved, at any expense. P platers aren't the only drivers who kill people. There are plenty of full-licensed drivers in high performance cars who kill people. Should we ban high performance cars for everyone? Hey, people are getting stabbed with knives as well, and the perpetrators were over 18. If we were to ban the sale of knives to anybody, then we'd save another life! That's two lives I've just saved by ruining the vast, law abiding, majority of the population's shit! I'm some kind of life-saving genius. Hey, if we medicate everyone and strait-jacket them then we'll never see a bar brawl or a riot again. Someone break out the Thorazine! I just saved another couple of lives! Where's my Order of Australia Medal? No, they don't. Look up the difference between a "right" and a "privilege". No-one has the right to discriminate against anyone based on their age, religion, race, or beliefs. That's a fundamental human right, something that we (and when I say we, I obviously don't mean you) believe in. Being able to investigate and incarcerate specific people suspected of crimes is a privilege granted to law enforcement agencies. And its only if they suspect an individual of a crime. Its illegal to target someone purely because of their race; their age and lack of skillset is no different.

9/11 was very successful in bringing about the imposition of a far more non-permissive society onto the Western World (kind of like Sharia Islam, although its for the equally ephemeral concept of "security" instead of "Allah"), and its given terrorists a new base of operations to work with (Iraq). Its also mobilised a lot of Muslims in countries that were either supportive, or at least ambivalent, to US treatment of Arabic Muslims. I don't see zero tolerance doing a better job. Its killed far more people and caused a lot more unrest in recent history than negotiation. At the end of every "war", the leaders of the combatants on either side sit at the table to discuss the terms of peace. While the victors hold the upper hand, they still have to negotiate. Even when Japan / Germany got defeated in WWII, while the Allies ran roughshod over them they still didn't just imperialistically say, "This is how everything is going to be in your country". So, given that zero tolerance is inevitably abandoned, why not skip all the killing and atrocities and go straight to the negotiating table? People who are oppressed inevitably rebel, unless you're willing to extinguish all hope and break their spirits. The only way zero tolerance works is if you're intending on wiping out the enemy. As long as you let people with another point of view live and you want to live in harmony, there must be give and take. I don't think we, as a society, have the stomach to execute a pogrom or brainwash people to wipe out that "way of life".

Judging by the fact that you refer to your car as a 240SX (and you're doing SR20DET conversions into Silvias) I'd say you're in the US. Which means finding a GT-R is going to be a pain, since you guys didn't get that many of them and MotoRex got their asses kicked for fraud or tax evasion or something. And that's going to blow out your costs even further. With that realisation it might not be as bad. Americans have much more of a fabrication culture than in Australia, who tend to try and make existing parts fit rather than make new parts to fit, so it won't cost as much as we think it would. Once again, why not consider getting a G35x and stealing that drivetrain? The VQ will eventually get you more power, and it will be a lot more drivable. I realise its not very different, but an AWD Vortech supercharged 350Z with nitrous would make one hell of a car. You could even fabricate custom manifolds and run twin turbos. Low mount them near the gearbox like the single turbo kits for the Z33. EDIT: Oh, you specifically say you're in the US. Missed that post

Should be close enough, from a connector standpoint. I know of at least one 350Z out there running around with the VQ40DE out of a Pathfinder, and a Maxima with a 35th Anniversary 350Z engine. Like the Murano the Pathfinder and Maxima have a transverse mount engine, yet they still got it to work.

All of which were designed with inline 6's, unlike the Z33. The Z33 nose is very short. Obviously its possible, since several companies have done it. I just very much doubt its going to be cheap. Or effective. But since you're trying to build something "different" rather than something "good", go nuts.