Merli

You n00b It's: "I never NARC'ED on nobody" :lol: :lol:

Yah, that was me... That was probably the last time I drove it :cry: I might take it for a spin tomorrow actually

I hate you :)

Spotted a purple R33 GTR... Didn't look like it'd been driven for a long time

Geez guys... I don't know about you and Silver... I thought this was just a "spotto" game... Not a "pull down his pants, check what underwear he's wearing and then give him a five finger rub" You guys just don't know when to stop

"Victoria - Mini NSW-Wannabe State"

LESS WORKING. MORE PICS.

@ last photo

I got my new bimmer hailed on :cry: Luckily they're steel panels and the hailstones were only about 1cm big... They sounded so damaging when hitting the car though! I think if I parked my GTR outside the aluminium panels could have been dented... PHEW!

He must have changed again because I saw him in the tanning salon wearing nothing but a hand towel

Since posting this thread a year ago, I have gotten a lot more experience in identifying automotive smash repairs... I'll cover a few points for you: 1. Check headlight/tail-light alignment. They should have perfect gap between them and the fenders and bumpers. Uneven alignment means that they've been taken out and put back in askew. Ask yourself why? 2. Run your eyes along the bodywork and look for paint runs. That is, the paint was sprayed on too thick and dried in "drip marks"... These are commonly found in crevices or join areas. e.g. along the bottom of window seals, the bottom corner of the rear quarter window, the bottom of the A-pillar, etc etc. 3. Look for blending marks. Usually found somewhere along the top or bottom of the C-Pillar, you'll see a slight straight line bump where the spray painted has tried to blend in the new paint with the old. Blending marks can be anywhere depending on where the accident occured, but usually found along large panels that can't the sprayed individually and has to be blended (e.g. the roof's connection to the rest of the body and the rear quarter panels) 4. Look for masking marks. This is where the spray painter has masked off an area of the car that he doesn't want to paint. Masking marks are rough lines of paint where the paint has seeped under the masking tape and hasn't dried smoothly. They'll usually be visibly rougher than the rest of the paint, and rough when you run your fingers over them as well. Most common masking marks are found in door jambs, so open up all those doors, boot, bonnet and check very carefully. 5. Check for paint defects. That is, dirt that was on the car whilst it was being resprayed. They'll show up as tiny, tiny sand-particle sized bumps in the paint. They should be visible when you look at the panels at an angle, but you have to be conscious to look for them. You can also feel them when you run your hand over the paint. I have never seen a factory car with these defects as they would be fixed before delivery. 6. Check for delaminating clear coats. If the clear coat was sprayed on too soon after the colour layers, it won't bond properly to the layers underneath. As a result, you'll be able to see the clear coat "lifting" off the undercoats and it will be brittle and crack off when you touch it. This can be found anywhere, but I found it on one car at the bottom of the A-Pillar. common sense would suggest this delamination would start at sharp edges like the edges of panels and bends in panels. 7. Take the car to a trusted panel beater. They have a paint thickness tester which is basically a magnet that measures the distance between the metal bodywork and the magnet... i.e. the thickness of the paint. Most factory paintjobs will have a paint thickness of about 50-60 microns. But what you're REALLY looking for is a large DIFFERENCE in paint thickness. e.g. If the roof, boot, rear quarter panels and doors have 60 microns, and the bonnet and front fenders have 130 microns, what does that suggest to you? Obviously if the whole car is showing 150 microns it's probably had a full respray. Cars that have been rubbed back to bare metal, repaired and then resprayed by a skilled panel beater are harder to uncover... But that is very very rare as it costs mucho dinero in labour to rub back a car to bare metal and respray. Any car that I'm looking to buy, I do the following things: 1. Check out the car myself using the checkpoints listed in this thread. 2. Take it to my mechanics and get it up on a hoist to check for underbody damage that I wouldn't have been able to spot in my initial inspection. Get a compression test done on the engine and put it on the dyno. 3. Take it to my panel beater and get him to have a quick look at it. They do this everyday of their lives and they can spot 1000 times more paint defects in one quick walk around the car, than you could in 8 hours of looking at it.

Firstly, thanks for everyone chipping in and expanding this checklist! Secondly, as this is the Tutorials/DIY/FAQ forum, not many people come in here to answer your questions. You'd be much better served if you posted your questions in the General Automotive Discussion Forum, as your questions will be answered much faster! Now I don't want to go around slandering people or businesses, so I'll just answer this question briefly. Car yards are in the business of making money. Since they are in the industry, car yard owners ALWAYS have excellent contacts and friends who run panel beating shops. Car yard owners make the most profit by purchasing smashed and heavily damaged cars for pennies (either locally or from Japanese auctions) and get them repaired and repainted here by their mates. Ever wonder by BBToys (Parramatta Rd, Victoria Rd, etc... hopefully you know who I'm talking about) always have Yellow and Green Soarers, Pink and Orange Skylines, Candy apple red and Lilac FTOs in their yard? Just hope that the police never find it, as they are completely in their right to confiscate the car and return it to the original insurance company who paid out the claim of the original owner. If they do that, you get NOTHING in return except for a handshake and pat on the back. Yes, you can take the chassis number from the BLUE Nissan Build plate in the engine bay and ring a Nissan Spare Parts dealership. Give them the Chassis number and they should be able to look up the details of the car (Month/Year of Manufacture, Paint Code, Engine Number, etc etc) for you on their parts database. If you happen to call an unhelpful Spare Parts Department, don't give up... Just call another one. It's easy for them to look up, you just have to find a helpful Spare Parts Advisor. WilliamsRacing, do what I said above to check your chassis number.

beret? or beretta? You obviously missed his studded neck collar.

Saw you again this morning! You were wearing a lilac shirt with a green feather boa!

I saw you... You were wearing a blue shirt!

Mona, everytime you drive, it's a race Your car's accelerator pedal is a binary device. It's either "ON" or "FULLY SIK ON" :burnout:

Anything happening with this? I wouldn't going through the paces again...

:werd:

This laptop is BRAND NEW, still sealed in the box, and never started up, so you'll get the initial end-user configuration for XP Professional when you start it up. I'm sure you can find the specs yourself, but here they are in a nutshell: 1.7Ghz Centrino Pentium M 1Gb RAM 60Gb HDD 14.1" Screen 128Mb ATI Mobility FireGL (1400x1050 res) CD-RW/DVD-ROM Ultrabay Slim Gigabit Ethernet/56K Modem Inbuilt Bluetooth Transceiver Inbuilt 802.11a/b/g Wireless etc etc.. As I said, it's still sealed in the box, and I have never opened it. The Thinkpad T41p retails for $4799, and a $199 512Mb RAM upgrade brings the total to $5000. I'm asking $3500 for it. Pickup from Lane Cove welcome, or delivery anywhere is possible. Contact me: andrewho at au1.ibm.com or 0418 881 113 Here's the story behind why I'm selling a brand new $5000 laptop for $3750: I bought an IBM T40p about 1.5 years ago, and started working at IBM about 6 months ago. I continued to use my personal laptop, as it was better spec'ed than the ones they were giving us (plain T40). Unfortunately someone broke into my car whilst I was at the gym about 2 months ago and stole my briefcase and my laptop. I then grabbed a work laptop, and have been using that for the last 2 months. I have just last week recieved a BRAND NEW IBM T41p with 512Mb RAM upgrade (bringing it upto 1Gb) from insurance as I had it covered under home and contents. Yes, it took them 2 months to replace my laptop.. God forbid that was my only access to a laptop and I needed one for work So I now want to sell this replacement laptop, as I have no need for it. edit: Price dropped from $3750 to $3500

This thread is full of whores Hi minh and Jimbo, I'm still alive and kicking... Hope you are all well, and your rides are polished and shining!

No comment.

Mate I'd love to, but I probably won't be bringing the Skyline... Whilst you all fang along in your loud, low sports cars, I'll be hanging back in a slightly more sedate car Mmmmm... leather seats

I don't work for the media, but they've been calling me all day. See thread in Member's area.

Not bad... I haven't been around because of several reasons. Mainly because I've been terribly busy at work... I'm also over the whole modified car scene at the moment (not my friends on here, but the scene in general)... I think I'm getting too old to be driving to client sites in a loud, purple car with butt-hurting suspension They all look at me weird.