mad082

you missed a major point in the guys post where he said "a kid at school"

good thing it's not a 300zx, otherwise it would be engine out.

the long and the short of it is that no matter which side you are on, group A is an extremely poor example to use. the rules and regulations were pretty ordinary, and manufacturers could build a car that was right on th elimit, make enough road going models to get it allowed to race and that was it, meanwhile other car companies were simply beefing up existing models to make them a little bit better. i would've like to had seem how the AWD turbo falcon that ford was working on (but ended up scrapping) would've gone against the GTR. oh and i remember the super tourers that were all 4 cylinders (basically what the BTCC is). because of parity regulations neither fwd, rwd or awd dominated, however in the wet the audi's did very well, being awd.

+1 also love how the radiator hoses are put as a modification

no, my best advice was that a womans face doesn't matter because you can't motorboat a face. this is up there though.

few points to address here. 1: doesn't matter when the group A gtr set the record, as long as it was built to group A regulations as current regulations are totally different. 2: the cost of the GTR very much does play a big part in it's speed. for starters, the purchase price of the GTR was double that of the commodores and sierras it was racing. then take into account the fact that the race cars were built on a much bigger budget that the rest of the cars it was racing. this certainly gave it an advantage. look at single make or twin make races such as the v8 supercars. you won't find many teams on low budgets running at the front of the pack, regardless of how talented the driver is. this is because the more money you have the more developement you can do on engines, etc to get the most power out of them. you do have 1 point right though. the GTR was more advanced than it's competition. this is because nissan designed it to fit at close to the limits of group A regulations as it could and they honestly didn't really care whether the car was a success sales wise or not. on the other hand, holden was building a family car with a few performance enhancements.

the best thing for you to do is not bother asking for advice on here, but to call your insurance company and ask them what to do. that way you have 100% accurate information.

says so here http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/licensing/downloads/p1p2_conditions_dl1.html also doesn't make much sense to look at a list that is nearly 2 years old.

you do realise that you can't drive a 350gt on your P plates?

also it is worth pointing out the (theoretically) fastest concept car in the world (fastest race car ever thought up) is AWD. i am refering to the redbull x1/X2010. basically the engineers sat down and designed the dream race car, and suprise suprise, they made it AWD. the reason being that when you are talking about upwards of 1000hp, traction really does become an issue.

ok now you are just clutching at straws. comparing a lap time from 1992 to a lap from 2000 or later is like comparing a model T ford with a ferrari enzo. it's just plain stupid. you have to compare apples with apples. that GTR lap record stood for quite a few years. plus the regulations on the cars has changed over the years (not to mention tyre compounds, etc), so you can't compare the cars. you might as well compare the lap times of a race car on wide slick tyres and road car on 4 space saver tyres, it would be about as relevant. even comparing the r32 GTR to the commodores and sierras it was racing isn't relevant for various reasons (from the cost of the GTR race cars being much more than the others, to pretty ordinary regulations) realistically you won't really be able to find many real world examples to use to prove your point. you can't even really use the 911 turbo and a GT3 since there is more different than just the drive system. using examples from racing categories where awd cars compete with fwd and rwd cars is also useless since they have rules and regulations to make the racing more equal. only way to know for sure which is better is to build up both cars equal with the only difference being the awd car having the extra weight of the awd system. i'm not saying that the GTR is the best car every, but if you were building up 2 cars the same, 1 awd, 1 rwd, on most race tracks the awd would be faster, especially in the wet (remembering that a v8 supercar will light up the rears in 5th and 6th gear in the wet). that said, the rwd would be more fun to dick around in as you could just fry the tyres round every corner.

i agree with all your points, i was simply saying that the difference when towing between the 2, as far as pulling power is concerned, would be more than "minimal". plus there is the fact that the turbo isn't P plate friendly.

short answer: no. long answer: no they won't. skylines are a small displacement engine, so they won't handle the taller diff ratio as well as a big cube engine. you may find that a smaller hill on the highway may require you to change down a gear as it is putting you into a lower torque range and taking you into an area of the rev range where you might not be making full boost. it will also make the car harder to get off the line (including reversing), so you will see increased clutch wear as possibly worse fuel economy. also as for gaining "more top end", unless you were pushing serious horsepower (enough to max out 5th gear, so up around 350 to 400kw at the wheels) you will lose top end and have a lower top speed than with the stock gearing. EDIT: just saw you are running a C4, so you would be maxing out top gear pretty easily, so you can disregard my post, but it still is worth posting for other people thinking of changing diff ratios with the stock 5sp gearbox.

the turbo will tow much better than the NA, considering that it has about 50% more torque than the NA (has similar torque to an XR8). the difference would be noticable.

i generally have that effect......

the extra weight of the awd when accelerating down a straight will be more than overcome by the extra traction when coming out of a corner, especially a slow corner, since you can get on the gas earlier as well as use a higher throttle percentage.

i know the vl ecu's can be chipped like other holden ecu's. don't know if the r31 ecu's are the same. with a good tune i'd expect to see maybe a 10kw gain without cams.

or try an exhaust shop. or you could get one online from somewhere like justjap

when talking top speed it isn't just about gearing. taller gearing can actually lower the top speed. i think it was the VR HSV GTS that had a top speed of 250kmh in 5th gear and only 217kmh in 6th because the gearing was too tall to overcome the wind resistance. very few cars on the road will actually hit the rev limiter in top gear in stock form. a lot would actually have higher top speeds with fractionally shorter gearing, but car companies don't worry about this sort of thing as they aim for top gear to rev in a nice fat torque range on the highway to give good fuel economy as well as stop you having to drop down gears at the slightest incline. top speed is all about overcoming air resistance and the faster you go the more it takes to go that little bit faster. as for shorter gearing increasing acceleration, the short answer is yes. this is why first gear accelerates faster than 5th gear. a commodore or falcon with a shorter diff ratio will be much faster than a stock one in a drag race. first gear in an auto commodore (older 4 speed autos) is nearly the same as second gear in a manual skyline (once diff ratios are taken into account).

definately go for a falcon or commodore. there are many plus sides over a diesel with only 1 or 2 negatives. for your money you will get a better car (i bought a vt wagon a few months back for $3550), they are cheaper to fix (and plenty of them at wreckers to get cheap parts for) and pretty much any car parts place will have most of the parts you might need in stock, tyres are cheaper than 4wd tyres, usually cheaper to run, except when towing, but unless you are towing every week it won't be an issue.

for the cost of a r34 gtr plus converting it to auto you could build up a very fast r34gt-t with strengthened auto.

look at it this way: if there weren't low life hackers, how sony's server security was setup wouldn't be an issue.

if you are on a high speed track with sticky tyres where losing traction when accelerating isn't an issue than the gts-t would be faster (if running the same engine). however any track with low speed, second gear corners, when you floor it coming out of the corner you will get wheelspin, or you will have to slowly apply the accelerator in the gts-t. in the GTR you can just floor it. this is the advantage of AWD. once traction isn't an issue then awd in any car simply becomes a dead weight and the lighter car will be faster. as someone said above about the JGTC cars being rwd because of regulations, that is 100% correct. it is also the same reason they are V8. as for understeer, which has more will come down to setup. they will both suffer from understeer when pushed hard, however they will suffer it under different conditions. lighter front end doesn't always help with turn in. look at the porsche 911. they suffer from understeer a bit because they are too light in the front end. long story short, which is faster will depend on the track and power level of the car. the more power and the tighter the track the more of an advantage it will be, but on something like a banked oval awd would be slower.

you have all the easy but fiddly bits done. all you have left is the hard and fiddly bits with a side order of swearing to go. lol. don't worry, you'll get there

cold engine temps result in poor fuel economy because the engine runs richer when it's cold (cold start enrichment). as gotrice said, the temps on thermostats are opening temps. then actual temp the engine should run at is in the 80's. it isn't unhealthy for the temps to get into the 90's on the odd occasion, and even towards high 90's when really giving it the beans for a long period of time, however for normal driving it should be low to mid 80's. to put it into perspective though, the clutch fun on a r33 doesn't fully kick in until well into the 90's. thermostats also don't open like a switch (open or shut). they open gradually and vary how much they are open during operation to try and keep the engine at the ideal operating temp. with a cooling system that is operating at 100% effeciency you should see very little temperature variation between a day driving in snow and a day driving in the desert as the thermostat will open less on a colder day. as for running a nismo thermostat, again as gotrice said, this is too cool for a street car. the car won't be running at optimum temps so if you are running a stock ecu you will be making less power and using more fuel than someone running the stock thermostat. the nismo thermostat opens at a lower temp in order to allow more coolant flow at high loads, such as on a racetrack, however plenty of people use the stock thermostat on track days with no issues with temps. as for oil temps, oils viscosity ratings are based off certain temps, so if your engine isn't even registering on the MFD because it is so cool then you would need to adjust the weight oil you are using to compensate. put simply, nissan designed the engines to run at certain temps and you seem to think that they got it wrong and so put in a thermostat designed more for motorsport use than everyday use, and you are most likely causing excess wear on your engine.