mad082

if you are putting them on a road car you might want to check the legality of them (i'm guessing there is a good chance they won't be legal because of sharp edges)

being able to play ps2 games on the ps3 is the only feature it doesn't have that i would like.

cheap way to get a little bit compression back is to pull the head off and get it machined (take of 15thou or so).

a lot of people who drive rav4's, camry's, etc, don't really give a shit what the motor is. a large portion couldn't tell you what size the motor even was. toyota didn't sell many supercharged aurions for the same reason the supercharged magna/380s were never a bigger seller. lots of power through fwd. being fwd keeps the rev heads out, and the extra cost keeps the grandpa's out (who are the main market of aurions and to a lesser extent 380s). had either one been rwd they would've sold heaps of them. put simply, a turbo diesel motor in nearly any car will sell well because of the way they drive and the fuel economy. that is the reason why they sell well in small cars and 4wds. the first company to put a diesel into a large car will do very well (provided they put the right engine in).

i'd guess that they will be drastically different and not really comparable (talking decades - plural, so at least 20 years). with focus now being on renewable fuels, etc.

that's the reason i bought a vt commodore for the 60+km drive to work everyday. cost me $3550, even being lowered with 18's it still gives a reasonably soft and smooth ride (although i'm going to get some stock springs for it since it will be much cheaper than a camber kit), uses less than 9L/100kms and has very comfy seats and cruise control.

they can. the other option, which is much more commonly done, is to just buy one with lower kms on the clock. it should be noted though, if you are trying to do it for dodgy reasons, there are ways to get a rough idea of how many kms a car has done. for starters, everytime a car is registered into a new persons name the kms are recorded, so if you put an odometer in with less kms than what you bought it at, when someone does a REVS check they will see that the odometer has been changed. i'm not sure whether, in southern states that require a blue slip every few years, the kms are recorded when the blue slip is presented (have a feeling they are). if you are wanting to know whether it is possible because you suspect your car, or a car you are looking at has had it done, it is generally best to assume it has been if thinks seem too good to be true.

the gear ratios of magnas require you to shift into 3rd before 100kmh, so give a slower time. same sort of thing goes for cars that do sub 4 second 0-100s will all do it in 1st gear. the moment you have to change to second you get much slower times.

if that helped then it means that your coils are stuffed. new coils should make it a lot better.

ok a few points to make here, 1: if f1 technology was used so much in road cars then we'd be seeing plenty of cars reving to well over 10,000rpm 2: turbo cars aren't that much cheaper to get power out of, people just tend to forget about the expense of getting power out of a turbo engine. the initial gains from a turbo car can be cheap (wind the boost up a bit), but after that the dollars start to climb very quickly. work out the price of a new turbo, ecu, injectors, etc. sure it will gain you more power than a natro, but it has also cost you a lot more. 3: if turbos were more common on cars then skylines would be less desirable. why would people spend 10 to 15k on a skyline when for half the money you could buy a turbo commodore or falcon that would most likely be putting out more power and be faster? 4: there will always be NA cars since they are always cheaper. 5: bigger engines with turbos overcome the lag. xr6 turbo is a perfect example. peak torque starts at 1500rpm, and the pull like a train throughout the rev range.

so it's a phased rollout of the new PSN, meaning it will be up and running for a few days/weeks before australia's is up and running again, lol

technically speaking, if you take a spoiler off that has a brake light in it and don't put a high mounted brake light in the back window your car isn't roadworthy. r34 has it in the bootlid, as does the r33 4 door, but the others don't.

well considering that aftermarket ones don't perform that much better than new stock ones i don't really think it matters what he compares them to. as long as they work without any misfires then it is fair enough to say that they are a worthwile adaption at a fraction of the cost of direct fit coils. i always wanted to have a crack at seeing if it was possible to get them to work with the commodore ignitor (instead of the skyline one) but never got around to it. reason being that the skyline ignitors are getting on a bit and if you could use the commodore ignitor it might make it easier to adapt to series 2 r33's and r34's.

not really. you have pistons going up and pistons going down at the same time. so the valves may be hitting 2 pistons stopping you from turning it either way. but regardless, you shouldn't be trying to spin the engine without the cams turning as well otherwise you run the risk of damaging both pistons and valves

ok i think i've done enough helpful posts for one day, so i'm going to go find someone to make fun of.....

technically many things should be considered when making suspension changes. even just things like wheel alignment settings. for everyday use picking off the shelf items is just fine for a small increase in handling and a better look. if you are going to track the car and want every last tenth you can then you would need to start really looking at every aspect of suspension and matching up all the items to suit each other.

what cams work in NA and turbo versions can vary greatly. for example, natro sr20 cams are actually an upgrade turbo sr20's. 2 things, engine light only comes on in the r34 and the actual performance gains from new coils is technically zero, since all you are doing is restoring them back to their original performance.

would very much depend on the car. what most people think of when thinking about aero effeciency is the front of the car, however it is often the rear of the car that makes the biggest difference. for example, back in the late 80's and early 90's volvo racing cars were wagons as they were better aerodynamically than the sedans, despite having the same front end. a lot of cars actually get a big swirling vortex at the rear of them which creates a low pressure area behind them. this actually sucks them backwards a bit. anyone who has driven a station wagon or hatchback in the rain will see how much spray from the tyres ends up on the rear window. if you look at the back of a lot of wagons you will see a little spoiler type thing that directs air downwards (my vt wagon has one). this helps to reduce the vortex, or at least move it further back from the car to reduce its affect. this vortex does have 1 advantage though. if you happen to be able to get behind a truck on a bike then you can really get some speed up without much effort.

unlike aftermarket ecu's, most stock ecu's will adapt to simple mods as they have a fair bit of headroom above where they are running standard. aftermarket ecu's are tuned specifically for the car and are generally running closer to the limit (hence why they put out more power than the stock). that said, if you do make a change to something like cams then the gains you get from the individual mod will be greater with the aftermarket ecu since it can be tuned to make the most of the mod rather than simply adapting to it the best it can.

i'm going to go a little bit different now. suspension. everyone thinks lower, stiffer suspension is better. this isn't always the case. lower is better because it lowers the centre of gravity, reducing body roll and keeping weight more even across the tyres, thus giving you more grip. stiffer suspension also aids in this. there is a limit to how stiff is good. on a rough road then super stiff suspension will give you less grip than a softer suspension as the stiff suspension will cause the car to skip over the bumps rather than absorb them, but on a super smooth road then you can go a bit stiffer. stiff suspension does put more strain on other parts of the car though. things like engine mounts, gearbox mounts, etc will all wear out faster because they are getting more stressed. in the case of drag cars though, softer suspension (at least in the rear) is a benefit because you get more weight transfer to the rear of the car and more weight over the rear tyres then the less wheelspin you will get. stiff suspension on a car will actually make it harder to get off the line cleanly, so if you ever see a car setup for drift at the drags you will usually see pretty crappy 60ft times from them compared to a car with stock suspension.

cams simply open the valves longer and further than the stock ones, allowing more air and fuel into the engine. head work increases the speed and volume of air that can enter the combustion chambers. injectors allow more fuel to enter the combustion chamber. as you increase the amount of air that enters you need to increase the amount of fuel to keep the air fuel ratio right. petrol requires a certain amount of oxygen to get maximum bang. different fuels (alcohol fuels, etc) have different optimum levels. damn, zebra keeps beating me to it (and with more details, lol)

gains from a CAI depend on how well the factory intake was designed. some cars benefit more than others. there are different theories behind headers. for example, on a 4 cylinder some will run a 4-2-1 setup while others will run a 4-1 setup. length of the primaries and secondaries will determine where in the rev range the power comes in. primaries are the pipes immediately out of the head, secondaries are after the next join. next comes the exhaust. a lot of people think bigger is better, and that is true to a point. others think you need back pressure and if you go too big the lack of back pressure is the reason why you can lose power by going too big. this is false. back pressure is bad in all exhaust systems, however sometimes you have to put up with it to get the power characteristics you want. if you want a car that is good on fuel, has plenty of pull in the lower rev range then you have to go a smaller exhaust. this will flow gases better at low rpm than a bigger exhaust due to a syphoning type effect that goes on. the downside is more restriction at high rpm. this is what the car manufactures base their exhausts off because on the highway, etc you aren't sitting at high rpm. if you put a bigger exhaust on you will lose a bit of low down power but gain high end power. this gain in the higher rev range often masks any loss in the lower rev range. if you go too big then you will lose even more low end power and it will become a slug for everyday use and might not gain any power up top. the same applies to extractors.

power to weight ratio counts a lot towards performance, but it depends on where the power is situated. if the power is all up top and not much down low then it won't be that quick. prime example is the 140kw corollas. performance wise they aren't really any faster than a 105kw pulsar because of where in the rev range the power lies, despite being similar in weight, etc. you also made a good point with the "hpye" around skylines. most of this is hype by association rather than being based off the actual performance of the natro. there are plenty of other cars with minimal hype that are noticably faster (all the regulars in here will know where i'm heading with this, so they can feel free to skip ahead, lol). i had a 3.5L manual magna. took it to willowbank. with just a cat back exhaust it ran a 14.8, which puts it on par with stock turbo skylines.

exactly. that is a valid point, but if people don't know and want to learn then they should ask the deeper questions to increase their knowledge rather than skip a few steps ahead and ask the best way to make 2 + 2 = 14. as for this thread in particular, well yes everyone has their own tastes and buy cars for different reasons, but you have to admit that a lot of P platers put performance pretty high on their list of things they consider when looking at cars. in the case of natro skylines the percieved performance in the eyes of potential skyline owners is usually much greater than the actual performance of the cars, and the percieved performance of rival cars is lower than what it actually is. if they did research they would find that while the natro skyline is a decent car, there are also plenty of other decent cars out there too, and if they want something to win the traffic light GP they should look elsewhere.

i need to be alone now........