mad082

generally you should be seeing around the mid 80's when driving normally. if you have put in a new thermostat than you have ruled out 1 possible cause but there are still 2 others that may be affecting your engine temp. 1: water pump is on the way out. as the water pumps wear they can actually wear away the fins on the pump so you end up with a pump that doesn't pump very well. generally this should be changed at the 100,000km service, but since a lot of imports get lower km clusters put on them before being imported you can often end up with a car that has done well over 100,000kms on the original pump. 2: the radiator is blocked (internally) and isn't doing it's job properly. a simple radiator flush won't anything to help with this. they need to be professionally cleaned. however the cost of this isn't that much different to some of the cheap alloy radiators that you can buy, so the choice is up to you, but at least if you go the cleaning option you get to find out if it was actually blocked

it could be that the afm is faulty and it was only an intermittent fault, like if you hit a bump and that was enough to move a loose connection. it could be a faulty tps (throttle position sensor) could also possibly be an issue with the ignitor pack as well.

+1 for nistune. will get you there for about half the cost of a pfc. should be under $1000 installed and tuned. also the oxygen sensor won't solve any over fueling issues you are having when you floor it. they are only designed to help with fuel economy at light throttle applications. once you floor it the ecu ignores it. if you don't know what you are doing i strongly advise to not try to tune an ecu by yourself as you can have some pretty serious effect on the car and not only end up with less power but also possibly end up damaging the engine.

also remember to not pay too much attention to how many kms the odometer says. so many imports have the odometer changed before they get here, so they aren't exactly reliable kms. go on which feels the best, and appears to be the best looked after.

you seem to have your mind set on a 34, so go that. if it was me i too would be deciding between the 33 and 34 and pretty much rule out the 32 from word go. for me though i would probably take a tidy 33 over a tidy 34 as i prefer the interior of the 33 ever so slightly over that of the 34. but that said i would have to drive the 34 first as i have started to like the exterior of the 34 a bit more (never used to like it much). but then for the price difference between the 2 i could easily bridge the performance gap between the 2.

could be a wiring issue

that could've been what they actually said and if the OP isn't overly knowledgable he may have gotten confused.

+1 for sr20ve. even in stock form it's got anywhere from 24 to 37kw more than the rb20, depending on which version of the VE you get. that is a noticable power difference, especially if you then also take into account that the engine is lighter. there are plenty of people getting 150kw at the wheels out of these engines with relatively mild mods.

ahahaha, thankfully the term "hellaflush" hasn't made it to gympie yet. i am fearing the day it does. i don't mind the slightly stretched tyres look, but stretching them so the lip of the rim hits the kerb a good inch before the tyre does it just plain stupid. same with being able to have the rim grind up against the lip of the guard.

it sounds like may you have somehow damaged/disconnected the wire from the dimmer switch and so now it isn't getting any power.

ahahahaha, tony you should wrap the phone in foam then give it to max and see how much HP he has.

i think it is the fact that as you sort of mentioned in a post above, most of these commodores and falcons have well over 200,000kms on them, and many are well over 300,000kms and are still running factory original parts that are well over due to be changed. but that said there's a few sad examples of skylines and silvias getting round town and they ride like a commodore sitting on bump stops. and then there are a few with fully hektic drift coilovers in them with stupidly stiff rear springs (like 13kg springs) and i have followed a few and again you'd swear that you were following a vl or vn commodore with cut springs. but the owners love them because they are fully hektic drift spec boy racers types

any aftermarket ecu will do the job. nistune, pfc, microtech, wolf. as long as the tuner has half a brain then they will be able to tune it without a worry. but go with what your tuner uses. no point picking an ecu to go with then not being able to find anyone near you who tunes them.

well then make sure you don't let your mate anywhere near your car. for the water temp gauge you need to make sure you have the temp sender that goes with the gauge. without it it won't work. also you will need an adapter to put it into the radiator hose. boost gauge is very easy to do. only slightly hard bit is wiring up the lights, but you could always just run all the hose through so the gauge works and then just take it to an auto electrician and them them to sort out the wiring. should only take them a few mins and not cost much at all.

sounds like one of the 3 following issues, or a combination of more than one: 1: spark plugs are worn, gap is too big and creating a miss. solution: new plugs or regap the old ones 2: coil packs are shot (most likely). solution: new coils 3: ignitor pack is shot (least likely). solution: new ignitor pack. there is also a possibility it is the AFM as well. when they play up the car goes into limp mode and won't rev past about 4500rpm, but it also won't rev past that if you simply rev the car with the clutch in (depending on whether the problem is intermittent or constant).

a lot of mechanics should be able to do them, or at least tell you where to take them to get done. it is pretty common and they don't have to know anything about imports to do it as the process is the same whether the car is an import or not.

mate of mine had wheels off an xd falcon on the back of his 33 for a while. offset was a bit different but they cleared. if you were going 16" though i'd go either r32 gtr wheels or 300zx as they are wider than both the ford steelies and the stock 32/33 gts-t wheels. and then you just need some non radial tyres to put on the front as well (can't run radial tyres on the front with drag slicks on the rear)

camry seats are shocking. they are like toyota grabbed a few park benches and wrapped some fabric around them, LOL. also the falcons stopped using leaf springs back in 1982 when they brought out the XE. the XD was the last to use leaf. not sure about the utes and wagons though.

depends on whether the missing studs/bolts are broken off in the turbo. if they are then it will be much more expensive than just getting a different dump pipe.

you can make close to twice as much power on an unopened 2jz as you can on a rb26 (quite a few 2jz's making up around 800hp unopened. don't think you'll find many rb's that can do that). i call that a much better engine. this isn't about being flavour of the month. this simply comes down to how well the engines are built and what they are made with. the 2jz is a much stronger engine (taking strength, not power here).

can't see why it wouldn't work. i know a lot of other cars will run fine with an auto ecu in a manual. not so much the other way round though.

i watched a 3d tv last week. didn't like it. they didn't have the room dark enough so it looked pretty crap. and since i don't have a theatre room to put a 3d tv in (or the money to even buy a 3d tv) then i will just stick with the 2d version.

for those disagreeing about the comfort of the commodore (or falcon for that matter) over the skyline, i had a 33, 180sx and VX commodore. when lowered the skyline rode much better than the 180 round the rough roads here, but the commodore was still a much nicer ride. and i'm not just talking about suspension here. i'm talking about the seats. i have a dodgy back and after about 90 mins of driving the skyline, the 180sx, the missus SSS pulsar (seats were very similar to the 33 seats) and a few other cars i start to get pain. the commodore seats i could spend 4 hours in them and not get any pain at all. they are like a big comfy lounge chair. they aren't some sporty seat to hold you in round corners. they are the sort of seat designed to make long journeys comfortable. also the fact that they have reach adjustable steering means that i can have the seat back far enough to let my legs be a bit more extended and still be able to comfortably reach the steering wheel, which reduces knee pain on long trips which i also get in the other cars. i'm not saying skylines aren't comfortable, but after doing some long trips in quite a few different cars, i'd still pick a ford or holden over a skyline if i was doing a driving holiday around the country. that made me laugh so hard. commodores have never had leaf springs in them. not even the VB back in 79. they all have coil springs. the ones you are seeing bouncing along are probably owned buy some young dick who has lowered it by about 3" and it is sitting on the bump stops. if they are lowered to a point where they still have suspension travel they will still have a very smooth ride. trust me, i've been in more lowered commodores than i care to remember.

if you are going from premium to regular or e10 (or the other way round) then nothing is needed to be changed. if you were going from unleaded to c16 or something like that then you may need to make some changes

you can also have a headgasket go and not end up with water in the oil (or vice versa). i had it happen on a falcon.