mad082

i'd just get a century one. i've never had problems with them in the past. not the cheapest battery around but also not the most expensive and a good battery. i've never had any problems with them and i've put them in every car i've had to replace a battery in. the missus pulsar has one in it at the moment. been in there for about 3 years now. only time i have had any trouble was when i spent a few hours trying to get the lights working on a trailer. used a jump pack to start it and it's been fine ever since. the one i got for the commodore was some cheap $120 one from repco. does the job though.

LOL, ok then. it may be that your battery was on the way out and what happened was enough to put it over the edge. i would try putting on a charger overnight and see how it goes. if the battery was a few years old then i would just get a new one. last year i bought a new battery for a commodore i was working on. basically the car only got started a few times and run for a few mins over the period of a month or so (never driven out of the yard. but the battery was disconnected between uses). eventually it went flat and would only just turn the car over but not enough to start it. then the car sat for about 8 months and wasn't touched. we went to move the car a few weeks ago and battery still had just enough charge to turn the car over once. we tried to start the car with 2 jump packs but they didn't have enough power to turn over the old v8, so we ended up putting a different battery in to move it and put the old battery on the charge. the battery was on the charge for about half an hour and it had enough charge to start the car. still started the car a few weeks later (and a few times starting the car later) but then it eventually died again. put it on the charge overnight and she's right as rain now. but when a battery gets old they can lose charge overnight. i've had a few cars now where i've driven the car one day, then the next morning it will be dead flat. jump started it, driven it to work (about a 10 min drive), let it sit there all day and it will start to drive home. then the next morning it will be flat again. this is usually happens at the start of winter. cold weather kills batteries.

i can hook you up with a supply of bike tubes if you decide to go into production of those ^^^

how long ago was that? that pretty much says that your oxygen sensor (o2 sensor) is working, because if it wasn't then your economy would've been worse. but still be worth checking to make sure it hasn't died since then. also doing short trips makes economy worse as the car never comes up to temp properly, so it is running on cold start enrichment for most of the trip, so your economy is down the toilet compared to driving a car that is up to temp. when you say the car runs pretty cool, is the gauge sitting at around the halfway mark or below it? if below then i'd look at a new thermostat. the radiator itself shouldn't affect how long the car takes to come up to temp or the temp that the car runs at as the thermostat does that by restricting the flow of the coolant. basically any positive boost will make your economy get worse, but it's hard to accelerate without seeing positive boost. as other people have said, check your tyre pressues, as low pressures increase fuel usage. and as someone said above, might be worth getting the timing checked, because if it is a bit retarded then you will have less power, so have to put your foot down a bit more to accelerate. also make sure you are only running the car on 98 octane fuel, because if you are running it on normal unleaded or even 95 octane you won't get quite as much power because the ecu will be backing the timing off, and it's not safe to do. a few other things to consider would be to do a bit of a service on the car and go through and replace things like the fuel filter, spark plugs and clean the AFM and even pull the o2 sensor out and see if it is all gunked up with carbon which might make it not operate at optimum levels. another possibility would be that the catalytic converter is a bit blocked.

you may want to add nearly (note i said nearly) every other major racing category to that analogy. pretty much every other major racing series in the world runs a major parity scheme in their cars. the DTM cars can have different chassis, but they still have regulations as far as tyres, brakes, electronics, gearboxes, and restrictors in the air intakes, plus more. or look at the F1 cars. take the paint off them and you couldn't tell the different cars apart. i don't think group A will return. you have to remember that it wasn't just australia that scrapped it back in the early 90's, everyone did. and to be honest, you won't see any new high end race categories anymore that don't have massive amounts regulations regaurding performance, because if they didn't 2 things would happen. 1: it would become a single car category, and it would become boring as shit if 1 team kept winning purely because of technological advantage and not because the driver is at the top of his game. if there was racing like that i wouldn't even bother watching because you know that unless the car has a mechanical failure it is going to win, which is basically what happened with the GTR back in the day. it was a car specifically designed to win group a racing against cars adapted to race in group a. but if you look at races the r35 GTR is competing in now (such as the super GT in japan) you see that it isn't dominating the races because it has been built to fit in with the regulations, just like all the other cars.

*kicks odin in the nuts* who you got next?

you wanna go do ya? *puts on wizard robe and hat*

it is also about the cranking amps of the battery. i could make up a 12v cell using 8 AA batteries but it won't turn over a car. infact it probably wouldn't even have enough power to turn on the stereo

you could always just hold the file on the outter side of the wheel so if you do slip your hand simple goes into the wheel arch, and if it does happen to hit the wheel it will only be the outside of the rim. but to the people who are actually scared of this, there are a hell of a lot of more dangerous tools out there. basically all he is doing is using the car as a lathe. nothing scary there. i'd be more scared of a simply angle grinder than doing this (and i'm not scared of an angle grinder, although i am still cautious with them).

would be interesting to see some other cars in the battle. it might actually open the series up to being a bit more international and get a few races happening in europe, which would be good for the sport. *sits back and waits for the idiots to post up about how the mercedes will shit all over the fords and holdens, ignoring the fact that they will all be built around the same rules and have to run all the same spec gear

you can leave them on the car and just polish them in place. i used meguires scratch-x on mine and it worked great. i know others who have used other polishes with good results too.

yeah drive for longer. 2 mins of charging would be less that what it took to start the car from a full battery.

18L/100km for heavy driving use isn't that bad. it is pretty normal. i used to get similar even driving sort of sensibly. before you even start looking at other things, think about the following things as they will give you an indication of whether it may be your driving style or something else. 1: even if you don't floor it all the way, when you accelerate are you pressing the accelerator down far enough to make it have full boost? 2: do you do lots of short trips? 3: do you sit on the same speed a lot or is it a lot of start/stop driving where you have to accelerate up to speed often? 4: do you let the car idle to warm up before driving off in the morning? 5: do you live somewhere with lots of hills and often have to take off from intersections at the bottom of hills? if you answered yes to any or all of those, then even if there is something mechanically wrong with the car causing poor fuel economy, fixing it won't make it much better. questions 1,2,3,5 all applied to me and were the reasons why i got poor economy. a few other things to check though to see if the car may have a fault. 1: how long does the car take to come up to temp? if you hop in and drive straight away the car should come up to temp within about 5 mins. if the car takes much longer, or never fully comes up to temp then change your thermostat as that can make fuel economy worse. 2: get a multimeter and do a search on here of how to check your o2 sensor, or alternatively borrow/buy a consult cable so you can hook a laptop up to your car and check it on a consult program. you can also use this to reset the self learn codes. 3: if you get really bored, jack up the car and go round and try turning each wheel to make sure you don't have a sticky brake piston. they will always take a little bit of effort to turn, but if 1 is much harder than the rest then you know you may have an issue. other things to possibly look at would be to get your injectors professionally cleaned and cleaning your AFM.

baaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahaha, love your work tony

you're a shit joke...... LOL

as above, expect you car to stall often when you lift off the throttle and latting it be all fulli hektic and flutterz yo. also expect to have more lag on gear changes.

i just want to clarify that i wasn't complaining about the issues i was having, just letting you know what was happening. and it seems to be running good at the moment. i think it only had 1 issue yesterday morning and has been good since.

my 33 used to do this on cold mornings when i was running 13psi, and only at 100% throttle. once the car had a bit more warmth in it (like had come up to full temp and then driven a bit harder) it would stop. if the car had only just come up to temp and you gave it the beans it would do it, but then a few mins later it wouldn't. i just put it down to having the boost set at the limit of what the ecu liked. for me it would happen at about 3000rpm and it felt like someone had just turned the key off and then back on. had it happen in second once and when it kicked back in it started to light up the rear tyres.

it was a joke......

could also be AFM, but check the other 2 first

i wouldn't jump to that conclusion just yet. generally if the turbo is shagged then it generally won't build boost at all and it will either blow smoke or make horrid noises. if the car has an electronic boost controller then it may be the gain settings, etc that are causing the slow boost rise. i personally don't like electronic boost controllers for running relatively low boost, but that's just me. if it was me i'd be disconnecting it and getting one of the cheap turbotech boost controllers and running that. also make sure you aren't relying on the stock boost gauge. another thing to look for is broken manifold studs. pop the bonnet and look at the exhaust manifold to see if there are any studs missing. there should be 2 per cylinder. if he was running that much boost then it wouldn't suprise me if there are a few broken since the cars are getting on a bit now and nearly everyone i know (people i actually know, not just randomly talk to on here) with a 33 have had a broken manifold stud. i did with mine, as did a mate who i put a bigger turbo on for, and as does another mate with a 33.

as i said though, they have been used in skateboards for years now. think about how much harsh treatment they would get landing from 1m off the ground (and often much higher) with 80kg spread across 8 bearings. and think of the vibrations, etc when rolling down a road. anywho who has ever ridden a skateboard on the road will know just how rough it is. much more rough and the vibrations in a car driving down a dirt road. they are starting to be used in bikes now in the cranks. so think about the forces there. around 80kg pushing down on it with a leverage or around 175 to 180mm, plus the force of landing from doing jumps, etc. and not all of these bikes have suspension. some are full rigid. oh and as for the example of the CB failing and then the customer using a ball bearing, has anyone ever had issues with the normal steel bearings failing? i'd say so, which makes that story null and void. it would be like saying that fords are better than holdens because you spoke to 5 people with holdens and some of them had had problems, but only spoke to 1 ford owner and he hadn't had any problems.

could be a short in the wiring

oh wow, i'm going to get the xbox version cause it must be better value if you get 3 discs for the price of 1 sony one, LOL

what causes the ceramic turbos to fail isn't so much the material itself, it is the glue/resin holding the wheel onto the shaft. also bearings spinning are subject to totally different forces than a spinning turbo wheel.