mad082

royalties can be a bit of a killer. a few years back one supplier i dealt with was closing down. one of the brands they were the distributor for was looking for a new distributor. they were asking $100,000 to become the distributor, before they took delivery of a single unit. now it wouldn't be such a big deal for a high turnover item, but they would probably only turn over 1000 units a year. i also forgot to mention that in a lot of cases suppliers pay large sums of money to be the sole australian distributor of their brands. this doesn't help the situation as it means that to a certain extent they can control the prices, but it also means that they have to charge a bit more to recover that cost. as for customers getting sick of retaillers crying for government assistance, why shouldn't they get it? the government props up so many other industries. look at the real estate and building industries. the government propped them up so much it created a bubble (which is now in the process of bursting). but the government propping the industry up meant the building companies were popping up left, right and centre. they certainly didn't need to do it but they did. retaillers get bugger all help (the government handouts a few years back did bugger all for retaillers). and sure, customers should look out for themselves. my big gripe is that so many of the consumers who gripe about australian retaillers prices would also be the first to jump up and down about australian manufacturers moving operations overseas, or if a friend of family member lost their job because of downsizing, but wouldn't change their buying methods, even if it affected their own job. if people want to buy online then i can't stop them. i just want them to know that they are having an effect on the australian economy.

common problem. usually the throw out/thrust bearing rattling a bit. nothing to really worry about. if you ever have the clutch replaced you get just get it changed then.

not always. if it was owned by a larger person then all of those things will have more wear than a car owned by a skinny person. it also comes down to whether the car did short trips or long trips as a car that does shorter trips will have more wear from the driver getting in and out more often.

finding one with no engine or box will be near on impossible. finding one with a blown engine might be easier. they won't be dramatically cheaper though (will be cheaper, but not 1/3 of the price of a running one for example).

try ebay

my main point is that it isn't just the retailers and suppliers who are to blame. as i said in an earlier post, the suppliers have their hands tied to a certain extent as well. in a lot of cases they are paying royalties to the overseas parent companies. also in a lot of cases, when the US dollar gets weaker the manufacturers in asia put their prices up a bit. and as i've also said previously, the population of australia doesn't help the situation as well. having a population of less than 10% of america's population certainly doesn't help get extreme bulk discounts.

there are probably many out there that have done 125,000kms but only have 70,000kms on the odometer

ok, a few points. firstly, when i said "they run off what they can get away with, not what they can afford" i was refering to the manufacturers. you say "greedy business model". you obviously have no idea about running a business, and if you went into it with your current ideals you would be behind in the bills after 1 month, i can garantee you that. every industry in australia is running off the "what you can get, not what you can afford" mentality, not just retail. i'd actually say that the retail sector is one of the lowest of this. generally the industries where you are paying for labour only are the worst. they will usually work off at least 200% mark up, but it can be 300 or 400% mark up. my sister in law works in the building industry and has had $30,000 worth of pay rises in the past 12 months. surely you can't say that they are running on thin profit margins. most people who haven't worked in upper level retail (where they actually get to see costing figures) have pretty much no idea just how much money it takes to run a business. to put it into perspective, the business i used to own, which was in a small town, in a small shop had a basic running cost of around $80,000 a year before wages were taken into consideration. based off the profit margin we ran at (which was running things at RRP) we had to make nearly $300,000 a years in sales before i would see a cent in wages. had i had my business running from a shop in a shopping centre here, for a similar sized shop i would've been paying nearly 4 times as much rent and would've needed to have roughly doubled my sales. rents in shopping centres are insanely high. this is partly because coles and woolworths generally don't pay rent so all the other shops make up for it. in the bigger centres a little sunglasses kiosk may be paying 50k a year for that tiny little area (plus a % of sales on top of that in a lot of cases). a standard width shop will often be up around $200,000 a year in rent. and reducing prices isn't as simple as it seems. in my industry, a 20% discount requires a double in sales to make the same amount of profit. so as i said with my business, if i was to have run my business with prices 20% lower than RRP i would've need to have sold around $600,000 worth of goods to meet basic running costs. or to take a basic retail wage i would've needed to have sold $800,000 a year worth of goods, and as i said, this is for a small shop in a small town with only one employee (me). if i employed someone else as well then it would go up to 1 million dollars worth of sales at the discounted rate. as for the amount of empty shops, you will find that the majority of that is because there is a new shopping centre opened up in a nearby area, so it's more a relocation of shops rather than the old ones simply closing down. and don't think it is just a few thousand people losing their jobs. it flows on much further than that. firstly the freight companies have to start laying off staff. the commercial building industry will also suffer. accounts will lose clients, cleaning companies will lose clients, less people will have money to pay mechanics to work on their car, less people will be able to renovate their houses and the list goes on. the retail sector employs over 10% of the australian workforce. so if the retail sector was to halve, unemployment in australia would pretty much double.

if i won lotto i'd have a ROC style track in my back yard

will most likely be the AAC valve. the AAC valve (auxillary air control) adjusts when things like the aircon is turned on, or the steering turned, as there is a higher load placed on the engine so the ecu compensates. look in the DIY section on how to clean the AAC and see if that helps your issue.

yes it does, the amount of retaillers who would need to go belly up to force a change would be a rather large and the consquences of this would stretch much further than the retail sector. it would require a complete collapse of the australian economy (don't under estimate how much industry is reliant on the retail sector). not really. there are a few factors in it. first of all is that a lot of the time they are buying larger bulk amounts so can often negotiate better prices. secondly, all the other goods overseas will sell for less so they have to accept that they have to sell them for less profit to be competitive in the market. this generally is in the hands of the manufacturer, not the supplier, as the manufacturer (in the case where they are not the same company) will see that in the australian marketplace they can get more for their product so why should they sell it dirt cheap? and at the end of the day they are a business, not a charity, and i can garantee you 1000% that in the same situation everyone here would do the same thing, and every business that people work for are doing the exact same thing as well. try going to work tomorrow and telling your boss that you've had a brilliant idea. they should halve their profit margin in order to be cheaper than everyone else and see what they say. i'm guessing that they will call you stupid.

getting to 150kmh is easy. getting past 180kmh is a lot harder. and don't pay much attention to how fast a car speeds up on a dyno. for starters there is no aero drag and that is one of the biggest factors in top speed. that said, a natro skyline would do over 200kmh, but it will take a bit to get there

yeah i just like an excuse to hop on my high horse.

that is assuming that they transfer the money the day the sale is made (since you are generally buying from the australian apple store). it also assumes that they have no fee for currency transfer. if they only transfer money to USD on a weekly or monthly basis then their actual gain will be less. as for aussie exporters, they either have to reduce their prices or suffer loss of sales (and it is generally the latter). it isn't really much different to here where cheap imports are taking over (mainly food, but many other things as well). and yes i get your point about digital media. in the case of music i think it is a little bit more complicated as you have different licencing rights, etc, in different countries. plus you have local music, not just international music, so you do have some aspect of different minimum wages in that.

fixed

cause be both own n15 SSS

you have obviously mistaken the internet for something serious

only way this will happen is the the rest of the economy goes down the toilet too. but as i said in my post, you can't have just the retailers drop their prices and not every other industry as well. you would also have to have a complete revolution of wages as well (large drops) in order for prices of goods to drop. and as i said, the problem extends further than simply retailers and suppliers. the manufacturers and parent companies are the ones who are really in control. the retailers and suppliers have to run the products at a margin that makes their business viable. but you really do have to look at minimum wages and compare what things cost in comparison to that. both the UK and the US have minimum wages around half of that here. to explain this better, i'll put it simply. a person in australia on minimum wage could buy roughly the same amount of stuff with a weeks pay as someone on the minimum wage in the US or UK. actually, in most cases they could buy more. example: apple iphone 4 unlocked. here it costs $859aud. in the US it costs $649usd (prices taken off apple websites, and US prices are for phones not on contract) so on minimum wage here it would take roughly 55 hours pay to buy one while in the US it would take roughly 80 hours work. another example, since people were talking about apple apps being $0.99usd vs $1.19aud, someone on minimum wage in the US could buy between 7 and 8 (depending on state) while here you could buy 13. so even with the higher prices we are still better off.

seb would fit right in at ferrari, being so arrogant and all. as for webber, you can't say that he isn't driving well. isn't he second in the points?

you won't need to rebuild the bottom end to make the power, you will need to do it to have it last more than a few weeks though (slight exagertion, but 300kw is the very upper limit of reliability)

you're welcome to give it a shot

so the fact that in a lot of cases the wholesale cost is higher than the retail cost in other countries is somehow the retailers fault and they should just suck it up and sell if with no mark-up? generally the people who argue that aussie prices are too high have very little knowledge of the retail indusrty and are simply consumers who see the australian cost and an overseas cost that is lower and think that it is the retailer who is making all the money. sadly they couldn't be more wrong. firstly, yes the minimum wage does play a part in the end price of goods. sure it may only make up a small percentage of the retailers cost, but it also makes up part of the wholesalers cost as well as the freight cost. and since wages are also a contributing factor in things like energy costs, housing prices (and therefor rent of both residential and commercial) it becomes a very large part of the cost of items. secondly, australias population plays a big part in the retail price as wholesalers don't get as much of a bulk discount compared to countries with populations much bigger than ours. thirdly, the strength of the aussie dollar plays a much smaller part than people think in a lot of cases. plenty of overseas companies will raise the cost of goods when the aussie dollar gets stronger. forthly, many australian wholesalers have to pay large royalties to the overseas companies. fifthly, 100% markup or more doesn't just happen in australia. it happens everywhere. some industries more than others. some industries get away with much higher mark-up without people giving a shit. jewellery is one of these. i'm sure plenty of people here work for companies that run large markup but don't know it. the companies you work for are all part of the circle of high prices you are complaining about. the prices they charge may well be much higher than overseas companies. does that mean that we should all get stuff from the overseas version of your work so that in the long term you end up unemployed? a prime example of all of this is apple products. the retailer generally makes something like 7 to 10% on them. the wholesaler is apple. so who is the bad guy, the retailer or apple? 90% of people will say the retailer because they don't have a clue how the world works. they are also the same people who will criticise a company because their goods are too expensive, but then also criticise the company for moving its operations offshore to cut costs to be able to lower the prices. summary for the TL;DR folks, if you are going to blame someone, at least blame the right person.

you will see a little square unit at the back of the coil valley cover. this is the ignitor. as for pros and cons of it being external, well there are a few of each. advantages are that if it is purely an ignitor issue causing a spark issue then you don't have to replace coils, you can simply just replace the ignitor. you can also use it to setup a wasted spark system (can use different coils, such as commodore or falcon ones) if you do need to replace the coils. disadvantage is that it is something else that you have to look at when having ignition issues.

the cable under the exhaust is the cat temp sensor. the lose wire above the cat is simply an earth strap

i use an ecutalk one. definitely worth the money over the cheap chinese ones. also, often a multimeter can't register the change in voltage fast enough.