Beer Baron

that does look pretty average. the 3 jdm cars I had were no where near that bad. 1 07 model and 2 early 08 models. maybe they are less worried about small export markets than their own domestic customers... the adm cars I've looked closely at were not as bad as yours either. I'm sure even if their average is not exactly ferrari grade they can still do better than what you have and should definitely provide you with 2 new front seat covers at their expense. it's also a bit odd how in their email they say that being a natural product it has blemishes, defects etc. then in the next paragraph they state that is has no defects...which is it?

you're right, they are a fortune I can't remember exactly but it was around $1000 per axle set. look at endless or project mu. they both make great pads and should be more reasonable $$ wise. they do everything from nice quiet, low dust street pads to dusty as fk, hard when cold, agressive, 800C track pads.

I'm an 'ample gentleman' too John, and as far as I've noticed the seats are the same in ADM and JDM. they are a little narrow for buff blokes like us, but I drove from sydney to melbourne without any real complaints.

do I? no way. I've owned and driven many GTRs from 32-35 inclusive, from standard models of each, up to heavily modified ones and whilst I don't wish for a paddle shift in my 32 I certainly don't wish for a manaul box in my 35 either. just like the regular H pattern in the 32 suits the car so does the DSG in the 35. it's part of what the car is. one of the best parts of what the car is actually. without it the car would be much, much slower. you would look and feel like a numpty as all the DSG equipped R35s blew past you on any kind of circuit or strip. a manual h pattern box in the 35 would be a massive step in the wrong direction. I've been in the passenger seat of the 35 for when many guys had their first drive of one. all of them were amazed at how good the gearbox is and how fast and direct the shifts are. when matt coleman drove my old one he was so impressed with the power, and the DSG that he wanted to know how to buy one straight away. the DSG makes the car.

on benchmarks I honestly can't see a stockish 35 on good tyres doing a high 30 at eastern creek. I reckon low to mid 40s is where it'll be at for this one till you go pretty hard core on mods to make it fast. I think a 44-45 for an ammatuer driver (like most of us!) is good. for a pro maybe a 42 or 43. still crazy fast for a big heavy standard road car!

very neat. do they have a disk type cover on one side so that dirty wheels dont mark stuff or are they open both sides?

not sure how long. just saw it in an email from my gf. http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/t...5522764794.html they make it sound like it's been him ever since season 3 though.

yeah at oran park and eastern creek the dunlops are about 1 second -1.5 seconds a lap quicker than the bridgestone. so going by what LSX said about the RE55s being 2 sec quicker than bridgestones then I'd say they'll be around a second quicker than the stock dunlops. I'd say if you only plan on a few track days a year then go the 20s. at the price you quoted they are not much more than the RE55s and are still good on track and last fairly well if you treat them sensibly. plus you can drive the car on them the other 360 days of the year without funny looking wheels/tramlining/excessive wear. but if you're going to be doing 10-20 track days a year then it's probably worth getting a set of 18 or 19inch wheels and buying semis for them.

yeah, apparently the Finnish language has 13 different words for 'lap dance' but none for 'work ethic'...

and since it is F1 related is anyone else shocked that michael schumacher is the stig on top gear uk? i never would have guessed that one. I was thinking some kind of brittish touring car or sports car driver. maybe an F3 or GP3 driver but no way did I think it was MS...

webber is not done yet dezz. he will get a win this year. I'm sure of it. even this little quote from yesterdays post race interview makes me believe. he still has the fire to make it happen. "The guys have buried themselves at the factory, including Renault with the engines. Obviously Dietrich (Mateschitz), the big boss back in Austria, is very proud of us today, getting a first and second again this year and I’m looking forward to my day when I can jump into the seat next to me. But today I’m actually happy with what I got out of it. Sebastian deserves to win today, so we’ll take it to another day."

yep, hamilton did everything he could to loose the 08 championship. it should have been a snack but continuing ammatuer fk ups cost him points. he should never had found himself 7th on the last lap of the race with massa crossing the line and thinking he'd one the championship only to see hamilton have it gifted to him on the last corner. and it was pretty much the same thing in 07 except that time luck fell the other way and kimi took it off him by 1 point. troy, yeah I think you are onto something. guys like hamilton/kimi/button who have tasted a top level car seem to go walkabout if the car is not up to par and just turn up, circulate, collect pay check then head back to monaco for champagne and blow jobs. where as guys like webber who went from being always top 3 in other categories then stepped into a smoking hot (lol) minardi will fight and knife you to death just to get into 8th place and score a single point. he turns up no matter what he is driving to get the most out of the thing. remember back to the way he strangled that absolute heap of garbage wearing a jaguar badge to get enough pace out of it for the odd front row start. I love kimi and he is surely in the top 5 most talented drivers and racers in F1 back fk me ragged you'd hate to be his boss as if you tried to explain to him the meaning of the words work ethic I'm sure you'd just get a blank look...

sing it with me.... hamilton is a dirty hack... who was gifted a WDC by a team that favoured him and a car that was years ahead of the best of the rest. it's a wonder they didn't win every race of the year. well they would have if they'd had one decent driver between the pair. I promise if they'd had a webber or a kimi they would not have been shitting themselves in the last race of the year when they by some magic stroke of luck gained 1 extra point on the last corner of the championship. pretty weak that even in the best machine he only won the championship in the last race by sheer luck. consider this. in 07 he lost by a point and 08 he won by a point. he was a bee's dick off being a being a 2 time runner up. and both years he had the better car by a long way. HACK! now to current events. who would have thought that half way through the season there are 4 drivers in with a shot of WDC. and that those 4 drivers would be 2 red bull drivers and 2 brawn drivers and they would be webber, vettel, buton and rubens. and that hamilton the looser would be struggling to get into Q2. and kimi seems to be completely disinterested these days. webbers call was pretty apt when he spoke to peter windsor and said that"'kimi was dreaming about a bottle of champange or some vodka when I came up behind him on my hot lap", lol webber is still 100% aussie that's for sure.

I should also add that vettel drove a pretty much flawless race. he was never under threat. in the first stint with webber stuck behind rubens he was free to just toodle off at a nice steady pace building up to nearly a pit stop in the bank at the first round of stops. sure mark was able to stop that gap and even bring it down a little over the next 2 stints but vets had done the hard work in the first third of the race and was never going to be challenged. it was a consummate win, if helped in small part by rubens! still even without rubens to hold him up I'm not sure webber would have been able to catch let alone pass vettel. but it would have been nice to at least see him under a bit of pressure...

a couple of points I want to make. all the fans who told me that hamilton was the greatest driver ever, and that he could win in any car. and all the people who shouted me down last year when I said that any of the 22 drivers in F1 would have been getting good results in hamiltons maclaren and that he was at best one of the top 10 drivers should now be eating some humble pie. he is average at best. sure he was able to win races in a car that was eons ahead of everyone else. now in a less than perfect car he struggles to get through Q1. finally some justice. and so it is with webber. he is proving that like at least half of the drivers in F1 he can race up the front when he has the car to do it. vettel drove a great race. for webber to have had a chance he needed to clear rubens early and try and hang with vettel in the first stint but he could not get a pass on so he was massively compromised sitting behind rubens for the best part of 20 laps. by then the race was over. but he had an awesome in-lap and a perfect fuel fill that got him passed and rubens didn't see him for dust after that. also I would place a hefty wager on the fact that there will be no break away championship next year. the teams and max/burnie will reach a compromise for sure and F1 will continue pretty much as it is now.

you sure you were watching the right race? for the first stint vettel was about 1 sec a lap quicker than rubens, webber was at all times less than a second off rubens, ie stuck at his pace. once he cleared rubens he was a second a lap quicker, ie similar to vettels early pace... I would think it's pretty obvious he was held up by rubens.

if I knew that I would not have to ask you for sleep overs at your place whenever i'm in melbourne... oh the shame.

hmm well either the washers are really hard or like andriano suggested you are bottoming out. not sure which I'm betting on at the moment but both are easy to check. stove and glass of water for one and set of vernier calipers for the other (cheap plastic ones will do for this excercise at $2 a set). get the calipers and measure bolt shank. then measure depth of banjo fitting and the hole using the bit of the calipers that pokes out aka the prong bit (nfi what the proper name is, depth gauge). don't forget to measure 2 copper washers and add that to the depth measurement. now if bolt shank exceeds that other measurement then you are in trouble...

lol, no you don't.

just added a set of nice carbon fibre covers for the little triangle at the base of the front door windows. usually that's where wing mirrors are mounted but on the FDs the mirrors are mounted to the door itself and so you are just left with a black plastic triangle. it's now carbon. pics to come.

not yet, the only thing delivered so far is the bloody phone! lol.

S15s did not come with 15inch wheels standard... I think he's talking about S13. maybe NA S13 or something. and yes S15s are 5 stud, but he's surely not talking about putting GTST brakes on an S15 they are basically the same thing. only the S15 ones would be much newer...

out of interest what balancer were you using when it was throwing off PS belts?

one tip. incorporate a way to lock down those jerry cans or some theiving asshole will pinch them and there goes $20 worth of can and $40 worth of fuel. well double that if they take both!