Beer Baron

on it's own it doesn't unless it's causing the balancer not to be mounted properly. if that is the case then it's spinning off it's axis which will be doing things no good at all. that could well have been the case with micks. you certainly wouldn't use a crank looking like that but i's easy enough to remove keway, weld then machine the crank snout, press in new keyway and away you go.

move on to the next car. it's not like there's a shortage of decent 32 GTRs. why buy a dud one? it would want to be practically free.

the cat temp sensor DOES NOT send the ECU into limp mode or any other mode. all it does is trigger the dash warning light which is there to tell you to slow down to prevent cat damage and also not to park in long grass as it's a fire hazard. it's in the original owners manual. the 02 sensor will cure any problems with poor running at cruising situations (small throttle opening, low load conditions) but wont do anything for how the car runs at WOT etc. are you running an aftermarket exhaust? FMIC? more boost? if so this is why the car runs rich. as the afm sees more air getting into the engine they start to overfuel as a form of engine protection. they just keep throwing more and more fuel in the more boost and power you run. the only way to cure this si return the car to stock (and they are a bit rich stock anyway), or get an aftermarket ecu and have it properly tuned. I know which one I'd do....

looking great mate. my car could not be in better hands! definitely go the 2530s. they will be a great match for the donk and your aims for it. it will be stock response but with 50% more (maybe 100%!) power at every point in the rev range. bellissimo!

the bare heads are all the same. no difference in porting or anything else. the only difference is in ancillaries. and of course the 34 cam drive for the CAS is different. cam profile is a little different too, but lift is the same across them all.

yeah I would. and I would get the nismo afms too. I went new gen nissan Z32s on the last GTR, and nismos on this one. performance wise they are very, very close. and the nismos have the advantage of being standard size.

do not sit still idling or revving the engine to get things to 60 degrees. that is the worst way to do things. your oil will get up to temp much quicker just by normal driving where the engine is under load etc. not to mention the impracticality of sitting in your garage for half an hour revving your engine! start the car and you should be driving off after no more than 30 seconds. get a new proper temp guage. you should need no more than 5 mins (10 max) of sedate driving to get things up to around 70-80 degrees C. sitting in the garage waiting for things to warm up is just wearing out your engine. you want it to get to operating temp as quick as possible and the way to do that is sensible driving (ie revs under 4500, no WOT, not big boost etc).

no it's not a 'ping coming from the exhaust'. I'm sorry but there is no such thing. a hole in the exhaust will not cause an engine to ping, nor will it cause a missfire, nor will it cause the engine to cut at 5,000rpm. all it will do is leak exhaust gas which will make the car sound like it has an exhaust leak. it's pretty hard to diagnose over the net. take it to a mechanic.

yep it should be, but i've been burnt before when fkers change what usually happens by a week or so.

what bastards! yeah I did think it strange for the guys not to have tee-d something up before hand. bad assumption on my part. what clowns. give permission then take it back. not to mention the fact that photo shoots like that do nothing at all to hurt their brand. they should look at it as free advertising. do they want to endear themselves to young, hip demographics that have disposable income or not? looks like not. very close minded. and typical of the imports are evil attitude yet they are happy to make money flogging us parts for them...

i don't think he would have had webber. and I don't think he backed off either. if anything he was going faster after the thinly veiled order to ease up. he just ran out of laps.

yeah, he said it had an RB. I'm not sure where brad saw it with an astron motor in it? all the talk and pics I saw said RB. it would be sweet with a nice 26 or 30/26. considering all the work done, and the fact that it's set to run RB I reckon if you're building a sports sedan you'd be mad not to offer the bloke $10K. even if you really wanted a new frame there would be so much money saved with body-work, wheels, shocks, pedal box.

tektrader is right. they can easily be welded and machined smooth again. it's only the surface for the balancer to sit on. but mikes problem is not just that visible damage, he has a smashed oil pump and from memory it's picked up a bearing so most likely journals are damaged too. if it was just those little bits on the snout then for sure it can be fixed no problem.

fyck that sucks. probably would have been wise for the magazine to ask their permission before spending 3 hours using someone's commercial premises as a background though... hopefully you got some good shots though.

very similar thing happend to me mate. simple timing belt change at a well known and well trusted workshop resulted in my balancer eventually coming loose. lucky the crank snout was easily repairable and engine does not need. and also lucky my balancer came loose 200 meters from home, putting down the street at 40km/h, not down the straight at EC at 220 km/h and 7500rpm!

you got some nice bush? do tell...

yeah, fighting for last with force india... fighting and losing half the time! yeah he is on drugs. boohoo tough at the top for all of 6 races (7 now). MS had every single other driver in F1 gunning for him for 10 years! and he always had a smile on his face on the podium. it's interesting to note that after MS left ferrari was still on top for one season (no doubt he'd already had a big hand in development of that car) but have since fallen well off their usual form. I know there are a lot of factors in that, rule changes, no ross brawn etc. but I don't think you can discount the impact that loosing MS has had on the performance of their car and team as a whole. just goes to show that the real champions GIVE THEMSELVES the best car and the best team, they don't fall arse backwards into one (hamilton anyone?).

that S13 sports sedan shell is a pretty good buy for $11k. especially considering the penske shocks etc. If I were building a sports sedan I'd take a hard look at it, as it's a big head start for not much investment, providing of course things have been done well to the stage it's at.

what use are you talking about? circuit racing? casual circuit days with some street use? all street use with the odd track day? drag racing? casual drag days with mostly street? or just high performance road tyres? this makes a big difference to what is suitable or not.

yes you need to change the clutch. either the clutch is completely worn out, ie friction plate is gone, or it's possibly that you have a broken bearing carrier (one of the wings snapped off) or broken clutch fork or pivot. either way the gearbox needs to come off the find out what's wrong. do not go and just order new parts until they get it off and see what it needs.

yeah once again RBR gave vettel a strategy that meant he needed to be in front, or have great pace on his short stints and he f**ked it up and managed neither of those aims which meant he put himself in a tough spot. it seems he is not as good at tyre management as webber. I think that is probably half the reason they keep 3 stopping him. it takes the pressure off him somewhat to look after tyres as he can use up 1 more set in the race AND spend less laps on the option tyre. where as webber can look after the tyres on bigger fuel loads and can manage the option tyre over long runs so they can 2 stop him without penalty. where as 2 stopping vettel would mean heavier qualy fuel load, longer stints with a heavier car and a longer last stint on the option tyre. but sadly he just doesn't seem to have enough speed to make the 3 stoppers work at the moment.

there is no chance fitting 370mm rotors and F50s under 17inch wheels. yours look like 355mm max or even 343mm maybe?

yeah they have been good on my old GTI-R, and good on a silvia and even good on a 32 GTR, but a 35 GTR is a different story with a lot more weight and a lot more lateral load on them. trust me, they were a step back from the standard dunlops on track. the times showed that too. about a second or so off at oran park GP. if you are going 18s, get the RE55s. or even better still some dunlop DZ03G. they will be much better I think.

none of your balls work very well troy but I think they have a pill or some kind of spray for that these days...

yes, especially since jenson has achieve absolutely bugger all in his first 8 or so seaons in F1 despite being in some decent machinery some of the time. well he did well in 04 in a cracking car. it's tough to think that if webber wasn't robbed of those 1.5 points at malaysia (scored 1.5 instead of 3 due to short race) he would be equal with vettel. i wonder what RBR would be thinking then about who is the #1 WDC chance? I reckon if webber can take at least 1 win this year he should be right for a seat next year. he'll probably need to finish ahead of or very close to vets as well, or else RBR will be convinced that webber is just an ok driver in a great car (like button!) and turf him out in favour of someone else. there will surely be a queue of hopeful drivers outside the RBR offices right about now. Webber is going well. 3 podiums this year (same as vets). and they have both had one shit effort. (webber qualifying 18th but finished 11th in china and vets even worse qualifying 13th dropping down to finish 15th in malaysia). sebs has had one DNF though. Let's not forget that webber got red bull's first ever front row grid slot at silverstone last year. he is bloody quick there and won there before in lesser classes. yeah he dropped it last year on lap 1 I think it was, but he wont fark it up again.... surely...