Roy

All those talking about parting out a GTR being cheaper. Lots of guys who race cars struggle to change tyres so dont discount the labour component of building a car. LOl, the flip side is i have seen what is required to build a Grp A car from a shell and its a farking ball ache if it needs to comply with a class or a its previous form

What boost are each setups running and are they tuned by the same mechanic?

But isnt the main advantage of carbon brakes the weight saving, not any improvement in brake fade/resistance? Well that is what i have always read in tech mags etc, rather then Wheels/Motor etc Hell Zanardi was the black sheep running steel brakes at Williams as he hated the feel of the carbon brakes. There was no direct difference in braking force or fade resistance, there was however the head fark for Williams to set the car up with all that extra weight at the end of the suspension arms

Yeh, the rear end is ordinary, but the front and side profile is cool. And i love the mods/power/weight of the thing. I would so love one, only $$$ would make me fall off my seat Though they are only about 55k in real dollars, taxes etc etc would bump it up to what 100k ? Shame they didnt find some middle ground and sell a Porsche esque GT3 RS version as a road going weekend race car

Well thinking out loud, i doubt Nissan would bin the DSG box on the track variants. Its a selling point for the car so will stay. However, its not hard to think of reasons to bin it for a traditional manual gearbox. The first being weight. What does all the electronids/hydraulics etc do for the overall weight? Im guessing the DCT is heavier, technology usually is. Secondly, talk out of Japan is that the gearboxes are wearing quickly on the development cars. So either Nissan have to look at the durability of the gearbox if it is really going to be considered the Nissan equiv to a GT3 / GT3 RS. Otherwise the annual servicing cost will kill the enthusiasm to track them. Lastly, as previously stated, the gearboxes are more complicated and given the extra wear and tear on the cars at the track, it will call into question even more the dependence on sensors etc etc. Also the launcing of the car will be far more frequent in a motorsport inspired version of the car and again...DCT and launch control are damn consistant for launching times...but $$$$ Ok they are far more durable then the automated manuals like in the F430 etc, but all manuals have clutches and wear with frequent launches. The availability of clutch compounds/designs and packaging, (servicing - replacement for production racing) are all more difficult with a DCT box. A more traditional gearbox will help with long term durability, a good thing if Nissan are looking at Group N type endurance racing...something i expect they are. Re the Fezz F430 gearbox, they claim 60ms but that is a marketing number and there is a catch in there somewhere about it being the average or something, its really more like 100ms. So, all weighed up i would expect Nissan to keep the DCT. Though i would not be surprised if they kept it for the road model only. I know if i was racing one i think i would prefer a normal manual

Honestly if people want to lie about lap times then let them. Nothing is more pathetic then bragging about winning a thrown fight, so if they want to be that fickle then ...whatever floats their sinking boat

Ok, my opinion. Go the 3037. Go the internal gate option and i think its best for your application for the following reasons. To make the power you want it will require less boost. The RB25 has a higher compression ratio then other RBs and it has the weakest pistons of the RB engines. So boost is the one thing you want to try and keep under control. The 2835 will be more responsive, but will require more boost. It will also put more wear on the engine as in your day to day driving the turbo will more often run through its peak torque rpm with your foot up it and under boost. Not a big deal, but the less reponsive 3037 will not be boosting as often on the street, and the mid range torque hit will be harsher with the 2835 with the boost you will be running to make the power you want. Its just more load on the engine. For those that say 250rwkws is really the safe limit?!?!? I disagree. A badly tuned 200rwkws is more likely to go bang then a well tuned and supported 280rwkws. Only nothing is safe when you start ripping off the stuff that Nissan has done the R&D on. In my eyes there is nothing safer about 250rwkws then 280rwks on a std RB25, the general engineering of the engine is there for it to be reliable. My vote it will be more reliable with the 3037 making 280rwkws then the 2835 making 270-280rwkws

Well if you look at the 10 piston caliper... The main reason you run more pistons is to ensure even pad wear and pressure reducing hot spots on the pad and rotor. So the fact that the 10 piston caliper uses a square pad with a straight row of pistons rather then curved on a radius means that you dont get the benefit of running a narrower pad which curves with the rotor, and has pistons that are larger for the trailing part of the pad and smaller for the leading part of the pad. A narrower pad like most 6 pot calipers means you get to run a shallwer rotor (the heavy bit) and a larger hat (the lighter bit) so for a given rotor diameter the assembly is lighter. If you look at ther crazy 10/12 piston calipers from the likes of Alcon that are/were used in Motorsport you can see that the piston size is dependent on the rotor direction through the caliper and the pad shape. The Tarox-10 is symmetrical front to rear with its largest piston in the middle, which is a generic solution to clocking the caliper to suit cars with leading caliper positions (Skylines) and trailing positions (Porsche/WRX etc) By that i mean look at the passenger side of the car and see of the caliper is on the right hand side of the wheel (Porsche) or left (Skyline) So hope that quick fire response makes sense. If you look at the pad shape of a CP5555 AP 6 piston caliper and compare it to an F50 Brembo caliper pad you will get what i mean about pad shape and curvature. I think the Tarox appeals to the "WOW, 10 piston" it must be good. I could easily be wrong, but looking at multi piston calipers from the major makers used in motorsport...thats where i am getting most of my thinking

They are used a lot on little 4 cyl hatches in the UK. I would personally only use them if they are cheap. Their 10 piston caliper etc rely more on wow value then engineering smarts.

But they manner in which he has attempted to support the lattice arrangement of the cooler is a step in the right direction. If i could have scored some half inch alloy tube i would have cut it to length and used it on the inner part of the cooler so that as you suggest, you dont over tighten and crusch the core. The easier solution which is all i did was put a nut on the inside of the length of all thread and tighten up to that. But the reason i like the install is because the cooler is nicely supported with the alloy angle/channel and the mounting uses allthread accross the entire height meaning that when the core gets hot and is full of oil (heavy) over time it doesnt distort and damage itself. If you look at cars for sale that are a few years old or done plenty of kms its not unusual to see their core all stretched and out of square. I have also seen one fail at the track causing oil down because the core was stretching under the heat and load while racing. Another core fail when the braided lines cause a load on the connection, when it heats up it bent to the point that the core fatigued. Again this was a race car and i noted that my core has been damaged over time as i used a 90deg bend and forced the braid to make up the rest of the angle. Shoudl have useda 120deg bend that way there would not have been any tension in the connection that when the alloy heated up was easily distorted. Another core in the inner guard had a rock go through it as the inner guard was removed. I think the stone was thrown from the tyre forward as the damage to the core was at the rear. This is another thing i am wary of as i havent run an inner guard since i resprayed the car. Just havent got around to putting it back on....though i should. A had abit of alloy mesh cut into my guard so air coudl still escape whilst being protected from stones and other rubbish. When i duct up the front of the cooler to the new bar opening i will also put mesh on the front to stop a rock going into/through it when following another car, which is most likely ever going to happen at the track (i suppose) And lastly i saw a car at a track day that damaged the core which ended up splitting as it was mounted a little too close to the bumper / vibrating and it ended up rubbing to the point that over time it eroded the core and split. LOl, so just some general comments on things to consider. LOL i know my install is short on two of the things noted above But i will get around to it, hopefully before it causes me problems. But thought i would just pass on some of the failures/damage i have noticed when looking at cars, attending track days and when i use to scrutineer cars

I hear what you are saying, but thats not exactly what i said. My point was a well setup car will work nicely on good road tyres, yes the setup could be optimised for the different level of tyre grip. But many less sorted cars like mine hide behind the level of grip the tyres give, and my not so sorted car can still punch pretty good times considering. But tyres hide the vices. So throw a less sorted car on crap tyres and without the grip the better sorted car on teh same tyre will only increase the margin. Yes less powered cars can often do better in the wet. But if you happen to have more power, with great power delivery and response to go with the chassis then others arent going to do a lot of catching just because of slippery conditions. LOL well thats my take on things Wet can help cars with better dynamics but hurt in the power stakes. LOL what happens the the dynamics/chassis are the cream of the crop and they also happen to be top shelf in the grunt department Nice work Adz, my car straight out of the workshop with that suspension did something like a 1:38.1 (?) whilst being held up by the F430 at Dutton. Having only done 2 laps and if not for being held up would have walked into a low 1:37 if not high-mid 1:36. So obviously the suspension doesnt suit your car and power as well as mine. Perhaps we need to find another set to fiddle with to better suit your car if they changes need to be more dramatic. As my car was a lot more neutral, yours seems to want to understeer a lot more then mine. Being too soft? Perhaps my sway bars are larger then yours because if anything i thought they could have been softened up a little more. But then again your power delivery is worlds different to mine so no doubt pushes the whole traction thing to the extreme. LOL, i know you have already been there done that, but i say bin the GT35R and go back to the 3076, then you will be able to take the 2nd gear corners in 3rd and use the midrange to push you out of the corners with a more tractable power delivery. I think thats why my car is so easy to drive because i have just enough corner speed so that the shorter gearing of the R32 diff/gearbox means i can honker out of slow corners in 3rd

Oh. Well just because i cant read

I will concede that after looking at what times you did at PI in those shitty conditions, i wondered what had been done to your car. I know you had been having overheating problems etc and didnt really get a chance to stretch the cars legs last year, but such an improvement in those conditions, well you are too good a driver to get those sorts of times from mpre track time (ie you are already good, so any improvement wont be seconds (perhaps only tenths) around a race track) Look forward to seeing the car in good conditions. I really dont think street tyres, obviously they will need to be good ones, is going to hurt the good cars that much. Good suspension and brakes and power only make the car quicker then a lesser car on streets. My car is all gripped up on semis as the tyre masks so many other faults. A well sorted car doesnt need to hide behind tyre grip as you only need a lap time for a single lap

LOL, i think you may be bi-polar. I love it

The above may all be true, but there was nothing wrong with how my car with the std shocks drove and handled with the King springs, It was a lot better with the swaybars, and once again better when the Kings and std shocks were replaced with Bilsteins. But for a street car, especially an R34 i dont think you need to use new shocks if you simply want to lower it and sharpen up the handling with slightly stiffer and lower springs. LOl, you may be able to tell me technically thats not correct, but like you said ... seat of the pants on the street it will feel fine and what more do you need. Suggesting that you go directly to new shocks and springs is a bit extreme and expensive for someone who has a pretty std car, sounds like it is generally going to stay this way who wants a slightly lower ride for looks and a handlign improvement.

The V-Spec R32 GTR that came with Brembo calipers ran a 324mm rotor under a 17x8.0" wheel that was +30 offset

How about over 1 sec quicker then JP at PI in crappy, cold and damp conditions. It wasnt wet wet, but there was light rain through the day and even for the brief moments when it was dry it was still frezzing cold and miserable. Better, dry conditions would no doubt be quicker again. Friggin cheaterer cars

Hear Brawns comments about when Honda have a worthy car they need to get one of the drivers who are a step above the others, like Alonso! LOl, fair enough he discounts Rubens from that sort of thinking, but means he doesnt rate Button as that great if he is talking about drivers a cut above I think Vettel is odds on for RBR promotion next year, but i do believe its his place to lose. Bourdais is far more experienced and has been able to race through the midfield in a few races, showed great presence and pace in Aus and showed well in qualifying. He has done everything right so far, and if continues to capitalise on opportunties that present himself i can easily see him leap frogging Vettel, who is still very young and possibly worth money contracted to other teams. Real question is whether Vettel continues to show he may be something special, as we recognise Bourdais is good, but unlikely to be special. Vettel can continue to get out qualified by Bourdais he may be in trouble, as one thing about Indy car is it will have hardened Bourdais in preparation for tight racing

There is nothing wrong with the HKS air filters. My compressor wheel doesnt have any signe of damage from dirt/particles and the thing makes 260rwkws at 18-19psi so you cant say they dont get the job done.

Yeh as soon as i saw that HK accident i was thinking, oops there goes the 14 years of fataility free racing. I cant believe that teh cars can submarine those tyre walls, They should be buried into the ground or teathered down. But good to see Webber running reliably to 5th, i cant see RBR getting the pace that will make them podium contestors. True to previous years, it seems Williams have lost the pace they showed early in the season At least BMW and the worlds most beautiful Polish race driver are real contenders. Kubie is doing to Heidfled what Webber did. Only he has a more reliable car so its highlighted even more. Nick to lose his seat at contract time for some hot young talent, or my tip a clever old Spanish Renault driver should he decide that Renault cant give him a shot at the title in 2009

TC105N 17 x 8.5 front and 17x9.5 rear?

Only have 6 beers to get me through to end of the race. Maybe i need to down a bit more satay chicken to slow up on the piss front. I love being at my folks place, eat and drink like a king

They were saying as far back as Aus GP that they had suspension upgrades to go on teh car. In Malaysia they said they had major aero upgrade in the wings and that was the first time i read that they has a new suspension system similar to what was previously banned. Renault are pretty good at developing parts mid season. Far stronger then Williams, Toyota and RBR who often go walk about mid season as they are slow with new development I dont think they have gained two seconds, but they have gained a solid 0.5 per second looking at the times they recently had in testing etc and in qualifying form it appears they may be able to dial a bit more out of the car. Plus running light in Spain means you can jump a few places on the grid. Did you see how close qualifying was? It was silly close and you woudl only have to go 3 or 4 laps shorter to get great track position

That is one of the best installs i have seen. Its a credit to you or your mechanic. So many people install their coolers in a way to damage them after hours of use hot

Reanult do seem to havea good map for drivabil;ity and launching the car from the line. Hell, it even means Mark gets the RBR off the line pretty well these days. Hoping Alonso gets out front. Probably sops early and races for a strong top 4 finish. With Webber home in 5th as Massa gets caught up with a fast starting Louise meaning the top spots will be up for grabs