JimX

I'll take it! How much is it including freight to Sydney? Is it adonized at all? If so what colour? If not, would it be possible to get adonized before sending? If so then at what cost? Have I asked too many questions yet? How about now? Do you hate me yet? How about now? Sorry, got a little carried away there. PM me your bank details and I'll DD you the cash whether or not it's adonized (although if it's already adonized in hot pink, I may have to re-think the purchase)

Unfortunately I have an R33 GTR now. Or is that fortunately? Something. The GTS-t still lives here, but the new owner can't afford anything like that yet (plus repairs on it are more of a priority)

Please put me down for next time!

Thanks for the info guys. I didn't know Soundstream were so expensive. I'm also trying to find more info on these USD Waveguides I've seen mentioned, but I think they'll be too expensive. Hard to find info on them. I'm looking at the Hertz thingie now.

I've done a search but turned up surprisingly little. I found some info on Kappa speakers that seemed to be unrelated in a thread about mounting an amp (?!) Anyway I've found the following brands/models on Ebay for around $250-300: PIONEER - TSC160R-6 ½" REV Component Speaker Pack 250W Alpine Type-R SPR-17LS 6.5 Inch 2-Way Component Speaker ROCKFORD P162S 6" 3 WAY 60W RMS COMPONENT SPEAKERS FOCAL! 165A1 6.5 INCH COMPONENT SPEAKER And then there are some which cost less but the name doesn't seem to be as big, so maybe the quality might be as good as the above. These are under $200: SOUNDSTREAM XSC6 (6.5" Component Speaker) RRP299 Boss Audio BLX6 2-Way Component Speakers System 450W CLARION SRS1686 COMPONENT SPEAKER SYSTEM I also found the Kappa 6.1's but I can't afford $500+. Can anyone give any advice or opinions on any of the above, or offer any other alternatives? The important things to me are low distortion and clear sound. Treble is probably more important than bass, since this is just for the front and it's only a 6" setup, but if there is a 6x9" alternative I can shoehorn in there for a decent bass up front then please let me know. I remember ages ago I had a Torana with some decent 6x9's up front and the bass was really good and very loud without needing (or being able to afford) a sub. I wouldn't mind re-living my youth if possible In case it makes a difference to the sound quality, the head unit is a Pioneer mp3 somethingorother (I forget model, too lazy to go to car and look) that I bought a couple of years ago. I have a 300W Clarion amp, which I think I can run both the sub and one pair of speakers (fronts) at 150W each so to save on buying another amp I would probably just run the rear speakers off the head unit. Oh if anyone has any suggestions for a sub that'd be good too. I have a JL Audio sub in a sealed box, it sounds pretty good but it's bulky and doesn't fit anwhere nicely in the boot, and hence uses too much space and shifts around. Fairfield Car Radio have their own custom 10" Skyline sub which sits in one corner and uses much less room, but they wanted around $500 for it a few years ago. I'm not doubting the quality but I can't afford $500 for a sub (yet)

First the short version with integrated questions first to keep it simple. Is the tacho needle sprung from around the middle of the RPM range (ie, around 5500 on the Nismo GTR version) so that if you move it up from this point, it will actually spring UP to the maximum? Somehow I doubt it. Would this be fixable at all or do I have to chuck and replace? (henceforth the above description shall be referred to as the "spring thingie") Now the long and complicated version with the numbered questions at the end. About a week ago, the tacho stopped working. Well I thought it did. But then it worked again, of its own accord. This continued off and on for a few days, when it started to not work more often than work. Then one day it stuck on around 5500rpm, then on the same journey it jumped all the way up to 11000rpm and stayed there. What I'm guessing happened is I revved to around 5500rpm while it was still working, then suddenly the signal cut out, and when it finally jiggled loose, it was on the other side of the spring tension and hence jumped up to 11000rpm. Last night I pulled the dash out and discovered the weird spring thingie I described above. I took the clear front off but left the tacho itself in the dash. I sprayed the **** out of it with contact cleaner, but it didn't seem to change the spring tension at all, it didn't feel like there was anything gumming it up so the cleaner wouldn't have really done anything. I put it all back together and it surprisingly worked. The contacts from the loom weren't dirty but I cleaned them anyway to be sure. It dropped out and stayed on zero once, but within a minute or 2 it started working normally again and so far hasn't stopped working since. I'm guessing this isn't permanent though. When it's working it seems absolutely fine, the redline is at 8000 and it seems to be accurate. The ECU doesn't do anything different whether or not the tacho is working, so it's got to be a problem with the signal between the ECU and the tacho, and the ECU obviously doesn't care what the tacho reads. So now, my questions are: 1. If the spring thingie isn't normal, would it be fixable or would I need to replace the tacho? 2. How do I safely take it out of the dash cluster? It looked like the needle was in the way and I didn't want to break anything unless I knew it was stuffed. 3. If the spring thingie IS normal, I am guessing there is a loose signal wire from the ECU. How do I find and test it? 4. Where can I get a Nismo tacho from? I've only ever seen the speedo head units or the entire dash. Would a stock one work in the Nismo dash or would it read wrong? That's all I can think of for now.

Time for a bit more info on this thing I didn't write a post up about it yet because the car needs to be repaired first (the accident or should I say incident was not her fault in the slightest, long story which I won't go into here). Anyway here's the basic rundown and why I don't think it's the coils. Firstly, the old coils were good up until about 1 bar of boost, then it would get the misfiring problem at anything higher which I discovered when I had it tuned last year. So I got Splitfire coils which fixed it. Before selling the car I decided to put it back to stock(ish), but tested the old coils at 1 bar first, to make sure that they were still ok. Everything was fine. So then I put the rest of the stuff I was selling back to stock. Injectors, ECU, AFM. Then I noticed that it was getting the misfire problem again, at about 5000rpm as seems to be the norm. Luckily I still had the Splitfires so I threw them back in to see if that helped, and it didn't make even a slight difference. So I was and still am 99% sure that it's not the coils. Next thing to test was the AFM. I couldn't put the Q45 AFM and PowerFC back in because they had been sent to their new owners already, but luckily Andrew from Kudos Motorsports sent me a stock replacement express post (thanks Andrew!), and this seemed to make a difference. Instead of misfiring ALL the time, it was now doing it maybe half the time and seemed to be improving. I then decided it was the factory AFM making it run too rich and fouling the plugs, but now with the new AFM it was running correctly and blasting off the carbon. At this point I decide to put the car on the market, but Emma gets a new job and says she can afford to buy it, so she is driving it around herself for a couple of weeks before she has the incident mentioned above. During that time though we discovered that the misfiring problem was gradually returning. I found that I could lessen the effect by winding the boost down, but gradually it started happening at lower and lower boost. Even though the EBC was set to 0.6, I think that the adjustable wastegate actuator is set to around 0.8 so I don't think we've managed to drop it any lower than that. I would need to road test it to check but obviously that's not possible yet. Other things I've tried were changing the plugs to new ones, it didn't make any difference and the old ones weren't fouled anyway so now I have a spare set. My current theory is that it's factory boost cut, but I unfortunately don't have a PowerFC anymore to test this theory. The turbo is not stock, it's a 450hp Garrett so this would generate extra problems for the factory ECU. The fact that the misfiring issue is moving around depending mostly on the changing of air flow (boost) or measuring it (AFM) makes me think that the ECU is "learning" how to cut the boost again whenever I change something, similar to how it learns how to idle, and back off timing when it detects detonation. A simple test will be to reset the ECU once it's on the road and see if it improves anything. I think that's the whole story! I was going to post all this up after the car was back on the road, but Emma's very eager to learn and she thought she'd put the post up about it

All modern motor oils have the "sticky" technology, if you can even call it technology. If they didn't, engines would wear out a hell of a lot faster whenever they were left overnight without running. If you want a form of proof, buy a new set of disc rotors. They will have a thin film of oil coating them to stop rust, and it doesn't matter if they are stored for years it will still have the same coating of oil. Magnatec is just a marketing gimmick. If it really has some sort of extra magnetism (why?), that would imply some sort of ferrous component in it. Would you really want iron filings floating through your engine sticking to all the metal? All good oils have a decent amount of detergent in them too, to help avoid the buildup of "sludge" that they will all get if left to cook inside an engine long enough. This post is not aimed at you, it's just addressing the Magnatec. I prefer to use a full synth rather than subscribe to mainstream marketing gimmicks. Magnatec seems to be an otherwise decent oil but there are much better choices. The main thing turbo cars need to contend with is the breakdown of the oil at high temperatures, and full synthetics generally have a higher temperature tolerance than semi synth or mineral oils.

Yes it will cause some shit with the HICAS if the wheel isn't straight, and now it steers better since I put it back on straight Before it seemed to be a bit weird before because the HICAS would do something different depending on which direction I was steering. It wasn't too bad before but it's definitely better now. The alignment is good enough for now, I will get an alignment when I replace the tyres.

I can only speak for the R33 GTR's airbag wheel, because that's the only one I've done. But there was no issue driving the car with the airbag removed. I had to do this because once I had the airbag out, I realised I couldn't find my steering wheel puller and so had to drive to my local spare parts shop to get another one. Oh yeah, something I should add. Once you remove the airbag there are 4 more security torx bolts which are 2 sizes smaller than the size 50 one used to remove the side bolts. I can't for the life of me remember what it was though, I think the mounting for the horn? I'm pretty sure you need to remove them to get to the steering column and threaded puller holes. I remember disassembling the horn to re-tension the springs a bit so now it doesn't rattle, but I forget the details because it was all so straightforward. I'm now glad that the shop only had the kit available and not a single size 50, because it would have meant an extra trip to the parts shop.

I have to say I haven't ever noticed tyre balance to have that big an effect on wheel shaking. It has improved, but never fully cured a wheel shake problem. On the flip side, I have lost wheel weights before and it has never seemed to make any wheel shake problem worse. This is particularly so on my motorcycle, where the wheels have never had the shake problem and I've lose more weights off the bike wheels than on most cars I've had. I've got no idea if the wheels on the GTR are properly balanced or not. I'm not going to bother doing a balance until it needs new tyres because it's got no shake problems at all.

How much would CV joints cost to replace, and what would be the consequences of letting them go unrepaired? (ie, how long have I got to save up to get them fixed )

Does anyone else in Sydney want one of these? Maybe we could get a group buy of 3 happening or something. I will probably be interested, but not for a couple of weeks while I book the GTS in to get repaired. Mavric, how much extra would it cost to get 3 shipped to Sydney? If we can get 3 people together, you could ship them to one address and people could pick them up or I could drop them off, etc. Also, do you know how much the indicators are roughly (are they GTR indicators?) and also the reinforcing strut bars, as my front bar is a complete writeoff and I don't think it had all the metal bars on the lower bit anyway.

It did it again tonight and I'm not sure it's the diff now either. I noticed it seems to do it when power is being shunted to the forward wheels. I have an electronic thing in the dash which has dials to adjust the forward/back bias, but I've got no idea how it works or if it's even faulty. It seems to go up to 2 on really slow take-offs (ie, for no apparent reason) unless I wind the dials all the way to the left, which I presume is the default. Also when paying more attention I noticed it's not always on corners, and it sometimes does it from the left too. I don't think it's getting worse, I think it just seems to coincide with the power being pushed to the front. Maybe it's tugging on the suspension in a weird way when doing this and something in the suspension is worn/grinding. Definitely not tyres scrubbing, I know what that sounds like from my previous car And also there's no scuffed bits on tyre or guard and nothing changes in the steering feel when it happens.

I think I have an intermittent front diff noise at low speed turns. It sounds a bit crunchy or rattly. I say I think because I think it's from the diff but could be a suspension arm or wheel bearing. But the car steers perfectly straight and there's nothing wrong with the steering so I think it's in the diff. Any ideas of what it might be and what I should do before something kills itself? It's only coming from the right side, and not all of the time, and even then only at low speeds.

I've had this noise before and it was the exhaust hitting underneath the car. It may not be that in your case but if you haven't checked already, see how much clearance there is between the exhaust and floorpan. With the car that had it I couldn't even fit my fingers around the top. I think the engine mount might also have something to do with it, if it's worn it will allow the engine to flex up more over bumps and stuff and cause the exhaust to hit up even if there is enough of a gap. On my current car I have the opposite problem, too much of a gap there which means it hangs too low and hits the speed hump instead

What is the idle speed set to on the PowerFC? If set to the minimum and it's still 1500rpm then the unit might be faulty, if the standard ECU idles properly. Otherwise you could have a vacuum leak. You could try the adjuster screw on the AAC valve.

When my battery died last year I got the NRMA to deliver and install one because I wanted to use the car that evening! I got the biggest f*ck-off one that he had He had to replace the tray it sits on, the clamp that goes over the top, and also the terminals because the posts were bigger. I should have got a bigger earth wire too, for future expansion of power usage. I don't know what the CCA is but it's never run flat and never even hinted at struggling with anything. It cost about $180 fitted I think, including all the extra bits. I think the standard size one was about $120, but I figured that if you're going to spend $120, you may as well spend $180 and get something much better.

When mine was doing this, it was the actuator arm falling off the blender motor (I think that's what it's called - that's what we called them when I worked for Ford anyway). The bit that controls whether hot or cold air came out anyway. It was stuck in the "cold" position obviously. I didn't fix it, but my mechanic had a quick look under the dash for me when I was there for something else and he fixed it in half a minute with a circlip or the like.

Just a bit of extra info that may help - I loosen off the brake filler cap before bleeding. I don't know if this is necessary but I think it might put too much pressure in your system, or even just the cap if you don't. You can also get those one-man bleed kits which have a valve to stop air going back up, but having a second person is always easier (just not essential).

One tooth isn't enough to get the valves to hit. I've done it myself when installing the adjustable gear. I actually fitted it correctly, but it ran so crap with the standard -4 degrees that I thought I must have put it on one tooth out, so I put it back on in what I thought was correct and it ran even worse. So I'd say it's ok to go at least one tooth off, and an extra 4 degrees of adjustment