JimX

There's no use in hanging onto it as a spare because it won't fit back into my mangled bracket anyway, so I may as well sell it. There are no problems with this pump at all. This is just the pump itself, no bracket or fuel pick up as I have re-used them with my Bosch pump. No pics yet but I can take some when I get home. Asking $100 (firm for now).

They drive on the left side of the road in Malaysia.

The kit you describe is the same thing I got and is indeed $1000 fitted. If you had bought it before the end of June you would have saved around $135. $250 is the labour cost for fitting everything and I think a wheel alignment included. Since I'm doing my swaybars myself I hope to save a bit on labour putting the adjustable bushes in at a later date.

You're meant to re-use the old rubber boots and bump stops with their suspenion kits. My bump stops were fine, but the rubber boots had long since disintegrated.

Well, I took delivery of the bits last night, and here's the lowdown: Firstly, I love Whiteline! The price for their handling kit went up to $750 on the 1st of July, but they sold me their handling pack at $15 less than the pre-July price of $615 as a favour because my shock isn't covered by warranty. They also gave me a big discount off the shock absorber, and also a discount off 2 rubber boots to stop the same thing happening again. They only had 2 boots in stock or else I would have gotten 4. The rears are the imporant ones anyway. I was so excited I spent 4 hours last night doing the following in this rough order: Pulling the rear seat and parcel shelf out, pulling both rear shocks out, dissassembling them both to fit the rubber boots (plus replace the old temporary shock with the new one of course), fitting them back up again, plugging a hole in one of my tyres (picked up a screw), drove my gf's car to the servo with my wheel to re-inflate it, putting back seat and parcel shelf back in, taking old rear sway bar out, assembling new sway bar and putting it in, then stuffing around with different bolts working out how it was supposed to go together. Oh, and I also ate dinner briefly at one point in there. I was also going to put the front swaybar in but by this stage it was 1:30am (I started at 9:30pm, went shopping!) and I had to come to work today, so I'll do it tonight or tomorrow morning. I haven't road tested the car yet but it all seems good.

This is a very common problem, usually caused by idiot forklift drivers on the docks. My panelbeater patched mine up when I got the respray done, he welded some new metal in there. It's not very pretty, but it's straight again and sealed and painted so it's not going to rust anytime soon.

Those magnets sound like a really good idea. Where can I get some with the right curve to fit an oil filter?

I have to correct myself about the Iridiums gap too. I'd been told that it was 1.1mm. I decided to expierment with changing the gap awhile ago to help eliminate flat spots. I pulled the first plug out and checked the gap, and it was 0.7mm. Oh well, nothing more to do there

If the VL Commodore ones fit then maybe try Repco, who have some aftermarket VL parts (waterpump for one).

No idea. I thought they might make them in-house. Didn't they buy out Selby a few years ago?

I don't get it. Taxis get to have whatever they want on their dash - their ID badge, stickers, bits of plastic, pen holders with pens in them, electronic/radio stuff, but we can't have a single gauge? Maybe combined with the lack of compulsory seat belts for taxi drivers they will be instantly killed by all the crap on their dash in an accident and thus be less of a burden on our health system.

GTS-t VSPEC, a guy in these forums (sorry I forget who) had his exhaust rust right through from beneath his heat wrap. He didn't say if he had mild or stainless though I think. The problem is not condensation while driving obviously, but after you park and it cools down. It probably won't be a *major* problem if the car is garaged but heat wrap being cloth and therefore porous, it will absorb small amounts of water from the air especially when it has the cold metal underneath to help the condensation in the first place. Anyway I'm pretty sure stainless will be ok. It's not rustproof, but it's rust resistant which is probably enough. It may be my biggest concern but it's probably not a major one Tomeastlake81, so you can heat wrap the exhaust manifold too? How do you do that?

Go to the counter and ask for "a can of carby cleaner", they will sort you out

I think the one of the biggest differences between LT12 and LT16 is closed loop mode. How good it is though I've no idea.

I'd change the shocks first, but it would depend on what you already have in there and in what condition. If they are gas shocks and still fairly new, then go for some lower springs. A set of Bilsteins or Konis should be around $1000. Four springs should be around $300.

Going off reports on both I don't think they are worth the price difference. But this is only a rough judgement call based on other people's opinions, there's no way to tell unless you've test-driven both yourself. If I had lots of spare money I'd buy the best tyres I could but I can't so I'm going for the ST115's or FK451's (probably the former).

18's in that size seem to be around the same price as 17's, so I would guess around $310.

SO3's are $450 or more in 255 size.

The biggest thing I'd be concerned about is the exhaust rusting from beneath the heat wrap because of condensation. Can you get your exhaust painted/coated with heat resistant stuff while it's on the car? And then put the thermal wrap on top of that. Although, my exhaust is stainless anyway, would that be resistant enough to corrosion?

How long do they usually last? Is there any maintenance you can do on them to help them last longer? Like, repack them with grease or something?

You can also buy a surge tank which will keep the original internal pump but use an external pump on the surge tank. Keep in mind that this will be quite loud from the cabin, which is the main reason I didn't take this option. The beauty of Bosch pumps is that most can be mounted internal or external, so once you take one course of action you can change it around later (to/from surge tank to internal tank for example).

The first thing I did when I got my car was remove the Autometer boost gauge. It was on the steering column and blocking the view of my tacho redline, which I thought was a much more important gauge! It had the EBC and it was all set correctly, so I really didn't need the boost gauge. I used the factory gauge as a rough measure of the boost and it was fine. But later as I started ramping up the boost towards 15psi and past the limit of the factory gauge, I decided to put the Autometer one back in. Only out of curiosity's sake really, to see at what rpm what boost is made. I find it WAY too difficult to look down at the EBC's digital readout, it's so far down (below the radio) that I would even say it's dangerous to keep an eye on while driving. So I put the boost gauge back on the A-pillar. Probably defectable, but it won't be much skin off my nose if I have to remove it. I have to say though, with the chrome cup it looks quite neat from outside the car. But that's not the reason I put it back on. All other additional gauges can wait. So I'd have to say that no aftermarket gauges are important to me. ALL of the factory ones except boost are important!

I don't think $33 is too bad. Mine aren't leaking at all, so I would think generally speaking they last around 8 years or more. That beats the hell out of Commodore gaskets which are about $10 but leak straight out of the packet

I get no dramas from using straight synthetic oil, so I see no reason to add stuff in that can't be of any benefit. Since there was no problem to begin with. Over 100k km on the odometer and not using a single drop of oil between oil changes, what more could I ask for?

Joel, the grey/brown/black cloud of smoke is definitely fuel, nothing to worry about at all. But flat spots under mild acceleration or when cold sounds like blocked injectors to me. Try putting some injector cleaner in with your next tank and see if that makes a difference. If not, then maybe try getting them ultrasonically cleaned.