djr81

Well according to the event publicity Beyonce & ZZ Top will be performing at the Singapore GP. So you are guaranteed to see both talentless hacks & faded "legends" trading on past glories. See I didn't even mention the drivers. See how much restraint I showed?

Yes it would. But I don't think (ie don't really know) that it amounts to a big difference. IMHO the (mis)alignment issues in the front end are what constrains the amount of castor you can run - that & the tyre hitting the plastic at the front of the guard. Importantly it increases camber - which sounds contradictory given you end up with less with a Nismo bracket. As an aside it means you cannot fit an offset inner bush to the Nismo bracket. The arm binds if you try it. The brackets are a &*%$ to get out too. You start by removing the abs system.....

Here are a couple of drawings and three photos. The first shows what Nismo do to the standard upper link bracket to allow for more castor/camber. Essentially it is a stock component but with the holes drilled differently - the front moved closer to the centreline of the car & the rear lower. Thus the upper link is rotated on two axes - allowing for more castor. The second shows a stock LHS bracket. The third shows the Nismo bracket installed with a stock upper arm. Interestingly (or not) the bracket ends up giving you less camber for the same arm length. The shot was taken before I installed some new arms that I had made. The fourth is a drawing of a Cusco arm - these are 10mm shorter than the stock arms. Note the trail. Unfortunately I don't have a drawing of a stock arm. Mostly due to being lazy. The last shows the whole lot bolted up with the new arm - in rattle pack black, no less. I drew the arms to use the Whiteline bushes. As an aside note that Nismo used to do a sliding bracket for the R32, but now all you get is a stock item with harder bushes. Also their castor rods are approx 5mm shorter than the stock items.

This may be a profoundly stupid question, but can the Nistune ECU be used with any of these devices to work in conjunction with the Race-Tech gear? http://www.race-technology.com/ecu_interfaces_8_7550.html

new custom one piece tail shaft is where to start looking.

If it is for the road go with bushes. Nismo make some nice swaybars which should match the springs.

IMHO I can completely understand why other teams told Ferrari to get stuffed. It stems from the multitude of occasions that the Ferrari team were the only ones preventing common sense rule changes from being exercised or for that matter fair & equitable agreements from being enacted. I would imagine the people at Williams, Red Bull & Torro Rosso p!ssed themselves laughing at the request. All Ferrari have to do is use their nominated test drivers....

A few thoughts - I don't have an axe to grind either way with all this. 1. Quoting Ultimate Tensilte strength for a component is a bit pointless - you need the yield strength. 2. Grade 8.8 is a high tensile bolt - a 4.6 is mild steel. 3. A rod end needs to be higher in strength than a bushed end simply because the lack of compliance results in much higher loadings.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/77534 and http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/77540

So carefully worded. Reads like he didn't ask Montezemelo for the money on Wednesday. "...when he met with the Scuderia's president, Luca di Montezemolo, on Wednesday...." Which leaves approximately 87,000 permutations of who asked what from whom, when.

Even the Whiteline stuff will get you those sort of numbers on an R33, ie 5.5 degrees castor. They have more castor stock than the R32's & better front suspension anyway.

Yes.

I run quite a bit of neg camber on my R32 R. The contribution the 4 degrees castor makes to the tyres camber angle when you have turned the steering wheel 90 degrees is not very much. You can do the sums if you want & you will get the same result. As for braking grip there is no shortage of front end grip with this setup. Nor traction particularly. But as the GT-R doesn't even have a front LSD standard it is a meaningless argument. Going from three degrees to four degrees is less influential than going from eight to nine, for example. So what are you going to do for the upper link bracket that is fixed to the chassis? Nismo offer a one of thse as part of a kit. Unsurpisingly it rotates the axis around which the upper arm moves. But is costs far too much for a modified stock component. Well you have to like running suspension without bushes. Which isn't good on the road, nor with poor geometry.

There are a number of reasons. 1. Castor is nice to have, but of much less importance than camber. 2. R32 GT-R's only have 3 degrees stock & increasing this to 4 or even 5 only gives you a small gain. 3. There are problems with increasing castor as it rotates the upright & stresses the bushes by forcing them to rotate on an axis somewhat different to the geometry they have. Doesn't much matter if you do it by pushing the bottom arm forward (which is easier) or pulling the top arm back. 4. No one makes a decent upper arm for camber, let alone for castor.

Well lets see, his career is going down the toilet & he is doubtless not very happy about it. He came second to some bloke called Hamilton in the GP2 series & tested well for Renault. So he did deserve his ride but clearly has failed to make anything of it.

If you go to the cams website www.cams.com.au & then following through to the club zone you can find a list of all the cams affiliated clubs & also regularly upgated lists of all the cams sanctioned events on in Australia. http://www.cams.com.au/Sport/Club%20Zone/C...e=WA&page=1 http://www.cams.com.au/Sport/Events/Event%20Calendar.aspx http://www.cams.com.au/Sport/Events/Event%...;to=&page=1

So, ahh, what does it sound like when you are trying to be offensive? You doubtless saw the endless replays of Adelaide in 1994 when Schumacher deliberately turned down on Hill after he had already bent the car by stuffing it in the wall. Further argument about what happened 15 years ago doesn't help anyone though. 1. It would be all about this years car for him & this year is already stuffed for Ferrari.< who said that Ferrari were going to waste resources on this years car? Your answer above makes no sense whatsoever. I did. I am of the opinion that they will spend more time / money / effort on this years car with Schumacher in it than they would with a new driver. 2. He has idiosynchratic set up requirements that will be out of step with the regular drivers. Fine if you the teams No 1 driver, but useless if you are a stand in. < MS has driven post 2006 cars and he will adapt his style to the current car. And he will also try & adapt the car to him. He would be stupid not to. 3. He would divide the team loyalty to the drivers they have. < Who else is in there other than Kimi? Maybe you're forgetting that one of their contracted drivers is in hospital recovering from sugery to the skull Just checked. Had not forgotten that. 4. He is going to cost coin better spent on other things < How do you know that MS isn't doing this for his current salary? Schumacher may be a lot of things but he is neither stupid nor is he naive. You can bet he will be making large sums of cash out of this. He is, after all, putting his arse & his reputation back on the line. 5. He will deprive a future talent of race experience that they can't get. Hell they can't even get testing experience any more. < You said it yourself!!! Why would Ferrari use these young guys who have limited or no experience in their F1 car when they had a viable option in using MS.... Would you rather they can spend more money fixing broken cars that were ploughed into the concrete barriers?. Well the bloke who just debuted for Torro Rosso is no star & he managed to get through a GP without destroying a car. My point is that if they end up needing a new driver why not get all that stuff out the way this year when it doesn't matter & do something for the sport whilst they are about it.

Yeah good point. I was forgetting about the soon to be unemployed BMW drivers.

Be interesting to see Alonso at Ferrari. He doesn't play well with team mates near his speed & a well Massa should be there or there abouts. A motivated Kimi would also be quick enough & more amusingly not at all bothered by Alonso's mind games. Ferrari have the advantage that they can pretty much chuck money at any longer term driver contract problem. I wonder if they really do have an option on Alonso yet?

That is the worst part of the decision. You get disruption anyway so why not get a long term gain out of it? As, I am sure, does everyone else. But what if he can't?

Broadly I have always said that 1cc of injector in a six will get you 1 rwhp. Depends on AFR's too obviously. So 555 will allow about 555rwhp at the upper limit of the duty cycle (where you don't want to be). So back it off 10% & you still get 500rwhp or 375rwkW.

Maybe put down the rose coloured glasses. 1. What has it got to do with anything at all? Simply put if Ferrari want to be competitive next year they will be doing themselves a disservice wasting effort on this years steaming t*rd of a car. 2. You would be wrong. The idiosynchratic way Schumacher sets the car up is a large part of the reason why he makes his team mates look ordinary at times. It is ok if your the No 1 driver in the team & can dicate set up & the development path for the car but not for a stand in. 3. Did I mention Kimi? I was talking about the team & the need to get behind their contracted drivers without being overly distracted by a stand in. 4. Like Ferrari have any room for more sponsorship. They still carry Marlboro logos in contravention to their agreement. Plus I am sure Schumacher wont be doing it for small change. 5. Oh, lets see. Some bloke called Senna isn't up to much. Then there is Nico Hulkenburg who is testing for Williams & braining the GP2 series. Point being Ferrari should get a driver who will be of use to the team in the future. Schumacher is no Mario Andretti after all. Not that any of that matters to the one eyed Schumacher fans anyway. Look, enjoy however many races he does. Just don't expect it to do Ferrari any favours in the longer term.

In the words of Frenzal Rhomb, Atleast we know that Russell Crowe's band's a ****ing pile of sh!t.... Senna only did that late in his career with McLaren. Different circumstances. I remember Schumacher running into Hill, Villeneuve etc etc as well. The John Barnard designed Benetton was a very good car. The Ford F1 motor was also very good. Senna won three rounds with a lesser version of it in his McLaren don't forget. I reckon the reasons he would be a negative influence are as follow: 1. It would be all about this years car for him & this year is already stuffed for Ferrari. 2. He has idiosynchratic set up requirements that will be out of step with the regular drivers. Fine if you the teams No 1 driver, but useless if you are a stand in. 3. He would divide the team loyalty to the drivers they have. 4. He is going to cost coin better spent on other things. 5. He will deprive a future talent of race experience that they can't get. Hell they can't even get testing experience any more.

So is Massa's eye going to be good enough for a return? Hope so but there was some press suggesting otherwise. Eddie Jordan is a good example of a team boss who used to get the most out of his drivers. He never did have a star at the peak of their career, but none the less managed to get most of his blokes to do better than they did with other teams. Frentzen, Hill, De Cesaris are three who spring to mind. Betrand Gachot is one who does not.

The rest of the team aren't driving the car. Maybe next year they will have Alonso & Massa then. My point is if you are paying your number one driver shedloads of cash why go out of your way to p!ss him off? Look what Ferrari did to Salo to help Irvine FFS. Then they do this. It is as bad a situation as Mansell at Williams in 93. Did nothing for anyone other than to further inflate Nige's ego. The regular drivers hated it ie Hill & Coulthard because it got in the way of developing the car properly for the long term. Ferrari's season is stuffed anyway. It is just an expensive publicity stunt regardless of any results that may be gotten. My question is at what price will a result this year from Schumacher (whether he gets one or not is a different issue) be to the development of a decent car for next year?