djr81

Well obviously you have problems with the Ford Sierras. But you need to make a distinction between the imported (ie built as race cars overseas) and local versions. The imported cars suffered from (Or took advantage of) the far more liberal interpretations of the group A rules used in Europe. Even then the Rouse cars (Moffat & Brock from memory) and the Eggenberger cars (Moffat at his second go) were passed scrutineering. Some of the others just got laughed at. Hell Walkinshaw used to turn up and put in a blanket protest against all the Sierras - just like he did in 88 for instance. He then withdrew the protest against the winning car (Frank Gardners B & H car) to prove what a "good sport" he was. Bullshit really. Didn't stop him, Walkinshaw, from running illegal cars at Bathurst however. The inherent problem with Group A was it was too closely linked to production cars. So you had to run, for example, components whos dimension were within x mm of the homologated part. Which is fine if it is easy to measure, bit harder otherwise. But it is a case of he who is without sin casting the first stone. Pretty much everyone either stretched the rulebook to breaking point or just plain cheated.

Toyota never cared much about top line Group A racing in Australia. Or Group C for that matter. They did win any number of class victories in their Corollas. So they didn't need to cheat. Rallying was a different story, however. As for Tom Walkinshaw. Don't start me.

It is strange to hear people advocating we buy Pommie tanks in this day & age. If you are worried about the M1's being heavy/slow then god help us if we had Challengers. The Centurians were a good thing, though. The fundamental problem with the most recent series of tanks (M1's, Leopard 2's, Challengers, even the bloody Le Clerc) is they weigh more than 50 tonnes. So pretty much any tank you choose is going to be too heavy for the equipment designed to work with the previous generation of tanks. You don't get Chobham armour, a 120mm gun plus a 1500hp motor without some extra weight. And yes a gas turbine will chew more fuel than a diesel. But it can run on just about anything. Atleast the M1's were cheap(ish).

Oh, ok I'll ask what's on it now?

It is not a technology thing. It is a fashion thing. There is nothing inherent in the design of a vee engine (either a twin, a 4, 6 8, 10, 12 or 16) that makes it high tech.

It would probably look a bit like this. But only probably.

Simple answer is to buy something like an EL/AU Falcon as a daily & put an R32 Gt-R in the shed for when you want it. You get the advantages of: 1. Cheaper to run. 2. No hassles on the road. 3. More comfortable for the 200+kms a day. 4. You will actually still enjoy driving the Nissan. 5. It wont ruin your day/week to the same extent if/when it breaks. Plan B would be to get a Gt-R as a daily & another GT-R as a track day special. Your shed would then look like this. Mine did for a time. Ahh, happy days.

My point was simply this. For the same sized/wall thickness etc tube an aluminium alloy will compress/lengthen 3 times as much as an equivalent steel section for the same amount of load. It may well be the same strength, just nowhere near the same stiffness. An old maxim: Use steel for stiffness. This is particularly true at high temps. Of course proper carbon fibre is good too.

Oh dear. People regard titanium as being some sort of brilliant material. It is not necesarilly that good. Its best properties aren't so much its strength per se, but its corrosion resistance, toughness & high temperature strength. Most of the titanium mined in Australia is turned into white powder, not alloy. In any case I think you will find that the rims are aluminium and simply coated in Titanium which give them the rainbow effect. There is no reason for them to be any heavier, stronger, weaker or substantially different than any other Volk rim.

Just a small point. Whilst chrome moly may be stronger than a cold drawn steel it is not stiffer, least of all if you are using a thinner walled tube. Remember that stiffness is a different property than strength. Easiest way of thinking of it is that stiffness is a property of the materials shape whereas strength is a property of the material itself. Also aluminium has a Youngs modulus (the measure of stiffness) of only 1/3 that of steel. So your aluminium strut brace may be light, but it is also probably useless.....

They got mounted on the cross bracing just behind the driver. Reason you don't see them much is that channel 7 removed them after the cars finished racing for obvious reasons. They were fairly large/heavy. If you get some footage of the 92 race you will see Jim Richards giving the thing a funny look when the extinguisher foam that filled the interior of the car (went off for no good reason) came off the lense of the camera & flew past him.

In some really sad news, Anders Olofsson has died. He was only 55. Amongst his many achievements he was a winner of the Spa 24 hours race (in a GT-R), an Swedish F3 champion & won the Japanese Touring Car championship 3 times. He also ran at Bathurst on four occassions for Fred Gibson.

No GT-R built in 1989 was white. So it has been repainted. Not that there is anything wrong with that. If the engine bay is dark grey it was almost certainly a dark grey car. Most white GT-Rs from the factory have a white engine bay. Mine does.

Box under the bonnet near the drivers side suspension tower. It carries both the fuse & the relay. Check both.

Well yes it only rattles when you put your foot on the clutch. If the gear stick is in neutral & your foot is ff the clutch the plates are engaed & there is nothing to rattle. What I was saying was that once the clutch itself has some heat in it when you depress the pedal it doesn't make anywhere near the same amount of noise. You can, I'm sure find a more driveable example. It is only ever about the friction materials & whether or not it has a sprung or unsprung centre.

Well I have a twin plate. It is perfectly driveable (lightened flywheel effects aside) but when cold rattles like a bitch. And yes they are used because they have more torque capacity than most single plates.

Personally I am a strong advocate of people wearing pants in public. As for shoes find something with thin soles so you can feel the pedals. For anyone who may be interested Go Gear sell OMP shoes for <$100 that are the business.

What you are thinking of are Falken & Federal tyres. But for my 10 cents worth it is not worth the effort of attempting to get half pregnant. Either get some R compounds (proper ones) or go with a street tyre. Toyo make a civilised R compound (RA1). The Falken/Federals combine stiff sidewalls with not much tread and not much grip. So you get the downsides of an R compound (bad ride, poor tyre life, torrents of road noise) without the upside (nose bleed grip).

I just made a bracket which bolts to the parcel shelf. You can then bolt the camera to it using the thread on the underside of the camera. Use the spot on the shelf above the ATTESSA unit. Gives a good view of driver plus track and the scrutineers are ok with it because everything is bolted down. That way you dont have to worry about bits of rod/gaffer tape and arguments as to how well it is secured.

You can either get the short type eg HKS or the longer versions which Trust make. There are also 100's of knock off version available. The HKS type replace the existing dump pipes in your car & will tie into whatever exhaust you have. The Trust type tie into the exhaust just before the cat - so you don't need a front pipe. For me if I would buy the Trust gear instead of the HKS dumps AND front pipes. However if you have an exhaust with an aftermarket front pipe (many exhausts use the stock ones) I would just buy the HKS dumps. The Tomei ones fit the same as the HKS type, but do not segregate the wastegate flow aswell as the HKS units. Just about everything will fit your turbos. Hks See photo Front pipe http://www.nengun.com/hks/stainless-front-pipe-gtr Tomei http://www.nengun.com/tomei/extention-pipe...san-skyline-gtr Trust http://www.nengun.com/trust-greddy/extention-front-pipe

Maybe we should all harden up & put some money down in a "Who has the most powerful RB26 at 3500rpm" competition. For me I am surprised (pleasantly) that cam phasing can have such an effect at low rpm. Certainly something I should go back to looking at.

Sweet. You have no idea how long I have been looking for some photos/footage of that smash.

The reason the car will feel sluggish is the ECU dragging ignition advance out of the engine when it is cold. It is trying to tell you not to hammer the poor thing until it gets warm! Replacing the sender unit is neither hard, nor particularly expensive. Order a new one up from Nissan & install it on your next oil change. $200 should see you right. From expereince it doesn't matter how many times you tell yourself not to worry about the pressure you still cant get it out of your head.

Wow, you've got a chicken in your cooling system? The easiest way to check for a hose failure is to get the car warm & with a pair of gloves on squeeze each of the hoses in turn to see if they do in fact leak under pressure. Or, if you are Welsh, leek under pressure.

Um, posterity. The only ones getting rich of dyno tunes are the oil companies & the workshops. But I digress. From your chart one of two approaches work: 1. Cams. 2. Larger turbos. From my chart it would appear that the combination of the two sucks wang for mid range grunt. Good work with the cams. I am curious to see what changes you made to the phasing and their affects on the torque curve. I reckon my thing would benefit.