djr81

Shit like this happens to pretty much all the car companies from time to time. Atleast Holden did the right thing & recalled the cars. Unlike, say Mitsubishi....

It is going to suck in a way becuase by freeing up testing on track on Fridays the teams will undoubtedly go to the race with more refined set ups. So the animals (aka teams) will basically be forming up on the grid two by two. Still it is better than not having anyone who's name you recognise going around on the Friday....

Lindsay, This is usually one of two things: 1. Have you fitted a catch can to the oiling system? As often as not these smoke after a run on the track. 2. The oil feed or return lines to the turbo leak at the connection. Usually this is a complete bastard of a thing to find.

Um, JDM imports do them. They have them listed for $1300, so you are pretty close with the estimate. I thought I saw the Mychron TG timer on the back page of the Motorsport NSW mag for $449. So the simple lap time is much cheaper. On the other hand the driftbox tells you lateral & longitudinal gees, speed, drift angle, track position & some other handy features. Unfortunately it doesn't log rpm which is a bit of a silly omission. That lot will tell you much more than just a straight lap time or even a sectored lap time.

I use basically this set up. IMHO I don't think it is up to handling 470rwhp.

Um, sorry Baron - how much is it?

Why not get a driftbox? You can get sector timing plus other useful info from the downloads. www.driftbox.com Not sure who the local vendor is.

Is anyone out there using the AP racing CP5200 caliper on their R32 GT-R? If so I have a couple of questions: How is the front/rear balance on the smaller piston size? Which rotor are you using? (I believe the caliper does not come from AP with a 30mm wide disc in mind, yet I understand many people run the R33 front discs) Physically, how wide is the caliper? I ask this because I am a little unsure if my rims will clear a fat caliper as there is not a huge amount of clearance even on the Sumitomo calipers

I think he will have gotten away lightly if he only has to take one for the team... The Brazillian GP should be interesting. What I find odd is given Bernie's frothing at the mouth over the better TV figures that Bahrain got over Melbourne (because of the time zone thing) why do they let the last race of the year go to Brazil?

The Gt-R, being one of the last of the Group A cars, can reasonably be expected to be one of the best. People do tend to forget how extreme most of the homolgation specials looked when released. Hell people were having seizures over the VL Walkinshaw Commode & other than the aero that had bugger all going for it.

Spring/Dampers are height adjustable (via circlips). Damping rates are non adjustable.

Would be good to see him have a go. Pedro was nowhere in Japan.

Fair point, but you can't really site fatigue as a factor in the 14 lapper support races, surely? Is it just a case of "Got sideways & ran out of talent?" The Porkers didn't seem to suffer quite so badly.

Actually I have a half serious question. From watching the Konica & even the main game races - half the cars ended up it the wall (Or it appeared to be about that many). Are the V8's a particularly difficult thing to drive on the limit. I understand they (like most cars) need to be set up to be taily to get good lap speed, but even so. I have a suspicion that the dirty secret of the formula is that they are actually not very pleasant cars to drive.

C'mon there was only nine of them on the weekend. Lasting about seventy two hours.

Watching the Porkers across the top of the hill at Bathurst tells you an awful lot about where their c of g is compared with the V8's & then the old Group A cars.

Baron, Can't help much with the sponsorship, but I do know some people who may want some small packages brought back from South America. How is your gag reflex?

I agree 100% with the above. From what I have seen a car used for the occassional track day gets very well looked after. Personally there is no way I head out to track days unless the car is tip top, ie all the brakes/suspension/drivetrain/engine is good. I have seen people try with cars that are less than well prepared & inevitably they go home early with a busted car. They wear items are pretty obvious: Brakes. Suspension bushes. Engine. In other words things that can easily be checked.

HRD hr30 -please don't get upset, no one is trying to decry the technical or racing achievements of Gibson motorsport or is having a go at you. I was simply pointing out the following: That the GIO car was a well funded privateer effort who's major constraint was said to tbe that Dunlop wouldn't give them the very best of their tyres for fear of info leaking across to Yokohama - atleast that was what was said at the time. Mark Gibbs was a good steerer, maybe not at Richo's level, but good all the same. When the word privateer is used people tend to think of a busted arse outfit operating a VL Commodore out of the back of a trailer. Or Gary Wilmington. Or similar. Yep, sorry a typo. The weight as you said was 1260kg. I was just trying to point out that the weight penalty wasn't as bad as the change from 1260kg homologation (Was that current in 91, because I thought it had already been changed by then?) & the 1500kg listed. 1500kg is a lard arse track car, whichever way you look at it. The weight/rev/boost/tyre changes were a parity adjustment. But as ever someone will always whinge when such things are done. A good example of this was the way Allan Moffat used to operate in the old group C days. The point I was trying to make with regard to articles written at the time & those written years later is that people tend to mellow & be a bit more truthful in their old age. Some of Freddos confessions in the Zoom interview make for interesting reading. Alot of people refer to Auto Action as Auto Fiction, me included. But I still buy it every week.

Bob Forbes GIO privateer car was built by Freddie Gibson's team. So it was technically a privateer, but other than running on Dunlops not Yokohamas there wasn't much difference between the cars. The GT-R NEVER made its homologation weight. So the adjustment wasn't from 1185 kg to 1500kg. From memory it was much, much less. The Sierra's had to run weight & rev restrictions as well. In fact all the cars had restrictions placed on them. Larry Perkins had a big dummy spit when they cut his revs down. People only focus on the GT-R but that wasn't the whole story. They didn't lose 1 lb boost by going to higher altitudes at Bathurst. The boost limiter still ran at whatever CAMS (Actually whatever Freddie Gibson) set it at. Have a look at the interview in Zoom magazine & you will get Freddo confessing that the settings on the boost restrictor were not all that they seemed. Besides they always low balled the claimed power outputs in the press. An RB26 full of the very best of parts will put out more than the silly numbers quoted in the press. To get a sense of perspective a stock motor on 1 bar boost on the street will still put out 400hp. I don't have the times handy, but Crompton was closing DJ down by something like 10 seconds a lap. There is a good writeup in the 1992 edition of the Great Race annual. Barring catastrophe, Crompton & his Swedish mate would have won that year had the race continued. Oh and don't believe everything your read in Auto Fiction....

Well how about Frank Williams, or Ron Dennis. Just that the Stone Brothers came to mind because of the race on the weekend.

Yeah, fair point. Maybe that is why I have any amount of respect for the likes of Ross & Jim Stone. Brilliant, but humble. And scrupulously fair.

But doesn't that just cheapen the victory? To the point of making it not worth while?

I don't understand something. How can people want Schumacher to win by punting his opponent off the road? If he wins he wins fair enough & good on him. But by doing that?

What, is he trying to take off or something?