djr81

Ahh, finally some truth in journalism.

www.takumasato.com for all your Takuma updates, info & forums. Don't forget he did win the 2001 British F3 championship, with 12 out of a possible 13 wins. So he can drive.

See - kiwi's can fly. The bit that really wigged me out was the footage of the front left tyre on Lowndes car.

Yeah it was pretty dull. Far too many pace cars & too little actual racing. How would you have liked to have been the photographer standing behind the wall that Radisich centre punched?

Lucky they don't put all that on his car. The aerodynamic drag alone would make him slower than his team mate... Reminds me of a driver at Bathurst from 1984. He had an absurdly long & pretentious name. Something Like Prince Leopold von blah blah blah. A German bloke, obviously & driving a Group A 6 series BMW for Frank Gardner in JPS colours. He stuck the thing into the wall on the top of the hill & someone helpfully inscribed (next to the skid & impact marks) Prince von Wanker was here. Nice work.

Dead set, is that his full name?

I guess that would be for the best. I mean, he turned in on Hill at Adelaide. Then he dive bombed up the inside of Villeneuve on the sub continent. So I gues if he simply "forgot" to turn the corner with alonso on the outside that would pretty much complete the trifecta. F1 is a sport, but only on Sunday afternoons. All the rest of the time it is commerce.

A couple of points: 1. What forced me to bin the rotors was not the fine surfaces crazing, but the cracks forming in & propogating from the small return slots that DBA put in their 4000 series rotors. Have a look at the photo up the top post, you can see the large crack in the rear rotor & the smaller one in the fron rotor. 2. The surface crazing can be removed by machining the rotors, but I have found that inspecting them is a cheaper option. The crazing on the rotor surface does not seem to cause crack propogation. I hang shit ont he DBA4000's simply because of these small return slots. I would much rather they not be there as I think they cause problems, ie cracks. They certainly have for me. In terms of caliper design there are a few things to note: Different piston sizes (as used on the Brembo's) allow for better (more uniform) pad wear. Larger pads will reduce the peak temperature as seen by the pad, but will not in itself contribute much to the braking torque over a smaller pad (Assuming a uniform mu value vs temperature, which you can't really assume)

I believe protocol calls for Schumacher to do that particular job himself.

The KCA336 front kit does both, ie adjusts camber about +/- one degree. You cannot fit two front kits as the inner & outer bush sets are different.

The three thermo paint colours change colour at 460, 550 & 630 degrees. So if you are getting fade at less than 460 degrees & can't get above that temp I would suggest there is something fundamentally wrong. Also, running semi slicks doesn't necessarilly work the brakes harder than running roadies on the track.

What colour do you mean by discoloured? A blue tinge on the rotors doesn't mean much. Check the thermo paint - you will probably find that all three have gone off which is indicative of fairly high temps. What I found happened to my front rotors was they developed fine cracks which looked to me to be around the grain boundaries of the metal. These aren't pretty, but keep an eye on them. Also, if you are running 4000 series rotors, it pays to inspect the small return grooves from the outer circumference of the rotor as these tend to be the first to instigate cracks. Check the back as well. 5000 series will save you some unsprung weight & lessen heat transfer to the hub, but are little different in terms of the rotor itself.

Um, was there another Chinese GP that was on last weekend that I missed?

Do they actually get a choice of inters? I thought it was restricted to only one type?

I am speculating to an extent in that the awful lap speed Alonso showed after his first stop was from a handling imbalance (Grippy front and or rears & no grip at the other end) rather than from a lack of outright grip. If it was an imbalance four new tyres would have fixed it. If it was a simple case of not being able to get the new tyres up to temp (bit like Kubica couldn't, although he was on slicks) then four new tyres wouldn't have helped. Ferrari lucked into the win. More a case of Renault losing it than them winning it. Alonso only finished 3 seconds behind at the end.

I think he finally snapped because for the second time in three races the pit crew has cost him a win. First Hungary with the rear wheel going AWOL & then China with the wrong tyre choice (Changing fronts only) & then the messed up pit stop. Critically Alonso could have won if only one of those two things happened, but not both. Still the speed the thing showed was killing the Ferrari. Hope he didn;t hurt the engine too much in those final laps. I hope Alonso wins the world championship. I would hate to see Ferrari receive yet another trophy tainted by their dodgy ways. Nice work by Webber too, btw. Two spins & he still managed to score a point. Jensen Button was only 30 seconds up the road in fourth. Hmmm.

1 Can the standard front rotors on a 33 GTST S2 be put on the rear(In the event that I get DBA 4000 Slotted Front Rotors) No, they will be different sizes. The 4000 series (IMHO) are not worth the extra money, least of all if you are just driving on the road. Just get the slotted street ones. 2 Is Motul dot 6 appropiate with standard brake lines or is it too acidic or whatever the term is and how many bottles are needed for a complete flush If you are thinking of the RBF600 fluid, it isn't dot 6 fluid. It is Dot 4 fluid with a 600 degree boiling point. It is fine in Skylines. You need 1L. 3 What pads to people use on Front and Rear and why (Cost isn't an issue coz I wanna be able to stop and I don't go on the track but I do alot of hills driving) I use Ferodo DS2500's because they work well from cold & still work when hot. The do get noisy when they get hot, however. 4 How often should brake fluid be flushed How long is a piece of string? It depends on what you do with it. I get mine changed every other track day as I find the pedal getting soft otherwise. But if you are only on the road, you need do it far less frequently.

So that would price the silver paint at, what, about $130? Got the Noltec bushes delivered. For once they cost less than listed price. $120 ish with postage. For the record they feel harder than the Whiteline bushes, despite all the palaver on the Noltec site.

Sometimes you need two kits to bring the things back into alignment. Also, make sure your ride height is correct as the back end camber is particularly sensitive to changes in height.

so get some of these...

You need the plugs that match the air flow meters & then youneed to splice them into the rest of the cars wiring.

How could you forget big Darryl Eastlake "Oh gees the emotion is written all over his helmet etc etc etc" In fact the whole channel 9 coverage was great. Alan Jones would rock & up not having even bothered to learn how to pronounce the names of whichever buy drivers Minardi was running that week. Darryl eastlake would chime in with useful offerings like "When you go off & hit the grass you actually accelerate." Ahhh, happy days. Tyrrell used to have PIAA as a major sponsor, which was obvious enough. Club angle was somewhat more obscure. Would you believe a Japanese manufacturer of underwear? Now that is product placement.

On the upside someone has taken over from Tyrrell as the rightful place for really obscure Japanese sponsors to call home. Never understood why Zent didn't back the Toyota F1 team, they used to sponsor their Le Mans efforts....

Nice work Baron. Love the Super Aguri Logo on the sleeves.

http://www.simmonswheel.com.au/range.html# The FR19 can be had in various offsets & with a number of different coloured centres.