djr81

Nice photos, mate. Good to see your day wasn't entirely wasted. Can I ask what camera you used & also what exposure time you had? That is something I always struggle with. Presently I use 1/400 of a second.

Um, neither the windscreen, nor the engine blocks are original. Having watched Bathurst for more years than I care to remember I can assure you you've never had it so good. What people forget are the desperately thin fields, the massive winning margins (As often as not by multiple laps) & in comparison to today, the rank amateurism of the whole thing. Group A was a dying formula when the V8's were launched. No one is seriously suggesting you would have a Nissan factory effort in any Australian racing presently, nor one from BMW. Toyota & Mitsubishi never took touring cars seriously & anyone else was pretty much an also ran other than perhaps Mazda who never really took on Group A - they only ever ran hard under group C rules. Besides what formula would you use? The BTCC is just ordinary & the only other one of note is ze Germans - which are pretty inapplicable & unaffordable for us. V8's may not be everyones cup ot tea. I despise the whole bogan/boofhead crowd component as much as anyone. There again, people have been whinging about that since day dot.

Like Roy said, first stop is some good tyres.

You may not necessarily want/need to run the DS2500's on the rear. I have seen a lot of people run 2500 front & 2000 rear. That way you get a less aggressive pad on the back end & never have to worry about getting temperature into the rear. Also would be worth looking at getting some braided lines for the front end to held banish the muchy brake pedal that Skylines can have.

Who, me? Sorry, just trying to make the point that traction on hillclimbs is not any where near the issue it is for drags or circuit work. Start is all important so get the left foot on the anchors, load the torque converter up & get up that hill. Best advice Gary (Not, you the other Gary) is go hard and have fun (& don't stick it in the trees cause that can ruin your whole day). Oh, yeah - I hope the start line bloke puts the chock under the rear tyre cause my car tends to slide down the camber of the road a bit on launch.

There is an important difference however - and one that may make a difference to how you set the car up. Many hillclimbs start on an uphill section - so you already have built in a fair degree of squat without adjusting the suspension. You are as likely to bog the car as belt the rev limiter on launch. Also it is not untypical for there to be a slow hairpin at some stage along the hill - keeping the thing on boost can be difficult at that point. So traction may not be as important as keeping the motor working within the rev range. Just a bit more confusing info for you to think about.

May be interested in the front brace. Couple things: Photo? Where abouts in Perth are you?

There are a couple of things to note: 1: In steady state cornering anti roll bars kill grip! An ugly truth, but there it is. They work by transferring load from the unloaded side of the car to the loaded side. Note that after a point the friction coefficient for a tyre falls away the more heavily loaded it is. (This is ignores temperature effects) 2: It may well be worth comparing the cars grip levels with the front soft/rear at medium with the front on medium/rear on hard. Remember balance and grip are two different things. Try it see if you can find which you prefer. (This all assumes one level of adjustment is sufficient)

You need to know what the cam gear setting is so you can compensate for it when you take the reading from the timing light. Depending on how much they have retarded the exhaust cam you should be able to look at the position of the CAS on the front of the timing belt cover as they move quite a bit.

False. GT-R's get hot oil only on a race track. They do have an oil warmer/cooler linked to the water system but this doesn't have much effect other than warming the oil a bit quicker on cold mornings. It doesn't seem to remove a great deal of heat from the oil system.

First thought is that you have it upside down, Miss Jane. If you want less understeer soften the front bar (or stiffen the rear). Increasing roll stiffness with anti roll bars will (all other things being equal) degrade the grip at whichever end of the car you make the adjustment. Which is why you start tuning with the bars on soft and then stiffen things up at one end to balance the car out.

It is if you use it all the time because it is a pretty strong/harsh detergent. As a once off it is fine.

Atached are a couple of plots which should be pretty self explanatory. Gary, sorry about all the questions - just trying to get my head around how to fix the problem. Sort of leaning towards shortening up some spare rods I have & maybe going for the extra adjustor kit for the camber. How many mm does the whiteline kit adjust the caster rod? Caster before the camber kit was added was 3.5 degrees & it only reduced slightly to 3 when the camber went fron -1 to -2, so to be honest I am a bit mystified as to what is going on. Do know that the local tyre shop has been making good money off the number of wheel alignments I have had with all the suspension upgrades. As for offsetting the camber bushes up/down I assume you want the outside of the upper link to be as high as possible to gain the geometric (dynamic) camber when the suspension is under compression. Is that correct? And you are right about the journey etc. I find learning about the suspension & the car in general to be as interesting as pedalling it around the track. There is always someone faster, just wish it wasn't by so much...

The rods are Cuscos and are supposed to be GT-R rods. They adjust (guessing a little because I can't read Japanese) from 339mm to 353mm around a stock length of 348mm. Not sure how many mm the Whitleline offset kit does nor approximately how many mm roughly equals how many degrees. The problem is that because the top link of the front suspension is slightly trailing the more -ve camber you add the less caster you get (Caster moves the bottom of the hub forward aswell) The rim is now noticeably forward in the arch. Don't know how to make a gain here without either losing adjustability (ie using bushes) or remachining the rods to make them shorter. Anyway - to answer the first reply first - the turn in is really good - it feels better than the midcorner grip - but that may be a bit of running wide into the marbles - not 100% sure. The good book identifies caster as being the issue for this. Outside of the tyre is hotter than the inside. For the record I can still get that horrible shuddering (basically stalling the tyre with the lateral force being generated falling off as lock increases) from the front end that you can get from R compound tyres. Nonetheless I suppose I should be thinking through how to address both issues. If there is a Nismo upper front arm then great - a 5mm shorter one could be about right. Matched with a Whiteline kit & that should give a +/- one degree range centred around 2 and a bit degrees, instead of one. Has anyone ever done this? Maybe two Whitleline kits with both ends of the upper arm made adjustable to decrease the effective length - has anyone done this? (I am a little worried about clearance with two sets of bushes) - also how many mm does the Whiteline kit give you (As opposed to degrees) On the upside - since I fitted the Whiteline gear I can carry noticeably more speed across the apex of the turn, generate more grip & found more lap speed - so things are on the up.

It depends greatly on what other suspension components you have fitted. Best bet is to start soft at both ends and go from there. If you want to drift the thing put the rear on full hard & the front on full soft.

Gents, Am presently running my R32 R with the Whiteline package. Setup is as follows Front: Ride height 350mm Camber -2 degrees Castor +3 (Rods are done right up) Toe 0 Rear Ride height 345mm (As low as it will go because the tyres are now fouling the guard when in compression & turning hard) Toe 1mm Camber -1 degree I am still getting a temperature differential across the tread face of the front tyres (About 5 degrees) & have too much mid corner understeer. Turn in & power on is now fine. I have fitted up the adjustment bushes fron Whiteline, but now find I need more. Question is where to from here. I have see the stuff on Nengun & Greenline & to be honest don't much like them. The Noltec gear is much the same. Area there shorter (non adjustable) upper arms available that the Whiteline bush kit will fit?

You could try the Collie Motorplex. Last Saturday there was approximately every S13 ever built going around practicing drifting. I think it was the Drift WA guys or similar. Try contacting Jay Hewson at [email protected] for details of the nearest club day. Just bring some spare tyres.....

If it is Calcium then try CLR Clear - but be careful with the paint work, ie try it on a bit on paintwork that is out the way & unseen first. If it is just a water stain then try using dishwashing detergent - that will pretty much shift anything that is water soluble & a few things that aren't - like dead bugs. You will need to strip any polish off the paint first, otherwise the detergent won't get to the marks.

I put it on the drivers side because the passengers side slides forward easier/further when you need to get people in the back. By the way - from memory the Collie motorplex charges $5 to go and watch any of their events. On the other hand the Speedeventseries don't.

Hang on a second - before you go and try all the Nanna recipes. Are the 'water' stains calcium stains, ie white?

Col, Paid for. Just by the by - to answer some queries you use them on the rear upper arms to allow sufficient adjustment and allow you to add sufficient postive camber to compensate for the -ve camber that happens when you lower the rear ride height on a GT-R. Just be careful that you read the instructions carefully as the drawing shows two top arms, not a top and a bottom arm which is what it looks like at first glance..... Cheers Richard

IMHO - just use Mobil 1. It is good oil, good viscosity range, good price. If you are going to a track day, 2000km old oil is fine. Keep an eye on the oil temp (if you have a guage) & check the oil for blackness (from blow by) when you get home. Beyond that there is nothing particular to worry about other than keeping the oil level to the correct level. You don't need to do anything special about changing oil for the drags as the thing is only on throttle for 11 & a bit seconds at a time.

If your car has a stock ECU it will run fine on 98 Octane. If you want to use an ethanol blend from what I understand the fuel density is different & you need a tune. If you have an aftermarket ECU get the engine tuned to 98 Octane. By way on illustration - when they sold the R32 GT-R's in Oz you could only buy 95 Octane...

Not sure exactly how far it will move... If you are handy with a calculator you can work it out. Just measure how far the top of the rim is closer to the centreline of the car than the bottom. A bit of basic trig (tan theta equals opposite over adjacent side etc etc) & you have your camber measurement. Not sure how your toe settings at the front will be affected by the change in ride height as the front links are not parallel like the rears.

Um, it is not about the ATTESSA system. It is about the relationship between the COG & the roll centres at either end of the car. Lowering a GT-R too much makes the roll centre migrate & will give you odd handling. Most people find that the camber kit for the rear is needed before the front - this is simply a function of the suspension geometry. 10mm will help, but may not make a whole heap of difference. Wheel alignment? Other than the rear camber settings and the front & rear toe setting unless you get the Whitleine kits there isn't really much you can align. Having said that it is usually $60 well spent. Before you start (Friday afternoon may be a good time) have a look at the state of the threads on the dampers. If they look to be grotty & horrible & seized give the threads a hose with some WD40 before you get handy with the C spanners.