djr81

More castor makes the steering heavier, or seen another way makes the power steering pump work harder - hence the heat build up. 16 degrees is a massive amount of castor so be careful. Disabling the HICAS at the rear leaves the oil cooler circuit in place (There is a long post on the just recently) and will let your system run cooler. Just keep in mind the temperatures are mostly the result of the system being asked to do something unnatural....

My plan a was to use an R33 master cylinder to allow for larger piston areas front & rear. Yes it will make for a harder brake pedal, but only 12% by my calculation (ie26.9 sqrd/25.4 sqrd) - so I can fix this by going to the gym. If I then get some cheapoid Brembo rears & match them with some sort of new front caliper with approx 5300mm2 of piston area on a 324 rotor things should be sweet. I would use the front Brembos as well, but they are too expensive & they only use the same size pad as the poverty pack GT-R's. I will just have to trawl around the various shops & find the info/prices. You ever tried asking technical questions of the 17 year old answering the phone? Quote: "I will ring you back" - yeah, sure you will..... The knee point for the R32 GT-R braking system is at 284psi & then a reducing ratio of 0.4. Hence line pressures front & rear are different. This is why I wanted to use the calculated ratio shown earlier rather than express it as a % front to rear braking bias. The numbers are not the same. I have seen some brake upgrades that do wonderful things to the front & nothing to the rears. It actually makes the braking performance worse as the balance is then out. Mostly, from what I understand, for your (lowered, R compound tyred, unladen) road/track car you can usefully run more rear bias than the standard car. For anyone interested there are some very useful articles on www.stoptech.com which I would recommend. And Roy, it is not good form to leave site on your week(s) off and not get on the plane three parts p!ssed. Cheers Richard

Thanks Roy, you are a champ. Now atleast I have a snowballs chance of balancing the thing front to rear. Did some quick calculations: Basically worked out a number that is the front piston area * the rotor diameter divided by rear piston diameter * the rotor diameter. In each case these worked out to be R32 GTS-T 2.11 R33 GTS-T 2.231 R32 GT-R 2.232 R33 GT-R 2.282 So should I try & keep these ratios similar if/when I spend large on new front end brakes?

cheers mate.

Roy, I tried to find the post you mentioned, but failed rather miserably. Can you point me in the irght direction? Cheers

Your best bet may be to find whichever class of racing uses R compounds by way of a control tyre. Over in WA the street sedans use them, not sure who uses what in Queensland but may be worth asking around at the raceway.

Have you had all the wheels aligned?

Adam, you can do it this way quite safely. However... The results aren't as predicatable as you may have been led to believe. The results people get vary from car to car. A better bet is to spend all of $80 or $90 on a Turbosmart bleed valve. That way you can set exactly the boost you want (up to a point). A bleed valve will not always give a straight line boost response. Mine (by way of an example) carries a little more boost lower in the rev range than at the upper end. A properly set up EBC will give you a flat line all the way across the engine rpm - up to the point where either the turbo can't move sufficient air (& the boost will drop off) or the waste gate can't move sufficient air(&the boost will climb).

It is adjustable - so you can set it to whatever you like within a range of about 7 lb to 14lb.

I have owned three GT-R's and never laid a spanner on any of the motors. They are a very strong motor, but like all motors do get tired with age. The reason you see threads about blown RB26's rather than threads about motors not having blown up is that people only seek advice after their engine has gone bang. No one needs to submit a thread starting "My engine has not blown up..." If you want a GT-R don't let the strength of the RB26 be an issue. Before you purchase the car get the engine checked, ie a compression test & a leak down test. Ask the owner for a dyno sheet (If modified) & have a look at the AFR's on the plot. Check out the engine bay for signs of heat stress. Talk to him/her - if he or she is a tool don't buy the car - go somewhere else. IN SHORT BUY A GOOD ONE, NOT A CHEAP ONE.

Does the extinguisher have to be inspected & tagged for your events?

Are they worth buying: emphatically YES. It may well be one of the best cars you will ever own. Are they reliable: Yes - to a point. The more power you screw out of them the more fragile they become. One with 300rwhp or less is going to be pretty much bullet proof as long as it is not worn out. Easy to maintain: Yes - no worse than most other high performance cars. Cost of running: Not cheap, but it largely depends on how you drive it. If you hammer it you will use huge amounts of fuel, hurt the brakes/tyres etc etc. Best advise (IMHO) is to buy a good one, not a cheap one. I look for a car (I have bought three) that is in good condition rather than one that has a heap of add ons. The latter are good, but don't do you any good if the basic car is not up to scratch. Have a search - you will find heap of tips about things to look for. But generally if it is well looked after, owned by someone who cared about it & has no obvious flaws you are probably onto a winner. Figure out what you want to do with it (eg daily driver, track car, drag car, bling special, whatever) & search accordingly.

Probably best not to bother. Just go and buy a Turbosmart adjustable bleed valve which goes in place of the standard one. Costs <$100 & you can set whatever boost pressure you like in the range of 7psi to about 14 psi.

Yeah, the lower viscosity will give you a slightly lower pumping loss on you motor & make life a bit easier for the oil pump. Don't worry about the kms - if you are at the point of having too much blow by or rattles or whatever then no oil, no matter how good will help. You can't save a sick engine with an expensive oil. If the motor is still ok then that is all good.

I pretty much always use Castrol, in a 10W60 - but mostly because I haven't yet installed the oil cooler I bought. The oil gets quite hot at he track, so the 60 high temp viscosity rating makes it attractive. All else being equal, a 5W50 grade is probably a little better matched to the motor. Have nothing -ve to say about Castrol oils. The thing you need to remember is the rating of the oil. When the GT-R was released, ie late eighties the oil grade was something like SF or SG or thereabouts. Now it is SM or similar. Each change from SF to SG and so on is a quantifiable gain in the protective qualities of the oil. So just about any current oil will be markedly better than what was put in the engine when it was released.

If you care about your cooler then mesh it. If you want to show the world your bling cooler, then leave it off. Personally for my 10 cents worth - go with the mesh.

You need to differentiate between bodgy operators adding ethanol/toluene and or any other rubbish to the fuel to avoid excise & the proper stuff. The legit stuff is good but you ned to be sure that your tune is ok with it.

Does anyone know where these can be bought in WA?

Late reply, but I don't really want to let this go through to the wicket keeper. You may have not differentiated between the two import companies (Imports101 & Prestige) but I do - simply because I have used both of them & Imports101 stood by their guarantee when the delivered car differed from the description provided by the Japanese supplier. It wasn't a problem of their making, but they fixed it... Imports101 is both a broker & the compliance shop - hence your distinction between the two is not always necessary. The advantage of this arrangement (not uncommon) is that it provides a link between the purchase of the vehicle & compliance of the same. If your broker & your compliance shop are different & you strike problems it is easy to get stuck in the middle & out of pocket. If they are one and the same & offer a service guarantee you should not have a problem. I made the distinction because in my opinion having the broker and the compliance shop as one greatly reduces the risk of something going wrong. My other point stands. I could make the arrangements for customs via a customs broker, transport, etc etc etc, but to do so means time off work & a heap of travel. I have done this before & I much prefer to allow others to do the work for me. Lastly, under the previous scheme it was quite common for compliance shops to refuse to do compliance work on cars they did not import themselves. So you may well save $1000 on brokerage fess, but that doesn't help much if no one will comply the car for you. My facts are straight.

There was a write up in either Zoom or HPI about the fuel in the last few issues. From what I can remember there is a difference in the density of the fuel, ie the ethanol blend sg is lower. For this reason alone I would be careful in using the stuff as it may change your AFR's to the extent of damaging your motor. Having said that - the ethanol is a very useful additive. It raises the octane number of the fuel & adds oxugen to it. Hence (as the article showed) when properly tuned for this fuel you can get a useful gain in hp. Bottom line - like most things in life - used properly it is a good thing.

Danny (Imports101) does a very good job aswell. I can recommend him. There is also a third option - depending on what type of Skyline/Stagea you want - you can easily find them locally. If it something like an R33 GTS-T you will find heaps of them about with the added bonus of being able to drive them & not having to wait for auctions/shipping/customs/compliancing/registration etc etc etc.

I have a couple of Kuhmo Ecsta's in 255/40/17 with 5mm + tread left.

At the risk of asking a stupid question (There are no stupid questions, only stupid people ) why do you want to fit up two feeds to the fuel rail? When you use pumps in parallel (other than positive displacement pumps) you get a very small gain in flow for a huge gain in cost/power consumption etc. Mostly fuel setup are as in the photo - with two pumps picking up from the tank & pumping to another small tank which is then always full. The third pump picks up from there & keeps the fuel rail pressurisedl at all times.

The Power FC has a bit of a reputation for not adequately compensating for the different ambient temps & engine temps of the engine under load. You may well find that it is almost impossible to isolate the cell & the circumstances without the data logit software. The best method I have found is to run with the graphing option & graph the knock & rpm on the same screen. A spike in the knock sensor will show on the graph is you may be able to trace the cell number - or atleast your passenger should be able to.