djr81

It is more to do with countless iterations & refinements than new ideas - I guess development rather than design. I mean I am sure somewhere someone is working on a really innovative new software package for their active diff but really who cares? No mroe 6 wheelers. As an aside the popular conception of why Tyrrell had one is just wrong - they didnt cut down on the frontal area of the car. They reduced the front aero lift from an exposed tyre. But anyway. My thing is if you lined up all the 2011 F1 cars & had them painted the same colour would anyone be able to tell them apart? If you put up a series of Ferrari's 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000 & 2010. Which do you reckon would look most alike? It used to be that Ferrari had a veto on any new rules. Which is why for so many years the stuff coming out from the FIA made no sense. In hindsight it is now very clear what was going on.

Yeah my point was not about the tenths you sweat blood over to improve your lap time. It was more about the big new ideas that we used to see in motorsport that sadly have gone the way of the dodo. No one is suddenly going to reinvent something as fundamental as ground effects, or bung a gas turbine motor in something, or run a 4WD F1 car or come up with a paddle shift gear change or pneumatic valve springs or anything interesting anymore. Instead you get countless iterations of ever more complicated front wings & the like. Hell the most interesting technical development this year was where Renault put their exhaust pipe.

Well I never saw it as a desperate anything. He saw Schumacher off line and slow & stuck the thing up the inside - same as any other driver would do. As you would expect him to do. Schumacher turned in on Hill. No it wasnt premeditated. That came later on JV. If they dont penalise the driver then any penalty becomes nothing more than a tariff on winning. At the end of the day it is his responsibility to follow the instructions, ie the black flag. The problem now is the engineers are basically hard wired to interpret the rules in two ways: What do we need to do to pass the regulations/test. How do we circumvent the regulation to achieve what we want anyway. The sad part about F1 these days is there is very little innovation left. Mostly just aero development and packaging. And commerce.

It was a horrible year. Drivers died and an alleged champion "won" after running an illegal car & then deliberately running into his challenger after he screwed up. I remember watching the Adelaide race. It was all I could manage not to throw a stubby at the tv when Schumachers smirking face revealed he realised he had backed into the championship. There is so much wrong with your post that I dont have a clue where to start. They only gave Benetton a slap on the wrist because they could not prove the code had been used. They demonstrated it was there, it was illegal, it was hidden. They final bit - proving it was used they couldn't make a case for. Not that anyone doubts it was used. Black flag? So it is ok to ignore a black flag when Tom Walkinshaw says so? Anyway there is a difference between innovation that needs clarification from the governing body and blatant cheating. Just like there is a difference between static deflection for testing and dynamic deflection on the circuit. The whole Benetton/Ferrari/Schumacher thing is tainted by dodgy behaviour & actions that were massively against the interests of the sport. If, for example, Ferrari were so bloody brilliant why did they alone need to have the power to reject new rules? It is easy to win when you write the rulebook. As far as I am concerned they can piss off to Ferrari world and run a one make championship infront of no one.

You going through another Don Johnson/Miami Vice phase Baron?

Why does "something have to be done" People have been bitching about too much aero etc etc since approximately forever. The more they restict the cars the less interesting F1 becomes. Now we have fake tyres and fake overtaking to go with the fake plastic trees in the hospitality areas. Anyway it will all mean nothing when Ferrari buy the series.

Schumacher was too bloody lazy to come back in reasonable time from a single, slightly broken leg. He is no Niki Lauda. Schumacher was a hack that was never challenged because he was too soft to deal with a competitive team mate. He cant even beat Rosberg who is no star.

Having thought about it some more it would appear the entrance to the Mines baffle plates is at the rear of the cam shafts (I had them upside down in my mind) - the movement of the cam cap covers to positions 6 & 7 then makes good sense - they stop the cam lobes flinging oil into the inlet of the baffle plates. So who would have thought it - following the instructions makes sense. Well for the next 5 minutes anyway.

You would buy a car with a rebuilt motor: Most R32 GT-Rs about already have a rebuild in them. It is cheaper than buying a car then rebuilding the motor. If the motor is in good condition (do the usual checks) and was put together by competent people using good parts then you are on a winner.

What do they upgrade Baron & what ratios are in it?

I have a pair of the Mines cam cover baffle plates ready to go but also a question about the fitting of the Nissan cam baffle plates. The Mines instructions tell you to move the four cam baffle plates from positions 3 & 4 on both cams to the rear, ie position 6 & 7. These are the gold coloured covers on the photos on the left of the instructions. However I cannot see why you would want to do this as they appear to help stop the cam lobes flinging oil up into the entrance of the stock cam cover baffles. Given the position of the entrance to the Mines plates is not dissimilar to the Nissan ones wouldnt you be better off leaving them in positions 3 & 4 and drilling the Mines plates to accomodate them? This is what was done in the recent write up in HPI magazine - slothough I am unsure if they had the fitting instructions... Any help/opinions will be appreciated.

Most service stickers are for kilometres or time. Eg get the thing serviced every 10,000kms or every six months. Does it necessarilly mean the car has done 100,000kms?

There are four of the covers that sit over the cams (on caps 3 & 4 as counted from the front). These are supposed to be moved to the back positions ie 6 & 7 but does anyone have any clue as to why?

Yeah if you have a Japanese car there is no point getting an imperial spanner/socket set. http://www.sidchrome.com.au/product/7443/33-piece-12-drive-socket-set-metric Dunno how it stacks up price wise but it should be ok. About $200? Also a good product are these: http://www.toolworks.com.au/sp10334-14pc-stubby-flexhead-metric-geardrive-spanner-set.html Never seen that combo elsewhere. Shame about the price, however. These are also well owrth having: https://www.alltools.com.au/shop/index.php/350/1337_TPI_Thread_Gauge_Metric_&_Imperial_

They changed the speed limiter from 180kmh to some unobtainable number. Also for what it is worth the highest octane unleaded you could buy in Australia in 1992 was ......95.

From memory the Sumitomo calliper had a 1.25 pitch and the Brembo a 1.5 But get a thread guage and check it because my memory is shot to hell these days.

1.25 or 1.5?

Maybe if people understood the difference between a facelift and a new model things would make more sense. The VB/VC/VH/VK/VL's are all basically the same car. The VK was the major mid life face lift and took the side profile from the up spec version of the Opel it was based on. If the VN (acompletely new model) looked like a VB they may have a point. The R30/R31/R32 etc were all new models. The Nissan model cycle was sufficiently short so as to not need anything much in the way of facelifts. From memory the R30 stopped in the mid 80's, the R31's in 1990 (earlier overseas), the 32's in 1993 etc etc. So they only lasted about four or five years. The local products model cycle is more like 8 - 10 years. The VB through Vl was from 79 through to 1988. The VN/VS was 88/89 to about 97/98. Numbers are all from memory so may be a bit dodgy. But the point remains a facelift is not the same as a new model. Nissan model cycles are shorter so it is therefore logical that the new model Nissans look more like each other than the new model Commodores.

Well for $20 it is not going to be top notch production. As long as it has some content I dont really mind if it is stapled together dunny paper. I get sick of buying supposedly brilliant books that have nothing new to say. Yeah the Senna book has brilliant photos & anecdotes etc all through it. Lots of good content too - a world a way from the sort of coffee table shite you so often see.

THis turned up in the Pitstop bookshop spam today. Does anyone know anything about it? Aussie Godzilla - The R32 GT-R Arrives Downunder By Damian Kringas Paperback, 148 pages Code 24532, $19.95 A great little book full of stories and anecdotes about how Nissan brought the awesome R32 GT-R to the Australian market and the feathers they ruffled in Australian touring car racing, ultimately causing the governing body to change the rules to exclude the model. Australia would be the only country outside Japan to have the honour of racing it, and for Nissan Australia it was a period of corporate turmoil and they, as a brand, would also never be the same. The R32 GT-R was dubbed Godzilla, after the city stompin' monster and culturally was compared to as an invasion - it was. The production of this little gem isn't flash, but it's an interesting part of Australian motorsport history that any touring car fan should read.

They have to have the same outside diameter otherwise the ATTESSA system thinks you are getting wheelspin all the time. Stop wanting. You should run the same size tyres front and rear. GTR's understeer and too much rear tyre will make this worse. There are a heap of threads on both of these subjects so maybe try a search.

From Grand Prix Week Our spies in the Red Bull motorhome tell us that despite informing the world at large that he wasn’t disappointed with P3 in qualifying, Sebastian Vettel may have been in tears after the press conference ...

Stop your pharken whining all of you. We get to watch it on Win. In glorious fuzzy analogue, 4:3 ratio so you cant see the drivers names down the left hand side of the screen. Broadcasts usually start at about 2.30 AM on a Monday. They dont show qualifying at all. Pharken win.

From the hat colour I would suggest Biot. http://www.biot.co.jp/

Basically an R32 is overweight and pretty hard on its tyres - particularly the front. So you could live with alot more tyre than you can fit on the (standard) things. Also you have to filter out all the fitment spam. R compounds dont need or want stretch. Also they tend to be a little larger than a nominally same sized road tyre. If it is a track tyre then you have to decide what kind: eg a proper slick or a semi slick or something else. An R32 will run a 255/40 r comp on a 9" +22 rim with a little scraping on the rear. Roll the lip of the rear guard like everyone does & you will be ok. You must adjust the suspension to make the tyres work & not to make them fit. But understand (as an example) that a 235/45/17 is cheaper than a 255/40/17 which in turn is cheaper than an 18" tyre. Also that not all sizes are available in all brands. Bridgestone dont make a 255 width in an 18" RE55 for example which is probably what you would run if you could. Anyway to answer the short question in short: Use 17x9+22 & a 255/40/17 rim. An r comp with your ride hight will foul on the lip of the rear guard so get them rolled.