djr81

I have used hose spanners for brake work. You usually end up rounding the nuts anyway. The are better than open ended spanners buy not by much. http://www.sidchrome.com.au/product/7473/5-piece-metric-flare-nut-spanner-set Now I just use vice grips for undoing stuff. Irwin have a huge range of them. Find the right size with a straight end & you will be fine. eg: http://www.irwin.com/tools/locking-tools/fast-release-locking-pliers-sets

The conventional wisdom is the Toyos (as a range ie including other than the 888)is a better tyre on a light car (relative to a hard SR2 compound RE55) and less suited to a heavy one - the sticking point is the stiffness of the sidewalls. I would reckon a GTST as being heavy but each to their own. I dont know anyone using them that prefer them to the Bridgies on a GTR put it that way. If you want to get half pregnant with regard to tyres you should include the new Yokohamas Advan Ad08 (?) on your list of stuff to look at. With regard to tire rack and motorsport tyres you have to be careful about the age of the stock. For road tyres it doesnt matter if they are a couple years old but I would be well unhappy to receive two year old R compounds for example.

It is amazing how many threads there are about semi slicks that dont talk about semi slicks. The first two tyres are not semi slicks. The third tyre is but doesnt suit heavy cars like Skylines. Go and look for some SR2 compound Bridgestone RE55's. The problem being you wont find them (or any other semi slick) in a large enough size for the money you have listed. 255/40/17's are just under $500 but 235/45/17's are cheaper and are probably what you should aim for. 18's are more expensive. In the long term if you want to save money you need to spend it on getting the suspension set up right so the tyres will live.

Really? Falcons have been running on 5W30 since the AU? Not sure about the Commodes either but I would expect something similar.

Cant argue with any of that. In its day the R32 was head and shoulders above everything else. Now it is largely just another out of date car. New technology and engineering practices will always best the old way of doing things. Which doesnt mean the old school stuff is useless by any means. I have an R32 R because 1. I love the things, particularly the engineering & 2 Because they can still be made competitive. Mystique/hype etc is fine. But when have you ever seen a Ferrari driven hard? The last lot I saw en mass was at the Perth Festical of Speed. The F40 on display looked like it had never been driven. Those on the track were driven in the same way that my Nanna used to drive. In contrast the NSX I was looking at on the weekend had over 100,000kms on the clock.

They have different cars for the short & long ovals aswell. The technology in Nascar is actually right up there. People look at the cars & sneer but the workshop engineering and preparation is every bit as good & beeter than our local stuff. Shaker rigs, predictive software the whole lot. They just cant get feedback from car sensors so there is no closing of the loop.

It used to be that every time a new model was released the journalists would confess that the previous one handled terribly but this time it is different, honest. I dont think you mean the original testarossa. I think you mean the mid 80's one. Which was horrible. I was actually looking at an NSX on Sunday. You look at it and realise the thing is really well engineered. No comparison to, say a 328 or 348. As for the McLaren I dont reckon it will sell. It doesnt have the styling to sell well - too conservative. Brilliant car but & there is nothing wrong with the McLaren brand. My argument is if the brand factor is so important what the fk does a Ferrari Segway exist for? Or bathrobes with prancing horses on them. It is just commerce nowadays.

So what you are saying is you dont actually care how good or bad they are. Which isnt much of a foundation to claim the thing is the greatest car ever made.

Back in the olden days when we wanted to check the calibration of a gee sensor we would tip the thing on its side. By doing so you imitate 1 gee lateral (or longitudinal). 30 degrees = 0.5, 45 = 0.71, 60 = 0.86 gees. If it is linear you could comfortably extrapolate from that up to 5V.

Yes it appears I am. Things people know about the F40. 1. It looks pretty. 2. It does 200MPH. 3. It uses carbon fibre/kevlar. Things most people dont care about: 1. It has a horrible 1950s technology steel space frame chassis. Welding is done by Mr Blobby. 2. The carbon does stuff all - no different to the fibreglass Ferrari used for many, many years. It is not structural in other words. Basically Ferraris are, historically, poorly engineered, poorly built, unreliable and handle badly. What I cant figure out is why so many people think so highly of them. Put the engineering of a McLaren up against a Ferrari & Ferrari gets thumped. Put the innovation of Lotus against them, same result. Put the build quility of a Porker up against them - same again. And so it goes. The only car maker with such a deeply flawed product is Bugatti. Ok maybe Maybach aswell but that is beside the point.

Well I reckon they will dump it if it keeps being unreliable and/or if rule changes mess about with the diffusers & rear end aero which may or may not make the whole thing pointless.

Here is hoping they can do a good gearbox to go with the engine. Maybe there is a reason no one else is running stupid drive shaft angles?

Well here is hoping the motor brings a step forward. They are certainly making plenty of changes, so fingers crossed. Which old colour scheme. The current one is very similar to that from 1994. I guess not having any sponsors makes it easier to paint the thing however you like.

Well any similarity between anything called HRT and a proper race team is entirely coincidental. For that matter any similarity between a race team owned by an investment bank and a successful race team is entirely coincidental. Look at how "Renault" are going backwards for instance.

Renault pioneered the turbo charged formula one motor. Nissan on the other hand have never even built an F1 motor of any sort. So what would Nissan possibly be able to help them with?

Some random investment bank. Great investment. Oh, wait. Renault needing Nissans help. That is comedy gold. Good work.

An F40 is just a 288GTO Evolution built to a later timescale and to no purpose other than to seperate rich idiots from their money. So pretty much like all Ferraris then. Anyway the base 288 was the business the evo was butt ugly.

Vibration is usually because the rotor is warped & they need skimming. The stock R32 gear is really not up to much. The rotors are too small, the callipers flex alot and the pads are too small. Upgrading will save you mone in the long run but it is expensive up front. As for performance you can generate nearly the same amount of retardation with the original gear just not for long. There is stuff all time in it. I hope for everyones sake the DBA4000 series is alot better than it was. I would check the price on some Project Mu rotors on import. As some free advice (Worth every cent) a cheap data logger that shows you how many gees you pull under brakes (& laterally) is one of the best investments you can make. Try the new GTech stuff (fanatic?) or just an app for your phone. Dont use a vernier. They dont clear the lip on the outside of the rotor & hence dont measure properly. Use a micrometer. If you are doing sprints get a pad that works from cold. Eg a DS2500 rather than a 3000. Then you dont have to swap them all the time.

You are missing the point. To a journalist a hoon and a car enthusiast are exactly the same thing.

I reckon that while it is easy to drive a slow car slowly (based on my years of experience of doing just that) it is actually much harder to drive a slow (ie bad) car to its limit which tends to be all over the place. You see it time & again. Someone who has been struggling in an average car finally gets something half decent and they are touted as the next superstart when they do well in it. I guess as long as it helps him progress to the point of replacing Vettel it is all good. It is all good having a West Orstraylean in F1 anyway.

So all that is missing is a circuit? What could possibly go wrong?

I went & looked it up. Sort of The answer is supposedly two. Two are Monza in 2005. The Dutch GP in 1961. The big news is: Narain Karthikeyan is the first driver in F1 history to finish 24th.

Fair call.

Blown diffusers have been around for ages. But off throttle blown diffusers are a relatively new innovation. According to the website it was once related, but not anymore. Did anyone else notice there were no retirements from the Gp on the weekend. AFAIK that has never happened.

That is nonsense. The entrants I know who are having to run on "street" tyres have left their R compounds at home in the shed. It is a nonsense rule aimed at artificially dividing the classes. In any case people end out going out & buying the closest tyre to an R compound they can find.