Daleo

NZM.031, I agree with most of what you're saying, cars are indeed fickle beasts, but this whole "treat us reeeally nice or we'll do a shit job" bs... That can't ever be an excuse, no matter what. I'm paying for a service when I take my car to a mechanic, I'm not paying for a new best buddy. You can't possibly know peoples motivation for taking their car to a mechanic. Whether or not they can or can't do it themselves is irrelevant. Do you think prestige vehicle mechanics do a shit job because they think the owner of a Porsche is a smug, rich bastard? I doubt it, I would imagine it's because that smug, rich, bastard could go anywhere, but he CHOOSES to come here. If you don't want the work, don't accept the job. If you can't guarantee your work, don't accept payment until you can. I work in a trade and i would never leave myself open to criticism that my work is anything less than 100% and I would never accept payment until I was 100% satisfied. My reputation is at stake. Sturb obviously chose these guys on the strength of their reputation, and thus far, it seems like they might have let him down. If it seems like I'm having a go at you , not my intention, I just hate it when professionals feel like they can blow customers off for trivial things. Sturb, checking you alternator and voltage reg is fairly straightforward if you have a multimeter. Start you car, put a meter on the battery, and check whether battery volts are rising or falling. Due to the power consumption of the fuel pump,etc, if your alternator is failing you will progressively lose charge, as the car runs, to the point when it stops completely. Testing a voltage reg, you can do with the meter still on the battery. The reg's job is to stop the alternator overcharging the battery. Generally you can check this by revving the engine (around 2500rpm is fine) and holding whilst you have your meter on the battery, if you are seeing more than about 13.8 -14.4 volts for an extended period, reg could be suspect. Good luck with everything, hope you get it all sorted.

White cars always look good with black wheels , good choice, offset is bang on.

Maybe I need to be less of a girlypants and get involved next time Ruby, yeah, I'm pretty sure it's all done & dusted for Oran now... If you do EC, let me know, I need and excuse to get out there again its been too long...

Hi Dunc, I have them in my nm35, I'm off to bed now but I'll post some detail for you in the morning. My car was totally stock suspension before these so I can give you an idea of std ride height. Cheers, Dale.

Awesome Ruby, never had the balls (or the wallet) for racing, good luck! A mate had an RS250, I love how you can't be lazy and rely on powahhh to get you out of trouble. When you get it right it's the best feeling in the world. Never done Mallala, but EC and OP in Syd. Phillip Island is my favourite place in the whole world.

I've often thought the same thing, the slowest sportsbike I've owned, will spank the arse of virtually any car I've seen. Once you've ridden a seriously quick bike, spending money making cars quick seems fairly pointless; mind you, I'm still spending... Another thing, once I'd spent a bit of time doing track days, I had no desire to speed or drag on the street. Which flies in the face of everything our governments try to tell people.

Hi Dunc, I recently fitted a set of BC BR coilovers to my Stagea, these were updated to correct some issues with the earlier designs. Most of the issues have been sorted, leaving you only having to re-use your original rear shock top mount. If you do buy, ensure that what you're buying is updated, not old stock, otherwise you'll have issues. The update is from September 09 onwards. Regarding ride height, the BR coilovers that I bought could easily be set at factory height, as the rear springs are now longer; there were no issues fitting the fronts originally. The ride is quite nice and the finish is quite neat for the dollars you pay. Hope this helps, Dale.

Now that's just mean... But please, take it off. Cheers, Dale

Sorry if I offended you Tom, clearly you have excellent taste in cars, you're obviously having an "off" day. It happens; I had an "off" day once, in the early 90's and ended up driving a Triumph . At least your mistake only cost 94 cents... But please, take it off, it makes the baby Jeebus cry. Cheers, Dale

I have a friend who is a storeman for Bing Lee in Sydney, he laughs hysterically every time he hears this kind of thing. According to him, the plasma's arrive flat on their backs, stacked on a pallet from the manufacturer. I think they just like messing with people, also I think it's a bit of a ruse by the shops to push people into home delivery they wouldn't otherwise bother with. That, and I've never seen one stuff up after it's been laid on it's back.

Step away from the bucket please . Your car deserves better than this, what did it do to warrant this punishment? Check out some plastics suppliers or use some flat alloy sheet. I'd rather a poke in the eye, then I couldn't see what you've done. Throw that abomination in the bin and let us never speak of this again. Cheers, Dale

I'm a bit of a luddite, so I'll have to sit down and work out how to load some up.

Ok, so I fitted the rear springs yesterday, for those who don't know how; Jack up car, support car on stands. Remove wheels (optional) You can get at everything you need with them on. Loosen the outer locating bolt on the lower arm. Mark position of eccentric bolt on inner mount (critical for toe adjustment) and loosen. Support arm under spring mounting cup with trolley jack. Jack up slightly to remove load from eccentric bolt, slide bolt out. Lower jack, which allows arm to swing down and towards the outside of car. Spring will now come free. Remove upper bump stop snubber. Install adjustable spring platform in vacated space. Re-using damping rubber on bottom of spring, install CORRECT LENGTH BC SPRINGS! Reverse process, jack up, line up inner mount with a punch or similar (Not fingers!) thru hole, install bolt. Tighten lock rings on spring platforms Nip up all bolts hand tight only. Roll car onto ramps, now suspension is at ride height, fully tighten all bolts that were loosened. Drive car at newly slammed ride height! The reason for 2nd last step is so you don't tear the centres out of all the rubber bushes, which will be unnecessarily preloaded if you retorque them at full suspension droop. The final step should be a proper wheel alignment, by someone who knows what they're doing, not K-mart Auto Service If you install the springs with the platforms at full extension you will have std ride height (on rs/rx). I elected to go down 20mm on the platforms which gave me 350mm guard lip to hub centre, this matches my 365 lip to centre on the front. Not super low, I know but enough to look much more muscular. as a reference, the front of my car is nearly 60mm lower than with std, the rear around 25mm lower. The car now has a 10mm rake front to rear, and I can still get up my (steep) driveway without scraping. You could however, go low enough to scrape anything & everything! It is much firmer now, with the rear springs installed, than it was with only the front coilovers in with the BC shocks in the rear. I am running damping at fully out (soft). Still quite acceptable by my standards and absolutely stormin' through my favourite test road. Much flatter, well controlled through multiple consecutive deep undulations at speed. These used to set up a frightening, uncontrollable wallow, now just eats it up and carries on. Sorry about the length, but I was very much in two minds about these when I purchased them, as there was little or no previous feedback, aside from Scotty's slightly less successful experience. As it stands, these are an excellent set up, with handling that finally befits the character of the car; Devastating when you want it, cruisy when you don't. Very pleased . I'm happy to field any questions if anyone wishes to know anything more. Cheers, Dale

Time for a highflow Lol, my missus does too, always making silly excuses why she needed to drive it, funny, I don't care at all. Even my 18 month old likes it, makes the spooling noise of the turbo the whole time we're in the car...

Yeah, seems that way, not really that worried, what I had to re-use, took no time to change anyway... I'll fit the springs and see how I go. Thanks for the offer, if I need 'em I'll just turn them up at work; they can pay for materials. I'll definitely be getting in touch with the supplier, he was very upfront and seemed interested to know how it went. Still quite happy for the price though. BTW, did your little boost sensor repair, nice find. Cheers, Dale

Happy Ending! At least she cares enough to tell you; that one's a keeper

Eeep! She's watching! Lol didn't mean to start a domestic On the tacho side of my dash, there is only 4 warnings; Oil light (Little oil can- red), Check engine (Little motor- orange) Charge light (Little battery- red) and the 4wd light Hope this helps, Dale

Hey Damo, been busy with work, but have the fronts in and height set, rear shocks in, but haven't had time to drop in the rear springs yet. Fronts were a piece of piss, probably took an hour or so (had to take them out a couple of times to finetune heights. Rear shocks; still had to use original top mounts, but all the new rubbers and spacers fit fine, bottom fork mount is closer now, only used a 1.5mm spacer when fitting. Damper rates are very nice, at fully out, they are not much harsher than std, just much more controlled, fully in; rides like a brick, so there's plenty of leeway for personal taste. Front springs are claimed to be 10kg/mm, rears 8kg/mm; they don't seem to be anything like that hard, but quite ample for my family car. I'm extremely pleased so far, given I paid $1100 delivered. Don't know about rear spring height yet. Scotty; do you remember the free length of your BC springs? Mine are 265mm high with the digits 62 97 260 012 printed on them. Hopefully different to yours. So on the face of it, quite a good spend, will update once I have enough time to fit rear springs. Cheers, Dale.

Is it possible she's referring to the gear position indicator in the bottom of the tacho? Women... A girl I went out with years ago turned up in my driveway one day with a worried look on her face telling me the oil light on her dash was lit. I asked "when did it come on?" she said "about 10km ago" me, "what did you do?" she, "I just drove here as fast as I could 'cos I knew you'd know what to do". As it turned out, I did know what to do; build a new engine for her car. Women...

I'm pretty sure he sold the whole car about a month ago.

Very disappointing to hear this, It might be worth moving your bikes to another secure location for a period of time, just in case the dirtbags decide to return and finish the job. I bloody hate thieves !

Sooo, I got home today to find my BC BR Coilover kit had arrived by FEDEX! I've been talking to the vendor on Ebay for quite some time about these kits regarding the fitment issues encountered by Scotty last year. He did some research with BC, found out about the issues and was assured the kits for the NM35 were updated in Sept to correct ALL fitment issues. So in the next few days I'll be fitting these up, and once I'm done I'll post up some pics and hopefully some positive results regarding fit. Also I'll try to describe the ride quality (improvement or otherwise) and adjustment proceedure. Given the poor damping my stock suspension is displaying at the moment, I'm expecting a decent improvement. Wish me luck! Dale

I love how some people continue replying to their own posts . I can assure you most people don't think "greedy rich pricks", that only happens when you continue to bang on endlessly about people with less than you, and how awesome you are. Then they just think "What a wanker!" If anything, this thread proves how much appreciation people have for others, who clearly have more or better toys, and how most people on here have a pretty finely tuned bullshit meter. I enjoy looking at the threads and pics from guys who have cars I can only dream of owning, but I'm still happy with my own life. We get it, you've got money, so what? Whatever you've got, someone else is going to have a bigger/ better/ faster/ shinier one. A great story I heard once about Kerry Packer goes, he was playing blackjack in the high rollers suite of a Vegas Hotel, he chipped another player about something, and the guy fires back, outraged " You can't talk to me like that, I've got fifty million dollars!" Kerry pulls out a coin and says, " No worries mate, wanna flip for it?" The guy looked like a fool. Someones always going to have more, it's whether or not you're a tool that makes the difference. Of course, this is just my opinion. Cheers, Dale

How long since you purchased your car? If it's under 3 months, the dealer you bought through, will be responsible for the repairs.

Not exactly the same, I know, but my r31 (rb30e) had done over 500,000 kays when I sold it, 300,000 of that in my hands, never used oil, never missed a beat except corroded plug on CAS, ($20 fix). RB's are built with extremely accurate tolerances. Also the crank girdle gives a very stiff block structure which can only help as power increases. As such, moderately powered examples that are not revved constantly within an inch of their lives are a very long lived proposition.