Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

So I've just been handed a major defect notice for having my diff locked. Now I actually only have my diff shimmed, not locked which isn't illegal is it?

Pretty much looking for any advice on this for when I go to court. I've been told I should go get a letter from some qualified person regarding the legality of a diff shim rather than just front up claiming it in court.

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/228574-off-to-court/
Share on other sites

  • Replies 131
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Well it was my mums 57th B'day today and we we're getting Thai food for it. So me and her drove down to Shri Thai at Mt.Ommaney. As I was entering the carpark I guess the cop could hear the inside tyre making a bit of noise. While he had me pulled over a 180sx drove in as well with a shim/lock/whatever and he pulled her over as well. Wrong time, wrong place. Of course he gave some shitty speech about modified vehicles killing people and all that garbage too. Absolutly ruined my mums b'day because we were both that pissed off about it.

I'll see about this legal aid thing. Could anyone recommend any lawyers for car mod related issues? Might fork out some money as I've just gotten my tax return back today. Unless this is a lost cause.

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/228574-off-to-court/#findComment-4021326
Share on other sites

yeah i would see legal aid.. they will explain a few things and tell you how you can go about it.. of course they cant tell you what to do, to get off but they can tell you whether or not certain things are allowed if you ask them questions and give them ur situation

if your totally boned then might as well save ur money for a lawyer.. of course you could pay for a consult with a lawyer, costs but not as much as having them represent you in court

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/228574-off-to-court/#findComment-4021516
Share on other sites

Your diff comes from the factory with shims. You have replaced a worn shim. How can that possibly be illegal.

You are probably going to have to pay for a lawyer if you want to win the case. Alternatively, if you think you can present yourself well enough, get formal documents from 2 or 3 different mechanics/diff specialists stating the fact that the diff is shimmed from factory and it is common for a diff to need servicing via replacement of said shims.

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/228574-off-to-court/#findComment-4021539
Share on other sites

Your diff comes from the factory with shims. You have replaced a worn shim. How can that possibly be illegal.

You are probably going to have to pay for a lawyer if you want to win the case. Alternatively, if you think you can present yourself well enough, get formal documents from 2 or 3 different mechanics/diff specialists stating the fact that the diff is shimmed from factory and it is common for a diff to need servicing via replacement of said shims.

Yeah that was what I thought. The only thing I thought that might have been an issue was because the shim I got was thicker than the norm.

Looks like I'll be getting a lawyer then :P as I have no idea about the court system other than what I've seen on Judge Judy. If anyone can recommend any lawyers for car related issues it would be much appreciated. In the mean time I shall give this legal aid place a call today and go talk to Option1 about it as thats where I got the shim done.

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/228574-off-to-court/#findComment-4021616
Share on other sites

take it to court.

By law I have to go to court. As of July 1st(correct me if im wrong) the new laws mean that for any defect at all you are required to appear in court. There is also the new laws that mean 1st defect is a warning, 2nd defect car is confiscated for 2 days, 3rd a month and the 4th time is permenantly. But f*k them, I'll end up driving a 100% stock skyline before I drive a bloody excel as im sure they'd like.

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/228574-off-to-court/#findComment-4021630
Share on other sites

Well I don't even think that will come up. But yes I could.

The other problem ive just realised is Im not allowed to drive my car as of 7:30pm last night until the defect is cleared. Now if im not changing it as its legal I guess I could fill out the self clearance form now(he didnt tick a box requiring me to have it looked at by QT). However seeing as I'm going to court to prove its legal, I can't really clear it till then can I. Plus If I were to get done for it again in the mean time it'd be even more of a problem. I can see myself going down to the cop shop to give them the self clearance notice and get done in their own carpark again lol.

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/228574-off-to-court/#findComment-4021722
Share on other sites

I can't offer any legal advice but that's some pretty bad luck mate.

That said, keep in mind that a skipping back tyre can get you an undue noise ticket, and I also know of at least one person who has had their car confiscated for "hooning" because their diff (tight, not locked but probably not as tight as yours by the sound of it) chirped over a white line while turning. Completely ridiculous but what can you do?

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/228574-off-to-court/#findComment-4021777
Share on other sites

Well so far I've spoken to legal aid, I have to call back monday to make a booking to speak to someone so the earliest that will be is the 28th.

Qld transport was of no use in regards to the clearance of the defect. I called the police about it and the guy I got put through to was pretty useless and asked if I wanted to call back tonight to speak to the officer who actually got me last night... i'd rather not.

I'd take an undue noise ticket :D I honestly don't care about a fine from this my sole concern is points on my licence.

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/228574-off-to-court/#findComment-4021832
Share on other sites

Lil update: Spoke to steve? from option 1 garage as paul was busy. He said they'd send me a letter about the work that was done etc. Sent an email to paul so hopefully that works out.

Back to QLD Transport mod line about it and some guy named Billy is going to call me back after he looks into it a bit more but it seemed promising. Also I was looking up their modification guidelines beforehand and found "permanetly locking a differential by welding or other means is not permitted and has a dangerous effect on the handling of a vehicle" and there we go, my diff is not permanently locked.

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/228574-off-to-court/#findComment-4022069
Share on other sites

Im still curious to know how the cop can even prove u got a locker.. i reckon if u went 2 court with very little evidence u could ask for proof on how he knew it was a locker. Ask for explainations on how a locker works. How to tell a car has one & why its illegal? Did he ask u if it was a locker? What did you admit to saying u had? U really want 2 prove its not a locker, get something from an engineer in writing. take it 2 court n ur fine will get thrown out.

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/228574-off-to-court/#findComment-4023079
Share on other sites

An undue noise ticket carry's 3 points so thats not a good option...

that all said in 2000 i got booked for speeding 80 in a 60 zone by a cop who didnt ever have me on radar

how do i know, cause when i questioned it saying i was only doing 60 he said

"i can estimate speed and issue a ticket on my estimate"

I said mate your estimate is wrong

he said "maybe you would prefer a ticket for those bald tyres plus an undue noise ticket"

i took the speeding ticket and copped it on the chin, all in all there are a few arsehole cops out there and they all seem to hate modified cars

My honest advice, Id take the fine and just make sure you cant get done for it again, and drive super good so you dont loose anymore points...

Ive seen quite a few users take on modification fines over the years... Im yet to see a winner...

Nismoboy is the closest ive seen to a winner, but he spent 10g's on his legal case and 10g's in unrecoverable costs is not what I call winning...

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/228574-off-to-court/#findComment-4023098
Share on other sites

Im still curious to know how the cop can even prove u got a locker.. i reckon if u went 2 court with very little evidence u could ask for proof on how he knew it was a locker. Ask for explainations on how a locker works. How to tell a car has one & why its illegal? Did he ask u if it was a locker? What did you admit to saying u had? U really want 2 prove its not a locker, get something from an engineer in writing. take it 2 court n ur fine will get thrown out.

He was just going on the noise the inside wheel was making while I was going slow as feck. He didn't want to listen to me pretty much. I had said it was only a shim and not locked but to no avail.

An undue noise ticket carry's 3 points so thats not a good option...

i took the speeding ticket and copped it on the chin, all in all there are a few arsehole cops out there and they all seem to hate modified cars

My honest advice, Id take the fine and just make sure you cant get done for it again, and drive super good so you dont loose anymore points...

Ive seen quite a few users take on modification fines over the years... Im yet to see a winner...

Nismoboy is the closest ive seen to a winner, but he spent 10g's on his legal case and 10g's in unrecoverable costs is not what I call winning...

Eeeep, lets not do that then :D He said as a major defect it was 3 points anyway. Unfortunatly my problem is I have only 1 point to play with at the moment due to an incident last october. But I really do drive "super good" now anyway as a result. I don't speed at all and even stick to speed limits in road construction areas where there is no bloody reason to. I even see cop cars speed past me on the cen10 highway where it's currently a 60 zone... f*k thats painful.

Car will be cleared tomorrow. I had misread the form and I need to get a saftey certificate to clear it. My mechanic is also going to write me up something as when I talked to him today he wanted to pull out the diff just to check as he didn't want to get in shit over it. Might as well take some photos while its out and open to.

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/228574-off-to-court/#findComment-4023110
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • The other problem was one of those "oh shit we are going to die moments". Basically the high spec Q50s have a full electric steering rack, and the povo ones had a regular hydraulic rack with an electric pump.  So couple of laps into session 5 as I came into turn 2 (big run off now, happily), the dash turned into a christmas tree and the steering became super heavy and I went well off. I assumed it was a tyre failure so limped to the pits, but everything was OK. But....the master warning light was still on so I checked the DTCs and saw – C13E6 “Heat Protection”. Yes, that bloody steering rack computer sitting where the oil cooler should be has its own sensors and error logic, and decided I was using the steering wheel too much. I really appreciated the helpful information in the manual (my bold) POSSIBLE CAUSE • Continuing the overloading steering (Sports driving in the circuit etc,) “DATA MONITOR” >> “C/M TEMPERATURE”. The rise of steering force motor internal temperature caused the protection function to operate. This is not a system malfunction. INSPECTION END So, basically the electric motor in the steering rack got to 150c, and it decided to shut down without warning for my safety. Didn't feel safe. Short term I'll see if I can duct some air to that motor (the engine bay is sealed pretty tight). Long term, depending on how often this happens, I'll look into swapping the povo spec electric/hydraulic rack in. While the rack should be fine the power supply to the pump will be a pain and might be best to deal with it when I add a PDM.
    • And finally, 2 problems I really need to sort.  Firstly as Matt said the auto trans is not happy as it gets hot - I couldn't log the temps but the gauge showed 90o. On the first day I took it out back in Feb, because the coolant was getting hot I never got to any auto trans issues; but on this day by late session 3 and then really clearly in 4 and 5 as it got hotter it just would not shift up. You can hear the issue really clearly at 12:55 and 16:20 on the vid. So the good news is, literally this week Ecutek finally released tuning for the jatco 7 speed. I'll have a chat to Racebox and see what they can do electrically to keep it cooler and to get the gears, if anything. That will likely take some R&D and can only really happen on track as it never gets even warm with road use. I've also picked up some eye wateringly expensive Redline D6 ATF to try, it had the highest viscosity I could find at 100o so we will see if that helps (just waiting for some oil pan gaskets so I can change it properly). If neither of those work I need to remove the coolant/trans interwarmer and the radiator cooler and go to an external cooler....somewhere.....(goodbye washer reservoir?), and if that fails give up on this mad idea and wait for Nissan to release the manual 400R
    • So, what else.... Power. I don't know what it is making because I haven't done a post tune dyno run yet; I will when I get a chance. It was 240rwkw dead stock. Conclusion from the day....it does not need a single kw more until I sort some other stuff. It comes on so hard that I could hear the twin N1 turbos on the R32 crying, and I just can't use what it has around a tight track with the current setup. Brakes. They are perfect. Hit them hard all day and they never felt like having an issue; you can see in the video we were making ground on much lighter cars on better tyres under brakes. They are standard (red sport) calipers, standard size discs in DBA5000 2 piece, Winmax pads and Motul RBF600 fluid, all from Matty at Racebrakes Sydney. Keeping in mind the car is more powerful than my R32 and weighs 1780, he clearly knows his shit. Suspension. This is one of the first areas I need to change. It has electronically controlled dampers from factory, but everything is just way too soft for track work even on the hardest setting (it is nice when hustling on country roads though). In particular it rolls into oversteer mid corner and pitches too much under hard braking so it becomes unstable eg in the turn 1 kink I need to brake early, turn through the kink then brake again so I don't pirouette like an AE86. I need to get some decent shocks with matched springs and sway bars ASAP, even if it is just a v1 setup until I work out a proper race/rally setup later. Tyres. I am running Yoko A052 in 235/45/18 all round, because that was what I could get in approximately the right height on wheels I had in the shed (Rays/Nismo 18x8 off the old Leaf actually!). As track tyres they are pretty poor; I note GTSBoy recently posted a porker comparo video including them where they were about the same as AD09.....that is nothing like a top line track tyre. I'll start getting that sorted but realistically I should get proper sized wheels first (likely 9.5 +38 front and 11 +55 at the rear, so a custom order, and I can't rotate them like the R32), then work out what the best tyre option is. BTW on that, Targa Tas had gone to road tyres instead of semi slicks now so that is a whole other world of choices to sort. Diff. This is the other thing that urgently needs to be addressed. It left massive 1s out of the fish hook all day, even when I was trying not too (you can also hear it reving on the video, and see the RPM rising too fast compared to speed in the data). It has an open diff that Infiniti optimistically called a B-LSD for "Brake Limited Slip Diff". It does good straight line standing start 11s but it is woeful on the track. Nismo seem to make a 2 way for it.
    • Also, I logged some data from the ECU for each session (mostly oil pressures and various temps, but also speed, revs etc, can't believe I forgot accelerator position). The Ecutek data loads nicely to datazap, I got good data from sessions 2, 3 and 4: https://datazap.me/u/duncanhandleyhgeconsultingcomau/250813-wakefield-session-2?log=0&data=7 https://datazap.me/u/duncanhandleyhgeconsultingcomau/250813-wakefield-session-3?log=0&data=6 https://datazap.me/u/duncanhandleyhgeconsultingcomau/250813-wakefield-session-4?log=0&data=6 Each session is cut into 3 files but loaded together, you can change between them in the top left. As the test sessions are mostly about the car, not me, I basically start by checking the oil pressure (good, or at least consistent all day). These have an electrically controlled oil pump which targets 25psi(!) at low load and 50 at high. I'm running a much thicker oil than recommended by nissan (they said 0w20, I'm running 10w40) so its a little higher. The main thing is that it doesn't drop too far, eg in the long left hand fish hook, or under brakes so I know I'm not getting oil surge. Good start. Then Oil and Coolant temp, plus intercooler and intake temps, like this: Keeping in mind ambient was about 5o at session 2, I'd say the oil temp is good. The coolant temp as OK but a big worry for hot days (it was getting to 110 back in Feb when it was 35o) so I need to keep addressing that. The water to air intercooler is working totally backwards where we get 5o air in the intake, squish/warm it in the turbos (unknown temp) then run it through the intercoolers which are say 65o max in this case, then the result is 20o air into the engine......the day was too atypical to draw a conclusion on that I think, in the united states of freedom they do a lot of upsizing the intercooler and heat exchanger cores to get those temps down but they were OK this time. The other interesting (but not concerning) part for me was the turbo speed vs boost graph: I circled an example from the main straight. With the tune boost peaks at around 18psi but it deliberately drops to about 14psi at redline because the turbos are tiny - they choke at high revs and just create more heat than power if you run them hard all the way. But you can also see the turbo speed at the same time; it raises from about 180,000rpm to 210,000rpm which the boost falls....imagine the turbine speed if they held 18psi to redline. The wastegates are electrically controlled so there is a heap of logic about boost target, actual boost, delta etc etc but it all seems to work well
    • hahah when youtube subscribers are faster than my updates here. Yes some vid from the day is up, here:  Note that as with all track day videos it is boring watching after the bloopers at the start.  The off was a genuine surprise to me, I've literally done a thousand laps around the place and I've never had instability there; basically it rolled into oversteer, slipped, gripped and spat me out. On the way off I mowed down one of the instructor's cones and it sat there all day looking at me with accusing cone eyes as I drove past. 1:13:20 was my fastest lap, and it was in the second session, 3rd lap.  It (or me!) got slower throughout the day as it got hotter.      
×
×
  • Create New...