0R10N

will more than 5 people turn up tonight? PRACE BET NOWE

my only recorded laptime for Track 1 was 2 minutes flat, with passenger. Dunlop D01J-S semis. I'm actually quite dubious of the current wheel alignment - swear I can see a shit-ton of positive camber on the front from that photo. given that my other TX3 (which is 4WD) ended up with wildly positive front camber after its big brake conversion, I'm sure it will be in the same boat... although FWD TX3s have slightly different front geometry so maybe not to the same degree the wear pattern on my semis didn't seem to indicate any major alignment issues, however I did eventually chew out the outside edges of my old set of front road tyres after about 8000km. Typically I went and lost the alignment sheet/didn't pay any attention to the operator way back when it was done. Camber bolts and a fresh alignment should take care of that. Autolign supplied some 'ideal' street/race settings so I just need to find an operator willing to use them, and not go "herr durr THE COMPUTER KNOWS BEST"

eheh yeah, the damn thing takes a lot of people by surprise. Some have even scoffed at how it drives the wrong wheels (bla bla bla) and how hatchbacks are totally lame - then they get into it, go for a quick cane themselves, and come back amazed, saying it's changed their opinion of FWD (at least for 20 minutes). I guess it's all to do with perception, after all to most people it looks like a disgusting hacked up Laser so one wouldn't expect it to accelerate or handle the way it does. which was kinda the point... might be time to put on the p-plate I bought for it all those years ago

one of my mates rode shotgun in the car around Taupo at the last trackday and got about three laps' worth of footage on his camera but I'm not sure what he did with it. I've never bothered to take any vids of boostings in this car, or any of my cars for that matter. Mainly because I think my cars are all slow, and who'd want to watch a video of a slow car anyway? chur. Nah that was taken at Taupo, and the celica belongs to a guy I know called Dave. took the car down at lunchtime to get my 'new' set of semis fitted to the Rallyracings, and swapped my road tyres onto a set of O.Z Crono Evos - can now sell the integra type R rims that were supposed to be temporary rolling stock (all proceeds go towards the banana compliance fund and painting my watanabes) just went and tidied up some wiring around the link before, and stuck it in a safe place up under the centre console so it doesn't go flying. Rear brakes are starting to grind so it's time for a pad change, will also put fresh fluid in and bleed at the same time. Still got a bit of werk to do before the next trackday... may be tiem to compile another list the type R rims in question WERE on the other TX3 prior to ending up on this one, lol

so I guess bishes don't know about my nosewheel drive. simply put, it's the polar opposite of my other TX3, which is the immaculately kept, road-going weekend cruiser. This one is the bashed up track hack that never got enough love for the first few years of being in my possession Bought it in 2004 off the flatmate of a girl I knew in Hamilton, for the sum of $720 with wof and rego. It was ridiculously cheap because "it blows lots of blue smoke bro, and doesn't idle", and because some moron had whacked the driver's side door and guard into a stump or something, and because the rear shocks were seized in the "hilux position", and because the clearcoat on the roof was (and is) pretty much rooted, and and and... But on the flip side, it was a Jap import version (even rarer than my other one) and the interior and electrics were still mint (not that it ultimately mattered, in the end), it was front-tugs so the gearbox wouldn't blow up every 200km, and did I mention the wof and rego were still live? managed to score a new door, replacement panels and other various parts for next to nothing after my mate's useless idiot neighbour (known affectionately as "fat fuck") wrote off his TX3, which just so happened to be the same colour. Neat. Yeah, the wheels were pretty lame. So I bought some 15" O.Z Rallyracing Compes for it I fixed all the issues it had, built a VF10 hybrid turbo for it, and let my old man use it as a daily for a year (after his company downsized their fleet and took away his ute). During this year it blew the headgasket TWICE. First time due to a ruptured radiator hose and having the wrong radiator fitted, and the second time due to some shoddy workmanship by a shady mechanic who tried to fix the first headgasket mishap. After the second headgasket failure I took the car to my mechanic (whom I've known for years) and we ended up rebuilding the engine. At the same time I bought a BFMP Familia parts car with some goodies, namely a Link V1, Mazdaspeed LSD gearbox, Franklin stage 1 cams, 6-puck clutch and some suspension mods. The Link eventually ended up in my other TX3 after a few years of collecting dust, but the LSD 'box, cams, clutch and suspension went straight into front-tugs. the holy grail of Laser/Familia drivetrains Third time lucky, right? wrong. the car finally came out of the workshop in early 2005. Things were looking good for a while, I even managed to dyno it at a healthy 138kW at the front treads... until one night when I completely stripped 3rd gear while accelerating onto the motorway. Turns out the clutch was way too lethal for the drivetrain, so out went the puck, and in went an organic heavy duty Exedy which is still in there to this day. My old man kept using the front-tugs until the end of 2005, when he finally got given another company car to use. By this time my DR30 coupe had arrived, and I was now dailying an AW11 MR2 instead, so the track car got parked up "for a while". "a while" turned out to be two years fast forward to 2007. the front-tugs was growing moss in the driveway by this time (I was actually using it as storage). I'd run out of things to do on any of my other cars, and one day I found some KYB coilovers on Trademe "to suit BFMP Familia or Laser". Ended up scoring them for far less than I thought I'd have to pay and suddenly decided that it was time to turn the good old front-tugs into a track hack. so from there, the motley collection of parts began to grow. Rummaged around in the crap I'd accumulated over the years and found this. anyone remember SCi Performance? they were big in the late '90s-early '00s apparently What they'd done was enlarged the intake on the plenum to 2.5" (from stock 2.0") and hey presto they'd also supplied a matching throttle body with standard dashpot and TPS adapted. put all together with a bit of portmatching resulted in a slightly more responsive intake setup. I kept collecting and fitting parts over the course of 2007 and into 2008 - bigger front brakes, swaybars and a strut brace all went on, and out came the interior for weight savings of around 50kg. The brake upgrade paid off, as these cars have ABSOLUTELY CRAP fronts from factory. ...as well as a useless little factory intercooler. Hmm which one would make a nice upgrade - GTi-R? or VR-4? Ended up going with VR-4. with the brakes, intercooler upgrade, and suspension fitted my car was finally starting to get more competitive. Managed 2:02 around Taupo track 1 on road tyres, which I thought was pretty good. I'm not much of a lap time person to be honest - I just go out there to try and improve on my own lines, what other people are cutting around the track doesn't really faze me. Then, disaster cooked the headgasket for the THIRD time. Going round Taupo in June 2008 the damn thing decided to let go between cylinder #4 and a water gallery, prior to this I'd noticed the temperature gauge rising above 3/4 after about lap three of each 5-lap stint around the full circuit. Got the car back to Hamilton (where it was being stored) and pulled the engine out and apart again with the help of my mate Brendan. in addition to the BHG we found bad detonation and pitting on piston #2 and #3 and decided to scrap this engine completely and start again (incidentally I still have the bottom end sitting around if I ever feel the urge to raid it for parts). A friend of mine on the AMAZD forum was selling a complete B6T GT-Ae engine so I quickly bought it. The only special thing about the GT-Ae engine is its alloy sump with fittings for an external oil cooler, which I may add in the future. While the engine was out I replaced the stock B6T injectors with some 390cc 4G93t ones - direct plug in, matching impedance and 30% more flow per min allowing me to run a bit richer at high boost and rpm. Unfortunately this made my idle and low-end drivability turn into a bag of utter shit and has resulted in more fouled spark plugs than I can count. to solve the cooling issue I bought a gigantic alloy PWR radiator off the one and only oldschool forum user sentra. The VR-4 cooler was only temporary, so I ended up fitting one of these instead: ...on a lean. Then I bought some semi-slicks. Dunlop D01J soft compound 205/50/15s. turns out they were too soft... At the start of this year one of the front tyres completely delaminated due to heat stress. Turns out 5 laps is a bit too much for soft compound D01Js, and combined with summer heat and track temps they end up melting after a while Hopefully the set of medium compound 03G Direzzas I've replaced them with will be much more endurant. After the success of fitting a Link V5 to my other TX3 and getting sick of going through two sets of spark plugs in the front-tugs each trackday I sold my Microtech and used the money to purchase a second V5 (plus all the associated junk for running wasted spark etc). Took it to Glenn B (ezy10s) to get installed and as of this week the car is now running (much betterer I might add). unfortunately I won't be racing at flawless trackday but there's a GP event at the end of the month which I'll be attending. so that's where I'm at with the good old front-tugs. It may not be a looker by any means, but it's provided me with a hell of a lot of fun (and more than a few nightmares) over the last few years. The best part is that if I had to tally up all the money I've spent on this hack I doubt it'd be much more than about $5k

'grats on the NZPC feature Rich. Gee I'm starting to know a lot of people who have featured on 'daily driven', haha. interview seemed kinda short though, I guess they were pressed for time during nats? I'm hoping too that no one catches on to the style just yet, but only because I want a chance to finish my cars before the trend inevitably hits

sorry, been in a meeting all afternoon and just got back to my desk. So the deal is off Ben? I wasn't sure how rooted the rest of the car was. But yeah if somehow you still need to get around auckland i'll be available as chauffeur sunday evening, but I don't have the space to store any more vehicles atm

oddly enough I saw a pair of fishnet headrests on tardme once for $20, but forgot about it and some other bugger ended up buying 'em in hindsight it was probably a good thing I didn't, because (as others have said) i never figured out how to actually remove the existing headrests. There wasn't much info on the net about it either, save for the usual "yes, they can be removed" comment with no hint as to how to aktvally do it.

ah ok. Thing is, they may have been driven on recently, but how old is the tread itself? that'd be the deciding factor for me imo. I have some FM901s on the track car that are six years old and I drive on them every so often to get to and from events. The last time I used them on the track (after I ruined my semi slicks) they were absolute crap - first corner and I pretty much understeered off the track, then a few more corners later I spun out completely and cooked the turbo. spose you could just doit and find out...

The FM901s will be stale as hell, you might be better off using T1Rs if they're not as old and/or if they have more tread left.

hello and welcome. yup 12ATs have vacuum lines for africa. I have some underbonnet diagrams kicking around somewhere, will find and post them up for you. They show some (not all) of the correct routing. I do know that contrary to popular belief they are EGI and not carby, albeit via a form of semi-direct throttle body injection, so hopefully you've also got the loom and ECUs and all that other garbage required to run it. what exactly are you trying to do, adapt the engine into something else? no doubt one of the more knowledgable rotary peeps will come along with more info soon enough, but for now here's a couple of links with general 12AT related guff: here and here

No suitable ones at beach hop then? over the years I've gotten used to being the single drop of yellow in a sea of white but whangamata on Saturday actually took the cake. I was waiting for some of the more toothless folks to bust out the pitchforks and flaming torches

Yeh, the T8-hard compound FTZ slick in 19/58-15. They should hopefully last a full 5-lap stint around the track without melting! but I need to make 100% sure first that I can use them at other tarmac based events in the future, e.g. autocross and/or hillclimbs, MANZ-approved events that sort of thing, and not just at the open trackdays.

I had a Microtech MT-8 sitting in the corner of my room for about five years. no one in NZ could re-flash it for the B6T (it was originally set up for a rotary of some description) and all of the shops basically told me to send it back to Microtech in Aus for servicing. but when I approached MT Aus they pretty much told me the MT-8 was no longer supported and that I would either a) be stuck using it on whatever engine it was set up for originally, or need to buy a brand new LTX-10 which was their current product at the time. so I sold it to some guy on Trademe who was gonna use it in a FC3S.

lol he was in the process of wiring up the V5 in my track car, but I think he went out of town for a few days? V5 can use PC link tuning software and an appropriate cable, anything earlier than that needs the fiddly hand controller. in summary, it's worth upgrading any early G1 LEM to V5 spec just for the PC tuning ability.

Thinking of running the DASH with one? see this link re: controlling the solenoid for the extra valve with MS1. hmm I'd imagine any early Link/MS1 would have a bit of trouble with my 850cc injectors at idle...

I didn't think ANY semi was that great in the wet, still lightyears ahead of road tyres tho. I spose you'd have to weigh up the likelihood of rain during an event. Might buy some full slicks from palmside, the $100 ones that are EOL and happen to be the right size for my car sorry to hijack sorta, but are you looking for some 901s? would 205/60R15s and 215/60R15s suit?

is moar expensives to upgrade anything older than V5. Three hundred and sixty three moolahs each, to be exact but for the price I picked up both Links for (one came free with a parts car, the other was $20) it was alright. V5 is ferpektly fine for running B6Ts, but I eventually want something with a bit more grunt to run the FJ20

Link still do subboard replacement/upgrades on the G1s, although their stock of certain types is now running low. Sent two G1s back recently to be upgraded to V5 spec/changed to Mazda CAS subboard, no worries there. one was a V1 (the guys at Link were tripping out since the last time they'd seen one with that specific firmware was about 2006) and the other was a V3.

oh, and furthermore - if you were looking for some aktual Dunlop race tyres 2nd hand on a budget, I'd recommend either the Formula R D01J or 03Gs. D01Js are a bit on the soft side though, and after 5 laps round Taupo if you don't cool them down sufficiently you run the risk of melting and delaminating 'em completely, which is what happened to me earlier this year. 03Gs are slightly harder and more ideal for those 5-lap stints.

Quite an old design now (over 5 years old), can still be found brand new in very limited/weird sizes though. Definitely a road tyre as opposed to a semi slick. Actually found them to be a much better tyre than the DZ101 overall in terms of grip and wear. Pretty noisy though. both the DR30 coupe and my track car currently roll these. If they are any older than three years old I wouldn't even bother using them on the track. Mine are 6 years old and they proved to be less useful than tits on a bull around taupo in the wet.

I would be very surprised if it didn't require some welding. looks like it's a 16v? where's Testament, he'd be all over this like white on rice.

good to know I'm not the only one who hoards Familia parts pity it's not the factory SOHC turbo model, those were a laugh and a half I remember wrecking one for the engine/gbox/loom once. It was such a deathtrap though, had spent most of its life in NZ @ piha and rust had pretty much eaten away most of the bodywork. But amazingly enough the bootlid and bonnet were untouched, and most of the salvageable unique bits I ended up selling - it's amazing how many Familia cab owners there actually are... if you ever need any spare front door glass - hit me up, it's all I've got left (apart from the bonnet, which I should probably try and get rid of as well) http://my.reset.jp/~inu/ProductsDataBas ... RIOLET.htm

hmm I see the document has generated a bit of healthy discussion, which is good I suppose. Not a huge fan of stretch myself but don't go out of my way to hate it like some folks do. I suppose it serves as a guideline both to LVV certifiers AND compliance shops as well. when my DR30 sedan came into NZ back in '06 and went into compliance it got pinged straightaway on two things: chopped springs, and 'excessive' stretch on the rears. 195s on 8" rims was a big no-no back then and I suppose it still is four years later, the key difference between then and now is that back then all the silly trends had yet to trickle their way down to this part of the world. and yes there is still a big obvious black hole concerning cars that roll around on stretched tyres without certs but you'd assume that if cops are stepping up their enforcement of said guidelines much like what the LVV certifiers are meant to be doing now, there will be less and less of them around eventually. Also, I was looking at some slick tyres recently for my track car, and realized that it would probably make a hell of a lot more sense if the rules were based around the actual width of the tyre rather than the section width. Meh

oh mint, that'll be nice and easy. It's no DOHC head I guess, but still pretty intriguing/unique. spose you'd have to run the factory ECU as well, to get the "dual action" benefits of that "super head" man, if I could find a widebody DASH Starion in Japan I'd be all over it in a flash. But 99% of them are the yucky truck engined ones