Hiro Protagonist

Combination of late night boredom, inquisitive nature, technically minded and a brain like a sponge for absorbing useless facts. Great for trivia nights.....

Genuine cinema widescreen is often 2.39:1 (anamorphic widescreen) or 1.85:1, native widescreen TV format is 16:9 (1.77:1), so there will almost always be the black bars top and bottom. Online content and ripped videos are often cropped to 16:9 or 16:10 (a common PC widescreen monitor ratio). Most (if not all) DVD players will have the option to change the viewing aspect ratio to get rid of the letterboxing or convert to pan&scan if it annoys you that much...

Another year, another TOCAU annual meet done and dusted.... Only got one decent photo myself, waiting on all the Vic guys to upload their photos so I can trawl through for some better ones...

RA23

Highly highly unlikely you'll see an NA 1JZ swap though, very rare to see in the country as the importers generally only bring over the performance versions (and the non-turbo Soarers were 2JZ)....

JZZ30 sump is mid/rear, JZX100 is front.

Could do that in the KE55, since it was a 4-speed the reverse light was triggered just by pushing the gearstick over to the right - you didn't actually have to put it in reverse, you'd stay in neutral but the lights would come on. Quite funny to do it at 110km/h on the freeway when someone was tailgating...

WGMG - the weather over the weekend. Was planning to wash the car, do an oil change, clean it out and have a go at mounting the amp to the sub box and cleaning up the wiring a bit in preparation for the TOCAU annual meet next weekend, only for it to intermittently rain-sun-cloud-rain-cloud-rain etc etc the whole weekend. If it just poured down constantly I'd be happier since I could easily write-off the whole day, but when it just teases you here and there with a glimpse of shine you get the faint hope that you can actually achieve something. Damn I need a house with a good garage....

What's wrong with your current ones?

If you've got a 96 Nova then it's a different chassis to the AE92. '94 was the changeover year so if it's actually a '94 then you should be ok, the exhaust follows the same standard path in the base models as the SX/GTi so if I had to hazard a guess then yes it would fit up fine.

The fake wheel argument is over because they're not fakes. They are "inspired by" or "copies of", but fakes imply that Rota etc are trying to pass their wheels off as Enkei, BBS, Volk etc (apart from the stupid RAVS Vork stickers on some of the BSA wheels, to be fair), which they aren't. Half the JDM wheels are styled after other wheels etc anyway (look how many JDM copies there are of BBS LMs for instance).

Marvis is a douche, plain and simple. He seems to take it as a personal insult when people don't buy genuine JDM rims and go for Rotas/Konigs/BSAs etc, he thinks that his JDM AA63 Celica (that's right, 4A-powered) is absolutely shit-hot even though a decent 18RG would leave it for dead, he can't take criticism of any kind, thinks Boso is the ultimate in auto styling...the list goes on. Fortunately he's gone quiet on Toymods of late, but there was a time when he was gettting into arguments/shit-fights just about every other day because he couldn't get off his high-horse.

I'm normally a stickler for keeping the newer engine within the same brand, so I approve of this. I approve of it alot. First-gen Focus is common-enough here, Mondeos had them too but I think they only sold about 10 of those in Aus in total :P

Yes Yes, Bazda does a good job and lots of guys on Twincam and AE82oc are running them with good results.

True, although some things (like the diff and bushes) are inherited from the previous owner, just taken a while to surface.

WGMG - Damn the Snoarer is really starting to get on my nerves. It's the combination of all the little things going wrong that add up to an ownership experience that is getting less enjoyable by the day, when it should be an absolute hoot. First, there was the wheel alignment problem, which (after being incorrectly diagnosed by the numpties at Bob Jane to be a bent chassis) was mostly fixed by fully adjusting the tow and then replacing the bushes (which didn't end up getting done because the shop couldn't get them in time, yet they failed to tell us). Then there was the diff, which was overdue for a service and apparently had a small leak - bought new seals for it and a can of Kaaz oil (as they supposedly don't like semi-synthetics) only for the shop to take a day and a half just to pull it out and do the seals (and do the bushes at the same time, see above), and now the diff is even noisier in tight spaces (damn you 2-way). On top of that, there was the alternator-noise in the speakers after the new headunit was put in (wasn't there with the old Eclipse), followed by intermittent loud distortion and finally by the amp dying completely - this wouldn't be as bad as it is if the amp wasn't worth $1k on its own.... And on top of that the engine pipe which scrapes on any bump bigger than a pea (since the new dump pipes were installed), the discoloured paint down the passenger side (and a long stain/mark that appeared out of nowhere), and it just gets _really_ frustrating. There have been several times that we've contemplated selling it (despite having $8k left to pay off on the loan) and buying something newer/more-reliable/not-an-import. And of course the thing that makes it even more annoying to me is the fact that the AE102, despite having driven the distance from the Earth to the Moon, is still motoring along virtually untouched, thumbing its nose in the face of more powerful, more expensive and more unreliable cars. And people wonder why I'd never consider selling it. I just wish we didn't have to spend so much money on the Soarer so I could actually do some real modifying to it.....

Well, considering all KE55s came standard with the 4K, you can see where I am coming from....

Did you try looking in your engine bay?

Smash them any way you have to to get them off, then buy new 7AFE ones from Toyota for a couple of bucks each.

And U13 Bluebirds, and Navaras... Was considering putting one in the KE55 if I ever decided to take it off the road and convert it to a race car...

Which is why I like my FXGT wheel :D Padded centre with big Toyota logo in the middle so the police won't look at it twice, but it is still a genuine leather Made-In-Italy Momo wheel with Momo logos and horn button, which looks like a normal Momo wheel when you take the padded centre off, and also comes with a Momo boss that works perfectly with the standard steering column, horn and indicator-cancel :D

Actually undergound equipment isn't _that_ big (except for a few things like shields and shearers), surface equipment can be huge however

Depends on what industry you work in. I'm primarily design-based (underground mining equipment), but I also do hands-on problem solving, failure analysis, overhaul rework/reclamation etc...

I technically hadn't graduated when I started my current job, had finished all my courses and had received official word from the uni that I had finished, but the actual ceremony wasn't until about 2 or 3 weeks after I started 31 out of 32 subjects completed for a Mechatronics degree, then switched to Mechanical (there was one course I just couldn't pass, based around transistor amplifiers) for 6 subjects to make up the difference (managed to get credit for a lot of things), plus a few fails along the way. I survived by spending a lot of time in the uni computer labs on forums etc instead of actually going to lectures.