Hiro Protagonist

So on the basis of one example (which sounds like something else was wrong anyway) you're going to completely rule out 95? What about if you own a European car, almost all of which REQUIRE 95 RON? What if you own a high-compression Japanese car, which also requires 95 minimum? Do you have _any_ evidence that the engine was screwed from being run purely on 95 PULP?

I ran 95 in the KE55 because that was closer to the RON of leaded which is what the car was initially designed for. Never had a problem with it.

Credit rating isn't about how quick you can pay off loans (anyone can have a chunk of cash floating around), it is your ability to make regular reliable payments over a long period of time (ie repayment security) that they look out for.

I'd say so. The 5 year loan we got for the Soarer has a fee if you pay it off in less than 2 years.

350Z is a locally sold car though....

Makes sense. Banks etc make money off the interest from your loans, so if you pay them off too quickly then they don't get as much interest and thus don't make as much money. Quite a few will actually have penalty fees for paying loans off before a certain time period (say half the length of the loan).

That's because you know it's grey :P I personally have seen some shitty black paint jobs fade that badly, so your average Joe Bloe on the street who mightn't know that the Series 2 SX/GTi came out in a (fairly rare) gunmetal colour could quite easily mistake it for a faded black paint-job, especially if the rest of the car isn't particularly neat.

Yeah NSW personal plates are a total rort...

Agreed, but you tend to notice it more on the reds. Doesn't help with the SX/GTis that basically half of them are red, and the other half are white (which isn't as noticeable from a distance), and the tiny minority are a gunmetal grey that already looks like a very faded black.

Makes sense when you realise that if you used all letters it'd cost a fortune :P I'm just lucky that my custom plates can be made using standard content patterns, means I only have to pay $90 a year for them.

Toyota's red paint from the 80s and early 90s was terrible for fading and crows-feet...

Agreed. Saw a ridiculous one the other day (names removed, although it's on here) to which someone replied Idiot....

The key here is the all-alloy engine.....a small block Chev (ie a Gen1, not an LT/GenII or LS/GenIII) has an iron block correct? Which would make them a fair bit heavier than an all-alloy engine.

The way the coilovers are set at the moment, there is a bit of bodyroll - but all in the name of comfort. If I was driving it instead of the missus, I'd have it set a lot firmer

Nah, Soarers don't roll over and explode as easily.

That's a kind of Camry, isn't it? Chick on the phone at the mechanics today thought I had a Ford Explorer instead of a Soarer.....

No that's different, that would be false representation. It is exactly like putting a TRD badge on a normal Toyota, or as Trev said, a HSV badge on a Holden, except that certain normal BMW cars that weren't M-cars came out with M badges on them anyway (and it wasn't that uncommon either). Same goes for Audis these days with S-badges, there are normal Audis with S-spec fitment but normal engines.

Thanks, definitely has to remain streetable as it is Cara's daily, but it would also see the odd 1/4 and the outside chance of a track-day or two. Power figures shouldn't grow too much so I'd expect a max of 300kw at the fly before I'd be thinking serious upgrade. Might be a good time to go for a lighter flywheel too, stock one seems fairly heavy and revs take a while to settle (although that could be PowerFC-related too...)

Driving to work this morning and coming to the realisation that the clutch in the Soarer seems to be on the way out.....normal around-town gearchanges are fine, but if you punt it in gear it'll flare like an auto, especially when you're hitting or in boost. Worse too if it is part throttle, as you can get it to flare a good 2-3000rpm (combined with a lovely smell), whereas full throttle gives you enough power through to the wheels for them to catch up to the revs and stop the slipping. Anyone got recommendations for a good street-suitable girl-suitable clutch for a 1JZ/R154 that can handle 250-odd kw? As far as I can tell it is still running the factory clutch, something a little heavier wouldn't be a problem (it is lighter than the factory clutch in the AE102, somehow), but don't want to splurge on a twin-plate or anything exotic if possible.

Sorry, I interpreted it as "the AE92s aren't prone to rusting, unlike the AE82s", not "the AE92s aren't prone to rusting as much as the AE82s did, but they do still rust a fair bit".

Being a carbied car, I would have thought that it wouldn't have had a factory O2 sensor (although I think some American spec carby cars do have them under the draconian Californian emissions spec). Are you looking at fitting an aftermarket O2 sensor for a AFR gauge?

I see no real problem here. It's not as bad as Chev badges, as M is purely a division of BMW like TRD is of Toyota. E36 M3s were also available in 4-door sedan form. Also, there were M-spec normal BMWs, the proper M3s/M5s etc would have the number next to the M-badge whereas the M-spec models would just have the M. The M itself does not necessarily indicate that the car is an M-car (M3, M5, M Coupe), merely that it has been up-specced by the M-division as a factory option.

In Newcastle at least, the P-platers and bimbo Excel drivers are rivalled by the industrial workers for their sheer inattentiveness and ignorance of road rules (and that is saying something, when 80% of the population barely bother to use indicators or check blind spots). I've lost count the number of times I've been cut off or seen a beat-up Falcon/Commodore flying down the shoulder or weaving in and out of traffic, with a sleepy angry hi-viz-wearing tool behind the wheel. Seems like they are paid at work by the second so they must save every single one they can in getting there, and every single second on the way home is potential lost beer-drinking time, so doesn't matter if it is morning or night - you WILL be forced off the road.

I disagree with the "you don't see many rusty ones" statement. At least in NSW pretty much every AE92 I've seen that hasn't been resprayed/rust-repaird will have some rust in it, and there are several classic spots which always go, namely across the top of the front windscreen, the A-pillars, and around the rear hatch and seals. Not as bad as a KE or AE82 though, but some of that will be due to age. Crusty/brittle interior plastics are another common problem too, especially the B-pillars.

Do you still have the article? Would be an interesting read. Although I'm still wary of things forwarded to me claiming to be from New Scientist or Scientific American (for example) as often they are fabricated or chain letters with authoritive names added to try and make them more believable - a guy on TOCAU tried to tell me that there was an article in "the July 2007 issue of the American science magazine New Scientist" about power increasing on a full tank of petrol (with several spurious claims), despite the fact that New Scientist is neither American (it is British) nor a monthly magazine (it is weekly) and I had been a reader for some 10 years as my dad was a subscriber, and no article would come up on their website search relating to the topic, let alone in the month of July 2007. Still, polarity being a "myth" is bending the truth itself too - it is more of a white lie to generalise the factual chemical processes into a more simplified theory to allow for study and analysis. Every theory will have some holes or exceptions, but that doesn't mean that they wrong. If you treat the "like-dissolves-like" rule of thumb as a pure rule of thumb and apply relativity to it, you can cover the base of water mixing with ethanol/ethanol mixing with petrol (itself already a mixture)/water not mixing with petrol with surprising ease. As an aside, even though ethanol and water are 100% soluble in each other, and ethanol is basically 100% soluble in petrol, a water/ethanol mixture is not, and you will get the water separating above certain concentrations (from memory it is in the 2% range for E10 (so E10 may in fact be 8% ethanol and 2% water), but don't quote me on that).