Giant slayer

ta si.

ok thanks for the tip. by the way what is a detailer exactly? how much would it generally be for a paint shop to spray a ready rubbed down bonnet, and i guess your advising me to rub down the tops of the wings too?

I have a red 1990 zed and the sun has sucked all life out of the bonnet. The rest of the panels are ok (does the heat from engine make bonnet fade worse??) and are smaller anyway so less noticable. would love to get a full respray but can really afford it. I have got a can (standard size how ever big that is in ml) of paint in my my colour code made up as well as cans of primer and laquer and was thinking of doing it myself if the weather stays fine. my question is how many cans of paint will i need to cover a bonnet and should i treat painting the bonnet differently from other panels because of the engine heat (extra coats, high temp / flexible laquer, etc)?

yep. take them out, seperate the glass away by heating in an oven and remove all the muck. there is a guide on here. I did this in the attempt of improving the lights but they weren't that dirty it was just the standard headlights being cr@p! never mind HIDs on the way! probably worth doing as your bumper is off and some lights will be dirtier than others so it might improve them.

I would recommend Nassa Performance in Aldershot mate. It is only about 45mins away from us down the m3 and they seem like competant guys and reasonable prices. The website says about skylines and imprezas but when i went in there last time they were working on 2 other zeds and the guy said zeds make up the largest proportion of their work now. http://www.zestperformance.com/nassa/index.html

yeah actually your right. you can put an auto ecu into a manual but not visa-versa. Is that right? anyway, we could put your ECU into my car to see if it made any difference. I dont know if you could tell any difference (ie safety boost) espeacilly if i have got a boost controller?? thursday might be ok for me but got a football tournament after work which i dont know how long will go on for. wednesday i am busy. tuesday i will be free after about 7.30

you can borrow my ECU for a test mate. I got a newly refurbed one recently so pretty sure it is ok. i got a slow puncture on the way back from rolling road so it is sitting there at the moment so pop over. Got a multimeter too if that is any help to you. alternatively, if both you boys are about this week we could meet up in putney again as i could do with having another conzult done now the new O2's are in....and it is my round too! give me a couple of days to sort my puncture though.

apart from a load at the rolling road day..... 1. m25 anti-clock leaving at m3 junction on friday about 5pm. dark red with targas off. Let you in when you were diving in and out of lanes 2. m3 London bound about 5.30pm friday. Red Z steaming up the outside lane. I was going southbound so you probably didnt see me. 3. a z31 on chiswick high road sunday afternoon.

im sure it would be ok. The heat is not that great. if it snaps is will just make another one or use a thin sheet metal that can be cut. Si, Not sure quite what you mean. Are you saying that the slam panel is there is allow some air to flow over the engine to ventilate it? I guess that would be useful to push that warm air around the engine out as it would be acting to further insulate it, but im sure it would be more effective to have better cooling of the coolant in the rad and let that take the heat away. by the way i realise this is a bit cheeky to nick one of smithys designs but i think it is a good idea and would happily buy a cheaper, non-bling version from him if one was available. same rules apply to the BMC stopper which i have used a piece of bent iron to slove the problem at a fraction of the price!

I reckon this would be a useful mod to stop fan air escaping but not really interested in the SS bling (and the price that goes with it!). I was thinking of knocking one up in ply or something but need the dimensions. Can someone with one PM me the dimensions please??

aaahhh. and earls court tesco too! Not a stalker. I went to Imperial College so know kensington well. My mate from uni used to have a flat opposite tesco so would often be staggering round that place a 4am buying a bag of donuts for 10p!

Slowhand. where is that place you have in you sig? Looks so familiar. After racking my brains i have narrowed it down to the hyde park mansions near edgewere rd or church street off high st ken. As it looks like there is a slope in the road i will go for kensington! oh yeah...and the clarkson quotes are class. More of them please to keep me awake at work!!

saw another set of these on the A4 last night. The camera that face into the traffic glow red so must be infra-red cameras. These ones werent over gatso's like the ones on the a40 although (inevitably) there are gatsos on that road.

thanks Gio. I need to replace my tension rods so hopefully that will sort out the problem. I will also have my tracking done again when the new tension rods are installed. Are there recommended settings for lowered suspension that will help stop this? cheers, Tom PS I dont think i have the sagging spring or old shock problem as it is Tein suspension which is less than 3 years and about 15k miles old. It is more likely to be the lowered suspension ---> worn bushes on tension rods (although my tension rods are rose jointed so have no bushes but are not in a good way) -----> bad wheel alignment, in that order. any help appreciated because i dont want to wreck my new tyres when i get my 18's back from the fixers!

but isnt 'hp' a different unit to 'bhp' so the figures they quote may not be incorrect?

i had my tracking done a while ago. It was one of the fancy ones with the cameras. They said they can only return it to stock alignment which i said was fine. Anyway i have noticed the inner most part of my front tyres has become very worn. I have lowered suspension and have seen threads were this has caused similar problems but it doesnt go into the cures. I guess the solution would be to adjust the alignment away from stock to take into account the lower suspension. I dont know much about camber, toe and caster but i remember the guy i bought it off (who put in the new suspension) saying he was running 2° negative camber (i think). was that to stop the inner tread wear thing? How can i do this because i expect if i ask them to do that at the alignment centre i will get the usual, "sorry boss, can only return it back to standard".

interesting. i will have to pay that a visit. salvage yards are always good for bit and pieces but the 2 i visit regularly (trents in Poole and one in Alperton, west london) havent had any zeds in for months. Is it a walk in and pick over the cars yourself or do they keep you out of the yard? how big is the place in total?

you will get square eyes if you sit that close to the TV!

i sat in for a round of graduate interviews at my place last year. At one of the sessions this really tall guy turned up who had long dreads. Thought he did ok in the interviews and seemed a nice guy. At the meeting after the interviews where all the interviewers discuss the candidates one of the interviewers came in and said "what was that guy with the dreadlocks all about! It is a definite No from me!" no one disagreed and that was him struck of the list. Seemed very harsh to me. Saw the guy again as he was a mate of someone who did get hired and he had cut his dreads off and looked far more respectable and had got a job (dont know if it was pre or post getting the job). I know dreads are different to smart long hair but i guess the moral is still applicable. I work at quite a conservative engineer design house (lots of right handed science types) and this guy was still a uni student so it was a bit of a two worlds collide thing.

yeah i agree. audi have gone a bit mental with their performance cars too. I sat in a RS4 Avant in a audi showroom and i felt like i was king of the castle! the LED runnings light on all new audi's look a bit rubbish though. I would be straight at them with the wire clippers, warranty or no warranty!

this halfords one?? it looks a bit of a fatty!

ok Smithy. hows your stock for these tension rods? i will give you a ring first thing monday morning.

....as the title says. dont want to spend to much on one but are there ones that will sneak under my lowered zed and still be able to take the tonnage. dont want anything fancy and would just get a halfords one but wondered if there was a speacial one for low cars??

i have seen that the TPS voltage should be between 0.45 and 0.5V......is the smaller range of 0.42-0.45V more optimum?

ahh! my car is lowered so i guess i will have to go for the adjustable rods? they are adjustable at the moment bad look in bad condition and need replacing.