hairdo2001

If the car's a 96 then it'll have the series 4 clocks which means there's no resistors on the back of the speedo to adjust. Also the faces of the clocks are a different shape and have different mounting points than earlier clocks which means you can't use indiglo dials as they're all in the shape of earlier clocks and won't fit in your dash. They can't be trimmed to fit as this would damage the EL material that makes them glow. The speed sensor on the gearbox on the 96 is the same as the earlier models so you don't need a special one for a 96, but you will suffer from the same problem that you get with all the speed converters in that all the electronics on the car that rely on the speed (power steering, hicas, etc) will be out by a factor of 5/8. I got round this by mounting a set of series 2 clocks into a series 4 dash as this way you can do the resistor mod and get your clocks reading spot on in Mph and the ECU speed signal is correct as well. This also meant that i could mount the indiglo faces on all the clocks and i even got to keep my airbag warning light. This, however, is not for the faint hearted as there's a lot of work to get the clocks to line up right with the dash and although the plugs that go into the back of the dash look similar to the earlier cars they are wired completely differently. Dave

These lot will be able to sell you a replacement

I think you might have a problem with the variable cam timing with a newer ECU. When the OBD II 16-bit ECU was introduced the VTC had already been dropped and different cam shafts used to compensate. If you put a later ECU into an early car it might stay on the "low revs" cam profile (small valve overlap) and never shift into the "high revs" profile (large valve overlap). Don't know if the program stayed the same when the ECU changed but if the VTC bit was removed you're going to lose a lot of top end power going to a 16-bit ECU. Dave

Sky broadcasts in 720p and 1080i but you're right to say that to get the best out of the TV you'll need a good 1080p source, but i'd disagree that there's no advantage even with a Standard def source. The picture won't be a crisp cause of the lower resolution but you'll still get the better colour reproduction and much much better contrast compared to a LCD (and just cause all the manufacturers are calling TV's LED's doesn't make it true. Remember, a TV advertised as LED is just an LCD with LED backlighting). Another big advantage with Plasma's is in gaming. Most consoles now can output 1080p so it'll look fantastic and plasma's have the advantage with must lower response times so the game will appear snappier. Serious gamers only use plasma cause they claim (rightly or wrongly) that it gives them an advantage in online play. I suppose that the reason everyone want's big plasma's is sorta the same reason that we all drive Zed's. 90% of the time you're not going to get near it's potential cause of the limitation of the TV signal (or the speed limit in the Zed's case) but it's nice to know that if you ever need it, the potentials there ;) Dave PS: Don't waste your money on expensive HDMI leads. They're a con. If the signals digital then the cable has very little effect on it. Just google "Monster Cables" to find out just how overrated expensive HDMI cable are.

As mentioned above, the best TV around for value and picture is probably the Panasonic TX-P50V10 plasma. Money no object, go for one of the Pioneer plasmas with the 9th gen Kuros panels. Dave

LED screens are set to be the next big consumer con. Unless you know what sort of LED backlighting you're buying there's no point paying a premium for it. At the moment there are 3 sorts of LED backlighting technologies: 1. LED backlighting replacing the standard CCFL tubes. This is the sort of backlighting that you're seeing on Apple notebooks and displays and other high end notebooks. Basically it just replaced the traditional CCFL (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lights) with an array of LED's. The pro's are instant switch on of the screen, wider dimming range, lower power consumption and better colour reproduction. Con's are no improvement in contrast ratios which is the bane of LCD's. 2. LED edge dimming. In order to make LCD's thinner it's possible to put arrays of LED's around the edge of the screen and send the light to the back via light pipes. This makes for an incredibly thin screen but early models are suffering from uneven light distribution so this is one to watch for now. 3 LED backlighting with local dimming. This is the one that's going to finally close the gap between LCD's and Plasma's. Until now LCD's couldn't match Plasmas for contrast ratio (Contrast ratio is the difference between the brightest and the dimmest pixels the TV can show). Plasma's had much superior contrast ratio cause when they need to show something as black they can switch off all the lighting to the pixel so it appears as black as the screen. When LCD's need to show something as black they go as opaque as they can, but the backlight stays on and shines through the screen so it show as dark grey. The new sets with local dimming have the ability to switch off the backlighting to specific areas of the screen so when the set needs to show black on a certain part of screen it can shut off the backlighting and then that part of the screen is totally black. That is the essence of the fancy new "LED" technology that everyone is talking about. Problem with this setup is that you've only got a finite amount of LED's for backlighting purposes and's it's nowhere near as many pixels as the TV's got so if you need an area to show black next to something bright you end up with a muddy compromise of semi light/dark areas with lots of "halos" around the bright things (bad). Most manufacturers won't discuss how many LED's are used for their local dimming setups but one came clean recently with a figure of around 1500 LED's. Sounds a lot but there are about 2,000,000 pixels on a high def TV so that means 1 LED per 1300 pixels. The reason i called LED's a big consumer con earlier is cause they're being marketed as a new technology when they're actually LCD's with LED backlighting (Samsung have already been slapped down by the Advertising Standard Authority for this). Don't get it confused with OLED (Organic LED) which is a few years off yet. If you're thinking of upgrading to LED (LCD with LED local dimming) then try and find out the amount of LED's used in the backlighting or it's not worth it and don't be confused by manufacturers selling TV's with LED backlighting. If it's not locally dimmed then it's not worth any more than a regular LCD. Dave

The Laguna has N.I plates on it. If that's the case then the dealer will be Charles Hurst Nissan. They're the only dealer in N.Ireland that sells the GTR.

Have you tried the "Skyplayer" service which is Skys answer to BBC's iplayer? If you've got decent broadband and wireless internet you can allocate up to 4 computers to watch the skychannels and then use a laptop to watch sky channels from anywhere in the house. Pictures is on par with BBC iplayer so it's definitely watchable but not as good as broadcast. Bonus is that it's free and you don't need to start ripping up floors and pulling cables. Dave

I work on an 87m private yacht owned by a member of a middle eastern royal family. I'm in charge of all the electronics and electrics on here which starts with the generators and switchboards and goes on to all the navigation, communication, process control, IT and AV stuff right down to the lightbulbs. Spent most of the summer in France and now we're alongside in Egypt for the winter. Pretty good job if you don't mind spending 8 months a year away from home. Plenty of perks as well such as the diving i'm going to be doing all weekend......

A few weeks ago the car developed a knocking noise going over bumps that sounded like it was coming from the transmission tunnel. I finally got it up on ramps today and found that the noise was the drivers side exhaust hitting the crossmember (as seen in Munys "What is this post"). The exhausts are mongoose cat backs, everything else is original and the cats are still in place. All the rubber supports at the rear of the car are intact and undamaged and there didn't seem to be any damage to the original parts of the exhaust but it's wrapped in cladding and difficult to see. The car's not making any extra noises and there are no funny smells so i'm pretty sure that it's not leaking anywhere. The only thing i could see that was different was that the hangers for the rubber mounts on the drivers side exhaust were at a slightly different angle to the passenger side. Also, the seam down the side of the cats were at different places on both sides making it almost look like the drivers side cat had twisted around allowing the exhaust to hang slightly lower. Anyone seen anything like this before? Dave

As i live in Northern Ireland there's only a few companies that'll even quote for me. Cheapest i found for a 31 year old with no accidents or points, but no NCB driving a 96 JDM with mild mods, parked in a private driveway overnight and limited mileage was £1200 from Elephant.co.uk !!!!! One of the many disadvantages in living in this part of the world. Dave

I went to these guys about 6 weeks ago on the recommendation from this thread and i can say that everything said by craigszxtt is true. I've recently had nothing but bad experiences with leaving my car in with so called "specialists" who just botch things as they go and charge a fortune, so going to centregravity was like a breath of fresh air. It really put my faith back into the motor trade. It's run by a fella called Chris who used to work in IT and started setting up suspension as a hobby. As he seemed to have a knack for it took up more and more of his time doing it and now it's his business. When i was there he'd just finished setting up an S2000 for a track day and regularly sets up Porsche ClubSport motors. I arrived on a Friday lunchtime and he worked at the car, asking me how i wanted it and showing me everything he was doing until 20:00 and his attention to detail was amazing. I had recently had Powertrix upper front and rear control arms, front tension rods, front and rear Whiteline ARB's, Tein mono-flex coilovers and a full polybushing by a "specialist" and the car had felt like crap. Chris found a number of defects such as suspension arm bolts only hand tight and castleated nuts without split pins and fixed all these at no extra cost. He checked every nut was torqued correctly on the suspension, diff and subframe. He even lent me his car so i could get a rear undertray section from Zedworld (15 mins away) after the specialist had just ripped it off and not put it back. After setting up the suspension he took the car out for a test drive and when he was happy he let me try it. It's an overused phrase, but it really felt like a new car. The ride was not noticeably worse than stock, despite all the polybushes and the coilovers and the handling was so far beyond what it had been before. I've been spending a lot of time driving in twisty mountain roads in the south of France recently and the car just sticks to the road, but even when it gets out of shape it's so predictable and controllable that there's never any need for panic even with a 600ft drop next to you. As you can probably imagine, i cannot recommend this guy highly enough. I only wish that the rest of the motor trade could have this guys drive and enthusiasm for what they do. Only problem is, most of his trade is repeat customers so when i was there in the first week in June he was booked solid through to the middle of August. If you book now, you might get in before Christmas ;) Dave

I used TBR for my re-spray and they did a great job. Would recommend them to anyone in NI. On a slightly different note i got Supra Specialists Ireland (SSI) to do some work on my car and got an entirely different experience. I'm still waiting on an email back from them explaining all the deficiencies so i don't want to publicly hang them but after the work they did a proper specialist had a look (and showed me) and quite a bit of the work they had done was genuinely dangerous. I know i need to wait for their side of the story for the full picture but they let me drive out of there in a car that was totally unsafe so i would advise anyone in Ireland to steer well clear. Dave

It was a pretty good day :) I actually stuck a couple of suction cup mounted GoPro cameras on the car and have recorded some of the roads. I'll stick it on YouTube when i've finished editing it. Dave

At the moment i'm staying in Nice in France and was able to bring the car along for a bit. Yesterday i went up into the mountains behind Nice and headed east across the Italian border before returning along the coast. It was the most amazing collection of mountains and valleys i've ever seen and has pretty much every type of road at some point or another. I've just had a load of suspension gear fitted and had it set up right by a race tuning shop so the Z felt absolutely amazing through everything from long fast sweeping turns to the 180 degree twists on the roads going down the sides of the mountains. For a 13 year old car i think it did pretty well. I'm pleased to report that it even got quite a bit of attention wherever i stopped (there were even some photos taken) and this is the French Riviera; home of Monaco and the supercar. Here are some photos of the highlights of the trip.... Dave