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

What i've never understood about these prosecutions is that, as far as i'm aware, they have to prove that it was you that committed the offense. Most people have a wireless setup these days with their wireless router connected to the cable/ADSL modem. This means that they can only trace the IP address as far as the router. If your neighbour/guest/guy outside with laptop had managed to get onto your network and used it illegally is it still your responsibility? If they say you should have secured the network then you can say that you used 128-bit WEP which is still in widespread use, but can be cracked now in seconds. The other issue is how they obtained your IP address. Most big companies use an anti-file sharing program called Media-sentry which now has a fairly impressive catalog of false hits (including someone who didn't own a computer, just google it) and is becoming increasingly derided in legal cases. Obviously i'm not a lawyer but i get the feeling that all these big media companies are trying to scare people into paying an out of court settlement instead of fighting it as the media companies might well lose. Same tactics with parking tickets..... Dave

I went there a few years ago when i was in Krakow and I think it's one of those things that everyone should see. It won't be an easy day and you will leave the place with a real chill down your spine but it's something that you will remember forever and go some way to getting a real sense of the loss and the suffering that went on at that time in a way that a book or TV program never can. I won't tell you about anything that you're going to see but at the start of the tour everyone is chatting amongst themselves and by the end everyone is silent. Dave

After months of searching i finally think i've found a pair of 5 spokes i like. They're the Enkei RP03's. These have been recommended on a few z sites as a good value lightweight alloy and i've found a set of 17x8.5 + 17x 9.5 for £1150. Found this picture of them on a z. Yum yum Dave

Hi Lusitano, I have a conzult but the usb lead is built into the car as part of my carputer setup thingy. I might be able to remove it temporarily but unfortunately the car's in the garage at the moment so i won't be able to check til later in the week. You can check the O2 sensors using the ECU test used to find fault codes in the ECU. You should be able to find the method for this test on here as i can't remember exactly how it's done. I know this method works as i used it to pick up on a faulty O2 sensor in mine before i got the conzult. A rough way to check it would be to try running the car at around 2000 rpm in 5 gear. I found that with a broken O2 sensor the engine would sound really rough (as it's overfueling) at these speeds. Dave

Did you ever find a place you can get the Cruise stalks for SRS equipped cars? I've done all the wiring for a CC retro fit but can't find a stalk anywhere. The stalk would work for me as i've got the SRS wheel and column.

I was always told that BOV's were really bad for engines that used mass air flow meters to calculate how much fuel to inject (Z engines). If the air flow meter has seen a load of air go through it and is injecting a load of fuel accordingly, won't it end up running the engine really rich if half that air comes out through the trumpets? Dave

I'm not denying that it's possible to get more power out of an engine that way, but mounting it away from the engine and the hot exhaust gases is a funny way of doing it. This is an excerpt from the wiki on turbochargers: "A turbocharger consists of a turbine and a compressor on a shared shaft. The turbine section of a turbocharger is a heat engine in itself. It converts the heat energy from the exhaust to power, which then drives the compressor, compressing ambient air and delivering it to the air intake manifold of the engine at higher pressure, resulting in a greater mass of air entering each cylinder. In some instances, compressed air is routed through an intercooler before introduction to the intake manifold. Because a turbocharger is a heat engine, and is converting otherwise wasted exhaust heat to power, it compresses the inlet air to the engine more efficiently than a supercharger." The whole point of a turbocharger is that you're getting more power "for free". Putting the turbo at the back of the car really reduces how much free energy you're getting. Dave

I thinks some of your assumptions about the setup aren't completely accurate. Exhaust gases are continuously being pumped through the turbos on all turbocharged engines. The reason why turbos are only effective at higher revs is that the exhaust gases just don't have enough energy to create useful work from the compressor side of the turbo until they're moving really quickly which only happens at higher revs. The reason why turbos are mounted as close to the engine as possible is cause right when the exhaust gases are leaving the engine is when they're moving the fastest. The further they get from the engine the colder and denser they get so the volume of the gas shrinks. As the volume shrinks the speed they move through the constant area of the exhaust decreases, so as they leave the tailpipes they are moving a fraction of the speed that they left the engine. As turbos are more effective the faster the exhaust gases pass through the turbine side, the further from the engine they are mounted the less effective they can be. On our cars the intercoolers aren't there to cool the charge air cause it's picked up heat from the exhausts and engine. The air coming out of the turbos is hotter as the act of compression generates heat. Doesn't matter how far away from the engine, or how cold the exhaust gases are, if you compress air to 9psi (standard Z boost) it's going to get hot enough to need cooled before being used in the engine. I'm not saying that it doesn't work but i don't think it's a good solution for the Z. It's more suited to big inefficient american engines that have such huge sizes that the amount of exhaust gases produced is enough to spin a turbo that's mounted a distance away from the engine (mainly cause there's no room in the engine bay for anything other that the engine) and that aren't as nearly as tuned or refined as the engines in the Z. Dave

I hooked up a solenoid to the boot release and connected it to my car alarm so i have a remote boot release. Cause of this i was able to remove the lock barrel from the rear panel and i put the rear view camera there. It was a little bigger than the hole but it's not hard to bore the hole out a bit. Dave

I'm the same with the datascan thing. The data display works fine but everything else can't be resized to fit the screen. Conzult on the go is kinda nice though ;) Unfortunately the words "transreflective" and "sensible price tag" don't really seem to go together. I might be upgrading to this 8.4" screen or this 7" screen depending on how bad i'm finding the glare on the TMS screen this summer. I know what you mean about the space navigator. It almost seems built for carputers. I'm going to integrate it with one of these microphones for voice control and hands free calling (with a bluetooth connection to my iPhone). Hopefully the iPhone's bluetooth will be cracked in the next few months then i can use it's 3G connection through bluetooth and have internet on the go :) One thing you should look into if you haven't already is fitting a reversing cam with auto switch when you put the car into reverse. It make parking and stuff a hell of a lot easier. Dave