the businessman

Curious, how many car lengths (or not) does the R beat the 350HR in a drag race? As I recall, not much if anything could beat my un-modded 350HR under £50k (unless it was modified :/) Totally agreed on looks. The Z looks like a sports car, feels like one and sounds like one. The Golf R.. looks just like another golf really. That is all well and good if you don't want to look like you have a sports car, but is that logic not so dissimilar to those old folk that buy a 4ltr only to do 30 mph everywhere. If it is fast, it should look fast - and sexy - and masculine! You don't see many girls in 350z's (no offence), but I see plenty of sales reps and estate agents in Golfs. I'd say, if you have dogs and kids, such restrictions merit consideration of a golf R, it has boot space and rear seats. Its not all about speed, you can obliterate a golf R by spending a little more money on the 350HR engine, but certainly, no where near what a new R costs.

The rear alloys were direct from Japan, from Rays. Have to say, the standard paint quality from Rays is very poor, too thin but the alloy is super strong and light, very well made in all other respects. The LMGT4 is among the best looking for the 350z. I read that you had some issue with the threading on the caliper and an issue with the clutch. If it helps, when it was sold to the chap that bought it off me, the car didn't have those issues, I never fiddle with breaks myself, always got Nissan to do that, call me fickle, but when it came to safety, I wanted someone to sue if things went wrong. As for the clutch, I read after I bought the car, the stories around the clutch only lasting 40k miles. But learned that was being reported by teens who were treating the clutch in this car as if they were still in their hot hatch. Dropping the clutch on an over-revving flywheel, to obtain that small shove you get. You don't do that in a machine like this, not least because you could end up off the road pretty sharpish but you also end up killing it just as sharpish too. I never had any signs of clutch issues, judder or such like, and this was way past 40k, I can't comment on what happened after it was sold. What it did have, was an intermittent noise on start up, where the alternator sounded like it was briefly sticking, nothing serious, I presume that got replaced since nothing has been said on that. It has been the only car, in fact, that I can say hand on heart I have never had anything go wrong with in the 4 years I owned it, other than the alternator noise in the last 2 months of ownership. (alloys were bought a year later). Its bulletproof, it was an absolute gem. I never used to thrash it as most do mind you, but then again that's possibly why I never had any issues. The front ones on that car are standard offset, but I opted for a slightly increased offset from factory spec for the rear, which makes the car look that bit more muscular without cocking up the suspension characteristics. The wider tires made a significant improvement to the stock handling though, it has to be said. 2x 19" 8.5J +25 offset (silver polished lip) 2x 19" 9.5J +25 offset (silver polished lip) Anyway, a little insight into its history for you. Hope you have many years enjoyment out of it. Wonderful cars. Here is a hint for anyone paying over the odds for break pads. I tried quite a few, I realized that hardly any were as good as the genuine Nissan ones, but they are a rip off. FERODO Premier Brake Pads Reference FDB1562 - Rear Axle -Set (for 2 wheels) £28.39 FERODO Premier Brake Pads Reference FDB1561 - Front Axle -Set (for 2 wheels) £31.61 (opieoils.co.uk with 20% discount code. Jun 2012) No word of a lie, they were the best pads I had used. Fully ECE R90 complaint but specifically, exceeding OE specs by 5%. This was key, since I was fed up with trying all these aftermarket pads, with promises of superior performance but in reality failing to deliver. It occurred to me, Nissan, having already specified the OEM pads with significant performance characteristics having spent millions on R&D, are already going to be designed to compliment the high performance the car is capable of delivering, notwithstanding the specs have been developed in collaboration with Brembo ! If we are to say FERODO meet or exceed those specs, that factor more than proved its worth in use, and at a 3rd the price, how about that! Slowing to a stop from 100mph for example, during the odd occasion of enthusiastic driving, never fazed them in the slightest. Never experienced any fade or excessive noise at all, they were progressive and as a bonus, not as dusty as DS2500 etc. You can tell straight away they meant business, from the quality of the build, the quality included rubberized shims, the chamfered edges and central expansion groove which despite the nay sayers, did not detract from breaking performance. I didn't rate DS2500 for road use in any case, the OEM pads were at least on par if not a better all-rounder, while I found Cosworth and EBC simply dangerous and should be banned on this car. But as always, high carbon content in the disk plays a big part. Can't beat quality disks, I made the mistake once (in the photos above in fact) of going for so called performance EBC disks and pads. Never again ! Dangerous ! If FERODO haven't revised the compound under the same name, you should still find they are superb. Spend the money you save on quality disks! ( and no I do not work for FERODO )

Tracked her down. Looks amazing she's in good hands. This is what it used to look like - I was first owner. Bloody miss that car lol

Fair point on regulation 90 , but after reading about it I find it means a brake product can still be anywhere within +/-15% of an OEM part, just feels like this falls into the category of being a weasel word, invented for marketing. It should be 'at least equals or exceeds' the specification of an OEM part. Well I suppose in the least you have the piece of mind that the product might be as good as OEM or might not be, it may even be 15% worse, it could be better, who knows. Or perhaps the product is more than 15% better, well then its not reg 90, but neither is the one that's less than 15%. Hummm, these advertising folks ah, who'd give em food and water ?

The Cosworth pads were £10 cheaper than the ds2500 at the time, i now notice they are more expensive. Main choice for them was the claim of exceeding the performance of the DS2500 pads, whilst less dust. They came with inclusive rubber shim plates, such as the OEM Brembos. My local Nissan garage "dont recommend placing copper grease on the back of the plates, for the rubber coating beds into the piston and seats itself whilst on the pad side, the rubber amalgamates with the back of the pad. negating the need to grease the backs" however they do carefully grease the rim of the pads where they make contact with the bembo calliper receiving slips and the pinion on top and bottom so the pad glides in and out on the stainless steel runners and slips if you will. After the OEM setup, I then fitted DS2500 and kept the OEM disks, good setup, no problems just dust. After that and once the disks were gone, I replaced disks with the EBC ones and went for these Cosworth pads, only to suffer the smoking arches, fade, spongy and vague break feel and stopping or slowing to 40 from 100mph is pretty dreadful. As you approach 60 and below from aprx 90mph, they begin to raw as you start to hear the groves on the disks, that's ok and probably normal behaviour for any slotted rotor by the sound of things, but then the pads begin to fade almost to the point of not working. have to say, this never happened with the previous set-up, even from 155mph on a test run i recall . They do appear to be a little less dusty however, also its not the kind of dust that 'melts' to the alloys and is very hard to remove without caustic cleaners, which is something that I did experience when using the DS2500. If i was to do a proper track day on the other hand, the fade and heat build up is so bad that my bet is that there would be a catastrophic failure. Not sure if these problems are due to the disk not being able to dissipate its heat effectively due to poor vane design or low carbon etc, I have no idea. Perhaps the pads simply have poor purchase on the disk surface, requiring me to put more pressure into the system and thus creating excessive heat, not being an engineer I would not like to say, but I can say the set up is not up to the demands of 300 bhp car as the performance is worse than OEM for sure. So since these products are operating below what Nissan deem appropriate for safety and performance, its surprising thy get away with stating things like 'better than oem' and giving them product numbers relevant for a 350z which they are clearly unsuited for. dam it ! Anyway off to get new pads for now see how that goes. thanks for your views, very helpful.

Thanks for the advice. Curiously, what was the biggest compliant for the EBC ultimax disks.

Thanks, im engaging with them now, hope to get a good deal Oh yes, lol clearly i made some mistakes thanks for the info on the EBC disks, was wondering, as back then some folks said there were good. Clearly not. I don't find Rotor noise intrusive as such, noticeable but not overly. Certainly, after reading around I have noted a few people have said that the Street master range from Cosworth are to be considered to be in an entirely lower 'league' than DS2500 or PF etc. So i'm hoping better pads will help resolve this. When it comes to it, it will be DBA or Stoptech disks next. I think PF, whist probably the best, may be overkill and prove too expensive as I don't do track myself. We hear of all these counterfeit products coming into the UK that are visually so convincing that it is very difficult for even the experienced wholesalers to tell the difference. Is there a system in place where these items can be tracked to source, Like there is in the food industry?

I purchased EBC Ultimax Discs, and those new Cosworth Street Master pads, I will never do so again lol. Cosworth claim there pads were created to match up to the DS2500s. When stopping from high speed I noticed something i had never seen before, smoke and a burning smell, this was after careful run in. Same speeds, same road never brought on such horrors from the stock disk pad combo from Nissan! So I sat there at the junction with blue smoke literally pouring from both front arches. Blue disks too. Perhaps the disks don't have enough carbon content crap disks? perhaps the pads are counterfeit as some are, or perhaps they are just crap ?? god knows but this new combo has been rubbish over the last 8 months, spongy, vague and when breaking from high speed, rotor slot noise grows louder and louder as you slow down and the disks heat up, perhaps this is typical of slotted rotors not sure never had them before. Just thought i would share that with you and wonder if you have heard anything along the same lines from others? Im due a new set of pads this week, thinking of Performance Friction Or going back to the trusty Nissan 350z OEM pads. Once had DS2500s, they were about the same as the Nissan OEM in all honestly, but cheaper, yet they were more dusty. My greatest fear, counterfeit items that even the reseller carnt tell are counterfeit untill someone dies of course. how do we avoid them.

That price is a give away, I seen most at around 18K with only 22 on the clock, then again it looks customised and faffed with which does tend to make people think its been mistreated and so forth. interesting price.