ChrisB

F*ck me ragged - thats mental!!

My dentist's receptionist's husband is a car dealer. Even she (receptionist) says: "Car dealers - if they are opening their mouths, they are lying".

Flashplayer is v.10 now, so v.8 is really old. That should be replaced by updated Safari anyway. The XML converters are related to MS Office. Could be a potential hazard if you have an old Micro$haft Orifice install on your Mac. I prefer iWork myself.

Not an Adobe user myself, so can't directly comment. However, CSS.5 works by all accounts. If you have any doubts about whats already installed on your machine (and haven't already done this), have a look at your system's application software architecture - anything left over from PPC days definitely won't work. Top left corner : click Apple icon : About this Mac In popup, click on More info (or was it system information on snow leopard), system information application should appear. Then, in left hand pane of system info app, click on Applications, wait a few (possibly tens of) seconds, application list should get filled in. On upper right hand of system info app, click on 'kind' to sort the applications in architecture order. Scroll to PPC. Any PPC apps or parts of apps, in that sub-set are for the bin. For example:

Still working fine here. Lots of new, nice touches. As for the 'bad' reviews in the App Store... just correlate the spelling used in the review with the level of rant and problems they've had. Tells you a lot.

We've been looking at this for a while - the wife's an Aussie, so wants to return sometime... We keep on saying next year will be the year... for the last 16 years... RORO looks like a good option http://www.autoshippers.co.uk/index.html do this for a grand. We thought of selling most of our stuff, just taking dogs, computers and cars. The cars have to be owned for a year to avoid tax. You can only import one car each every 5 years and you have to move permanently to Oz as we understand it. Does, by all accounts, seem that rules have changed radically recently. No idea about re-registration, but in Queensland, the bombs on the road seem to suggest rules are lax. Don't know about other states. Car prices in Oz are ASTRONOMIC!! Certainly seems to make sense to take a nice car that you've owned for a while. Euro cars are at a premium, but Zeds aren't cheap either. Other more common Japs or locally made (e.g. Holden) are a lot cheaper. So I'm planning on taking my Zed, and the wife is thinking of buying an Alfa at some stage. Possibly in the next 16 years.. Good luck, and feedback your experience here if you do get there.

Yup, complete knob, and cost me a lot of money when the UK treasury pulled his strings and helped precipitate the collapse of RBS shares in 2008. Market abuse I say.

Rubber mat? I think I must have an aftermarket JDM-satnav-replacement-or-not-fitted-at-all-cubby fitted. Which is a good sign for repair if a pigs ear is made drilling. Shouldn't be too hard to drill a hole and fit a grommet though. I think I'd keep the Garmin cable and extra traffic aerial attachment (first rule - 'do no harm') un-modified - and buy an adapter to attach to the car's ignition switched 12V mains.

I've got a Garmin 1490T in mine, and it works fine. It's not fully installed in the sense of cables, until I pluck up courage to drill holes in the cubby - they hang across the dash unless its on batteries - but the reception is spot on. It's sitting on a replacement Arkon sticky mount via Amazon, which is OK for temporary purposes, so far.

+1 Blade seems to pick up surrounding colours - like sky, especially sunsets - nicely too.. I definitely agree about blade being classy, although some of the high saturation colours like Azure are fetching too - as pretty colours. All very subjective - and I think the colour you own is the colour you end up liking the best.

Hi wackosr, Ebay has a CD for £3.99 currently which looks the same as mine (quick search for Z33 workshop manual) - although the link relating to the CD I bought has now expired. Manual is a set of pdfs - very informative. Good luck with what ever you decide to do - I was thinking of selectively coating Dynax on steel parts that need it, rather than dismantling anything. I looked at the 'professional' under-sealing companies work and was slightly horrified that they spray anything thats not hot or not moving - so you end up with a black mess on all components, even alloy ones. Nice colour BTW..

I'm probably not qualified to give advice but.. It looks like the 'rear pin stay' part 19 on drawing SEC.430 431, page RSU-7 in doc RSU.pdf ('03) of the CD workshop manual you can buy from eBay. It comes off according to the text, but in the context of rear suspension assembly removal. Couldn't tell you if its a routinely extractable item. Also, JDMs have smooth (ie un-finned) diffs I thought - well mine does. The one in the pic is finned. Just thought I'd chip in as I've been poking around underneath looking for rusty bits too. I'll shut up if I'm being in-appropriate.

I appear to be in the 'dentistry' phase of new-to-me zed owning.. Next up is application of Dynax S50 and Dynax UB to kill off the ferrous blemishes on the underside (only a few). She's pretty clean (JDM DOM 2003) - but £31 of protection can't hurt. Not as glamorous as adding a supercharger (one dreams), but well worth it none the less.

I think this is genius (especially after a couple of beers) - excellent!

Tempted to get one myself... mmm.. a blade JDM version, just like the big one parked outside..

One slight irritation appears to be that mdworker is being made to run/do a lot (more than before). This is the spotlight indexing program, which although runs in the background, does chew a fair bit of CPU. What appears to be happening is the Time Machine disk gets indexed as well in Lion, and as such the Time Machine Backups disk remains mounted, although a Time Machine backup cycle finishes properly. So, this background activity is still pummelling the Time Capsule, as well as what ever work is required on the Mac. End result, hot Mac (book Pro) and hot Time Capsule - not really what you want in a warm spell like we're having at the moment. It's background activity, so even leaving the computer unattended for a length of time can result in a roasting (or a flat battery). Shut the lid if you walk away from the keyboard! Alternately make TM backups manual - but thats not really in the spirit of things. I assume that once Lion has caught up - my Time Machine backup is well over 400GB - so that could be a while, that it will settle down again. Apart from that, Panthera leo is still fine and better than before.

Seems obvious but, if anyone has experienced a persistent nagging (even slight) steering pull to either side or a less than smooth ride above ..say 80MPH.., then a few quid (well quite a few quid actually) spent servicing the suspension is worth doing in spadefuls. Precious has had a 4 wheel alignment done at H-Dev recently, and as the rears weren't quite pointing in the right direction (both toeing slightly the wrong way), a small adjustment made a big difference to feel. Before adjustment, the steering wheel had to be held about 5-10º off centre, to go in a straightish line, and there was a tendency to head towards the left gutter. Along with that steering right felt a bit heavier than steering left. Continual steering offset and having to hold it there meant wander too. The rear wheels were only off by a fraction, but steering and 4 wheel geometry is obviously keenly sensitive in these cars. Secondly, at above 80, steering wobble got to a point where it couldn't have been rubbish Bucks roads anymore... Any faster and it was quite hoppity - skippity down the local by-pass. A trip to Blackboots in Chesham revealed a full 120-150g out on both the fronts (spec is 30g apparently!), and these are newish tyres too. How on Earth the previous owner didn't notice such abhorrence - or even got the wheels into that state - is beyond me. So £99.99 (4 wheel align) + £15.60 (both fronts balanced) = much increased happiness. Precious is much more Fairlady and less old crone now. As for the rears... they are probably too second hand to be worth balancing at this stage, so pair of Falken 452 XL maybe due to replace the old RE040's soon. Next credit card payment cycle maybe.

I have to say that in the two months I've owned mine, it's been nothing but good.. (apart from an odd traffic incident that I wasn't expecting - involves trucks, dick head 4x4 driver and a traffic jam... but that story should be in a different thread) When I first got it, we were late back and so came home in the dark. One of the neighbours said she was gobsmacked when she opened her door and saw it parked outside. Then the next day, our next door neighbour and their grandchildren gushed over excitedly about 350Z's in car driving games, and how its better than Audi TT's. Bless them, they now go around Z spotting apparently. We're quite convivial in our street, so I've had a quite few chats with other neighbours, including gawping at the 3.5l V6 under the bonnet (he now has a pair of 3cylinder diesel Hyundais.. but had children, so had to get rid of his 'beloved' Hyundai coupe). Best of all though, after I polished the exhaust pipes the other day, the 'lord of the manor builder type' at the top of the street felt the need to call in a mobile professional valet - his BMW is now spotless.. some kind arms race has broken out. A wave of car cleaning along the street has started... If you have great neighbours, lap it up.. If you have loser neighbours, just ignore them - drive past with a smug grin - they know, that you know, that they are jealous.. Best not antagonise them too much though - last thing you want is a key scratch down the gleaming paintwork..

LOL - pmsl

A few days of usage and I can testify to liking Lion. I updated straight away - but as a precaution made a disk image of my snow leopard installation first, in addition to normal TM backup before install. I have a Mac Book Pro, as does the wife. We are a Mac only household (have been for years) - so aren't affected by Micro$haft compatibility issues, and don't use Parallels. We don't have any Adobe applications either. The only losses so far for me are really old free applications that use rosetta - in my case, free OCR software that came with our printer, and freewares: GPSbabel, MacTheRipper (personal DVD copier) and MacAnova (ancient statistics modelling program). Anything native Intel or Universal runs fine as expected, as it says on the tin, in the Lion release notes. Only bugs I've encountered are a small issue (one time only) importing a photo into iPhoto which ended up hanging up finder - force quit, reboot and try again got over that, plus an install issue with the Xcode update. The Xcode update required a reboot and reinstall (Xcode not Lion) but nothing worse. Remember to run software update before AND after install to pick up latest compatible software as well as software versions required for upgrade. And kick off the download overnight - even on 10Mb fibre optic cable it takes hours to pull down. The actual install when started only takes 1/2 hour or so - walk the dogs etc. If you only live in Mac-verse, Lion is a good OSX update (definitely can't complain at £20.99). Only other thing to notice is time machine will take a long time to catch up - and spotlight goes through a full index cycle, so expect whurring fans for the first half day or so.

Since I've got my own personal thread I felt like sharing: Good stuff that Autosol - I finally got around to giving the Fujitsubo exhaust a polish (it came with the car).. Nice and shiny - even with the camera artefacts - don't put Panasonic Lumix TZ7's in your pockets - dust gets between the lens elements... grrr 2 months in, Cosworth panel filter, K&N oil filter (and ..ahem.. Magnetec A1 - but it was a specified option at Opie oils - and it was being sold at a good price at Costco - I know that makes me a bad person.. lol) - it's still Z heaven here in Bucks! Just need to book in for a 4 wheel alignment check and I'm happy. The driver's window motor seems to be healing itself in the warm weather, with a bit of activity. Anyone got any suggestions on wheel arch protection - apart from don't take it out in the rain? Is it worth applying some Dynax S50 or will Tetraseal do? I noticed there are gaps in the plastic wheel arch surround at the top that look like they need some love..

Mmmm, this may be a bit weird.. I have the Touring v.1 18x8JJ wheels (as can be seen in my pics earlier) but the car's been fitted with an unusual combination of tyres. Rear Bridgestone RE040 245/45/18 96W (I hear people groan from looking at your extensive tyre review threads). Yes they are easy to make slip. But weirdly: Front Pirelli P-ZERO 245/45 ZR18. 8% wider than stock recommendation of 225. I don't like anomalies. Manufacturers generally engineer for the best. As I remember from old, in RWD (used to have an Alfa GTV6 in the very late 80's) it's better to have slightly narrower gauge fronts for steering feel as well as grip balance. Feels OK to drive around sedately, (ie I haven't crashed it yet). Maybe 8% is not enough to notice in normal use (I'm not a track person). And with the cost of tyres, its way to early to bin them. Any comments?

Cheers guys, that was quick.. Here's me new girl. Standard Fairlady without mods. Only slightly suspect thing body-wise is a slightly wonky boot hatch. I don't think its anything worse than that - I can't find any wrinkles in any places that there shouldn't be wrinkles, so its just... a slightly wonky boot hatch. Everything else (window motor apart, and handbrake setting) seems spot on. Getting new cars uh? Makes one very picky. Engine - silky, Body - smooth, Gear box - finger tip, Stereo - loud, Brakes - epic, Tyres & exhaust- new looking and without holes, Wife jealous - priceless. Very proud.

Hi there, I'm new to this forum, and new to 350Z's. (I was a long time Subaru Legacy GT twin turbo owner) Last Thursday I bought a gorgeous, silver 2003 Fairlady Z. Not the youngest - but with (some might say suspiciously) low partially documented mileage. She's lovely. Gorgeous engine and brakes, no axle clunks, and the body so far seems perfectly straight. Only shock so far was the insurance on a JDM 350Z. Gawd. Double the quote for a UK spec (which I was originally aiming for - but cars seemed to keep slipping through my fingers). Pants insurance companies! And of course the driver's window motor is non responsive - I'll be using your guide to cleaning these later (or maybe when it doesn't look like raining). These cars certainly have WOW (or should that be phwoar) factor. The Subaru, while quietly very competent in almost every way, never seemed to quite have that appeal (arrgh sacrilegious speak). Cheers ChrisB