ChrisB

A new front wing...

...Except I'm buying / receiving and fitting a present to myself/Precious... belated to the new year... sniff... waaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!

Insane. I'm all for progress, but speaking as an ex-skydiver, thats just mad!

Once upon a time it used to be plain BASE was voodoo, ..but VRW/Head down 3 feet from a rock face and using very high performance canopies too is.. well..

No wonder its dedicated to a bloke named Antoine..

Yoof of today eh?

Where's me cotton wool blanket gone. I'm feeling old.

Good response chaps. Seems there aren't any generally experienced problems on here then.

We were actually at the tyre fitter to get my wife a set of winters for her civic. He advised 2 front el-cheapo incidentally.

Unfortunately I was extracted from the shop (by the wife) as a queue had formed while I was asking about Falkens, so didn't get to drill down into his reasons that far beyond the stated cases of replacement due to cracks under warranty blah blah - don't sell them here any more blah blah..

Looks more like a sad case of flannel than fact then, as cross verified by popular usage in this car club.

(My original post was purely to ask a question - obviously not spread a rumour - let it be written large that no faults were verified here and all original rumour came from the thieving gob of the tyre fitter )

As it happens, we left that place and ended up buying the civic a set of 4 Michelin Alpins from Costco (ouch - but they are lovely - if tyres can be regarded as lovely).

I was sniffing around a small (and locally recommended) tyre fitting place today (my rears are shot) and asked for a quote for FK452s..

The response was 'ahh, these were a good 'budget tyre' but we've had quite a few problems with them - warranty issues - where cracking occurs"..

Popped my bubble. I told Mr Fitter that 452s were well thought of in this car club, and worked very well on the Z. Certainly first I'd heard of this (alleged) problem.

Anyone had any experience of a bad batch possibly going through? Or is this just a load of old flannel to get me to buy his preferred stock?

Likes a bit of COF, me...

It was quite evil that moment, when the knackared seal sat on the iceberg without the energy to pull its tail out the sea was just calmly and slowly dragged underwater...

lol .. slowly, stealthily, gently, pulled off the ice with a quiet plop... Then a large rush of bubbles and a red sheen appears in the water. Very efficient murder... Amazing creatures Orcas. The team wave behaviour was awesome!

Loved it.

Attenborough is a god. OU/BBC rock at natural history visuals - makes the cursed licence fee worthwhile (almost).

PM sent (I think ) ..95% tempted..

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.

yeh buying one over there is not an option, they are ridiculously expensive

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.

there are two holes in the back of the cubby if you lift up the rubber mat

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.

Blade silver is a very understated yet classy look, although I am biased!

+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.

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.