Inf

I think your firing order is right Gav, you're just looking at it the opposite way 'round the dizzy! 6-3-5-1-4-2 is just 1-5-3-6-2-4 in reverse starting from 6

I would suggest soaking the base of the studs in a good penetrating oil like Kroil. You might not be able to find that locally, but i've been told PB blaster works well. That should be easy to find at your auto parts store. I think I used vice grips because some of the threads were too mangled to do otherwise. However, I've read about people sticking two nuts on the stud and tightening them together and then using an open ended wrench on the inner nut to turn the stud out. Other than that, just be careful, and make sure any kids are out of earshot when you're pulling them - things may come from your mouth that are not fitting for their impressionable ears! If you break one off, and it is flush or below the mating surface, I would just take it to a machine shop and see if they can pull them out for a good price. The easy-outs are very brittle because of the heat treatment to make them extremely hard, so many people swear them off. Once they snap off wedged into the old stud, good luck getting it out. Sometimes spending a few bucks is worth avoiding a major headache.

So how can one legally bring over and drive a RHD vehicle that doesn't have a comparable vehicle here?

Yeah, you might want to get that eye checked out e_racer1999. There are some pretty fragile paper thin regions in the bone surrounding your eyes, it's something definitely worthy of having someone look at. Something that might not hurt that bad now can cause trouble down the line. Getting hit in the eye in real life isn't always the hollywood depiction with the universal symptom of a black ring and the universal cure of a bag of ice. http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIHW000/9339/10028.html

Crap like this is why it should be much more difficult to get a driver's license in this country. I guess i'll be the one to say it, YOU are the kind of guy this thread is about, thanks for your contribution.

Some people are not fit for society unfortunately

Please post any details you find out TomoHawk, I am interested as well, but for my '72

Get new friends

Yeah, the last picture is fake, the water around where the first crane is "falling in" is totally calm.

i'll have to find my copy and check it out

To be honest, I wasn't expecting much since i'm not a big fan of the SR20DET swap either, but I have to say that is a pretty sweet car.

I've only got the one 26th-Z linked, and it is one of my favorite things to just flip through.

I've seen this on a number of commercials. From the quality of the commercials it seemed like a gimmick, thanks for confirming it for us.

I believe the "speed restriction" refers to having the drivers on Michelin tires just slow down before turn 13 - utterly retarded. That would cause all sorts of problems, i.e. if a Bridgestone driver was just behind a Michelin driver who suddenly started to brake. Drivers will do what it takes to try and get a win, and if they see a chance to pass they will likely take the risk. I think much of the racing comes down to instinct of the driver, which cannot typically change 5 minutes before the race starts. The whole thing is really stupid, and i'm hoping this future breakaway from formula 1 puts an end to the retarded way the championship is actually run.

I have to agree, that Michelin deserves most of the blame here. They didn't do their homework here, and as a result they put out an inadequate product. However, Formula 1 is a spectator sport : they(F1, FIA) had an obligation to put on a valid show for all those people who took time off work and spent money on tickets, travel, and lodging. If they had indeed put in a chicane and ran the course, I would agree that it should be a no-points race. FIA should not sanction the race if the course was changed at the last second because some teams failed to have the proper equipment to race safely. That would hardly be fair. Some teams might not race under non-sanctioned circumstances, if they were overly concerned with the overall championship - i.e. "why 'use up' the car for no reason other than showing our logos?" , but 6 or 7 teams would be better than 3. I only watched for about 10 minutes before turning the TV off. Time will tell what this does to F1 in the US. Normally a formula 1 event would never make headlines here in the US, but i've seen this debacle being reported on the front pages of many mainstream newswebsites. Certainly does not bode well.

I'd go, but i'll be up in Dallas this weekend TCOB.

Yeah, like Carl said : it is from the exhaust. Mine are the same way.

I'm sorry to hear about your loss. There are some pretty awful people out there in this world of ours. I hope things turn out as well as possible for you.

the FM transmitters I have come across all ended up sounding like arse. I would suggest just using the hard-wired inputs you can find on many receivers. A previous owner already did a fair amount of hacking to the center console, so at this point I am not too concerned about that. I stuck a cheap panasonic cd/mp3 player in last year and haven't had any troubles.

FWIW i've been using my palm m505 for years and the battery still works fine. The only time it starts to run low is when I leave it in my bag for several months without using it and the battery gets down to about 1/4 or so. A night on the cradle fixes that though. If you're looking for something basic and inexpensive, the base level zire is around $100. I believe you will find almost all pocketPCs will be considerably more expensive. I generally use it to keep track of my schedule and contact info. I don't see any reason why you would prefer a mobile using a windowsOS vs palmOS for basic stuff like that. Either will work fine IMO. My friend has an aftermarket GPS unit, I believe it is a Garmin. It is pretty neat for finding someplace you've never been before since it can be clipped above the dash like a radar detector, displays various types of maps and gives audio instructions. It is meant to be removed when you get out of the car, and I assume it will work on its own battery when not plugged in. I agree with e_racer on getting a dedicated GPS.

I think I'd like to see pictures of your setup if you have any SteveK. Sounds interesting

Begin countdown to the first "this is off-topic" reply

I had forgotten to followup on this last year, I did take a picture of the glovebox sticker in my 03/72 stamped car, I just forgot to upload it. Here it is. If you add the "permissible vehicle load capacity" of 420lbs to the GVWR of 2400, it is obviously 2820. I think Carl is right on here and Nissan just goofed up or for some reason was transitioning how they did the numbers. The picture came out pretty poor, but you can make out the important info.

Natural gas/propane/etc are all petroleum products. Moving to them is not an escape from our reliance upon petroleum. Technically, the fuels that come from organic sources such as alcohol from corn are pretty clean. Of course, I remember reading that the massive demand the world has for fuel far exceeds the amount that could be produced from land capable of supporting the agriculture. Also, I remember seeing an episode of Top Gear (British automobile show) in which they converted a car to run off some gas (Methane?) that was produced from collecting farm animal crap and processing it somehow. Same problem as above really : supply. The food for making that dung has to be grown somewhere as well, not to mention costs associated with processing it into a fuel. *skip to the end if you wish to avoid a long winded line of thought Fuel cells(and power from combustion utilizing hydrogen) are quite nifty and all that. They are not a 'free lunch' so to speak like politicians and the media like to often claim. As has been pointed out earlier in the thread, it does indeed take more energy to split hydrogen and oxygen up from water than you would get from burning them. The big problem is, where do we get the energy to do this? It is not capable of being a self sustaining process from an energy standpoint. At this moment, the energy we use for electrolysis and getting hydrogen in the first place comes from power plants (coal/nuclear fission/hydroelectric, etc, etc etc) which are all either not capable of producing massive amounts of energy(hydroelectric, solar) or create harmful byproducts (whether released to the air, or concentrated in nuclear waste. Take your pick). The latest theory i've heard involves deploying large satellites into orbit to generate power with solar cells and transmit the energy down to a specific point on the earth via a laser of some sort and use that energy for electrolysis or some similar process (i'm no chemist). This seems like a fairly clean idea, however I am skeptical about this being able to produce nearly enough power for us to generate enough fuel to get off of our oil dependence... at least in our lifetimes. My personal opinion is that we will be locked into our reliance upon fossil fuels until/if we can generate a sustained nuclear fusion(nuclear reaction the sun produces) reaction here on earth to generate power. The energy we could technically get from the fusion reaction from hydrogen to helium would be much more than the amount of energy required to extract that amount of hydrogen from other sources. Helium is a harmless substance, and would be pretty much all that is leftover afterwards. This would probably not be done in cars, or homes but in huge reactors like we have today. This energy however would easily 'trickle down' to consumers: the power generated at this reactors would be used to extract hydrogen from water that can then be used for fuel in our cars either by combustion or via a fuel cell (either one would not produce any emissions). Nuclear fission, like we use today for power generation, works upon the principle of splitting heavier atoms which results in a lot of nasty nuclear isotopes leftover. Our current solution to this is to "sweep it under the rug," or more specifically, bury it underground and just not worry about it. Nuclear fusion is what goes on inside a star. When the temperature of the hydrogen reaches a certain threshold temperature (about 100,000,000 kelvins IIRC), the atoms are moving so rapidly that they can strike and overcome the "strong"(?) force that would otherwise make the two nuclei repel from each other and 'fuse' into a larger atom. This releases a tremendous amount of energy. The big hurdle right now is our understanding of plasma dynamics : no containment vessel we could construct out of materials could withstand 100,000,000K, so we must keep the plasma constrained by powerful magnetic fields. There are plenty of sites with information about this for the curious, if you google for info on tokamak reactors and/or nuclear fusion. Fusion is fairly safe, if the containment vessel failed it would not be the end of the world or anything. Maybe for an operator who was near the reactor though. I'm not a physicist or anything, but that is my understanding of it. This is most likely still a long long way off. There has been a lot of promising research done into this however. There are several reactors around the world that are currently capable, and often do, perform these fusion reactions, but at present they are not self sustaining. It will most likely just be a matter of time though. In short : I think hydrogen is the critical piece of how we could someday be free of our fossil fuel dependence, however it is not as simple as the media and politicians make it out to be.

Doesn't matter how much you spend, someone will spend more. If you let yourself stay in this macho mentality, you will never be satisfied. Not with this car, and not with life in general.