SimonB

Maybe Blitz supplied just the core as well, so people could make their own custom setups.

That would be interesting. I've seen them posted up a few times, but never where they actually came from in the first place.

I once had my clutch fail when I was almost outside my local Toyota, so I limped in and asked them to have a look. More so I could leave it there for a couple of days while I sorted getting it moved! They gave me a line about "that being an engine out job" and quoted 12 hours labour at £85 per hour plus VAT! Obviously I didn't take them up on that one! What a bunch of numpties...

If it's a Blitz LM, which is the only Blitz one as far as I know then as standard the pipes come out straight from the end tanks, not backwards at an angle like yours. So I guess it's been modified. Here's a pic of my Blitz LM I found lying around (the photo that is, not the IC!).

That braking force list is pretty much irrelevant though. It doesn't really matter if your brakes manage 1600 "braking horsepower" (whatever that is) or 1 million. If they are strong enough to lock the wheels it makes no difference. What matters is the amount of heat they can dissipate. Also, it doesn't say anything about how the test was done. Plus there's no link to the actual results, it could just be a load of made up numbers in a table for all we know!

3-4 hours labour, tops. By the way, not sure what you mean about "not including oil". What oil?

Chris, are the Bilsteins you use the same as the jap spec yellow Bilsteins? In other words, can you simply revalve those, or is it a case of buying new dampers?

Ah, I'm with you. I would have thought you'd be OK though, I can't see them being any worse than normal. I think the reason a lot of people think the big brake kits work better is that they can brake harder with less effort on the pedal. If you don't press the pedal hard enough then I guess they'll stop you faster than the standard setup.

A brake upgrade will make absolutely no difference to stopping distance. The limiting factor is grip - you can easily push the brakes hard enough to lock the wheels with standard brakes. Where they win is with repeated braking - they can shed heat more effectively and therefore fade less.

They will be so inefficient they will heat the air up by more than you will get back from the extra boost basically. That's ignoring the fact you would need a way of increasing the fuelling etc etc.

They only give up to 5 years no claims anyway, any more than that it'll be the same. Some places take 6-8 into account, but normally it's 5.

You need to phone the special Jap import scheme, which is based at Thatcham I think. 0845 071 1234.

I think you're referring to the new Low Emission Zone Charge enforcement cameras. They don't monitor emissions, they are straightforward numberplate recognition cameras. They look up your numberplate and see if you have paid the LEZ fee. It applies to heavy goods vehicles and the like, and the idea seems to be that the more emissions your lorry puts out the more you are charged. There is also a "fake" public consultation proposal on transport for London's site which basically talks about charging everyone depending on emissions, again looking up your numberplates. That doc talks about pre-2001 cars over 3l being classed as the highest band. It's not a real proposal though. Nothing to do with cats or no cats though, even if it came in it would only be based on what was registered with the DVLA for your car when new.

Sounds like a typical urban myth to me, 38dB is about the same noise level as a fairly quiet PC. No way that could ever be applied to cars.

But you can rely on someone to be perfectly positioned to see your side repeater past their own bodywork, looking sideways instead of ahead to see it, and then to have enough time to do something about it in the small amount of extra time they would have over seeing you start to move anyway? I don't think so somehow!

I can't actually think of a situation in which you are completely side-on to a car (so can't see the front or rear indicators) and need to see them. On a roundabout you would see the front ones as the car approached.

A normal USB-USB cable does not work and will damage your Emanage. You can get clone cables from a couple of guys on the yahoo emanage group though, and one of those is a special USB-USB one. It's a guy in Korea I think, I bought one when I had an Emanage and it worked a treat. I think it cost £15-20 or so IIRC.

I have a facelift, so I tap into the wires that go to the side repeaters (if I still had them). I put some bullet connectors on there so I can plug in my temporary repeaters, tape the wire up out of the way and then just pull them out after the MOT.

I've had this problem for the last 3 MOTs. You just buy some stick on LED side repeaters, stick them on for the MOT and then take them straight off again. It's a bit of a pain but not too bad.

That's completely incorrect. HKS officially say 7500rpm. It's a much better crank than the US stuff, and the pistons are much more sophisticated. They also don't use buttons to hold the pins in, which are horrible. Plus the HKS kit comes with Carrillo H beam rods. A race team in the US has run an HKS stroker at 9000rpm and it survived. Ken Henderson in the US has made over 1100 BHP (US BHP of course) with his HKS stroker, and I know he has a very high opinion of it.

I've just been through this myself. I'm rebuilding my old engine myself and was very tempted to make it a stroker. I figured I'd probably only build one once, so why not make it the ultimate. I was looking at the JUN and HKS strokers - you can get them for a very good price from Nic, or other places in Japan. You're looking at 4k for the HKS, 4.5k for the JUN, more or less. In the end I decided I couldn't justify the extra cost over standard stroke JUN pistons.

It's a breather, to remove excess crankcase pressure. You need to get a leakdown test at the very least, you can't tell anything from a simple compression test.

Oops, actually I didn't read the question properly, it wouldn't be legal where the red box is, I thought you meant where it currently is!

I think that would be legal, as long as it's a full size normal plate.