Chris Wilson

You can get (although hard to find) a double length banjo bolt for the fuel filter and tap off there or use it as a fuel pressure gauge point. Many aftermarket FPR's are total junk, be wary!

Check the ALT-S fuse in the under bonnet fuse box. Check the wires CAREFULLY where they leave the alternator plug. If neither of these are broken I would suspect the alternator itself.

I may be interested in the propshaft but feel the price is a bit heavy. If we reached an agreement would you be happy if my propshaft people were to examine it? Thanks.

I need a complete twin turbo manual six speed or automatic propshaft in good condition. There must be no wear on the centre sliding spline coupling. Can have collected on a given weekday by DPD on receipt of payment. Thanks. Please e-mail me direct at [email protected]

Jag XJS has to the easiest matrix to change. Glove box liner out (six screws) disconnect hoses, remove heater box end cap (two screws) pull old matrix out, push new one in, replace cap, replace hoses, refit liner, refill and bleed coolant 30 minutes tops... Some Mercedes have two matrices, buried totally behind the dash, one each side, depending on model they make the MKIV Supra look like a walk in the park... madness, these things should be easy to change, like a main coolant.radiator. Renault V6 GTA's are terrible, too. Must post photo of the old matrix from a MKIV I did quite recently.

Well, it's a LOT of work to change them, especially if the car has a lot of aftermarket wiring behind the dash that is not documented... (you know who you are, lol). So it makes sense to use a decent matrix.

I have a sample one here at £350 plus VAT, next ones are £500 or more, they are tricky to make due to the size of the end tanks, being double flow, and needing bespoke pipe connectors.Plus the cores are very efficient and again, bespoke. But if you like heat and live in Scandinavia....

Yes, but they are expensive I'm afraid. Very expensive...

Have to give my local Toyota people a telling off, unless these are things Toyota have started to re manufacture. Good news though, they are something that would be hard to recreate.

Most direct acting overhead cam, and soe indirect acting use hydraulic buckets for long term quiet running and less maintenance. the shimless bucket4 pot Toyotas went that way as they turned a LOT of revs, plus there may be some assembly cost savings with them.Most race engines that haven't got pneumatic valves use shim under bucket (tiny top hat shims that are very light). Older Vauxhall 4 pots used tapered Allen screw adjustable buckets, which seemed reliable and made valve lash adjustment quick and easy. They never caught on, possibly cost or weight being the issue. What I sometimes do is buy only thick shims and surface grind down the side that sits in the tappet, or grind the valve stem tips to give correct clearance without a vast and expensive inventory of shims. You can do the same with shimless, buy only thick ones and change clearance with valve stem tip grinding. You MUST be ultra careful not to take too much off the valve tips, firstly to avoid getting through the hardening and secondly to make sure there's no interference with the retainer collets or the bucket to head. I thought only the Beams 4 pot Toyota (similar to the MR2 engines, but Ti rods and trickery within) used shimless buckets but maybe the late 2S-GTE used them, too? I know the Beams shimless buckets fit the 2JZ lumps The only real point in using shimless is on 2JZ's that turn huge revs, where valve train oscillation or bounce can cause the relatively heavy shims to get flicked out. Same with Ti retainers and top hats, Ti galls on steel and can cause issues, Serious race engines treat them as throw away at rebuild time..

AFAIK they have been discontinued for a while and making new ones is far from trivial due to needing an accurate inverse flare where they O ring on to the cores. Not to mention tight bends over very short distances. I'll post a photo of the last heater matrix I changed after hack sawing off an end tank. Talk about clogged up...

A snapped stock AB? Really? Never seen this, nor a stock road spring. Office chair material aftermarket ARB's? Several.

Very, very sad to get an e-mail telling me Rob of Liquidart has died, a true character who only quite recently lost his wife. I had no idea he was even poorly and I know many here will join me in a wish for such a nice fellow to rest in peace. Life can be very cruel. Not an e-mail I had expected to receive, another larger than life Supra enthusiast has shown our joint mortality, my sincerest condolences and sympathies to his family and friends everywhere.

You check with one cam at a time in the head, no valves or buckets and slowly tighten the caps rotating each cam and looking / feeling for contact. If no contact occurs with the cap bolts fully tightened you them measure clearance at the tightest points with feeler gauges. I wouldn't want less than fifteen thousandths of an inch absolute minimum. If contact or insufficient clearance occurs then clearance needs milling in the head casting. You need to be very careful or you will have a two or more piece cam to think of an ornamental use for.

Displaced shim?

Duration is irrelevant, lift is the critical factor in head to lobe clearance. I'd ring them and ask, but even so I would physically measure clearance on *YOUR* head casting.

Total junk, you'll have less issues having unprotected sex with a room full of hookers. Geez, just Google what goes wrong with these things. Whoever designed the transmission must have been still at school. Splied C/V joint shafts running un-lubricated inside the rear drive motor casings and they wonder why the motors croak due to a load of metal dust inside them....? I can complement their advertising department though, I know two people, both of whom I would call intelligent and savvy, who bought the things. Sadly both regretted it once the cars were spending more time being patched up than used. One came from a new Jaguar, I think some folk should just pay someone else to choose them a motor.

Looking for a few 50 pin SCSI drives, smaller capacity the better, must be known working! Thanks.

I want to see them ON THE CAR before machining anything, something very odd here. How much compression is on the rear springs when fitted woth the dampers off the car? They will need a bit of existing preload if we are going to move the lower seat lower. Are Eibach springs a common denominator by any chance?

If you still have the stock rear springs fit those and see how it sits?

DO NOT cut the bump stops. The car should never be on the bump stops except in extreme situations, like a hump backed bridge taken far too fast, if there's not at least 1.5 inches clearance static, it's too low. Once the damper tops hit the bump rubbers the spring rate goes insanely high with unpredictable effects on handling. I see plenty of mashed up bump rubbers, the cars invariably drive like dogs. Constantly running on the bump stops will put insane loads into the suspension components. As an aside there have been times when I have deliberately designed a suspension system to run permanently on specialised Koni race bump stops, they used to be available in many different lengths, shapes and durometer readings. The last time I did this was in a one make BMW championship series for a local guy. He is a very capable racer but was always finishing down the field. He said springs and dampers were supplied by the series and could not be changed. He was sure the front runners cars handled very differently to the also rans. I watched videos of the series and saw the also rans were rolling about in the corners, the front runners barely rolled at all. ARB's were also fixed spec. So what were they doing? I read the rule book analytically and worked out the fast guys must be running trick bump stops to increase spring rate via that means. Nothing was said about bmp rubbers. Yippee, got `em! He tried various trick rubbers and eventually won the championship. Was it cheating? No, no more so than a factory TVR racer that had a transaxle fitted. The scrutineers tried to fail it, but the rules just said that the original gearbox casing must be used in its original position. it was, but the internals were absent with the input shaft welded to the output shaft, taking drive from the crank straight through to the rear mounted transaxle. Another wheeze was the regs said a lightweight propshaft could be used. With transaxles the inertia in the prop makes rapid gear changes hard on the gearbox / transaxle, so it became the first UK race car to run a (hugely expensive back then) carbon fibre propshaft. Again the scrutes hated it but what could they do...? The thing wiped up for 18months with the hugely talented privateer Steve Cole at the wheel as the regulations were deemed to have to be kept the same for a minimum of that period. That's what race designers do first, read the regs and look for loopholes Even little things helped it. It had to run the original roof, a soft top. It flapped about creating drag, so they doped it with aeroplane wing cloth dope until it was a rigid as a steel hard top, but far lighter. The chief engineer for TVR at the time was a Kraut, Chris Schirle, ex F1, the guy was awesome, he taught me a lot about rule books and interpretation He'd probably be good for Boris in the Supreme Court right now Trick bump stops are kludges strictly for the race track though, where "proper" suspension more suited to the needs is banned by set rules.

Thicker little bit at the bottom, toward the lower end of the damper, but it won't affect the ride height.

It needs to be done on a two post ramp as the tramways on a 4 poster stop you being able to use a slide hammer...

You need to make a steel clamp on device to first straighten the length of the return seam, then using a slide hammer screwed into the "device" gently tug it back to shape. Never seen anything commercial, you'll need to get an engineering shop to build you something out of 3/4 inch steel plate. Basically the device clamps to the return edge with three fine threaded bolts clamping the two halves together, then a threaded hole for the slid hammer shaft is needed to allow the slide hammer to keep tugging the return down until it's back where it should be. Finish with body hammers and anvil. Sounds easy, takes forever and needs some practice on a scrap car! Serrated edges on the jaws help stop it being pulled off. Can be a simple thing or you can have the shop go to town on something trick...