Digsy

Steve, I've never seen the stock slave amp, but I do know that under the passenger seat is the favourite location for it. Your box does, however, match the general description of what I thought was a Satnav system which I had removed by JIC (but I kept the bits). Upon closer inspection it turns out that my car had a complete media suite installed (including satnav) , and the black box was the TV tuner, and input for all the various media sources. It is a modular Panasonic system for use in Japan only. When imported, my car had a porcupine array of TV aerials on the tailgate which had to be removed for the SVA, plus a GPS receiver on the roof. The mircoswitch: Is is a push on / push off switch with three wires coming from it? If so, it may be an override for your radio frequency shifter if you have one fitted. The one installed by JIC had a switch on a long fyling lead that they just switched on and then tucked away in the centre console. I found it when I fitted my Kenwood MP3 player. HTH.

Apologies in advance to Alex for temporarily hijacking his thread, but I think I have these wheels fitted to my car. They use a smaller than standard wheel nut which is recessed in a very tight counterbore in the wheel. I have an adapter to fit a standard whel brace to get them on and off, but I'm having a b*stard time finding a set of locking nuts that will fit down the counterbore. Maybe someone can mail me offline with some suggestions? You can have your thread back now, Alex ;-)

Hmm. That's handy to know. I was going to switch my drill the "bat out of hell" setting. Cheers, guys. I'll let you know how much damage I cause! ;-)

Does anyone have any experience in drilling holes in the bumper mouldings? I am all set to have a 4xsensor parking aid fitted to replace the 1xsensor one which was already fitted, but malfunctioning. Spurred on by my success in filing out my dash, I have decided to do this job myself too. This means I will have to drill 3 more holes in my beloved car's rear bumper. The bumper mouldings look to be fairly substatntial 3mm thick GRP or something similar. Hopefully I won't louse the measurements up and drill in the wrong place. My main concern is paint or laquer flaking off around the hole as the drill bit bites. I will be using a 25mm diameter core cutter. Hopefully some masking tape over the area I want to drill will help prevent this. Any tips, anyone?

Theres one at http://www.mkiv.co.nz/specs.htm

I don't know *exactly* what it does, but judging by the rev counter it looks like like it adds another 1000RPM or so to the change-up point. Possibly it does knock out 4th gear, but also re-maps the other ratios across the rev range.

I'm sure it would be a doddle for a trained person to do, but I'm not really serious about conctracting someone to make one. I was just thinking aloud really! :-)

Just wondering about this today. Since I don't have the necessary knowledge to do it myself I thought I would bounce it off you chaps. I am a forgetful idiot. I also drive an automatic SZ, which although wonderful for cruising on duallies with OD on, is a little bit (and I mean *little* bit) slower off the mark than I would like. However, with O/D off it seems ok. So, drive it everywhere with O/D off then! I hear you all cry. Trouble is I do a lot of steady cruising miles and I am rather keen to keep hold of my nice MPG figure which seems to be calculating out at 26 to 28 MPG. So, turn it on and off when you want! You all shout. This brings me back to the first line. I am a forgetful idiot. I will need reminding when to turn it on and off. So...why not have a gizmo that monitors what speed you are doing and when, say, you have done 70MPH or more for more than a minute, it flashes the O/D OFF light at you for five seconds to remind you to hit the button? Then, when you drop below, say, 40MPH for more than a minute, it flashes the light again to remind you to turn O/D back off. Any thoughts..? Cries of "you should have bought an RZ will *not* be appreciated! :-)

Except (currently) moving the gearchange. So the HKS SLD is just a speed signal clamper, and the connections to the gearbox are for the gear remapping? TRC is traction control, yes? Unless I'm mistaken I don't have than on my SZ, so apart from the gear mapping Pete's new converter might suit me fine.

Paul, Are you saying that Pete's new converter is as good as the HKS SLD for an auto, or that its best to use both together?

Flip, When you out the clutch down you are decoupling the clutch driven plate from the flywheel. The resulting drop in flywheel inertia will make it slightly harder for the engine to keep turning at idle. This is why the engine sounds like it runs slightly slower, or maybe less smoothly, with the clutch in. If the manual Supe has a single plate clutch (no idea on this one) then it is likely to be a *BIG* one to transmit all that torque!

My BMW had a dodgy input shaft bearing which used to make a soft rumbling noise with the car at idle and the clutch out. When the clutch was depressed it went away, like yours, but the sound was different. The Getrag 6 speed is one of the only Toyota 'boxes with no dealer-servicable parts inside...

Paul, Last chance to send me those instructions before I fly! Please try to keep the attachments below 1.5Mb because my Yahoo! mail account will throw out anything larger.

I've been wondering about this clock forward / clock back / UK odo thing ever since Paul talked to Steve and since Ash posted saying that the odo cannot be clocked backwards. Basically, I've been going over the information *as it was told to me* by JIC and their conversions guy (Andrew), rather than how I may have interpreted it. I have come to the conclusion that the most likely scenario as it was described by Paul: JIC do not in fact clock their odos back to the equivalent miles reading, but instead fit a new modified or UK spec odo which is clocked forward to the correct reading. This would fit with the known facts, get around the latching problem, and also take a lot less time. When Steve and Tim told me that they adjust the odo figure to read the equivilent miles I assumed that they clocked it back, rather than use another method such as fitting a new odo - just because it seemed like the simpler soltuion at the time. I openly admit that I don't know a huge amount about electrical engineering, so I try to make a point of only repeating information that I understand to be correct, and which can be independantly verified from learned sources such as Paul, Ash, and Pete. In this case I simply put two and two together and got five (or five-eighths!). Sorry if I clouded the issue at all.

Yep. I'm talking about the stock system on an NA. I don't need to buy any replacement parts yet - not by a long way - but thanks for the offers. I just wanted to get a feel for the longevity of the downpipe / cat assembly to find out if I need to *budget* for a replacement sometime during the next three years.

Cheers, Paul. I fly on Sunday afternoon. If you can identify what you think are the most important pages (judging from the pictures, I guess) that would be handy. I'm taking all my import documentationover for them to peruse, too. This will be for the auto version, right? Hopefully I'll fit in a few minutes to talk business, too! :-)

Well I'm off to Thailand next week to talk to a company about oil pumps. The company I'm going to see is owned by a Japanese parent company, and some of their representatives will be there, so I will be surrounded by people who speak technical Japanese. If you can get some scans to me, and there aren't too many words, maybe I can ask someone to do a translation?

I suppose I must have got confused then...

Paul, Loaded question: How many pages is the HKS manual?

Okey dokey. I suppose there's really no point in arguing over it, but Steve *did* put me in contact with their auto electrician. I gathered from our conversation that their standard procedure was to "clock" the odo back to the equivalent miles reading and then feed it with the 5/8 signal. Fitting UK spec odos was never mentioned. *However* I could have got my wires crossed (geddit?). Anyway, whatever they did (or are doing now) its academic for you and I since we both have beautifully unadulterated electrics :-)

Hmmm. Wouldnt be too sure about this, Paul. They were going to feed my odo with the same 5/8 signal that goes to the speedo (until I stopped them). Because I have an auto, I too have a speedo-only conversion a'la PB (except my loom is modded rather than the speedo) head.

Its amazing how much strength suddenly find you have in your arms when you hear the price for a new BMW PAS pump. :-)

Hi Alex. The gearing will be set in the steering rack. The pump only provides assistance but you are right it would probably have to be uprated as steering effort would go up. Doubtless someone like Ash or Paul could knock up some kind of sun and planet gearbox that fixed between the steering wheel and the shaft with their eyes shut. I would be surprised if anything was available commercially. When the PAS pump failed on my BMW I had it disconnected as a short term fix until I could find a replacement. I found out then that the PAS version had a higher geared rack (less turns lock to lock) than the non-PAS version. It felt great at speed, but for parking - Jesus! Talks about needing arms like Arnie!!! :-)

Mine doesnt have fold-back mirrors. Bugger. Where is the switch for the heated mirrors?

This is *NOT* intended to become a thread about de-catting!!! I *know* what you guys are like. Behave! :-) Has anyone ever had to replace, in routine maintenance, the downpipe assemblies on their Supra? As far as I am aware there are no aftermarket alternatives, and the original parts cost over £500+VAT *EACH* from Japan because they include the catalysts. I've only ever had to replace a set of downpipes on a car I've owned once, but I fully exepect to go through the rest of the system. I would hope that the downpipes will last longer than the mid section / back box. Anyone have any direct experience?