Doughie

i'm sure Fahie was actually a search engine, so i checked it out : http://www.fahie.com and bl00dy hell it's full of inbred brothers and sisters. !! truly deeply scary. Martin, now which one is you mate ??

no but it'll only say Pi = 3.1415926 and we all know that that is just an approximation..... ;-)

hey, wake up Marty. If in a few years, you get your Supe bored out and then you want to calculate the new engine capacity very very very very very very accurately, this information of pi (to 45 dec.places) is what u need. HTH (!) Stu (Pi-nerd)

hi Gordon -actually there was no code setup in the stock stereo when i bought the car and having asked both of the previous owners (back to the 1st owner) i don't believe there was ever a code setup, so i'm 99% sure that the stereo comes in the car without a code and left up to the owner to choose their own code or just leave it as is, code-free. - I set the code up myself when i had the car. (and fortunetely for Keith i can still remember !) ps. for the curious: 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510. that's as much as i can remember. been about 18 years...

yep Keith i'm 95% sure that the brake fluid was changed at the last service the car had shortly before you bought it. I think perhaps only a month or two before. I even took along 2 bottles of new DOT5.1-spec fluid with strict instructions for them to use that. higher spec than Toyota fluid (i think they use DOT4) and also ..... cheaper ! so it had new DOT5.1 fluid at the service shortly before you got it. cheers ps. what pads you running these days in it ? and did u change the discs ??

hey Keith you're just lucky i'm a numbers nerd... I also know Pi to 45 decimal places (er, yes i am serious) but whenever i tell people it induces blank looks or hysterical laughter..

Keith - yep the fluid should be a noticeably different colour. watch for the colour change when it comes thru the bleed nipple, and then keep going anyway to make sure it's completely new fluid. also, if there are any bubbles at all, keep going until these are all completely gone. keep the reservoir well topped up as you don't want that running out as then you'll get a huge chunk of air in the system which you'll have to bleed out.

Ancient Thread of the Week... .... like a Phoenix twas risen from the Ashes ...... sorry can't actually help much with the "weird squeak" issue. the Getrag boxes are quite clunky especially in 1st and 2nd, but are very tough boxes designed to handle big torque. I've never heard of an actual failure. New gearboxes are a tad costly at about £6500 or something..... I know Keith C has had a whine in 2nd gear (the car, not him). Might as well get the 'box oil changed to see if that helps. ONLY ONLY use Toyota V160 gear oil. thinks it needs 2 litres or so of it. changing oil has been known to sort out some funny noises etc.

I *think* I might have a full set of stock UK springs at home. off my old supe. i'll check and get back to you.

Are you certain that the "Apexi Shiny Thing ™" is 100% accurately recording rpm ? how is it doing this ? Using telemetry on a kart, it records rpm by clamping a "crocodile clip" to one of the HT leads and it counts each HT-voltage spike that goes thru that HT lead. this of course easily gives rpm 100% accurately. it might be that A.P.T. ™ is using some other "guesstimate" for rpm. what sensors does it use ??

At the end of the day, the limit to the "stopping power" will be the friction of the tyres on the road. if your brakes can activate the ABS system, then that's as fast as the car can stop. Where extra big brakes will help is, as someone else said before, is potentially on a track where the heat dissipation may be better and therefore it's more of an issue of the brakes SURVIVING rather than them being able to stop you any quicker. Also, some brakes may *feel* like they're stopping you quicker because they need less pedal pressure to do so, or the pads are very aggressive and give big initial bite. all of these things will make the brakes feel more powerful, but ultimately when you really stand on them, i doubrt they'd bring the car to a halt any faster than UK-setup. just my 2p

Terminator it's yours. SRF is like Beaujolais Nouveau - consume immediately ! name your meet and as if by magic, the shopkeeper will appear with a litre of ex-Raikkonen, ex-Coulthard brake fluid. "Uzi 9mm?? - you sure know your guns pal Phased plasma rifle in the 40watt range ? - Hey just what you see pal..."

in all fairness, it is very easy to break the bleed nipple, but garages must know this and you'd think they'd take extra care cos at the end of the day they'd have to sort it out. to BREAK the bleed nipple and NOT TELL YOU is, in my humble opinion, negligence of the highest order and life-endangering. water absoprption - yes brake fluid is highly hygroscopic (affinity for absorption of water, even water vapour from air) and therefore you shoulsn't open the can of brake fluid until you need to use it. even then, get it done, in the reservoir as quick as poss and get the cap back on. yes, Castrol SRF (and all other brka efluids except silicone ons i.e DOT5) are hygroscopic, but this doesn't really matter for race teams as they do complete brake fluid change very often. usually every meeting. Brake fluid boiling temp. is quoted as "dry" and "wet". i.e the boiling temp. when "dry" (=new, with no water absorbed) and also when "wet" (with some water absorption). Water absorption obviously lowers the boiling point a lot, but even so these ultra-high-performance brake fluids would need mega-provocation to boil under track-conditions. 1 advantage of SRF is that it's boiling point when "wet" is a LOT closre to its' BP when dry than most fluids. perhaps explains why it costs £35 per litre (WTF??) I actually have a litre of SRF available that i don't need. it's unopened, and it actually swiped from McLaren F1 team, so was (100% genuinely) gonna end up in Coulthards or Raikkonen's car, but you can have this once-in-a-lifetime chance to buy Team Macca fluid for a few quid. offers pls before i stick it on Ebay..

DOT 4 is absolutely fine. It has a high er boiling point than DOT 3. DOT 5 is the one that MUST NOT be used as it's silicone and does not mix with glycol-based brake fluids (DOT 3, DOT4, DOT 5.1). You'd have to do a complete system flush with ether or something and even then you mustn't use it as it doesn't work properly with ABS brakes. DOT5.1 is even better than than DOT 4. higher boiling point. Yes, the best stuff is Motul 600 or Castrol SRF, but these are overkill unless you're doing serious track days. Problem is like you said they've snapped off the bleed nipple which is easy to do, but it's 100% their fault and they must replace it at their cost. do not drive with brake fluid p1ssing out - super super dangerous. a small leak is tolerable for a limited distance but every time you press the brake pedal, it's squirting fluid out of the system. no brakes = no fun at all. SO DOT4 or DOT5.1 are both fine. Motul600 and SRF both exceed DOT5.1 spec and have meg-high dry boiling points. McLaren use Castrol SRF in their F1 cars. i know a Macca mechanic and that's what they use.

ahh yeah Keith, er, hah, now i was wondering how long that old trick of putting sawdust in the gearbox would last..... ;-)

I've got a Clifford alarm in my Golf. XL10 I think... I remember from the manual that whenever you disconnet or reconnect the battry, you should ALWAYS switch to valet mode first. that's swtich on the ignition, flip the valet switch, then switch off ignition. The LED should be fully light now (showing valet mode active). When you reconnect battery, i think you should always disconnect the earth lead first, and reconnect the earth lead last. I have a suspicion that you've fried some of the circuits in the alarm maybe by not following the above procedure 100%. (although my alarm is a different model i'm pretty certain that the procedure will be universal to Clifford alarms). the alarm itself has behaved impeccably for years now. doesn't give false alarms, (i know cos it tells you if it's gone off when you disarm it). The only thing it does do that's a bit annoying is the siren goes off when reconnecting the battery, even though in valet mode. and when the bonnet is up, when you're reconnecting it's BLOODY loud. 128db or something. good luck with fixing it.

Keith if you've not changed those plugs since you got the car, as far as i know they're the original from-new factory-fitted platinum-tipped plugs. I certainly didn't change them and i don't think either of the previous 2 owners did either. They were scheduled to be changed at the last service before i sold it to you, but the plug-change was the one item i politely declined as it was £100 + and i wasn't getting any misfires or rough running, so i figured i'd save 100 notes. but they could probably do with being changed now, i agree. think recommended interval for platinum plugs is 60k miles. cheers

I agree with the others in that it's most likely the standard TC. It closes the throttle and it's most disconcerting, losing all power for what seems like an age but is probably less than 0.5secs. Take the corner again, at the same speed etc, but this time (if you can safely) keep an eye on the dash somewhere to the right-hand-side of the speedo and you should either an orange or green LED light flash on indicating that the Traction control has cut in. I think the LED is green on Jap-spec supras and orange on UK-spec supras. My ex-UKspec certainly was an orange light. The stock TC does cut in at *any* rear-wheel slip. going over a cats-eye while cornering or simply hitting a small bump while cornering can make it cut in. cheers

My opinion = get the NUR spec. Stunningly well made. Stainless steel. Has a removable baffle which you may be very very grateful for because you may well find the Hiper just too loud all the time. With the Cats out the Hiper is really very loud and you can't quieten it down again unlike the NUR spec which takes 30 seconds to make more civilised by putting the baffle back in. That flexibility wins it for me.

yep it is interesting for sure. i'm quite interested in vehicle dynamics, handling, tyres etc. Generally speaking low profile seems the way to go on a race car, but the F1 rules demand fairly high profile tyres. I guess the tyres are so specialist that Michelin and Bridge. get round the tall sidwall issue in very clever tyre carcass construction or something. Suspension travel in F1 is so limited that the tyre-wall squash is quite a large part of the whole suspension "area". Those tyrewalls must be mega-stiff cos the downforce on the cars at 170mph plus is huge, and if the sidwalls bent too much it would : a) give massive sidewall heating, which is not good, increases tyre failure risk b) risk of the car bottoming out on the "plank" at high speed simply due to tyrewall flex due to massive downforce. interesting stuff indeed. I think we need Chris Wilson to give his opinion here as suspension stuff is a bit of a specialisation for him I think! ps. oh and the reason race slicks are no good for the road (apart from not being legal of course) is simply due to the fact that the tyre compund just doesn't generate decent friction levels at the sort of temps. road driving can generate. they need toget pretty bloody hot (and STAY hot) to work. If you made them in a "road" compound (but still a slick tyre) then in the dry they should work really well on the road.

I think v low profile main benefit is really for cornering purposes, in that it maintains max. contact patch and the tyre doesn't deform so much and try to roll off the rim. Also stiffer sidewall inherently on a low-profile tyre, which maintains v good control over contact patch. But for traction, look at, for example, Top Fuel dragster tyres. they're MASSIVELY high profile. All you need there is monumental traction. They also run extremely low tyre pressures (I think less than 10psi) and the tyre sidewall is actually crinkled when the car is stationary, so low is the pressure.

that's an exhaust emissions failure. will be because the Carbon Monoxide levels are above permitted levels, or because Hydrocarbons are above the max. ppm (parts per million) levels. i guess it's because you've got no CATs on the car ? yes ? if so ...... put one back on (the front one), and re-submit for the MOT (best to get the CAT as hot as possible just before giving the car in). cheers

Maybe the wife in the passenger seat ?

Just pull out the TRAC fuse in the black-covered fuse-box near the battery and that will disaable the stock system, so then you know you've only got RLTC.

no, doughnutting probably won't work as RLTC is setup so that it *knows* when you're on full-lock so that in tight manouevering it doesn't cut the engine. Simply put it on lowest setting (0% slip = wet) and then give it a reasonable bootful going round a roundabout when there's NO OTHER CARS around ideally. just increase speed going round and round and you should feel it cut in pretty quick.