July/August/September '04 NEWS

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30-09-04 - 7pm - Well... I'm a slack bastard :)

Please forgive me for letting this news stagnate for the past 3 months. I tell you what, the past 3 months have been exceedingly busy, and unfortunately sort of slow on the car front. Nevertheless, I shall give you an update on the happenings of June, August and September '04.

For a start... As most of you probably know if you've been following the project this far, we've been toying with the sequential changeover, how to best do it, what we needed, and how exactly to FIT it all in. :)

Well, the past few months have involved quite a lot of testing, research, ordering and unfortunately sending back bits and pieces we THOUGHT would do the job, but due to various reasons, wouldn't.

The most notable of these was a 3" valve used to control bypass airflow which, when it arrived, proved to be larger than the big turbo on the car!

There was no way in hell we could get that sucker to fit anywhere...

Anyway, after many days of research and wrong orders, we have finally found and settled on a bypass valve, being 1" diameter, and of a size which we can (tight squeeze as per usual) fit in the engine bay with the rest of this crap ;)

In other news... I was cruising along on my way to work mid Sept, minding my own business, and was fortunate enough to have a motorcycle police officer decide to pull me over for a "random" vehicle check.

Unfortunately, upon being asked to produce permits for my as yet incomplete modifications and having none such permits to produce, said officer decided to give me a yellow sticker (Defect notice) stating that I had to take my "defective" vehicle to the vehicle inspection centre (AKA, The Pits) within 15 days, or it would be deregistered. Yay.

Well, I can't say the officer abused me, or anything else. He was rather down to earth, nice and cheerful, asked about the car, said how great it looked, etc... then proceeded to shove the ugly looking yellow defect notice on the front windscreen, before letting me continue on to work, which I was now late for.

The "offending, unpermitted mods" you ask?

The "Big single turbo" which is actually the twin turbo system (he missed the other one...)

The "Aftermarket Air Filter" which was just a temporary K&N which has now been replaced by a Blitz SUS

And finally "Your blowoff valve make noise." Which we had a nice discussion about, and I lost, of course.

Anyway, he was just "doing his job" as he puts it. I'm not really pissed, because I went to the pits and got a fairly good response... That'll be talked about next. I just sort of wish that the cop had pulled me up for a valid reason. ie. if I'd been speeding, run a red light, thrown something out my window even, just SOME reason to pull me up and then request to check the car out, then sure.... Oh, alternatively maybe they should just go and catch criminals like they're meant to? In the 30 minutes he stood talking to me, defecting my car (which I will guarantee runs better, cleaner, and more efficiently than 99% of the junk that infests our roads) and generally not out catching criminals, there were probably 2 houses being burgled within 5 minutes drive of where we were standing.

Anyway, it's not my place to make that call and say what I think.

hmmm... hang on, this is my website. Ok. Well, maybe they SHOULD go catch cops rather than target enthusiasts with nice cars. Maybe Michelle Roberts should get out of her little dream world she's in and start making rational rather than totally stupid ideas. Ah, a list...

Stupid things done by Michelle Roberts (Feel free to let me know ones I've missed!)

1.) Hoon Laws - Stupid idea, already stupidly implemented in other states where it has been perfectly proven time and time again to a) not decrease fatalities or nuisance drivers on our roads and b) increase government revenue. I wonder why they've implemented this?

2.) Red Light Speed Cameras - Not here yet, but coming soon apparently. Where if you run a red light, you get flashed, just like what happens now. BUT, if you are speeding through the intersection, you get done for speeding too. Right... so, what happens at those times when you're right on the threshold of the light change. You get amber, you either speed up to make SURE you don't get flashed for running a red, then *flash* done for speeding. OR you slam on the brakes, and the person following you rear ends you. Yay. The result? Case A) More money for Govt thru speeding and red light camera fines. Case B) More accidents on the roads AND more money for the Govt through fining drivers for causing an accident by rear ending someone.

3.) Computer games? - Freedom of speech... I heard just yesterday that our lovely Michelle Roberts decided to request that a game which had already been passed through Classifications be reclassified. The game (Manhunt) might be bad (I haven't seen it), but... I am a firm supporter of freedom in society. If someone wants to buy a bloody game and play it then why the hell shouldn't they? If they're a child, then it's up to their parents or guardian to specifically police their access to that. It is NOT up to Michelle Roberts (Whom I don't even believe has SEEN this game in person, only read a review) to decide a game is not fit for people to buy. Not that it matters, since it will just go straight the direction Grand Theft Auto 3 did when it got all the "bad" banning publicity. Suddenly everyone wants to get it and see what it's like. If they'd just SHUT THE HELL UP about it, the game would have not even touched most peoples computers. Now, especially now that it's illegal to buy here, people will just go download it to see what all the fuss is about. The game company doesn't care. Any publicity is good publicity. They're just increasing the lure of the game by doing shit like this, and it only serves to make the game more popular. Stupid, just stupid.

Well I'm in one of those moods. Do everyone a favour, don't vote Labor and hopefully some of these totally stupid laws that have been passed will be kicked out the door where they belong. I have a LOT to add, especially to the Hoon Laws bit, but I won't right now because it depresses me thinking about how fucked up our police minister is and how she doesn't really have any idea how best to get around these issues. (Which I admit need to be looked at, but not in this way...)

Maybe I should just run for Parliament myself. Do I have your vote? ;)

Ok. The Pits.

This is a really big one from the car's point of view, and the sequential TT kit specifically!

I went to the pits with the intent of not passing, I'll say that straight out. Remember, the stuff we've been designing and working on has taken... what... hmm... about a year and a half or something now! It's a total prototype, and I expected (and was really looking forward) to hit some troubles and get suggestions from the guys at the pits about what we should look at changing to come within the legal boundaries as far as the modifications go.

So. The inspection went OK. What did they pick the car up on?

1. Tint. Perfectly Legal on the door windows, too dark on the quarterwindows and rear window.

2. No child restraints. Apparently every car needs two hooks to hook a child seat onto... WTF? I have no kids, I have no plans for kids, and I sure as hell don't plan on dragging kids along in my Supra. This is the most absurd law I've ever heard of for a sportscar...

3. Blowoff Valve makes noise. Sure enough, the ADRs apparently specifically state that your BOV can't make noise, at ALL. Why do they sell BOVs that aren't plumb back? EVERY non plumb back BOV would make a car illegal, that means... I would've thought that the smart thing to do would be to make sure that a BOV sound doesn't exceed a particular dB level... but hey, I don't make the rules, unfortunately. So, maybe I'll have to go buy a plumb back BOV... Anyone want to buy one (or two) APEXi Twin Chamber Blowoff Valves? :/

4. Wheel Sizes. I went to the trouble of specifically buying and importing a Tyre Placard specifically from Japan for my car, since it didn't have one. Apparently the original Japanese placard (even though it DOES state the figures for front and rear in English numerals) is not good enough. So... when I went to get my lovely shiny new baby seat hooks installed at a company who does import compliancy, whom the pits told me to go to, and they supplied me with an "Australian Compliance Tyre/Wheel Placard." Which in all truth was only an Avery sticker with wheel dimensions for a JZA80 Supra printed onto it. Lol... so now armed with my "Authentic" Tyre placard, I won't have troubles with my 9" wide wheels. *Sigh* How weird...

5. Degrease needed since there's some more oil spots hanging around from when we unfortunately forgot to plumb an oil line in when we started the car... >:)

6. Car is like 0.5cm too low. It was SO close to going over the actual pit, it wasn't funny. Anyways, good excuse to fool with the coilover adjustments somewhat. ;)

That's pretty much it... and you know what? They like the mods, they said that obviously there's been a lot of time and effort gone into the design and creation of the system, and that they would be happy to permit it. SO, AWESOME NEWS. For all of you out there who have been interested in this system... it just got so much more plausible an option for your future modification choices.

Since I didn't actually get the yellow sticker off, I have 20 more days, and I expect it to get over with no problems, and get fully permitted for every modification on the car. Let's wait and see, but if it does go through within the next couple of weeks, there's going to be a lot of people who'll be breathing a sigh of relief alongside Tris and myself after all the months on end of work that's been put into this project.

Ok that's about enough for the 3 month update!!! It's close, so close I can nearly touch it... I reckon within a month we're going to have some more very major news for you all ;)

I will make sure I keep October updated like I didn't do with the last few months, sorry to those of you who were checking back over the time... feel free to abuse me when you see me next :)

Oh. Nearly forgot... there's all this text and NO pictures! That's not on.

Here's 2 shots, the first of which is the old air filter and intake next to the new Blitz one with the new intake pipe we did last weekend... and the second pic is of the business side of the engine bay as it looks right now. :)

New next to old. The quality difference is noticeable (I hope?)

Always up for discussion if you guys want to get in touch! Take care!

Jason