rob323

No idea sorry. I used to take my street car there when the Club Car Car Association would put on "practice days". $50 for 4 hours of fangin!

Awwww That takes all the fun out of it. I remember how important it was to hit the apex at the kink, if you were more than a metre wide, you were in for an interesting time. Please tell me the next double apex corner is still tricky to get right? :(

I would say it is most likely a dodgy wire/ connection going to the oil pressure sensor. Echo's are fairly basic, they only have an oil pressure sensor, not oil temp as well. The oil pressure sensor is on the front of the motor, under the intake manifold and is green coloured plastic from memory. You can always remove it an insert an oil pressure sender if you are concerned about the pressure and your bearing clearances. Refer attached extract from the work shop manual for further info. insp.pdf

That was nice of Toyota to replace the maf for you when they could have just given it a quick clean and the result would have been the same.

Hard enough to have brake fade with DS2500 pads ;) which was lucky as that was about the limit of my ability anyway. Agreed. I haven't been on Lakeside since it was done up but from all accounts, it is a bit more forgiving than when we used to play on it in the 90's.I just get bored going round and round and round the same way on the same track all the time, that's one of the reasons why I like the challenge of rallying. The chance to drive flat out on different roads that you have never driven on before, having to read the road conditions and adjust your driving accordingly, and having to listen to your navigator at the same time as well (which is harder than you think). Different strokes for different folks. :)

Boring with a capital B! :D

One of the very first khanas we had up at the Farm Fantastic (purple cow) site did chop up quite badly but you simply drive to suit the conditions or accept the risk of damaging something. My VR4 had the minimum legal 100mm ground clearance, Hotbits coilovers and never suffered any damage at that event or any others for that matter. I do know, that at that event, a guy in an R32 GTST that ripped an old rubber strut top apart and I got him some Noltecs to replace them with, but he also had silly stiff jap spec coilovers.

Such as? You have to drive a fwd really badly (read excessive understeer) to roll a properly inflated tyre off a rim. I think the only incident I can remember seeing at one of our grass motorkhanas is a wheel came off a falcon cause the nuts weren't done up tight. A quick search of Youtube for "NDSCC motorkhana" will show you what the events are like. There will also be a skidpan motorkhana coming up early in the year.

Good to hear you got it sorted. When I finally put my car back together after being apart for 3 years, my isc was stuck. It would stall when cold and idle all over the place when hot but it still pulled normally (no lack of power or flat spots). So I pulled apart my spare isc and cleaned it all up but never installed it as it luckily sorted itself out after a few months and has been fine every since (touch wood). People running oiled air filters have to be careful and clean their maf often as they get a coating of oil residue on them so avoid an oiled airfilter on an Echo/ Yaris if at all possible.

You sure can turn off the VSC and Traction Control. ABS is a little iffy. Apparently it should turn off when you turn VSC/TC off but from experience I have found that mine tends to stay on. If all else fails, there are relays and fuses that can be removed. That's good. I found with my vr4 that it stopped alot quicker on grass with the abs switched off. But maybe in the last 20 years technology has advanced to the point where the tables are turned. I would hope so anyway.

So you just have to use some skill and talent and throw the car more to get the weight shift thing happening. I had to do exactly the same in my Mitsubishi VR4 as the handbrakes in them don't work well enough to lock up the rears on grass and the turning circle is not that good. Can you turn the abs and traction control and any other pansy driver saving device off in an Aurion?

Are any of you "racers" not afraid to get your cars a little dirty? My car club is holding a grass motorkhana on the 6th of March if anyone wants to pit their "skilz" against a gutless, little Echo :P (amongst a variety of other cars). The motorkhanas are much more about driver ability, memory and car control than about power (although a good driver can put it to good use) and provide plenty of opportunities for front wheel drives to use the hand brake. But of course, they don't count for much in the way of braggin rights to your mates.

Where are you? I turned up just after 9 as everyone was leaving?

Yeh, mine's 7 and has been going to the drags and rallies since he was 6 months old.

I most probably won't be there due to rugrat commitments.

Maybe, unless it's raining (as my roof vent leaks cause I haven't connected up the drain tube yet :( ).

Dunno. It's a bit past my bed time.

I haven't found that limit yet. My driving ability is still more of a handicap than the car is.

Forced induction is for people that don't have the talent to drive their car fast. (Says he with 63kw of custard skin pulling power :( )

I would be most curious to hear if the Aussie Yaris even has a speed limiter or whether it is just here say.

It it idles properly at 650 rpm when hot and doesn't stall when cold, then the ISC is fine. Flat spots in an Echo are usually caused my a dirty MAF sensor. See here for how to clean it - http://echodiy.multiply.com/journal/item/4..._Filter_and_MAF Or, if you on the Northside of Brisbane, you are welcome to pop over and I'll show you how to do it. If you have the security codes for the radio, I would also do as suggested and disconnect the battery for a while to reset the ecu. It will seem a bit sluggish at first though while it relearns things.

You can blame our wonderful, narrow minded, Department of Transport for that. It is getting extremely difficult with rally cars, on one hand you have to meet all the relevant requirements from CAMS, on the other, it has to be road registered and therefore meet all the ADR's (unless it is a race/ rally import). There's no middle ground (yet, they have been working on a rally car rego scheme for the last 20 something years so it should be any day now ). Rallying is easily the best fun you can have with your pants on. If anyone is interest in rallying or other forms of motorsport, here is a little calendar of events for the year - http://ndscc.asn.au/index.php?p=1_4 First rally for the year is up at Benarkin (a nice drive up the Brisbane Valley Highway) on the 6th of March 2010.

It was nice to meet you guys last night.

Thanks, I will call by on my way home to see if anyone is around.

I have to go into the CAMS office at Milton tonight so might bring the Echo out for a drive. Where do you guys meet up?