Hiro

Fixed...

Got a photo? The Gen1 3SGEs that came in ST162s does indeed have TVIS, and there will be a TVIS badge on the intake plenum. The cam covers will say Toyota 2000 Twincam.

Always calculate fuel economy from a full tank re-fill, it reduces the inaccuracies in the calculations substantially. The fuel light won't consistently come on at exactly the same litres-left-in-tank - if it comes on at 10L left and you only fill up 10L, and the next time the light comes on at 11L left, you're calculating 9L of use but assuming 10L, which is a 10% error. The same 1L difference on a 40L refill is only a 2.5% error, which is much less. Basically, fill the tank up to the brim (say, second click) and reset your tripmeter. Then, drive around for several hundred km so that you get significant fuel usage (try to use a full tank if necessary). Then, refill the car up to the second click again (from the same station/bowser if possible), and divide the number of litres you put in by the distance travelled, then multiply by 100 and you'll get your L/100km use. The only problem with this method is that it is hard to isolate one particular driving condition (ie city, freeway, Sunday arvo etc), but is perfect for an average. The good thing is that it totally ignores any inaccuracy in the timing of the fuel light (since you're not relying on it at all as a measuring device) - the only errors can come from the bowser not clicking at exactly the same tank level (but once again, a litre or two over a full tank isn't that much of an error), and the accuracy of the odometer/tripmeter (standard tyres should be fine, aftermarket rims/tyres may put it out by a few %).

The car itself definitely isn't fake, saw it at Autosalon on the dyno run myself, no idea as to who owns it or where it normally lives though.

Ahh yes, just noticed that. the freeway will be fine all the way -putty road :) *Note meant to say Peats Ridge Rd, not Putty Rd, but still the same story - road is quite windy around Laguna up to Wollombi, and there were a fair chunk of roadworks when I last went through there (close to a year ago though). If taking the freeway I would definitely advise cutting the corner over Heaton Gap instead of going all the way to the end at Beresfield/East Maitland, traffic through Maitland/Rutherford/Lochinvar is painful on a long weeked (almost as bad as Karuah/Buledelah on the Pacific at times) and the back way through Cessnock and the vineyards completely bypasses it.

No such thing as a manual version of the ST246 anyway :P

Putty Rd at 4am? Maybe not the wisest choice, especially if it is truck-central (which it could well be at that time of the morning, the whole trip up the Hunter is going to be spent dodging trucks. Might be better taking the freeway up to Freemans Waterhole and then cutting over Heaton Gap through Cessnock and the vineyards to join the New England at Greta. Can meet up with you guys at the Freemans Waterhole diner stop that way too :P

Picked up the Snoarer from the mechanics yesterday, hip-pocket is $2k lighter but it feels sooooooo good to be able to drive the car properly again without the clutch slipping...

Well, the drama of the banana-peel-instead-of-a-clutch has been rectified, although at significant pain to the hip pocket. What was initially quoted to be a $700 clutch from the Exedy distributor turned into a $1200 clutch, plus add on about $800 in parts and labour. Still, being able to plant it with confidence makes it worthwhile, it was getting to the stage where it was downright painful to drive, even the slightest hint of load and the clutch went south. Next on the cards is a new set of tyres and/or wheels, plus fixing the radiator and diff leaks that they found when it was up on the hoist.

Logic says neither - brake rotor will warp from excessive heat and wear, wheels will buckle from impact. One should not cause the other.

I'll most likely be coming up with the rest of the NSW crew, almost certainly bringing the 102 though since the Snoarer has already had a QLD trip recently and I'm not sure Cara would let me borrow it for that long....pity, because it is a _much_ better cruising car. EDIT: So all the out-of-towners staying at the International? Or slumming it at a Formule 1? $140 a night is a bit pricey for 1, unless anyone cares to split a twin room (the one with seperate beds :P)

Going to organise accommodation this Friday when pay comes in. So where are all the out-of-towners going to be staying?

17x7 +45 Speedy Lite-5s

Still got to get tyres for them, so they won't be going on the car for a while, but the time was right for a change of wheels :D

I'm down for this, which reminds me, I still need to take the Friday and Tuesday off work for the drive...

Nah, Camrys are 5-stud and the wheel in the picture is only a 4-stud. Fairly generic style by the looks of it, probably most of the knock-off companies would have an equivalent (BSA, Lenso, Rota etc)

Most systems are set up so that the key will disable the alarm so that you can get in the car if the remote dies, but won't disengage the immobiliser so it won't let you start the car immediately - you have to wait half an hour or something similar. Had this happen a couple of times with dying remote batteries or if parked in a high RF noise zone (like under Black Mountain tower in Canberra, or high voltage power lines). Sometimes the remote will work again if you're inside the car (bit of extra protection/sheilding) or if you put it into the remote control reader thingy (usually in the glovebox) and the immobiliser will disable.

Saw a burgundy Alphard on the way home today, looks soooooo much better than the fugly new Elgrands it isn't funny...

Mine was stuck fast, I actually ended up twisting the vinyl cover off before the knob itself started turning.....that then revealed a hard plastic knob with little ribs on it (sounds dirty when you think about it) that gave plenty of purchase for an adjustable wrench to grab hold of and turn....

Well, got my first profit-sharing bonus yesterday, so immediate plans are for a new set of wheels (17" Speedy Lite-5s) and for the front bar to finally get the coat of paint it deserves, closely followed by fitment to the car Stay tuned

Yet another example of the confusion when people try to apply SI-prefixes to the binary system..... In short, it depends on who you talk to or what you read. Some places will do the power-of-ten conversion and say that a megapixel is 1,000,000 pixels, others will take the binary conversion and say that a megapixel is 1048576 (ie 1024*1024) pixels. Same thing goes for hard-drives etc, it was simplified to normal powers of ten some time ago to make marketing easier - a 1-gigabyte hard drive will be 1,000,000,000 bytes, but if you look at technical uses (ie file sizes etc), 1 gigabyte is 1,073,741,824 bytes. Since kilo/mega/giga etc are all SI-prefixes, they technically refer to power-of-ten orders of magnitude (ie thousand, million, billion etc). Since computers etc run in the binary system (power-of-two) To get around this confusion they changed the prefix system to kibi/mebi/gibi (ie 1024, 1048567, 1073741824). Most end-users will never see those terms used though, and will just keep using kilo/mega/giga etc interchangeably (even when it is technically wrong). As an example, my 10MP (advertised) Panasonic FZ28 bridge camera produces 3648 x 2736 pixel photos, which equates to 9980928 pixels, which is much closer to 10,000,000 (10 megapixels) than it is to 10737418240 (10 Mebipixels) As an aside, the camera world is rife with confusion and myth/hype in refernce to the two numbers commonly used to market them - megapixels and zoom. For instance, you actually have to QUADRUPLE the megapixel rating to get a doubling of resolution (or picture area), and zoom ratings (ignoring digital zoom for now) are actually the multiplication of the focal length.

Paseos should be a closer match to the Sera, they ran the 1.5L 5EFE (lower compression version of the Sera's 5EFHE) instead of the 4EFE in the Starlets.