Hiro

It'll be $50-100 well spent, trust me. A Gregorys/Haines manual should be the first thing that any car owner/home mechanic buys, you'll most likely save in labour costs the price of the manual in the first job you do yourself (apart from an oil change :P), and you learn something along the way too.

Corolla - HIR07A - fairly obvious, my forum handles is Hiro and the car has a 7A :P Soarer - KIL202 - came with the car, previous owner had a mate who was doing up a HQ or something similar with a 202 in it, all his mates then got anti-Holden plates as a joke.

And you choose to believe something that looks like it came from a chain email? To me, individual research beats blind "it was posted on the internetz" hands down.

Almost like some kind of...."national"....meet or something, I don't know. Maybe we should hold one every year on a long weekend to give people lots of time to get there. And have it in a different state each year, so that everyone in the country gets to come.

Why might a good car sit around for a long time in a dealership? Simple - supply greater than demand. Remember that 95% of Toyota models are hardly rare or unique and were sold by the thousands with little enthusiast interest, so there will always be orphans left sitting unloved in dealerships. That and the general quality and reliability of Toyotas means that the people most likely to buy a new Toyota (ie, a current Toyota driver) already have a reliable car and don't necessarily feel the need to upgrade.

Why are you bitching about the RTA? If it isn't their toll-road (they only deal with the Bridge/Tunnel now that the M4 has gone toll-free) then they are doing the right thing by directing you to the people who operate/run the particular toll-road that your notice refers to.

Note that it says E10 compatabile, not 91 E10 or 95 E10 (E10 used to only be 95, but newer ones are coming in at 91 which makes me shudder how crap the fuel must be for the ethanol content to bump it UP to 91.....). They are leaving the door open for future high-octane ethanol blends (ie 98 or 100, remember Shell V-Power Racing 100), whilst still requiring a 98RON minimum petrol.

Gave the Soarer a proper hand wash, attempted to try and fix the paint down the left side but it didn't respond to cutting compound, so a light-grade sandpaper might be needed.....not really willing to attack it too much though, but it stands out too much for me to just ignore it.

WTF is 'MIRIN' ?! Is this meant to mean 'admiring' ?? I prefer to think of it as a sweet Japanese condiment..... Mirin

Generally you can order them from your local friendly auto-parts store (Supercheap, Repco etc), if not then flEbay would be another spot to look, they pop up there from time to time.

Already got holidays planned for Qld in July sometime, so may not feel like 2 1000km road-trips in one month.....will consider it though, other big question would be whether to bring the Snoarer (excellent long-distance cruiser but thirsty and expensive) or the 102 (much better on fuel but uncomfortable on long drives)

The best thing about FnF is that we can look back at it and laugh at how stupid it was. This extends to people who tried to copy the style back then, and continue to copy it now. You have to agree though that FnF was a pretty entertaining movie. It did provide some mild entertainment, although most of it was due to the complete ineptitude of the script trying to make them sound "cool" - the amount of facepalm-worthy one-liners to come out of those movies is ridiculous.

The best thing about FnF is that we can look back at it and laugh at how stupid it was. This extends to people who tried to copy the style back then, and continue to copy it now.

No kidding, I live in Australia too....what a coincidence!

a wideband is *meant* to be 0-5v, with that said when was it changing voltage? just randomly or otherwise? newer narrowband o2 sensors do operate in a wider voltage range, and are heated for (somewhat) more accuracy, but regardless they are no-where near as accutate as a WBO2. as for the multimeter reading, it was consistent fluctuating, and just at idle. However the gauge itself when i went for a test drive, with no throttle sat needle at the bottom. Then with little to almost full throttle it was constantly and consistently bouncing back and forth between low lean to high rich (completely unrelated to throttle position, speed, load, anything...). but with fully opened throttle it would stay up in high rich. confusing as hell.. its like theres no signal at idle, pluses of signal with throttle, and constant signal with WOT. pretty useless for the gauge though like you say haha. might try take a vid again this arvo of a drive, but yea probs not of much use anyway? The reason why an O2 sensor flickers back and forth so much on light and medium throttle is that it is running a closed-loop feedback system - the ECU is registering whether the exhaust is rich or lean and adjusting the mixture to strive to get it closer to the ideal level. However, on full throttle the ECU ignores the O2 sensor output and goes into open-loop - it just uses the fuel map for judging mixtures, which invariably leads to the engine running rich up top on WOT (hence the stable signal). This is a design feature though to prolong the life of the engine, as a lean mixture at WOT and high RPM is a very bad thing for an engine. Same goes for idle - it ignores the O2 sensor feedback and leans out the mixture to improve fuel economy during idle (no point pouring fuel in if you're not going anywhere). Thus, since a narrowband only sees 2 basic conditions (lean and rich, say 0-2V lean and 3-5V rich), you'll get constant signals at idle and WOT, and constant flickering between two levels when on part throttle. A wideband sensor will give a lot more accurate and detailed information In short, a narrow-band tells you if it is rich or lean, a wideband tells you exactly HOW rich or lean (and tells the ECU the same thing, if you have an aftermarket unit).

Assuming you're still running stock-sized tyres, going off what the tyre placard says would be a good starting point...

Our 1ZZs aren't less powerful, it's our 2ZZ that is more powerful than the Yanks. 140HP is 104kw, which is roughly what our 1ZZs put out (more like 100kw, and ignore the drop to 93kw after they changed to DBW for emissions), and the 2ZZ in our Celicas and Sportivos put out 189HP (141kw).

^that Only the US got the crappy 180HP spec in their Celica/Matrix/Vibe.

40kw even, not just 40HP....

Ran the Soarer at last weekend's Toymods Dyno Day, unfortunately didn't quite live up to the 200kw claim but still quite respectable, conditions were far from perfect and there is still plenty of room to play with mod-wise and still keep it looking stockish Previous run at SAS in same tune but in much more favourable conditions :P

Just feels that way. 180Nm from 1.8L is pretty good. When your torque peak is as high up the RPM gauge as it is for a 2ZZ, you don't really feel it because the power and speed are dominating. Perfect example is the silvertop 20v 4AGE compared to a 7AFE - technically the silvertop makes more torque but the 7A will always feel it more, because the low torque peak means you can really punch it out of the corners without having to rev the rings of it. Remember, power is torque * RPM * a constant, so cars with high power figures for their capacity either have high redlines or high torque production in the top of the rev range - motors designed for low-down torque (whilst they give you a good shove in the back down low) won't produce big power numbers because of the low RPM.

The fact that it has been fine since the battery terminals were cleaned to me indicates it was either (shock horror) dirty battery terminals, or they were a little bit loose. I've had a car struggle and then fail to start, or turn the accessories on but then die when you turn to start, and it was simply the terminals - both alternator and battery were in perfectly fine condition.

With my orienteering shoes (actually touch-footy boots, I couldn't get proper cross-country shoes in my size), I got terrible blisters on my achilles because it would rub through the socks, I fixed it by first wearing double-socks (made the fit a bit tight though), then by using gauze pads (the sort you remove make-up with) combined with ankle-strapping (I needed the strapping anyway), that provided enough protection so that my skin no longer rubbed and blistered. I'd try the double-sock method first, only problem with it is that you might end up stretching the boots a bit (especially if they're leather), which means you'd always need to wear double socks. Other than that, make sure that they're laced tight and all the way up, the key is to minimise relative movement between your foot and the boot.

You mean XV30 to XV40, and you can instantly tell them apart just by looking at them - they are completely different body-shapes XV30: XV40:

Sticky caliper slide perhaps? Caliper doesn't properly slide back away from disc after application, thus still leaving pad in partial contact thus giving squeak, but after enough spinning of the wheel the pad and caliper is forced back, stopping the noise. Would explain the intermittency as well, and why you don't hear it when the brakes are applied