DJKOR

Woohoo. I got spotted . How embarrassing. I hate it when you get pulled over for nothing much and people probably drive by laughing thinking you did something wrong. It was basically just an inconvenience which is the second time it has happened and will no doubt happen again. I saw the whole thing coming. My whole rant was put on Facebook. It goes something like this: I wonder why they chose to run my plates? Is it because I don't seem right driving the TRD? On both occasions where I was pulled over for this, the cops were in another lane and appearing to be going in another direction. Then all of a sudden, they decide to change their course and end up behind me. Before they pulled me over today, I could actually see them doing the plate check AFTER they pulled in behind me (could tell by the way they were looking at my car and their computer) so they obviously had some suspicion in the first place.

Personally, I think powering an amp off your cigarette lighter is just stupid idea (no offence intended). If you are going to put an amp in, do it right and run a power lead to the battery. But each to their own. Not only that, your cigarette lighter is limited to 10A max and at 12V-13.8V, you are looking at a maximum power of 120 watts to 138 watts. If you then factor in the fact that amplifiers can be around 80% efficient, this means the most you can get out of your amp is 96 watts to about 110 watts*. Go more than that and you will blow your fuse for the cigarette lighter. On top of that, I wouldn't want to put the continuous stress on the cigarette lighter wiring like that. * These are all rough figures. For the sake of this discussion, I will not bother going into full detail.

Yes I'm repeating what those above me have said, but yes, it is just a standard TRD Aurion. No engine modifications done. That said, there are modifications but not the type you would have been expecting. Just the fitting of a roll cage, racing seats and extra safety equipment.

That's what I intend on doing.... just not literally this time around :( For me, if I had a lot of money to blow I'd definitely buy new cars and upgrade after a couple/few years or there abouts, because nothing beats having a fresh new car. But when it comes to cars at this point in my life, I don't see anything wrong with buying 2nd hand. It saves a fair bit of money and in my opinion, you can get a pretty good deal if you look hard enough. Then you have more money for the other things in life. I'm not one for worrying about resale value on cars either. I can't let go of things easily enough and a car definitely fits into that category for me. I intend to drive my car till it's had a pretty good life and clocked up many k's, and when it's time for a new car (either if the current one wears out or just starts to look plain old), the cycle will repeat. Then my 'old' car can be like a runabout or something or I will sell it off without worrying about not getting much for it.

When it comes to the entire politics side of things, I don't want to seem stupid or anything but I don't really follow it. At the end of the day, it just seems like there is always going to be problems. For the record, I never voted for Rudd. Things seemed okay to me before he was in action so I figured why bother changing it. Anyways, politics aren't my thing. LOL at Jetstar though. Edit: Only noticed it was a poll (after wondering why this thread kept getting bumped with no new posts). Thanks for the support guys -------------------------------- Mines downsizing due to new super tax:

Mate... asking our opinion on what looks good is like asking us to pick your partner for you. Chose your style based on your opinion, not others.

I think I know what you mean. You are referring to how the spring clip that holds the original bulb and holder in place doesnt spring down far enough to hold the H7 HID's? On my sister's Mazda 3, I used some washers to hold it in place. Luckily I had some laying around that were about the same overall diameter as the H7 base with a hole in the middle large enough for the HID centre piece to stick through. I used a couple on each lamp and it was enough to allow the spring clip to push against it to hold the lamp in place. Just gotta think a bit creative.

7:30pm the meet starts and we meet at the end of 'Macarthur Ave, Eagle Farm QLD 4009, Australia'

That map doesn't show the completed area, but it's pretty straightforward. You just drive to the end of that road and you will see where to park. This should give you an idea of what it all looks like. Except this time around, we will park perpendicular to the kerb, not parallel to it. http://downshiftezine.blogspot.com/2010/06/that-time-of-month-again.html Considering the JDMST meet is from 7:30pm and it's a good idea to arrive on or before that time, meeting at the loop before hand will not really benefit anyone meeting at the usual 8pm and have missed the details here.

Damn... you sure gave that gearbox a beating. Quite a bit of damage there. What was the guy's reaction when he pulled it apart?

I don't think the OP is comparing the two for deciding on a pending purchase. Because he is in KSA and has an 'Aurion GLX Sporty M/R', I'm guessing that he wants to know what our SX6 and ZR6 has which his doesn't. But the Aurion GLX Sporty M/R isn't 100% match to a Sportivo SX6, so for comparative purposes, there are even some SX6 features that his Aurion doesn't have.

If you want a car that will spend more time driving than being repaired... I'd go for the Holden.

Go for it. I wouldn't say they look cool, but they sure as hell sound nice. And say goodbye to good fuel economy.

At 4:44pm today I spotted a JDM Yaris at the Milton Road/Petrie Terrace intersection. This time without a shady looking suspect in the drivers seat.

I'll be there. No offence to the usual Brisbane meet, but if this is where most of the regulars are going to be, then that's where I'll be. And Mick, you have something of mine that I wouldn't mind getting off you on Thursday.

Your mileage may vary (no pun intended), but with my Sportivo and TRD which I would assume behaves exactly the same with reading fuel level, from the moment the fuel gauge is on empty and your cruising range says '0km', you will actually have anywhere between 10 and 12.5 litres or so left in your fuel tank. This is why I mentioned that the gauge only reads the last 60 litres of the tank. So if your fuel light comes on when your cruising range says you have 50km remaining, you will have about 18-20 litres of fuel left or approximately another 120-150km of driving remaining. Last time I tested this out, I travelled another 80km on empty and still had a few litres left in the tank.

The Sportivo looks pretty sporty without the need for a different bumper

An in-between just doesn't seem to work. It looks like that one popped out of the oven a little too early. It's either you go all out or not at all I reckon.

As I mentioned, the difference here is that you are spraying part of a piece that is already painted. Just giving you the heads up that if you haven't done painting like this before, it won't exactly be a walk in the park like spraying an entire piece with the same paint. It's getting it to blend in which is the hard part. Now I'm no professional at this, but from what I've seen, painting any part of a larger painted surface requires a bit of effort to blend it in. An example of what I'm talking about can be seen in the following video. You can see the size of the repaired area, and the area around it that required respraying. Good luck though. I guess you will learn from trying it out. If worst comes to worst, you can just pay someone to do it if it doesn't work out.

What Andrew said above is good with respect to the ECU reset so I will leave it at that. So instead, I will comment on the fuel side of things. The following is my own personal observations and opinions, don't exactly take it for truth. When it comes to highway driving where you only use the lower half of your engine range most of the time, I would imagine that there would be no difference economy wise when using E10, 91RON, 95RON, and 98RON on a car that is built to run on 91RON. My own understanding of the octane rating is that the higher the octane, the less resistant to knocking due to compression. Now when you are casually cruising along, your engine is not going to be running at any form of extreme that would require the extra 'abilities' of a higher octane fuel. Therefore, in theory you should be getting the same highway fuel consumption with either grade of fuel. I found this true with my old Aurion. As said, this is my own experience. Driving interstate with highway only driving, I tested E10, 91RON, 95RON, and 98RON and found barely no difference between them all. Any variation I found could have easily been the result of getting a little happy with the accelerator. That said, I have also heard that you have to give it a couple of tanks or more for the engine to make significant enough adjustments to give you that little bit more fuel economy. Even still, I wouldn't be expecting that much of a difference with fuel economy in this scenario. ---------------- Other note: if you haven't picked up on it yet, your fuel gauge from full to empty should read about 60 litres. The last 10 litres, it doesn't really register. So when you said you arrived in Sydney with a bit more than a quarter of a tank of fuel, you would have had at least 25 litres or so left in the tank. That means you used about 45 litres to get there which seems to match what you used on the return trip. If you need to do some more detailed calculations, reset your trip meter every time you fill up, then when you fill up again (to the same full level*), write down the trip meter reading on your receipt. Then when you get the chance, take the litres of fuel you bought, divide it by the kilometres you wrote down on that receipt, then multiply the figure by 100. This will give you your l/100km value. * I determine full by pumping till the first click, removing the nozzle, waiting about 10 seconds, putting it back in and pumping till it clicks again. Then I usually round to the nearest '5 cent rounding'. ---------------- Edit: 45 litres per 550km equals about 8.18l/100km. That's about what my old Aurion did on the highway when keeping to the speed limit. I hear the Camry has about the same consumption.

Well I think I have reached a decent point now which I can then use to get something made up. I am definitely sticking with the SRI type intake so no point discussing that choice. Just thought I would report my observations. The intake design which I have been working with for the last couple of weeks would be the following (photo credit to u54mot): About the only difference from the trial one I started with initially was that I added a section of pipe before the MAF mount (filter side) to make the filter sit about an inch and a half or so further from the MAF sensor. These seemed to have smoothed things out a little (not that it wasn't to start with). Everything from there felt alright. That was until I had to send my car off to AAMI for assessment and repair. Before doing this, I put the stock airbox back in and straight away noticed a difference. It felt like it had just that little bit more pull and when you release the throttle sharply under acceleration, you get this sharp kind of ***** forward. This was barely there when I had my test intake on, and I clearly remember it being there prior to putting the intake on in the first place. I remembered that my MAF adaptor comes with various reducers so I thought I would give this a go when I got my car back from the repairers. Well, I put in the 2.7 inch reducer (ie. the MAF sits in a section with an internal diameter of 2.7 inches), and it pretty much has that same feel as when the stock airbox was put back on. So I guess it's one step closer in the right direction.

Damn. If only my office was still there in Yatala. I could have easily had some work done while I work with easy drop-off and pickup. So I take it that you have good personal experience with these guys.

Oh hell no! :lol: Not quite my style.

^ Unfortunately that method there -DAvo isn't so effective when you need to fix up a section of something that is already painted. I had damage on my Sportivo around the same area and couldn't blend it in with your standard paint-code made up paint in a spray can. I even sanded back a large area and tried to gradually get lighter on the spraying to blend it. But then again, I'm no professional DIY'er.

I can't comment on what the ride quality is like exactly, but I can tell you that the Touring will ride exactly the same as the AT-X. There are no suspension changes between the two, and any variation in tire/wheel size between those two grades will not be noticeable. This I can say something about. Having used both the standard A/C controls and the automatic climate control, I would say that you wouldn't really notice much difference between the two. About the only time you will notice something different is when your passenger decides to set their temperature to something different to yours. Apart from that, the difference is just in the way you control it, which really isn't that much different. I could happily go back to the manual A/C controls without any complaints.