Doughie

The two mistakes they made are that they opened the bonnet the whole way. No.1 thing you should do is pop the bonnet just so you can get the extinguisher nozzle in there and then use the extinguisher. - or if you do open the bonnet the whole way, and can't put it out, then SHUT the damn thing. Keeps oxygen flow down. No.2 thing they did wrong is they left the doors open after 'giving up' on the car. They wouldn't know how long it would take for the fire crew to get there, so the idea is to keep all doors and bonnets / boots shut after you get out. This car on fire thing does seem to be catching... Check this out of an ex-member, Eric, of mkivsupra.net (he had a UK TT6) Ferrari 355 going up in smoke earlier this year : http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=55058&page=1&pp=20&highlight=died

One of my favourite films !! try this: http://www.anthroid.net/autopsiadonniedarko.htm rgds

knew i shoulda pushed for another few hundred quid .......

you get lots of nasty vortices and "dirty" air flow behind a car, so i guess it's possible the wing smooths some of that out which may mean there's actually less drag with it on, as the drag coeffs. imply. Also - in NASCAR, 2 cars can travel at a higher speed when they're nose-to-tail. You may say "yeah of course mate - it's called slipstreaming". but what is interesting is that the FRONT car can go faster when a car BEHIND it is right up on it's bumper. this tells quite a bit about smoother air-flow behind an object can help reduce it's drag.

Good advice above. Also be v careful when going over painted lines, manhole covers etc in the wet. And ... pedestrian crossings. Off the throttle over those in the wet. Might be an idea to find a deserted wet car park or a big EMPTY roundabout and have 10 minutes pratting about just so you get a feel for when it might let go and what it's actually like when it does. That way you're less likely to be completely freaked if it catches you out. Oh, and take up outdoor karting. http://www.club100.co.uk

KYB adjustables are good but not that common ! - not the sort of shock most garages are going to have. Assuming you supply the parts (the 2 shocks), i think most garages would charge about 1.5hours per side = 3 hours labour + VAT. Garages always over-charge on the labour front but about 1 - 1.5 hours for a shock is about right. One more thing - I got my shocks on my Supra changed by Darrell Payne who's a really top geezer and very able mechanically. He lives in the midlands, somewhere north of Milton Keynes if my memory serves me right. He used to post on this board but don;'t know if he's still active or even got his supra. Only reason i mention it really is that he had KYB adjustables on his silver supra like yours. he found the bilsteins a bit hard and fitted the KYB's as a solution. I got his bilsteins and he fitted them for me for VERY little dosh. Just occasionally you do encounter someone who's a top bloke and happy to help you out and Darren's one of them.

yeah if a shock is leaking, it'll be bouncy on that corner and this'll be well dodgy if the shock is knackered enough. plus potentially dangerous so advise you replace both shocks on that axle. Plus get the toe checked on the rear wheels - rear-end instability culd be cos exacerbated by major toe-out on one side or similar geometry issues.

mild edit to John's post : You can't stop a solid-fuel rocket. - you can stop a liquid-propellant rocket by just switching off fuel-feed. I'd imagine the rockets you can buy off-the-shelf will be Solid-fuel so yeah that's a one-shot thing. That's why on the Shuttle, NASA gets the main liquid-fuel engine all lit and ready to go, and at the last moment, they fire the SRB's (Solid Rocket Boosters) as if they need to abort take-off they can, as long as the SRB's aren't lit....

GPS systems (i have 2) have an internal almanac of satellites and their orbit. They know how long they've been switched off for and they know where they were last time they were on, so they know which satellites to look for if they've only been off for 15 minutes. If you've moved a long distance (approx. 600miles) since the unit was last switched on, then the satellites it last was talking to probably won't be the ones in the visible sky now so it does a "general search" and this takes longer. Most GPS' need 3 satellites for a "2D" fix and 4 satellites for a "3D" fix. (i.e. knows altitude too). There's no reason why a plane's GPS will be any more accurate than a ground-based GPS that you can buy cheaply, other than because it has an unobstructed view of the sky it will lock onto many more satellites (& prob. a bit quicker cos no obstructions) and this will mean it'll have a fix of about +/- 13feet. Best i've ever got was receiving 11 satellites at once on a boat on Pacific Ocean off North-Eastern Coast of Australia, which gave a fix of +/- 13feet. Normally i'll have a fix of +/- 23 - 30feet once it's got 4 or more satellites. "Warm start" (unit has been off a max. of 15minutes) takes about 15 seconds, and "cold start" takes about 1 minute, but this depends a lot on how many solid objects are obscuring view of the sky. "Initial start" for a GPS is the very 1st time it's powered up from new and takes about 5 minutes. One more thing is that the time on your GPS is VERY accurate (atomic clock accurate) as it gets the time of day from the satellites themselves and the satellites get the time from an atomic clock. A GPS works simply because it actually knows the time down to a zillionth of a second that the satellite sent it a signal and it simply times how long the signal took to get to it. Once it's got 3 or 4 it knows it's position down to a few metres via triangulation of the signal. Each satellite is approx. 11,000miles away. The USA govt. used to have "SA" (=Selective Availability) switched on all the time which degrades the accuracy for civvies, but a few years ago they (nicely) switched it off so civvy GPS receivers are more accurate now. They can switch it back on at any time etc. Faster speed i got on my GPS is 468mph on board a 747 ! (it works holding it up against the window...) Though the air stewardess said that the pilot already had a GPS and so asked me to switch it off ! it doesn't transmit any signal to the satellite (contrary to what the stewardess thought it's NOT like a mobile fone in that it just receives.) sorry for rambling. cheers all

You'll be able to get a stunning set of speakers for that sort of money. I'm getting some B&W 603 S3's next time round to replace my current 2 Mission 762 hi-fi speakers. they make Centre speakers too, and i'd imagine the rears. I also think they look the nads with their gold-coloured woven bass-drivers. think it's woven Kevlar.

Sounds to me like just straight forward aquaplaning on the rear axle. usually the fronts will aquaplane first, but if the rears were lower than the fronts (and you say they were) and with the Supra it's rear-light anyway, plus the rear tyres are wider than the fronts. Wider tyres aquaplane more easily than narrower ones. (Oh one thing - usually when the fronts aquaplane, the steering should get lighter not heavier, as essentially the tyres just in contact with a thin film of water, and not tarmac any longer so there's hardly any resistance on the wheel. you'd only need to be giving it a little bit of throttle to push it over the edge on a wet road with low-treaded rears, and once a heavy car like the Supe is out-of-shape you have to be v quick to catch it. i'd imagine spinning on a wet motorway at night is a deeply scary experience !! RLTC can't ADD traction, it can only use the traction available efficiently and if there's little tread on a wet road at speed then ...

far - what Termy said is exactly what i said yesterday !!!! (see my post y'day avo about the wheel allocations). BUT then you said that when you hit "Receive" i.e. you take the actual DAT that RLTC is now using after the calibraton has been done, then it has the wheel assignments completed. The basic DAT file that Termy will have sent you will be complete APART from the wheel assignments as that is done by RLTC itself when the calibration routine is carried out. What i suggest you do is hit "Receive" and then save this DAT file as a new file name, so that you have a DAT file that you got from Termy (that you downloaded to RLTC) and then the DAT file after RLTC has populated the wheel assignments.

could be a dodgy unit but more likely problem with install i would think. i'd 100% eliminate the DAT file possibility first, and then move onto the other issues. When you say it's speed-related, what's the speed it all goes wrong at? is it exactly the same whichever gear you're in ? if you "gently" accelerate up to this same speed (i.e. with no possibility of losing traction) does it still do the "hard-cut" thing ? if it's speed-related. presumably therefore it goes wrong at lower revs for higher gears ? and when it cuts, it's a "total" cut is it ? i.e. is there a pretty violent "bang" just like an overboost fuel-cut ? or is there are subtley to it at all ? does overboost fuel-cut occur in your car, with RLTC switched off completely ? i.e. need a bit more info from here.

ok good. but it doesn't (at the same time) lose the "diamter driven" and "diameter referrence" settings for the wheels does it ? in your revised screenshot they've both gone down to 0. is this actually representative of the file that's in the car at the moment ?

OK far taken a quick look at those and the one that (going largely by memory since it's been about 2 years) is the "Wheel Speed Sensor" tab looks wrong. The lower half of that screen, some of those check boxes SHOULD be checked and none of them are. "Reference assignment" : basically what this does is tell RLTC which is the "reference wheels" i.e. the ones that WON'T slip, i.e. the front wheels in a Supra. "Side Assignment" : this tells it (obvious) which of the 4 channels (one channel per wheel) is the left front and left rear wheels. Since none are checked, RLTC won't have a clue which signal relates to which wheel which probably explains the problem. I THINK that channel's 1 and 3 are one axle, and channels 2 and 4 are another axle, so for "Reference assignment" try checking the channel 1 AND channel 3 boxes, OR the channel 2 AND 4. that's the most important bit - the side assignment is also important, but a bit less so than "reference assignment". I'm only going by memory on the channels, but if you've span the wheels, you should know which is which. give it a go, road test (safely).

Hmm yeah, that seems allright, and wouldn't explain the reason for your problem. 1 thing - you say it cuts completely at 2.5k revs ? Is it the SAME revs, whichever gear you're in ? in other words, is it specifically related to these exact revs whichever gear you're in, or is it road-speed related ? also, you couldn't post JPG's of the other tabs in the DAT file could you ?

one suggestion that would explain the reason for the "total cut" : When you've next got the laptop connected to it, check out the DAT file that was on the car, and look at the settings for each level of cut. There will be a "table" of check-boxes for the soft. medium and hard-cut, and each checkbox essentially represents one cylinder. If there's no check for a box, then that cylinder will be missed or "cut". It might be that (for whatever bizarre reason) ALL or almost all of the checkboxes are unchecked therefore instructing RLTC to cut all cylinders which would. i imagine, be very dramatic and feel a bit like the fuel-cut you get when you start to overboost. So check the cut-tables and see. let us know how you get on.

Hi Keith I'm amazed the stock original clutch has lasted so long ! 71k miles is pretty good considering it's been BPU for a few years now. I think stock Toyota clutch is about £480 or so, fitted, which isn't too bad. off topic - how's the gearbox whine ? is it still there ?

Now then.... My leg should be all fixed by that time, so ......... .......count me in. sorry everyone.

A bit of an educated guess, but it may be that the people who have had problems with RLTC assigning wheels etc *may* be because when they did the 180degree setup routine, they mayt not have done a tight enough turn. Obviously the tighter the turn you do, the greater the rotational speed difference between the outside wheels compared to the inside wheels. I would imagine that there if you do a too large a 180 degree turn, the difference between the rotational speeds of the wheels wouldn't be big enough for RLTC to detect or it may simply get a bit confused. just a guess. I would recommend these people to repeat the 180degree setup routine, making a TIGHT turn (perhaps rather more than 180degrees, why not do a 360 degree in a car park or something ??

Your car (and any turbocharged car really) should actually feel *quicker* in colder weather due to the denser air (i.e. more oxygen) being sucked into the engine, mixed with a bit ore fuel. Certainly my expereince with my UK-spec manual TT confirmed this. It felt considerably more lively from about October or so when you started getting sub-10 C. days etc. can't imagine thicker engine or gearbox oil would outweigh the effects of denser air being used for combustion. sorry can't help more than that. cheers

OK let's ignore RLTC for a second : If you pull the TRAC fuse, you will have disabled the stock TC, BUT it's my understanding that the "TRC" lights on a Jap-spec will still flash when traction is lost but since the TRAC fuse is pulled, it can't reduce the engine power any more (via the throttle butterflies). so it is still MONITORING when traction is lost (and the stock TC is set to 0% slip) but it can't do anything about it any more. With RLTC, just pull the TRAC fuse and it eliminate the systems clashing. There's nothing dangerous or wrong with the systems clashing, and it won't stop you driving anywhere as normal. RLTC reacts so much more quickly (and subtley) than the stock TC. The only situation i cna think of where the stock TC could cut in with RLTC installed, is if you select more than 0% slip. I never tried it, cos i always had the TRAC fuse pulled (even before i got RLTC installed.....) As Termy has said, there are all kinds of parameters you can change on the DAT file, via Graham's app. There are 3 levels of "cut" (this is fuel-cut, i.e. one of the cylinder's fuel injector pulse is "skipped" thereby meaning no power from that cylinder for that crankshaft rotation) : Soft cut : 5% slip + what's dialled in + 5% if in straight-line Medium Cut : 10% slip + what's dialled in+ 5% if in straight-line Hard Cut : 15% slip + what's dialled in + 5% if in straight-line Soft cut will cut 1 cylinder per crank cycle, medium is set to cut 2 cylinders (if I remember correctly) and hard-cut is set to cut 3 or 4 cylinders. all of this is user-configurable. i.e. you can tell it which cylinder to cut, how many for each level of cut etc.etc. So as i understand it, say you're cornering and you've selected 5% rear-wheel slip (RLTC options as we know are 0%, 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, OFF) then the system will allow (whilst cornering) 10% rear-wheel slip BEFORE "soft-cut" is invoked. (5% dialled in, + the additional 5% before soft-cut happens.). If soft-cut fails to prevent the rear-wheels spinning up (say you hit some diesel fuel or something) then when rear-slip hits 15% then medium-cut happens, and then "hard-cut" after that. Obviously the more cut, the fewer cylinders are getting any fuel and the less power the car produces. The one BIG advantage over the stock TC is that RLTC happens VERY quickly, and equally important, stops reducing engine power very quickly once the rear wheels are no longer spinning above the allowable levels. the Cut-levels are noticeable but you just don't get the horrible "zero power for ages" feeling of stock cut. In practice all you do is play with the dialled in levels until you're happy with a setting in the dry, and happy with a certain setting in the wet etc. phew, think that's it. sorry for a long post. I got quite into the mechanics of RLTC when i had my Supra but Phils' more uptodate than i am these days.

Brake fade on new pads is likely to be what is called "Green fade" which is, as oithers have said, lack of friction between the pads and the discs due to not having been bedded in, and maybe even glazed. Brand new pads will give bugger-all braking the first few times you brake which can be alarming, but if they're bedded in gently then they should be ok. different pad compounds require different bedding in. some of the carbon-metallic compounds need to go through a couple of heat cycles first which is a bit different to normal organic compunds. Bedding in instructions should come with the pads themselves. I think if the pads are glazed then if they can't be unglazed in the car (won't explain..) then they might be able to be saved by taking them off and removing the glaze on the pad surface with sandpaper etc. Brakes are important so make sure you know what you're doing with them ! Check with supplier / fitter.

far just to back up further whats been said, my old UK TT manual did exactlyt the same thing. rattle goes when switching off with clutch in. it's the clutch release springs rattling and is a known phenomenon with the manual Supras. this is on http://www.mkiv.com too (if that site is still around). Gavin Loughtons does exactly the same too. cheers

I agree with this. Most tyres, even after scrubbing in, don't perform their best for a while. In fact, in the dry, a newer tyre of any brand will almost always be outperformed by the exact same tyre that hasn't got much tread left. This is because in the dry, you get too much tread block squirm on a new tyre, and more grip on a tyre with little tread left. Of course in the wet it's completely the other way round. Give em a few thousand miles and I reckon they'll be a their best then.