Items required:

• ~5m of battery cable – talk to an electrician friend, or use 2 gauge or larger cable – $$$?
• crimp on battery terminal lugs – 2 for battery, 2 for isolation switch, 2 for starter motor, 1 for fuse box – $4 ea?
• isolation switch – $20
• sealed battery box – $50 or so from Supercheap / Autobarn
• battery clamp – $20 or so, or make your own
• zip ties / p clamps / screws / nuts & bolts etc, as required to mount/secure all the bits and pieces

Tools required:

• Drill with suitable sized drill bits
• Suitably sized spanners/screwdrivers for nuts/bolts etc
• Battery lug crimper (borrow one, or Tradetools, $40-50)
• Wire cutters + strippers (Stanley knife will suffice for stripping, I massacred the cable itself with tin snips)

Disconnect your battery from the front of the car. DO NOT START BY REMOVING ANYTHING ELSE FROM THE ENGINE BAY… Just in case you stuff something…

Battery box goes in the boot. I was lucky to have a grommet in the boot large enough to fit my cable through, but you may need to drill through the floor of the boot. You will need to drill holes to mount the box securely also. Use suitably sized nuts/bolts/washers to ensure the box is secure and won’t tear away (plastic boxes especially).

Battery needs to be firmly secured inside the box. Use a battery clamp, or a suitable strap to tie it down to the box. Some boxes will include one or the other, but check. You may need to drill through the box / floor of the boot to mount the clamp.

My battery allows for the battery terminals to be bolted to the battery. This removes the need for standard battery terminals.

Find a suitable ground point for the battery. Mine is mounted to the chassis rail where the tow hook is bolted on, by simply undoing one of the bolts for the tow hook, slipping the bolt through the ground lug and tightening it back up. You may need to rub some of the paint off the chassis rail with sandpaper. Feed the cable through the hole to the battery box, cut it to size, and whack another lug on that end, and connect to the negative terminal of the battery.

Getting the cable from the boot to the fuse box is the tricky part. I used the starter motor as a “junction” point, essentially, running the battery cable to the starter, where it terminates, and then running another cable from the same terminal, to the fuse box.

Disconnect the existing positive wire from the starter motor. Most starters will only have one wire, as the body of the starter grounds itself to the engine. On the SR20 starter motors, this cable is held on with a 12mm nut.

From the starter motor, you will run two cables. Start with the cable running to the battery, as this will be the longest, and if you run short, you might kick yourself. Crimp one end, and connect it to the starter – hand tighten the nut back on to hold it in place, as you will need to remove the nut again. Run the wire along the bottom of the car, using whichever method suits. Avoid sharp bits, suspension, moving parts, exhaust, etc. The cable should not be allowed to rub on anything! Failure to avoid this may result in a fire or other electrical damage. Use zip ties or P-clamps to secure the cable – it should not “hang” anywhere, as if you drive along and snag it on anything, it could sever the cable, or possibly rip your battery or engine out if you’re really unlucky!!!

If you choose to run an isolation switch (recommended), install the switch, and run the cable to this. Crimp one end, and bolt it on to one of the isolation switch terminals. From the other terminal, run the cable to your battery. Again, cut and crimp as required. At this point you can test connectivity to the starter motor by short circuiting the signal terminal on the starter, with the positive terminal which runs to the battery. Be careful not to short ground to positive! If the starter motor works, continue. If it doesn’t, check your wiring, and ensure the isolation switch is turned to the “on” position.

If that all works, turn off the isolation switch and move on to the fuse box. Crimp up a new cable and run it from the starter motor again. This wire will need to be fed into your fuse box. Inspect your existing battery cable terminal, and follow the cable into the fuse box. On my S15, the battery terminal had 3 wires – one to the starter motor, and two running inside the fuse box (both seemed to run to the same terminal in the fuse box, instead of just running thicker wire).

Inside the fuse box, you will need to pull out the plastic moulding which holds the fuses/relays in place. In my case, there were clips at the sides of the mouldings which required a flat head screwdriver to flick open. You will notice in the fuse box, a number of “fusible links”, which are essentially the “larger” fuses, around 80-100 amps. The largest of these will generally be for your alternator, which is where your batter cable will connect to. Inspect the underneath of the fusible links, and trace the cable from the battery, to find where it connects to – it will generally be bolted to the underneath of the fusible link. You can unbolt the existing battery cable from this, and run your new cable from the starter motor to this fusible link.

Be mindful of anything else which may have been connected directly to the battery whilst in the engine bay. The only things which should be connected here are the fuse box and starter motor, so if you have anything else, like amplifiers etc, you will need to rewire these also.

With the cable connected to the fuse box, you can turn on the isolation switch again, and do a basic test – open the car door and check the room lamps come on. If they don’t, you’ve done something wrong. If they do, flick the ignition, and it should start up fine.

Troubleshooting

• Check all your fuses
• Check all cables are securely connected
• Check all cables are intact, and undamaged
• Check the battery voltage (should be 12v or higher when the car isn’t running)
• Check the isolation switch is turned on!

Import add from a mate:

Should mention to stay legal the battery box needs to be a sealed one. IE a Moroso one that is vented to the outside of the car. Or if your using a standard super-cheap or BCF battery box you will need a sealed or gel battery.
Engine also needs an Earth from the motor to the chassis unless I missed reading that somewhere in there.

Its also a good idea to have a spare battery key in the glove box too incase someone steals it when you park your car somewhere. I have a spare just incase, don’t want to get stuck somewhere.

I suggest using some chain or similar, permanently fixed to the chassis, to deter people from knicking the key…

Then I started playing around a little.

My first gripe. rFactor somehow “re-calibrated” my G27 in it’s settings, changing the steering such that I have to turn a full 90 degrees to the left, just to drive straight. Not a single Google help desk support issue logged… I ended up having to find the configuration file, which was hidden away in the Windows “appdata” folders in the current user profile (C:\users\username\appdata\local\rfactor). I can’t remember the exact setting I changed, but it was an X-axis setting which was set to 0.00, where the possible values are 0.00-1.00 – i.e. full left, or full right.

Secondly, car control. The slightest touch at high speed and a car will spin out – this could be realistic, but hey, I don’t go driving round at 200km/hr to test this. Correcting your steering at anything more then 10 degrees results in the car just spinning out. Google help desk support has numerous results regarding this issue… Turns out this is an internal rFactor physics issue… Fail.

So I downloaded Live for Speed, or LFS (which I had previously purchased a few years ago). The download size for starters is a lot smaller. The difference is immediately evident.

LFS, from the get go, seems like a much better designed simulator. Money surely isn’t an issue, as both simulators require you to purchase them… The simplest feature, the first thing I noticed, is that LFS includes tutorials, which is on par with Gran Turismo. I like.

LFS fails to allow customization. Something I really like about rFactor… rFactor allows you to add user created cars, including the Yashio Factory S15 which is included in the Oversteer modification. The same is also said about tracks… rFactor has thousands of user submitted tracks available, including Queensland Raceway, Lakeside, Nurburgring, Pikes Peak, etc. LFS includes 7 tracks with 54 configurations, as well as an autocross layout which you can customize.

In terms of drivability, LFS was immediately “better”… Powering out of a corner in an underpowered car didn’t result in a spin out. Correcting a spin didn’t lead to a spin. Driving normally, was, well, normal…

I’ll have to give it more of a go, but from the hour I spent on LFS, I was suitably impressed. I only wish it was customisable, or that it could at least have an S15 and a few real world / local tracks…

For car nuts like myself who have little interest in the Ford vs Holden war, this is a much welcomed change!

For all the Nissan lovers, it’s just another reason for them to brag about the R32 GTR all those years ago.

It’d be interesting to see what car manufacturers bring to the table. BMW, perhaps, could bring the M3, which would make for an interesting lineup.

Original announcement here – www.v8supercars.com.au/newsarticle/bmw-confirms-v8-interest/tabid/70/newsid/10576/default.aspx

A number of issues had led to this point, a number of which include administration, but it was widely agreed that the car scene in general has just “moved on” with life, and people just have higher priorities now.

So I put it to the people, what can we do to turn the community around? This led to something like 200 replies, most of which seemed to be quite helpful and full of good suggestions.

As part of that, I sent out a mass mail advertising the discussion, and numerous Facebook posts to try and drive some traffic to the discussion. This seemed to work pretty well at getting people back! The talk of progress seems to have brought a lot of users back on to the forum, who had otherwise moved on with life.

Our Google Analytics report shows a massive jump in traffic over the past 2 weeks!

Moving forward, there’s a lot of stuff I’m personally working on, and I’m pushing hard on the community to help out. A number of people who have offered to help in the past have continued to stick their hand up, but in addition to that, more people seem to be interested in helping to bring CB back to life. Hooray!

Shortly after, I had a great phone call with Rick White of EFI Performance. Rick is heavily involved with the forum CalaisTurbo.com.au, and had a wealth of good ideas. The most notable and acted upon idea, is re-introducing our “Feature Ride” articles. These were a big hit last year, but due to a number of issues, were cut short. The response from the new “Car of the Month” idea has been pretty inspiring. Previously, the moderator team helped decide who the next month’s feature would be, but the new plan is more involving of the community, by asking them to nominate the car they think is worthy. From there, a poll was posted and everyone has started voting.

I have also mitigated the risk of feature articles not being produced by the team, by ensuring people are interested and available to help out. I’ve tasked one of the members with writing a feature article for one of the nominated cars already, with about 3 weeks to spare, and he’s jumped to the mark quickly (not that I’m surprised, he’s a good bloke). I have also lined up 3 separate photographers to shoot the car, so the article should be brought together pretty quickly.

Most importantly, the production of the article is now alot simpler. Previously, Jamie Woods (www.digitalemu.com.au) put the article together in Adobe InDesign, which resulted in a highly graphical and creative production, based on the ideas from my original one off feature articles a few years ago, which were essentially 2 page feature articles published in PDF format, so people could print them out as a real magazine article. The original articles had alot of positive feedback, but the time and resource of doing this solely resulted in only two articles being created by me.

This time around, I’m looking to put together the article in a simple linear format, based on the same kind of layout as Speedhunters.com. I’m currently working on a WordPress installation to integrate with our Invision forum software, to present the articles in a blog format. The idea behind this is we can export the RSS feed to Facebook and Twitter, whilst allowing us to have a straight forward, manageable and “pretty” system for our articles, and any other content which may be introduced later down the line.

In addition to implementing WordPress, I need to migrate the current front page of the website into the new WordPress layout. At present, I have a custom coded page layout pulling data out of our forum database to display the latest threads, photo threads (i.e. readers rides and event photos), and Youtube videos. I initally wrote this around 4 years ago, and it has seen 3 or 4 website re-designs since then. It’s proved to be an important page for our users, as it shows a good overview of the forum and what’s going on at any point in time. The photo threads showing on the front page of the website was a key factor in my initial design 4 years ago, as it had to compete with what Boost Cruising was doing also. We realised that photos are what people want to see, and showcasing that on the front page was the best, most effective way of doing this.

Getting photos on the website is another issue entirely. We used to have a number of people who would take photos regularly and post them up on the website. Due to people’s ego’s, people leaving, or people generally thinking they had become pro photographers and not wanting to contribute anything just for the pleasure of contributing, we naturally ended up with practically no one posting photos. This still has to be improved. To start with, I announced a photo competition, a simple way for people to feel involved, and get a little bit of pleasure out of doing it. Oh, heck, I even offered a $100 prize to the winner. This got a few people posting pictures up, so good start. Next, I needed to get more established photographers on board. A quick post on Facebook resulted in two photographers offering their help to come out on cruises and events to take photos, which they have already delivered on. I guess the next part is getting the photographers to stick around, encouraging them to keep taking photos and posting them up. Some way of recognising their input will need to be established, and I hope to somehow repay them later on down the track.

Which brings me to sponsors… Rick mentioned yet another great idea to me here, as well as reviving an old idea which was acted on a few years ago. Back when we had some older members around, one of them hosted a “technical” day at his home workshop, where we all rocked up, had a BBQ and had some technical discussion around car modifications and what not. The day was a bit of a success, with some 20 members or so coming along. We’d like to start this up again when sponsors come on board, as the result is two fold – our members get to go to your workshop and have a look around, and learn a little bit more about car modification, and you get to show them around your workshop, essentially face-to-face advertising and building a bit of a trust relationship.

The other idea Rick gave me was video production. I have got a potential sponsor interested in this already, who I pitched the idea at. What I’m keen to do, is basically produce a video for the business, taking the public into the operations of it and showing them what the business does. For say, a workshop that does fabrication work, we’d go into the workshop, and show the processes involved in fabricating something, like an exhaust or roll cage, whilst interviewing the people who work there for a bit of commentary. Not exactly ground breaking stuff, but hey, it’s essentially a TV production advertising your business, albeit on the internet.

There’s alot of work to be done, and I’m truly committed to making it all work. I have a number of people backing me and it’s really looking positive. Whether it works or not is the question, but I’m optimistic that with the right people, it can turn around and we’ll be able to start doing the things we always wanted to with the community, like track days and stuff… Good luck me!

I worked out that the starter motor issue was simply just a bolt coming loose and so the starter motor gear wasn’t engaging with the flywheel. Saved me some $$$

Next, I tried whacking a Microtech X4 igniter in. Tried firing it up a few times, nothing…

I was quite frustrated at this point, til I realised it was turning over really slowly to begin with (it’s meant to crank at around 300rpm, was only doing about 150rpm at best). Checked the battery, jump started it, and then found that the air con belt was too tight… un-tightened the air con bracket and voila. 300rpm cranking.

So that pretty much got it all running. It’s still a fair way off, with lots of little bits and pieces to tidy up. Electrically, everything is sorted, except the tune. I need to get the idle tuned up right too, my wideband O2 sensor is reading an AFR of around 18 on idle, which isn’t very nice at all!! Yet to find the actual cause of the high AFR, it looks to be timing related, so that will be my first thing to look at.

We are a South East Queensland based car club with members from Brisbane, Toowoomba, Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast. The members drive vehicles ranging from Nissan Skyline’s, 180sx and Silvia’s to a variety of Toyota’s and the odd Honda…. We pride ourselves on modifying our cars in a tasteful way with more focus on performance and handling than purely for looks.

Our members enjoy and compete casually in motorsports such as Drift racing, Drag racing and Circuit/Hill Climb events.

Check out their website at www.nakamaworks.com

If you care to stumble across it, it’s over here -> www.facebook.com/ausperformance

I will hopefully use it a bit more over the next year, I aim to have atleast 500 “likers” before March 2011. And with that, I hope to run some competitions and what not to get people involved… Here’s hoping!

It’s been an interesting week or so of discussion since Mark Skaife’s scathing report on Australia’s road safety report on Channel 7′s “Sunday Night” on 13th June 2010. At the dinner table, amongst friends, and on web communities alike, everyone has their own bit to chip in on the subject.

Personally, I couldn’t agree more with Mark Skaife on a number of the issues he raised, and ideas he proposed. Some of his points:

• Variable speed limits (i.e. from 70 to 80, to 60, to 80 all on the same road)
• Raising the speed limit of our “high quality” highways (not to be mistaken for sarcasm, more so, our one or two highways that are actually pretty good) from a ridiculous 80-100km/hr to a reasonable and safe speed for that surface – 140km/hr
• Banning parents from teaching their kids how to drive
• Better driver training – “reverse parks and 3 point turns don’t save lives” – teach kids how to handle the cars!
• Instead of “wasting money on pink batts and solar heating”, do as Germany do, give rebates for people to buy new cars, instead of old bombs.

These are just the highlights of Skaife’s report. Of course, the media/government picked it apart, and what resulted was everyone having a jump on the bandwagon free-for-all at Skaife for suggesting our speed limits should be 140km/hr. Ridiculous. He was quick to set the books right, and reminded the media and the government of the real issues at hand.

Despite boasting the statistics to back the common-sense initiatives he proposes, Skaife’s words have fallen on deaf ears with the majority adhering to the ’speed kills’ mantra and immediately condemning his suggestions.

- caradvice.com.au

I really commend Mark Skaife’s bold move to suggest how our roads and cars should be operated for the better future.

Additionally, I have some points of my own that I put together in discussion over at Cruising Brisbane. This post below written by myself was sparked by an article posted on CarAdvice.com.au regarding proposed P-plate laws changing for Queenslander’s, allowing you to gain an unrestricted open license in return for completing advanced driver training courses.

ECS, ABS, blah. These don’t teach you anything.

Don’t blame the car. Blame the driver.

If I had of rolled my Daihatsu Charade when I was 18, doing say 120km on a suburban street, would you blame the car for my death? Or me for being a complete #@$#head?

1. Experience pays – no one can really teach you how retarded other drivers are – and how to handle retarded situations
2. Know how to handle the car in all conditions – including when its out of control
3. Teach kids how dangerous cars can be, make sure they are held responsible and accountable for their actions – news/media/Police can’t show you this – in this day and age where kids play video games and kill each other with no remorse, some shocking pictures on the news means shit all. Driving should not be “scary”.
4. Driver confidence NEEDS to be evaluated. Unconfident drivers should be banned or be forced to return to their learners. Over confident drivers need to be woken up and shown they are not invincible.

Maybe some contradictory points there… but food for thought nevertheless

It will be interesting to see how far the ideas, comments and suggestions of the Australian public are interpreted by the government(s) and how this will shape the future of our roads. It’s sure to remain an active topic in my corner of the internet at Cruising Brisbane, that’s for sure.

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