johng

Damn. Here I was, thinking "ok the home brew can rest for a little while, I've got a new toy to play with". Well it seems you can't get away from the home brewers. I'm an AG brewer (all grain) meaning that I don't use kits, but make it from the raw ingredients. I have to say that the best brewing forum in Austrlaia is aussie home brewer http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com which has a wealth of information. Be carefull of using krausen as an indicator with a lager. The lager yeast is a bottom fermenter, and depending on the strain, will not produce as much krausen as an ale yeast included with most kits. If it's a dry yeast you used, you should first rehydrate the yeast in warm water (say 30deg or so ) for 10 minutes until it turns into a nice cream. Then introduce some cooled wort a bit a time to bring the temp down, not too quick or you will shock the yeast and it will fall out of suspension. Keep the temp down particularly with a lager yeast to 12-15 degrees, and let it ferment slowly. Higher temps will tend to make more fuesel alcohols, and you will end up with cats piss. As the lager temps place more strain on the yeast, pitch a larger amount (2 packs) and don't drop the temp too quickly. A lager should also be "lagered" (stored cold) for at least 4 weeks after primary fermentation to clear up the taste. Can give you lots more info, but the worlds best resource is available for free at http://www.howtobrew.com - give it a read, then come back and ask.

My suprise was how much fuel it used when driven sedately. I've owned a highly modified turbo RX7 in the past - a car known to drink fuel. But when driven normally, it returned much better fuel economy than the T. Sure, give it a bootfull and you'd swear it was puring straight out of the exhaust in liquid form, but driven in traffic it was not all that much worse than the 1.8l astina I also had as a runabout. The T seems to drink fuel in traffic to an extent I never imagined.

I bought the wife a Yaris, and I agree, great little cars actually. But that's way off topic.

Well I've only had it for a couple of weeks, but my consumtion is terrible. If I drive like an absolute granny, only using like 1cm of throttle, the best I can get is 16.7l/100k. If I drive it like a normal car, I'm on like 19L/100k. If I drive it like a sports car, it's well into the 20's, and if I thrash it... This thing drinks more fuel than my RX7 ever did.

So you are probably looking at $80k+ for a dunnydore. Stuffed if I'd pay that for a Late model camira or a falcon.

Firstly, thanks for all the responses. Looks like my cheap upgrade is pointless, and I may as well put the $400 towards a $2000 upgrade .. While my head agree's with you, my experience doesn't. I had various brake upgrades on cars in the past, even cars that I could lock up with the standard brakes, I found could stop a hell of a lot quicker with real brakes.

Hey Guys, I'm sure the following questions would have been asked at one time or another, but after reading 5 pages of brake threads, I couldn't see it. I've got a BA MkII, and frankly the brakes are sh*t. Maybe because I've driven lighter cars most of my life, but by god I jumped on them the other day, ABS coming in and out, but the car didn't seem to stop real quick at all. So an upgrade for me. Now it appears that the PBR upgrade kit is the gun upgrade, but when I check out the specs, it doesn't list the MKII as compatible - it lists "to 9/04" which is the Mk1. Has anyone here fitted it to the MKII ? Secondly, seeing it costs so bloody much, im considering going with a simple pad upgrade + DBA 4000 series rotors. Once again, not sure if the 4504 is compatible with the MKII as it just says 2002 - onwards in the spec. ANyway, DBA will be able to answer that I'm sure, but has anyone done this upgrade, and can they comment on how well it worked? Did it make a big difference? Has anyone done this upgrade and moved onto the whole PBR kit that can comment on the difference between them?

It's been a few things... mostly I think the car was just a lemon, teamed with an incompetent dealer. Like the two times he got it back, drove 5 minutes down the road, and cooked the auto. The engine fire caused by them leaving an oily rag on the exhaust. The incorrect oil in the gearbox. The fact that the current diff is apparently full of lapping paste from the factory. The fact that somone fitted the incorrect radiator.And the sneaking suspicion that the dealer has been pulling a swifty on Ford by not actually always replacing parts. It's been with a different dealer since June on the current repair job, and they are still fixing all the problems with it. Unfortunately due to all the problems with it, Ford is doing things like sending the gearbox back to the factory for the engineers to inspect etc to figure out what has been going wrong.

If only I could tell you the story of a bloke I know.. I won't go into the full detail though as it's all gone legal I believe. Suffice to say, he bought a BA MKII XR8 ute at the beginning of the year, yet it only has 7,000 k's on the clock, and has been in the dealer for most of it's life. I think it's on gearbox number 3, diff number 2, has had multiple cooling system replacements, and now has the motor being rebuilt due to melted pistons (the complete list of things is so long, I doubt anybody would believe me). In the middle of this, his friendly dealer black-listed his car as being heavily modified, so all the other dealers refused to look at it. It was only when he went legal that Ford claimed that they had "made a mistake" - seeing as his car is stock.

Worse part is if you find the bastards and take an iron bar to em, you're the one that will go to jail

Phew! It only has 19000k on it, but I had sudden images of buying a 19k demo car... Thanks for that.

Hey guys, just picked up the BA MK II (6sp manual) today, and have been out driving it around. I've noticed however that there is a "clunk" when releasing the clutch that is apparent somtimes. I can always replicate it by coasting, changing gear, leaving the clutch in a couple of seconds, then releasing it. Is this symptomatic of these gearboxes or should I be having words with the dealer tomorrow?

Damn some of you have expensive insurance premiums. I remember I used to pay $1800 a year when I was 21 in a modified turbo rx7 and thought that was expensive. My insurance now is $800 a year fully comp in the xr. Guess having no speeding tickets, no accidents, and being over 25 helps. May change soon though, I swear the rx7 was radar proof.

Maybe he totally lot contol and spun it? You can get some pretty weird accidents until you work out what happened. Just ask my mate who had his front bumper removed by a guy who lost control who was driving behind him at the time.

cool man.. big day tomorrow then.... so when you going to up the power? ← Thought I'd wait until at least Thursday..

Few quiet beers tonight, need to get up early to pick up me new beast <----

Well when I bought the xr last week I went searching google, and found fordforums. Wasn't overly impressed, but then I found a link here, registered just to read the link, and was totally stoked when I discovered the depth of knowledge on here.

You know it's often the guys that make $50 an hour than don't want to pay somone $20 for a fiddly job that would take them 2 hours to do themselves. Me, I used to be charged out at $220 an hour (god I wish it came to me) so I always pay people for stuff that takes skill. It does cost me, but funnily enough most of the time when I get something done, it works first time, every time. It's amazing the extra level of service you get when you slip the guy an extra $20 every so often for beer money.