Zzzz...

Erhmmm i think i have to step in here and clarify something Nissan and Renault are NOT the same company... they are an ALLIANCE , where the best of each is shared to ensure the highest value is provided to the end user... ( no one rules over the other... and no one has a say in each others business, but they share resources to improve efficiencies.) So Nissan can give presence to Renault outside of Europe, share technology ( V6 engines , petrol engines, 4WD, Off road know how etc as well as reliability standards...) and Renault can give competitive suppliers, diesel technology, and cost reductions through bulk Both can share developments which will end up as different and synergetic products... So not the same... I just though I clarify this for the sake of anyone working for Nissan in this forum.... Jeee i can talk some babble... I am under impression also that the VQ- is a Nissan developed, series of engines, which I though was sourced by Renault for the VelSatis, not the other way round...

from what i can gather : ( i have been checking the owners manual ) and as a rough over dealer sloppy timing... 0. open hood and unscrew brake reservoir cap and wrap with some cloth to prevent brake fluid spillage to paint work.. 1. Jack up 1 corner= 1 minute 2. Remove wheel= 1 minute 3. Remove 2 clips from brembo caliper. = 30 seconds 4. Remove retaining pins and spring. = 10 seconds 5. remove pads = 1 minute 6. push brake piston in ( by hand is possible)= 1-2 minutes 7. Copper grease the pad. 1 minute 8. Slot pad in. = 2 minutes 9. Fit pins and sprin = 1 minute 10. Fit pin retaining clips. = 1 minute 11. Fit wheel again= 2 minutes 12. Torque check the wheel fixings..=30 seconds I think it can be done in around 10 minutes per wheel, with dealer lifts and tools... so 40 minutes which will end up being 1 hour...plus pads... the annoying thing is that 2 brake pads will take 20 minutes but i bet they still charge an hours labour...

GT-R is GT-R there will not be "seconds" there will only be one car i think...which will be the "halo" car , the same way the zed was the "halo" car up to now... Nissan are pretty good at making affordable Front engine Rear Wheel Drive sporty cars... and the market is saturated with Front Wheel Drive Hot hatches...but not that many affordable RR wheel drives like you use to get in the 80's and Nissan won't try and compete against so many Front wheel drive euro hatches... including partner megane ( that's why they canned the almera and announced the stop of production of primera...) So then Nissan can cater for 4WD with Patrol, Pathfinder, Navara, Xtrail, Qashqai (Covers all segments possible for SUV/Offroaders) RWD SPORTS with GT-R, 350Z, and something else(??????) (Small sporty is not yet covered by Nissan...) There is definetely a gap in there for the 2.0 engined smaller Rear Wheel Drive huh? Also Qashqai uses a brand new 2.0 Nissan engine... no doubts there is some tunable FI performance in there somewhere... Nissan will let the Euro lot battle it in the hot hatch market and the sedan categories...

could it be this? perhaps it could be this? OK i bet it is this one... or maybe this one... soooooo many possibilities...

I still think those pics are maybe 09 Zed or something like it... a smaller engined compact sports car will not be based on the zed platform...(it would be over-engineering it! and make the cost of the car too high...) I am going to hazzard a guess it will be based on the C-Platform of Renault Nissan Alliance (currently used for Qashqai and new Xtrail), or perhaps even a stretched version of the small platform ( MICRA, CLIO ) and this latter would make sense since we know the clio can handle 200bhp. this is what the urge looks like

it looks like a test mule ( underfloor, brake, etc of a new development and the upper body is an existing model to camouflage it... dimension wise seems round about the same as the zed, not that shorter (apart from the headlamp bumper lines being pushed back a little... Next ZeD? rather than small coupe?

I think this is japan being overly gadgety ... As oposed to UK where double sided sticky tape will do... in Japan you are required to fix the number plate securely to the car (so screws or bolts are the minimum, and because all number plates are the same size and fixings are standardised, they designed this holder which is securely fixed to the vehicle body and allow you to screw it/bolt it to the frame and also to apply the tamper proof seal they apply to one of the bolt by the Nippon equivalent DVLA....just being kind and thoughtfull to their domestic customers...

I am not sure of the exact details but I will put my money on IT being a homologation requirement for Whole Vehicle Type Approval by the OEM. In the EU law there will be a requirement for a side indicator light which is visible from the Front back and side, it is intermittent, it is mounted in the front third of the vehicle, with a minimum height from ground of "X" mm. and a visibility angle of "X" degrees....blabla bla That is why every car manufactured for europe have them, and even the mirror mounted I think you will find can be seen from the drivers behind you. I think however for single vehicle type approval this might not be so strict, because if you are to import an US spec car it will not have it, and I cannot remeber if seeing US cars with add on side indicators (like Jap-imports have add-on rr fog lights...) I cannot find on the MOT anything about it, other than the generic "if the car is fitted with side indicators , check them for operation" So my calculated guess is that this is a Whole Vehicle Type Aproval requirement for manufacturers to homolgate vehicles for all markets, but after this, it is your duty to maintain the vehicle in a roadworthy condition as highlighted by the MOT test standards... and since the basic rule is "if it is there check it" if it is not " don't check it" I think you would probably be OK... however I would double check with your local friendly MOT tester...

let's give him a chance... loudmouth than he is...

details?

63 microns... they might as well just waved the can of paint past the car.... I cannot understand how Nissan in Japan can get away with this level of paint, without more strong complaints from customers... specially on cars like these... I guess joe blogs does not know, until it goes wrong, and they must be playing the odds of how many will go wrong or be checked.. my faith in Nissan dwindles by the minute ...

I can imagine it won't show it as an example on the MOT testers manual but that does not mean it is not legal ( to the word of the law...) I agree it is stretching the word of the law a little... but I bet the rover 75 number plate shape does not appear on the MOT testers examples...

ok I think DS2500, peurely on the fact it is european, developed and is an upgraded version of the OEM... red stuff will probably do the job very well actually, but i am worried about the effect on the discs... maybe just paranoid, but an agressive track marketed pad, with low dust reports etc. means the pad is not shedding material, which I guess must be forcing the discs to shed a bit more material...for heat I think I might upgrade to 5.1 at the same time... just to be over cautious I have not got enough information on the other pads to make an informed decision... Thanks all ... I need them pretty quick so I am going to go with the Ferodo Pads... I think they'll be the best overall

it does not say it has to be rectangular... and the 11 mm border can be achieved... so long as we can check the british standards and postcode etc... is included in the plate... I think I am going to find out where I can get them and give them a try ...

I am sure they will not allow it purely for Speed camera recognition, but actually I THINK THE LAW is a bit vague in this area... Also the MOT can fail it IF 1. A registration plate: a. missing or incorrect -> Not APPLICABLE b. so insecure that it is likely to fall off -> Not APPLICABLE c. letter or figure missing or incomplete -> Not APPLICABLE d. faded, dirty, deteriorated or obscured, (for example by a towbar so that it is likely to be misread or is not easily legible by a person standing approximately 20 metres to the front/rear of the vehicle) -> Not APPLICABLE 2. A registration plate with: a. letters and figures obviously incorrectly spaced -> Not APPLICABLE They are correctly spaced b. letter or figure not correctly formed or likely to be misread -> Not APPLICABLE c. a letter or figure which is obviously not of equal width along its entire length -> Not APPLICABLE d. any feature on a number plate that has the effect of changing the appearance or legibility of any of the characters, so that the true identity of the vehicle is less easily identified. -> Not APPLICABLE , but maybe the police will argue that it is identifiable by humans but not easily recogniseable by some device ... I still think it is -grey-ish-ly legal, but because the revenue making machines will not recognise it, the powers that be...will try and make your life hard ... It is similar to those Rover 75 number plates with Non-rectangular plates... I am tempted...

Every day usage Countryside roads, speeds around 70mph , and when i am in germany ( ) tendo to use the motorway, sorry autobahn, around 80-100mph. However living near milton keynes, I have experienced brake fade on all my previous cars including this one!!! (Basically part of a regular route i do... is around 4.5 miles and 12 roundabouts roughly divided into quarter miles straights and roundabouts, which require accel out of the roundabout, get up to speed, then hard on the late braking... round the roundabout, accel hard back up to speed , then hard late brake etc... all this within 70 mph of course... After the 8 th roundabout the brakes start to get a little hot... If I can get a Street biased pad with a high-ish "mu" coeficcient (0.4-0.5) and good performance at normal operating temperature ranges (i guess 80% of all my driving) , but capable of preventing brake fade at high temperature for 10-20% of their usefull driven life... I'll be happy.

I read somewhere that the "LAW" requires the number plates to have a certain font, a certain spacing and a certain amount of background around the lettering ( for example 10mm) in which case this number plate would be legal as the border around the lettering meets the "word of the law" ... ? right? anybody know? I want to know because this looks very cool....

Thanks all thanks for the advice guys... I am looking at the project mu and the TYPE HC+ (plus) 　 has a similar friction coefficient to the ds2500 and red stuff... now need to know what is bad about them... the mintex seem good as well but i am guessing disc wear will be greater... hummmm big phil, how long have you run any of the pads you sell ? do you replace them early to check other products or do you run them till they die?

humm don't get it... all red all have the same alloys plastic windows everyone seem to be copying each other... no imagination... at least some one could have gone for some alloys from halfords or something... a nice racing Nismo style down the side and maybe a few different colours,.... ACTUALLY that must have been amazing to see and hear ... dammit i wish I knew this was going on... I would have gone to have a peek...

A W E S O M E and good publicity for the club

thanks guys ... yes i am thinking at the initial stages of living with new pads the first impression will be of a step up compared to previous... Sarnie seems to have the edge on experience here as he has had a few pads ... thanks ! (did i just say Sarnie is helpfull!?!?!?! ) The dust bit I can live with, I assume that extra dust means that the pad is shedding it.. therefore material wear must be greater than RED STUFF, but so long as the performance is consistently better over the life of the pad, I am happy with that... even if it does not last as long as Red stuff... as for MinteX yes... i am reseaching these to find out a bit more about them... but I guess mintex are not going to show the negatives of these very new parts ...

OK I am going to buy some brake pads, so I want advice from TRADERS and USERS who have had more than one different type of NON OEM pad on their car e.g Red stuff and Ferodo DS2500.. My options are RED STUFF (Which are currently the cheapest) FERODO DS2500 (Which are same brand as OEM but higher grade) ENDLESS Vita Nuova (3rd party performance part , but not a lot known...) I am always very paranoid about something that claims TOP performance and has the cheapest price... There must be a compromise in there somewhere, and if I don't know what it is it makes me very dubious... but at the same time I prefer to pay the best price, so long as I am happy with the overall picture for the part. I don't want to start TRADE-WARS between different sellers or users...but i would like to get the pro's and con's for each product as much as possible... If I have the pro's and CON's I will be more likely to go with those options than one where I only know the PRO's I'll be honest... currently i want to go with ferodo out of piece of mind in my head...but am i paying a lot for what i can get with red stuff? sorry for the long winded explanation... let the debate begin... THANKS

SUV seating (mine) or F1 Seating... (Manual adjust seats...)

it is not that difficult to understand that a new buyer will be interested in getting the higher spec models available... is it? specially when it is so easily identifiable from manufacturers spec. plus you know the cd skips and i do...but new buyers don't .....and the BOSE name, and subwoofer... and the leather and the heated, etc. etc... all count for something when trying to sell second hand ... the most important factor in deciding cost of second hand cars surely is the mileage and year... so for the same year and mileage you want to try and get the most spec for your money

I have checked a japan spec cloth manual adjust seat and my leather electrics GT because of all the electric gubbins beneath my leather seats you sit higher in the cabin compared to the manual trimmed seats With the manual cloth trimmed seats you sit lower and more cocooned in the cabin rather than ON the cabin... also allegedly cloth will grip you better than leather round corners... I think apart from the expensive looks and better resale value, cloth are better for actual use.