American Muscle Photo Hunt Contest

American Muscle Photo Hunt


American Muscle Photo Hunt Contest

$250 Gift Certificate Grand Prize

Find All 12 Irregularities To Enter To Win!



Think you have a keen eye? Then tune your visual acuity toward the AmericanMuscle.com Photo Hunt Contest for your chance to win a $250 American Muscle Gift Certificate! With summer right around the corner, why wouldn't you want to test your luck on one of our coolest contests yet.


This contest is pretty easy folks. In fact, it's just like the infamous bar game. All you have to do is study the two photos below and find the 12 differences in them. Then list the 12 differences and/or circle them in a photo editor if you know how and email them to contests@americanmuscle.com. It's as simple as that. The $250 winner will be drawn randomly from all of the correct entries submitted. Good luck!

Click Here to see the Mustang photos and start huntin'.

Cam cover gasket change

My engine has been seeping oil from the front of the cam cover for ages so I got a new Ford gasket and half moons and replaced them. The cam caps at the front of each cam had a lot of oil under them and I suspect that this is where the oil has been leaking out. I added a dash of liquid gasket under each of these and put it all back together. It seems to be holding oil better now.

Cam cover off
cosworth cam cover removed

Looked a bit dirty so I gave it a clean
cosworth dirty cam cover

New gasket on, cam cover back on and hopefully less oil seeping out all over the engine. However it is a Cosworth so it has to ooze somewhere.
cosworth cam cover

Technical diagnosis at Enhanced Performance

I went down to see Luke at Enhanced Performance near Gatwick. Luke's an experienced Cosworth tuner. He put my car on his rolling road and we tried to find the hi-rpm misfire that has plagued the car. Fuel starvation seems to be the issue and Luke looked closely at the fuel lines which run under the car, pump, swirl pot, filter and tank and recommended I change them all.

Luke's going to run braided fuel lines through the interior and will replace the tank. I considered going for an ally tank in the boot but this would require a panel to prevent fuel escaping into the driver cabin in an accident. For simplicity I'm going for a replacement Ford fuel tank which keeps the weight down low.

I'll collect the car next week. Here are some pics:
Enhanced Performance workshop on a sunny spring morning:
cosworth enhanced performance

In good company:
cosworth enhanced performance


On the rolling road:
cosworth rolling road

cosworth rolling road

Silverstone

Had a thoroughly annoying day at Silverstone. Arrived in the morning in a confident mood but had my high end mis-fire come back in qualifying. It was nice to be in a tiled garage for the day but I decided to retire early, lick my wounds and seek professional help for my car.

Here's a couple of pics of my car in the garage at Silverstone behind Stacy Vickers' orange RX7 alongside a couple of M3s.
cosworth silverstone garage

cosworth garage silverstone


And a brief moment on track:
cosworth race silverstone

New calipers and discs

The rear discs and calipers that I have been using get very hot on track so I took the decision to upgrade to wider calipers and vented discs from a 4WD Cosworth. This should keep the rear braking cooler and reduce the excessive wear on the pads that I have experienced. I fitted new discs and calipers to the rear and changed the disc type from drilled and grooved to solid grooved. I also changed the front discs at the same time.

New 4WD caliper on the right, old 2WD on the left:
cosworth brands circuit


New vented discs next to the non-vented 2WD item:
cosworth brands circuit


New calipers and new grooved discs in place on the rear:
cosworth brands circuit


Front discs on:
cosworth brands circuit

Brands Hatch

Had an annoying first race of the season at Brands Hatch in March. The car handled well and felt well balanced but had developed a misfire at 4,500rpm and it would not rev any higher. Through qualiying and two races we failed to diagnose the problem and I finished both races well down the field. We changed the plugs and checked the electrics and sensors.

After getting the car home I got some advice and checked the phase sensor and the crank position sensor which turned out to be out of adjustment. I adjusted this to 0.8mm and the car seems to be working well now. Next race is at Silverstone National on April 19th.

First race finished 22nd, second race finished 19th. Best lap time was 1.00.5. All timings from the TSL Timing site.

cosworth brands circuit

cosworth brands hatch

brands hatch race

Nissan Australia cuts white-collar jobs



By TERRY MARTIN

Marketing general manager among managerial staff made redundant at Nissan Australia


NISSAN Australia’s general manager of marketing Ross Booth is one of a number of managerial staff made redundant in recent weeks at the prominent Japanese marque.

Corporate communications manager Jeff Fisher has confirmed to GoAuto that Mr Booth was one of two members of Nissan Australia’s management operating committee to leave – the other was company secretary and legal counsel Colin Buckley – and that an unspecified number of other white-collar positions had been cut.

GoAuto sources have indicated that this amounts to 20 per cent of staff at Nissan Australia’s head office in Dandenong, Victoria. Mr Fisher said he was unable to calculate a percentage, but said the actual number of job cuts was “less than 20”.

Nissan Australia’s general manager of sales and network development Stephen Collins has added marketing to his portfolio, while Mr Buckley’s responsibilities have been absorbed within the management operating committee.

“He (Mr Booth) departed the company along with a number of other people,” Mr Fisher told GoAuto, adding that Nissan staff repatriated from head office in Japan and elsewhere had assumed some of the other roles.

“We are undergoing a period of renewal and looking at what our resources and personnel skill sets are to face up to what we believe is a changing market.

“So we have new people starting here in different roles, and with different tasks that are different to some of the roles and responsibilities that were the expectations of the people who are departing.

“We’ve made some structural changes within departments here, put people on to different jobs, moved people into other areas and into areas where we think there is a developing need. So some people are being chartered with new responsibilities and expectations.”

As an example, Mr Fisher said one staff member moved from aftersales parts into a financial management area.

He also emphasised that Nissan Australia was not “restructuring” but “reassessing priorities” in response to the current economic conditions.

“I wouldn’t count it as a ‘restructuring’. This goes on all the time. We’re in the middle of a global financial situation which probably fashions the term ‘restructuring’ for a lot of organisations. But we don’t see it as that,” he said.

“We see it as a consistent process of reassessing priorities and applying the resources that we have – or finding new ones to get us shaped up properly for the future. That includes the market scenario as it plays out at the moment, but also looking for growth in the longer-term.

“Around the world, Nissan is looking at readdressing market situations and, yes, we’re impacted here in this country. But, as you know, the United States and Europe are much more acute in terms of the challenges that they face, and these sorts of things are happening (there) on a much larger scale and very, very frequently.”

The white-collar redundancies at Nissan Australia have occurred around four weeks after the company announced it would cut 57 jobs at its casting plant in Dandenong south, following production cuts and reduced demand from Nissan Motor Co and third parties.