cygnusx1

I bought a top of the line Dell XPS700 when Dell decided to try to get into "alienware type" killer gaming systems. I bought it less than two years ago, when they announced it was ready for production. It was great. I had no problems with it at all. Stable, fast, played all the latest games with all the graphics options enabled. This Monday, the PC just would not turn on. I diagnosed it as a bad motherboard. After many arguments, Dell tech also diagnosed it as a bad motherboard over the phone. Here's the fun part. My warranty expired Dec 07. It also turns out that Dell generously gave away FREE motherboard upgrades for customers that bought the XPS700. They gave them for FREE, a $500 upgrade package to turn the XPS700 into the newer XPS720. Why? Because there were TONS of complaints about the mainboard of the XPS700. Fortunately, my PC held on until this Monday so I had no reason to go to the Dell website and ask for an upgrade. I had NO IDEA about this free upgrade. Dell had announced the FREE UPGRADE PROGRAM to about a dozen online communities but never sent out a mailer or flyer to XPS700 owners! huh:icon4: Now they want to sell me a replacement XPS700 motherboard for $306!!!! They said that the FREE UPGRADE program had a deadline of Oct 13th 2007. Are you eff***ing kidding me? To top it all off, it's a proprietary motherboard layout that ONLY Dell can sell me. You make the call? I won't tell you what to do but I can no longer recommend Dell. BTW, I have been all over India. Two hours on the phone and EIGHT call transfers with hold times in between, ALL leading to my credit card to sell me a new overpriced motherboard. I ended up losing my cool. I now own a $3000 paperweight. Luckily, I found someone that had a used XPS710 motherboard laying around and picked it up for $125. :nono:

I don't know about you guys but THIS sound does it for me ALMOST as much as my hometown Ferarri's do. And THAT we already know how to do.

Go for it. Use some 1/4", 3/16", 1/2", 3/4" billet plates and bars, some extruded tubing, and bolt them together in the shape of an intake. It might be tough to get rounded flow lines unless you start with BIG billets and hog out tons of material though. $$$$ I would love to see your creation. Go for it. Me personally, I would do it all with extruded aluminum tubing and have it welded. I would like to see you design around the no-welding constraint. Should be interesting. You might want to go all-out and incorporate multiple throttle plates as an option.

Clutch

You want to be impressed? sign up to http://www.vimeo.com and upload there. No contest.

I know but you have to see this case. It's beautiful. I might have a lead on a used XPS710 motherboard that was pulled for upgrade. Fingers crossed. The case is extruded 3/16" Anodized Aluminum and the side opens up and closes as tight as a car door with rubber seals. I know it's just a case, but it's also art.

Dell transferred me seven times within an hour of held calls and dead end discussions. They cannot help me other than to sell me overpriced parts, and deny that there was ever an upgrade available for my computer. Dell knew about the poor Motherboards but failed to notify XPS700 owners. They just put out a generic announcement. By the time I had the problem with my Motherboard, the free replacement program is over and Dell "deny's" it ever existed. http://news.softpedia.com/news/Dell-Releases-the-XPS-720-Upgrade-Kit-58152.shtml http://wp.dembowski.net/2007/09/26/xps-700-to-xps-720-upgrade/ http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/06/01/dell_xps700_free/ I would just go out and buy a generic motherboard but the Aluminum Dell case does not use an available Motherboard format. It requires a Dell sourced motherboard which is 3x more expensive than an off-the-shelf. Between work and home I have spent over $10K with Dell in the past two years and get no respect. DO NOT BUY DELL!

No, it's not POSTing. It's definitely got no BIOS in it. The Mobo is wiped. I disconnected and removed all hardware and it still wont POST. No beeps is a bad thing. Looks like I am going to have to fight the corporation to get this fixed. I knew I should have built my own PC like usual. This is the first time I've bought one complete. I regret it now. Non-Standard Dell motherboard.

Mine is a gravity system and the tank is probably around 800 gallons. It cost me $260 to pump it today. Then my luck continued. I went to my office and my PC wont POST. You know what that means right? No BIOS. Frustrated, I pulled all the parts out of the Dell XPS700 one by one to see if I could get it to POST. Nothing. It wont POST right down to the motherboard. This indicates that the MoBo is dead. So I find a link to Dell Free MoBo upgrades for dissapointed XPS700 customers. Offer expires October 2007. My warranty expired 4 months ago. I am just LIVID after two days of this BS.

For a while now I everythime we drained the tub after bathing our son, I would smell septic coming up from the toilet area. I figured a vent was plugged somewhere or the toilet seal wax ring was bad. So I get up Sunday morning it's one of the best days, weather-wise, since Winter. I plan to drive the Z and do some RC flying. Being a responsible home owner and dad, I decide to change the wax ring under the toilet, first thing in the morning. Lift out the toilet, scrape the nasty wax off the base and I notice the tiles under the bowl are collapsing. I push on them and break through. The subfloor is rotten. I chisel out tile and rotten wood for about an hour to make a 18" by 18" square hole in the floor. Then I go get my shop vac to clean up. The shop vac turns on but there is no suction. The filter is caked with wet dirt. OK now I have to roll out the garden hose for the first time this season to hose off the shop vac filter. Crap, a pipe in the wall broke over the Winter, and when I fixed it, I never connected the garden hose feed line back up. OK time for some plumbing. I bust out the plumbing kit and have all the fittings I was saving for this repair. I finally get the garden hose running to clean out the vacuum filter so I can clean up the mess in the bathroom. But wait... What's that smell? Oh crap! The septic tank is leaking back into my basement. There are puddles of septic water on the floor and water is running down the wall where the wastepipe exits the house. OK time to dig up the septic tank to find the access cover and call up a pump truck. After about an hour of shoveling I found the tank cover. The tank was full, and I suspect that I need to re-grade part of my yard. It looks like rain water running off the mountain may have washed into my tank because of the sink holes I found in the lawn. Good news is that the hole in the bathroom floor is now fixed with fiber cement board, the tank has been pumped out, my garden hose, and my shop vac are working again! Whew.

This is an older thread but I never felt the results of the tach noise that Matt saw, until this weekend. I put about 100 miles on the Z this weekend and a couple times I experienced a sudden, split second, drop of power. It felt like the engine turned off while cruising around 3000rpms. I happened to catch, out of the corner of my eye, the tach needle bouncing around for a split second. I was not datalogging but I suspect this is what Matt saw in my datalog. I am going to look back through the log and see if I can find it. What can be done to improve/reduce noise on the tach signal? Is it all about wire shielding? This is how I wired it: http://www.diyautotune.com/tech_articles/how_to_megasquirt_your_280zx_turbo.htm My lean spikes were pretty much fixed with more careful tuning.

Reload the firmware one more time to confirm. I shipped my MS back to get reflashed when it didn't turn on anymore. It turns out I could have easily done it myself. I doubt the MS "burnt out". It's pretty tough from what I hear although I don't know how you wired it.

We just went through EXACTLY the same thing. Let me tell you what we found. The Sienna feels and drives like a bus. The Odyssey drives MUCH more like a car and has excellent visibility. We chose the Odyssey because of that simple fact. We wanted AWD but the Sienna with AWD was too expensive and ate waay too much fuel. We ended up looking for a used Odyssey but they hold value so well that it made more sense to get a new 2007 at the end of the model year. We ended up getting a fully loaded $32K model for $25K because Honda needed to move the 07's out. It get's 19mpg in town and 26mpg! highway. Thanks to the ECO mode that drops out 3 cylinders under light cruising. We love this thing. I never thought... More interior volume than a Suburban!

Wait a minute!!! What is 8.71 metric equivalent to in US time? That is one HECK of a launch!

And I thought all you New Englanders did was drink beer. Really interesting stuff.

Make darn sure that the "spacer" you made CANNOT fall out or you will lose most of your brakes.

15/16ZX master new, AZC brakes all around, stock 280Z brake lines and all the gizmos that were stock on the factory brakes. I have a linelock and prop valve in the rear brake feed line (should make no difference to you). The brake pedal feels firmer and reacts better and higher, tighter, than any other new car I have ever driven. It also modulates excellently. The brakes feel better than my friends new STI with the factory Brembos. I bled the brakes the traditional method all by myself with a piece of hose that has a one way check valve in it. I also bench-bled the master before installing it. I use ATE Super Blue fluid and stainless braided, teflon lined brake lines at the calipers.

Fine line between genius and crazy. Can you tell I was raised in the Bronx?

That's how I drive too. I like to keep "situations" approaching my windshield rather than my rear bumper. I try to keep my flow slightly faster than the average traffic flow. Enough can't be said about profiling the drivers you are catching up to. Do it. Drive predictively with a plan B.

I kind of like this "becoming classic" rally vid. Probably a repost from somewhere, but no harm, no foul.

The kid driving the stolen car makes me think of Canadian Bacon for some reason.

But if you go 90mph you get there faster so the engine is not running as long. Does that make your brain hurt?

Motion detecting cams/software around the house. Nothing beats it. Motion activated lights with audible beep for daytime warning are also handy. I am working on such a system right now. I also really like laser trip wire around the perimeter of the property. I don't care if I get false alarms occasionally. Oh, a shotgun comes in handy too. My favorite surveillance software is H264 WebCam. It works great on any decent PC just use a bunch of webcams at the windows or outside. http://www.h264soft.com/

I cant remember exactly, but I think you separate the white plastic ball joint from the rocker linkage, right ahead of where the boot goes, and screw it off the rod so the boot can slip on the rod. If you do this, mark the length of the rod so when you screw the ball joint back on it goes to the same length. I may be wrong but the service manual may tell you how to do something like this. It's not really all that difficult.

Sorry to hear it. My wagon got stolen about 17 years ago. Never did see it again. It was a 84 Diesel Maxima. I'm sure someone is using the crankshaft right now for a stroker though. I always thought my wagon was stolen to haul something. Why else would they steal a wagon? Hope your car gets found in good shape.