Power

Based on the various responses including yours and our friend with the CPA as a spouse, I'd agree it sounds dodgy as hell. I'm going to see an accountant and let them decide. My thought would be, as I said, invoice for replacement exhaust for example and you have a significant portion of the work already. No fraud or even on the balance of probabilities any intent to deceive - I think an audit would be hard pressed to prove that my reason for such a replacement wasn't 'cause I hated the look, or sound, or thought Ford Service were dickheads for not fixing the rattle on my new car (as reported actually) and I'm just a nutter who spent the money. Maybe even that isn't 'legal'. I tend to think that adding $6K for THE LOT at the end of fin year, or even over a year on a new car would attract attention - the wrong type of attention! Then again 1/2 this year and 1/2 next year..... In any case, I'll see what happens. Cheers.

Appreciate the advice & comments. Something to work with.

Yeah, utes are BEST for the tax issue. No friggin around with % of personal use you lucky bas*ard. I'm actually considering getting it done (or at least paying in full) in the next 9 days if it's deductible to take advantage of an immediate refund of course. I can't find any info to say it's not deductible. A percentage will always be for personal use in a sedan. Even a tyre pressure guage or weekly car washes are deductible for those not in the game. It does occur to me that maybe the tax dept have a ruling for this type of thing where it falls into 100% personal use even on a car used to obtain income - having "tyre frying" power doesn't provide for income. I guess a huge sound system or custom interior or flames and so on would be viewed the same way. Then again, who is to say I'm not a nutter who just replaces bits of his car all the time. Re your point: I can't see that as a car purchased in April and comprehensively insured that such amounts wouldn't be covered by warranty or insurance.

Do we have some members with some tax expertise or past experience? I use my car for work - sales - so a percentage of all expenses, lease repayments etc are tax deductible. Most of this amount is by way of car allowance. Can anyone imagine a $6000 expense for an APS Phase II + valve springs + engineers certificate as being allowed as an expense in the same way? Then again I'm sure I could get invoices for "Replacement Exhaust" + "Replacement Cold Air Intake" and so on.....no lie there.

Only scanned through this thread......but anyway, for what it's worth: Visited my Ford Dealer last week and spoke to the Assistant Service Manager directly, to discuss all the fixes required for 3,000kM service so I can get them done in one day & booked it in for later. I raised the subject of my forthcoming APS Phase II & warranty. He was very open minded about it and basically said "shhhhh don't tell me" <wink> <wink>. Regardless he said if 'noticed' and you had thrown a rod or something, well you get what you expect. He pointed out that it is not just the dealers decision to provide warranty and gave a prime example: - XR6T had come in with a blown turbo. - Service call Ford for a replacement part. - Ford refuse prior to sending a factory rep to inspect the vehicle!!! - Ford rep arrives some time later and asks to see the car and notes custom exhuast etc. Went over it with a fine tooth comb and apparently knew what to look for. - Warranty refused by Ford Australia with no 'help' from this dealer. So there you go. I'm not going to mention the dealer by name for obvious reasons and 'cause he's doing me some favours. Greater Sydney Area.

From new I had heaps of soot all over the rear bumper/boot. It seems to have suddenly improved at around 3,500km. I've heard it's pretty common when new.

Funny, I was reading a bunch of forum links elsewhere on exactly this subject a couple of days back. The concensus, for what it's worth, was that most critisice Shell's Optimax - which I've always used with the T. Main critisicm was that they all beleived Optimax was not a 'refined' 98RON but rather had additives to acheive this number - the point being they all said that it was the most variable RON and that the extra additives including whatever boosted the Research Octane Number sort of evaporated easily and quickly, perhaps even whilst sitting in your tank. Most prefer any other 98RON. Apparently, and the Caltex website *seems* to back this up, their Vortex 98 (not Vortex that's just 95RON) is a minimum 98RON wheras all others are an average 98RON. The usual experts on the other forums claimed they knew this to be a fact as well. Anyway, was 2K's from dry and filled to the brim with Caltex Vortex 98 and subjectively I felt it might, maybe, be better. Sure cost a lot more.

I may be interested so put me on your tentative list just for now. I gather you intend importing them from the USA, and on-sell at AUD with shipping costs and profit, to sell at rate mentioned - OK by me. Sorry for all the O/T info but it is very related by way of laws outside W.A. I'm going to have some hard-core factual information from the NSW Highway Patrol in regards to, simply "what do they actually do with detector-detectors, are they using them succesfully, how many busts via this technology alone, etc." I think this will be of value to all, none the least the original poster!

For those outside WA, especially NSW like me, I'm having a friend check with the NSW Highway Patrol to see if anyone actually gets done by these detector-detectors. About a week or so and I'll have the info. For those who care....

Not doubting your sincerety and yes, knowing the theory from my radio background I agree, but if switched off you can't detect an LO full stop! Even if you detect it going by....which car? In Sydney I don't see many or in recent months ANY Police sitting by the side of the road or hiding in the bushes trying to bust people (remeber they replaced the highway patrol with cameras ). Stop them all and strip them like a full on drug search to find a little black box in a secret hidy-hole? Even if you do detect an LO, man is that going to be prone to interference and being so sensitive it's going to get it's front end overloaded from almost any transmitter of decent power. Having said all that I could be wrong and people are getting caught every day. But has anyone ever read a newspaper report, seen any articles on the 'Net, any police pulications, ANYTHING to show a single real case of someone busted by a radar-detector-detector? It would make great news and I'm sure the police PR people and the media would be right on it. I'm not advocating breaking the law, I'm just questioning wether the reality of the fear generated by these detector-detectors is BS.

Funny thing though, I've never heard of anyone caught by a radar detector-detector. Plenty by not hiding them and so on. Despite the investment in technology, I wonder if it is really just an investment in public perception that you can't get away with it no matter what.

Interested for NSW. Illegal in NSW and (from the experience of a mate) you will if found (a) have the item confiscated on the spot, get a fine, end up in court. Big hassle. He was STUPID as he had it in PLAIN VIEW and was pulled over for an unrelated issue until Mr Policeman said "Oi! Whadayaweaveere!". I've read a lot about radar detector-detectors and believe they are in most/all states (except WA of course). I go with some of what's said about these detector-detectors, especially the incredible difficulty of actually determining which car that just went by had the detector in it, and detector-detectors would naturally be prone to heaps of false alarms. Having a radio background it all makes sense. I doubt they are very effective despite the HUGE sums of taxpayer money spent on them. So I guess given the above, you just hide it REAL well, and switch off whenever possible with a remote switch. MY QUESTIONS: 1) Has anyone actually heard of anyone being caught by these radar detector detectors? 2) How do the radar detectors perform with laser speed detection (they have this capability - most anyway), any real life stories? TIA.

Since this old thread is back to life: I agree 100% with this post. Having spent two years involved in NSW Fire Brigades fairly recent changes in the way fire panels for prescribed buildings are linked to the Brigades - most being done by dual path (redundancy for extreme reliability) using both GSM signals & PSTN (your normal 'phone line), I can speak from experience at around 1,000 transmitting sites. GSM signals are sent for alarms of course, but also daily or more often to test systems. GSM gets through FAST, but even then, if the network is busy you can have a delay (in fire alarms the system would then dial via PSTN in such an event). A point VERY few people understand is that even your ability to connect to a busy cell via GSM is dependant on your priority - I.e. your plan/how important you are to the carrier! Still, it's damned good generally. SMS! Fer chrisakes, we used that for low priority data, nothing else, but also had alarms send a daily test SMS anyway to ensure functionality. I can tell you the time SMS takes can vary from almost instant, to a day - no kidding, it does happen, extremely rare, but oh yes it can! SMS is not a timely system. No commercial alarm systems use it as a primary comms method, no fire alarms can legaly touch it for alarms. So, given this, why would you touch it for your pride & joy -T? Go GSM, GPRS, Satellite technologies, and some others are developing.

Just about to get an install myself. My Company pays for it so I don't care within reason what it costs, so long as it "leaves no holes or scratches" on my car. Can't the "long wires hanging out" be hidden behind the dash....surely? Anyone else used this setup?

Yep, not only black (like oil) on the exhaust but soot all over the rear 'bumper' panel, spoiler & boot.

Mine is average 19.5L/100km over 2,000km.

You guys are LUCKY! My fuel economy has always been bad from zero k's to now. I have never reset the avg km/L figure and recently at somewhere between 1600 & 1700 km I took the attached pic at 19.4. Around 2K now and still 19.4. It went higher than the usual bad from purchase date high 17's to low 18s very suddenly about 2 tanks of gas before the pic. In virtually a day or two it went to a peak of 19.5. I've been babying it trying to get the avererage down but it just flicks around between 19.3-19.5. Must be running VERY rich. Exhaust showed lots of black residue from day one. Oil is OK.