Tire Pressure tuning

Most people always change their oil at certain intervals/miles, but many people forget about checking their tire pressure. It makes a significant difference in the handling of your car. I think I remember reading that the higher the pressure, the better the gas mileage because the contact patch would be smaller thus lower rolling resistance. Same vice versa causing wider tire and better handling. There's a tradeoff.

If you visit autocross sites or an autocross itself, you'll see a lot of people messing with their tire pressure. Basically, you can enhance the balance of your car. I've tried out this tire pressure trick on the prelude and datsun and I've had favorable results. The datsun had real bad oversteer which would kick the back out, but it was fun. I've put more pressure in the front than in the back and it's reduced the oversteer in the turns. The prelude understeers at fast speeds and I've reduced it significantly. For the lude, I put more pressure in the rear tires.You have to really push the car to get the car to push out.The link below has a better explanation.

Prelude 44psi rear 34psi front
Datsun  30psi rear 35psi front

oversteer? then increase the air in your front tires.
understeer? then increase the air in your rear tires.

Links
Datsuns Technical Menu - look under tech articles and then handling

Synthetic Oil vs Conventional Oil

I've been using conventional oil in my cars because that's basically what my dad will pay for. I can't afford anything because I'm just a student, but I figure I should pay the extra few bucks and get the better protection because I want my car(prelude) to last forever. As for the Z, I'm waiting for the engine to go, so I can replace both the engine and tranny with the 280zx. I'm still changing oil on a regular basis though. It's my beater car.

I'm sure I can't really explain why synthetic is better, but that's why I found a few websites that offer a lot of information(especially the mr2 board). Basically, a lot of the wear from your engine occurs in the morning when you start the car up. Conventional oil has a tendency to become like molasses when it's cold while synthetic stays liquidy(don't know if that's a word). Also, one thing that drew me to Royal Purple synthetic oil is because supposed to be there's a special ingredient called Synerlec that sticks to metal better, so the beginning friction is easier on the engine. Something like that. Links are better than I can explain.

Another thing synthetic oils do are clean up the engine. I remember this one prelude owner told me it cleaned up his engine real good. I'll see how it performs in the next few months.

Links
Royal Purple Motor Oil - Oil I recently ordered from carparts.com
Oil filter comparison - Honda oil filter is included
Info on Synthetic Oil - Lots and lots of info of synthetic oil from the mr2 board. You need to set aside some time to read all this.
More info on syn. oil - lists some of the most popular oils and results
Mobil 1 - lots of people use this synthetic oil
NeoSynthetic Oil - another synthetic oil
Amsoil - not the direct link for amsoil, but lists just about everything. This is supposed to be one of the best oils too. 25,000 mile oil change intervals!

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