Hey Mazkid, here's a strange story of locking up in GT3.
I was at my dad's house 2 weekends ago, the weekend that I bought a sharkport and found both Stratos and the WRC

. The problem was that I could only play with them in arcade because my garage would lock up in simulation mode.

I was deeply depressed and angry. Why can you drive in arcade, but not simulation mode? At the end of the weekend, I came back to my mom's house and hooked up the ps2, expecting my games to lock up as usual. To my delight, the game played perfectly! I loaded up lots of other hidden cars without any lock ups occuring!

I still haven't had my game lock up yet (actually sample 005 causes a semi-lockup - you can't see any cars in your garage if you go by it

!) The only reason why this could occur is perhaps the temperature. At my dad's house, the ps2 sits on a wood surface that's in the sun most of the day. So the surface of wood must be ~80 degrees. At my mom's house, I have the ps2 in a small wooden structure that must be ~65 degrees because it's out of the sun. That small change in temperature, I think, caused my GT3 to lock up whenever I loaded new cars. So Mazkid, I recommend moving it to a cooler place if possible. Otherwise, I'm stumped

.