Natemarian

Brakes still for sale?

Just for Anfanee here are the non-fisheye lens pictures . Dash Mat. N1 Lip Spoiler. Kansai Service Strut Bar. The all important badging lol. Had a chat to Brett at the end of last week for a small progress update, He said that pretty much all that is left to do is put the timing belt/pulleys back on, put the motor in and tune it which is exciting!! I have been talking to a few mates brainstorming about the next upgrade to do as it will probably be the last one for a while due to house purchasing this year so I have to get it right lol. We narrowed it down to either: A Haltech Racepak Logger Dash - as we currently have no way to monitor vitals and the lap timer would be very useful and probably more reliable than the one on my phone lol. OR Alcon 6 piston front brakes with 365mm discs - for obvious reasons lol. It is a hard choice as they are very different types of modifications. One will give awesome performance and a large drop in lap times but will leave us blind to what the motor is doing which is a big risk, the other will let us know everything the motor wants to do but will give no actual performance improvement. Personally i lean towards the dash as i can always manage the brakes. I have messaged Brett to get his opinion as he is the expert, you never know he may even tell me to spend my money somewhere else like suspension. If anyone would like to weigh in on this feel free to do so

Ahahahaha yeah sorry about that, It's just what comes on the Sony cam and at the time I couldn't find my phone ;P

Hello again Guys and Girls, I figured it's time for another short update. I've really only had some random parts arriving as I can't help myself when it comes to a good deal. First things first, my lovely Girlfriend had a custom dash mat made for the GT-R for an early Xmas present (gotta love having a girl that supports your hobbie/obsession lol) Next up is something i have always been planning on getting but have been patiently waiting for a cheap one. It's an N1 boot spoiler lip although its a bit hard to tell that by my crap picture and lack of paint. This probably won't go on the car for a while as I want to get new bonnet and front bar lips and Ganador side mirrors so once i get all of that I'll get it all painted up but for the price i wasn't going to pass it up ;P The final part is something a little more special, I was starting to feel as though the car was heading in a cheap direction with the XXR wheels and the replica Kansai service strut brace, as my luck would have it a genuine Kansai Service strut brace popped up for not much more than i paid for the replica so I figured i better grab it other wise i would be kicking myself forever haha In saying that the replica one is now for sale, I placed it over the genuine one and it lines up identically, if anyone is interested please feel free to inbox me

Hi Guys! Time for an update!! The other day i was thinking the interior of the GT-R was looking a little drab. As my luck seems to go at the moment i saw a little something pop up on a 2nd hand site a few days later for a good price and figured i had to have it! Carbon fiber dash cover! I always wanted one of these but not many places seemed to sell them anymore so i was stoked to pick this up for cheap having never been on a car. Next i got quite excited when i looked on the BC Auto Facebook page and saw my sump being worked on!! This means the motor is out so we're half way there!! Stock sump. Increased capacity, custom baffles and windage tray with Cusco 1 way LSD built into the housing That's all i have for you guys at the moment! More small parts are on the way so expect a few small updates this week

Haha yeah I wouldn't want to know how much a real Kansai service one would cost! Yeah A.I. Do amazing work. Just a shame I don't really need it anymore but I'm sure I'll need it one day

Hi mate thanks for the offer but I already purchased a greddy suction intake kit

Here is the list of mods getting done at the moment. Cusco front LSD Custom sump. Oil pump gears. Mines baffles. Diff Bearings. Oil cooler. Braided oil lines for turbo’s Catch can. Accusump Cam gears Timing belt. Nismo engine mounts. Ross harmonic balancer and trigger kit. Paint rocker covers/spark cover (keeping the colour a secret until its back) Fix any oil leaks Nismo Thermostat HKS Actuator upgrade. Radiator. Radiator Cap. ETS-Pro AWD controller. Trust Intake + Nismo oil cap GFB Deceptor BOV’s Haltech ECU Haltech 3 bar map sensor. Haltech Boost control solenoid Haltech Air temp sender Haltech Coolant temp sender Haltech Fuel and Oil Pressure Sender

Just realized at some point I missed another mod I actually really liked. I managed to pick up this Broadway 360mm rear vision mirror from Japan. It actually makes quite a large difference with vision, should be useful for keeping an eye on cars coming up on me at the track So it is official. You guys are up to date with where I am today...........So I better let you guys know what parts just arrived lol. If you haven’t noticed I’m a sucker for 2nd hand parts at good prices and when I saw this DO-Luck cross bar for $200 I figured I had to get it!! Next were just some unknown brand front castor rods. However they are missing a bit which I am trying to get sorted out now. Another thing I picked up which is brand new and I think will look great is this! A Kansai Service style front strut bar! It was really cheap and I think it will look great with the Greddy suction intake So that is it for now. Not sure what I am going to do next. I am torn between: A: AP racing brakes all 4 corners. B: 6 speed getrag conversion. C: Car trailer built how I want it so I never have to hire a trailer again lol. Feel free to let me know your opinions on anything and I’m always up for a chat

Just found some old pictures next to a mates xr6 turbo. Gotta give credit to that FG. 630rwhp, it's no slouch!! Side note its for sale if anyone wants it?

So the car made it safely to BC Auto. Although i will say this: Do NOT use the hire trailers at BP service stations (move-urself trailer hire) it was probably the most dreadful experiences of my life, that trailer should not have been on the roads more or less towing my pride and joy! Now with that said the car is safely tucked away at BC auto (who have thankfully increased their security a lot since their time attack GT-R was stolen).

In every Nissan I have ever owned as well as almost all of the ones my friends have had they have all had over heating issues. I decided if I'm going to track it an aftermarket radiator was definitely on the cards. I eventually decided on Trust just because I like Trust/Greddy. Now I don't know what the standard blow off valves on GT-R's are like since there is two (there is a surprising lack of information) but I know on most cars the factory blow off valves tend to lose efficiency once the boost goes even a few PSI above stock. Considering I am running more than double stock boost and looking at the dyno print out that came with the car you can see a drop in boost pressure up high which indicates that the BOV's are probably losing spring pressure slightly, I decided something aftermarket was necessary. Now with any Japanese car if you search blow off valve you’ll probably be reading your option list for days. I was pretty confident I was going to go GFB just because they are local and they do good quality stuff. I have a liking for the new and shiny stuff so when I saw that they just released a new BOV I emailed them for the details (it was still not on the site). It was the deceptor pro 2. Very cool bit of gear with an electronic valve to change it anywhere between atmo and plumb back..............it was also very expensive since the GT-R has two BOV's the electronics had to be custom made to work off one controller and in sync with each other. They claim it will take more boost than a car will ever run. I plan to test that one day Now these next couple were impulse buys from FB pages that I saw ridiculously cheap and could not pass up lol. First up was an A.I. surge tank with twin outlets and brackets. I always wanted an A.I. setup just because they do amazing quality work. Pictured don’t do this thing justice as to how well manufactured they are. However it was unknown at the time of purchase but I know now it has a bosch 023 fuel pump (biggest in-tank they make) so it is currently not necessary, it will be once I go to e85 though ;P Next (and the one I am most excited about) is a haltech platinum pro ecu. I was planning to run one anyway but when this bad boy popped up for half retail and was in perfect working order I had to snatch it. Another add on I was excited about (I get excited about the little things) is I managed to pick up a GENUINE HKS oil filler cap. I'm sure you are aware of how rare these things are, especially new and in box. (I keep the box and instructions safely in the closet lol) AND WE ARE DONE!! (Well sort of) this is the stage where the car was ready to be sent off to BC Auto. All loaded up with boxes/testing out the new Sony action cam before I head off for WTAC VIP style (^^^ note to self, don't move until the red light turns off or it goes blurry ^^^)

Also interested

Ok so now on to the proper mods. A lot of them I didn't get a chance to take a photo of because a build thread wasn't even entering my mind to be honest, hopefully I have enough to keep it interesting. First thing to be added to the 'while the motor is out' list was a new front differential. I was originally going to go a Quaife as recommended by Trent Whyte but Brett was pretty adamant on using a Cusco LSD, after having a chat it turns out that’s what they used on their WTAC car so that stopped any objection from me The next thing was an oil cooler and filter relocation. Due to my wanting to do a fair bit of track work I was highly recommended to get some form of oil cooler. Luckily for me, one day later on SAU Classifieds a Blitz oil cooler with thermostat and filter relocation popped up. Obviously I didn’t unwrap the cooler itself but you get the idea. I managed to pick it up for $350 posted which I thought was a good deal. Next I managed to pick up a new Nitto clear timing cover (to match my rods lol) so with that I realized I have no idea what the current timing gears look like. On that note I decided to order a set of HKS cam gears and timing belt to match. I've heard the older HKS timing gears tend to wear very quickly but from what I’ve been told they have fixed this issue. Only one way to find out I guess! After that, while I was chatting with Brett and mentioning how much track work I want to do/this cars possibility of becoming a dedicated WTAC car in the future, he recommended if I could stretch the budget that I should get a Full-Race ETS-Pro AWD controller. He said it was the best thing they found to get rid of the notorious R32 understeer and also gives you a lot of flexibility in different conditions. Unlike a conventional piggy back AWD controller the ETS-Pro is a full replacement system including g-sensor. It reacts faster than the factory set-up (.023 of a second from memory but don't quote me on that) and has a gain knob to adjust the sensitivity of the set-up. On top of this it has completely customizable maps so you can change things like how much power the front wheels get in individual gears, how fast and hard the transfer case engages and so on and so forth. (Obviously some images I am now pinching from Google just to keep the posts interesting and break up the writing) Also I had a chance to chat to Ant (check out his build) and he recommended while the motor is out I switch to NISMO engine mounts....so I did lol. Ant also said (as he has the same turbos) that the actuators that come on them start to lose efficiency at around 20psi. Since I was already on 20psi and was hoping for a bit more power I decided on HKS actuator upgrades as well. So remember how earlier I said I couldn't justify $1400+ for the greddy intake? Wellllll I maybe, sorta of, kinda got one lol. They look awesome and after chatting to Jesse Streeter i found I could get one for under $900 which is how I justified it to myself when I agreed to it haha! While I was at it I picked up a NISMO oil cap.....just cause. I think that will do for this post. There's a few more parts to get put up and ill post up a full list of the current mods getting done in case I missed anything.

Thanks mate. I have had the car about a year now.....still barley had any seat time. It must be a GT-R haha.

So now I had the intercooler fitted, I figured I really should get a hard piping kit. I managed to pick one up from a Facebook page (where half my parts for this build come from lol) I can’t quite remember how much but I remember it is Just Jap Racing and it was over $100 less than retail and still brand new as the owner had changed to an ARC twin entry intercooler. The piping itself was a good fit but I will admit it was a bit tight and the pipe joining to the plenum needed the silicon cut down to have any hope of fitting. After many a swear word the piping kit was on!! (I double clamped all the joins to make sure I never had to do this again lol) Next to do was to start reassembling the front end. Grill back in, new look indicators in. All looks pretty good I think, better than the silver mesh that was originally there haha P.S. please excuse the level of dirt on the car. It had sat for quite a while by this point.

Thanks mate! I think anyone who has had the motor out has been down a similar path haha. I wouldn’t mind a 2.8 down the track, don’t think I’ll ever go a 3.0 I read a fair few build threads myself and always find I enjoy the ones with a bit more story and character so I figured I would try and make mine a little interesting

While I was organizing the parts from Japan, exchanging emails between Brett and Jesse like crazy to figure out what I needed. A friend and I decided I needed to make a new intake since he is a boiler maker and I couldn’t justify dishing out $1500 for a greddy suction intake. So we started pulling the intake off, however when I pulled the twin turbo pipe off I was concerned to find this! Uh Oh! Oil in the intake! :$ Naturally I was a bit concerned so I made a few calls to a few mates who are no stranger to RB's with much more power than mine. They all reassured me that this is common in cars running a fair bit of boost and if I wanted to avoid it, run a catch can.......I ordered a hi-octane catch can that afternoon lol (The car is currently at BC Auto and Brett was going to check the compression before commencing work, haven’t had a call so I’m assuming all is good). Figuring there would be oil elsewhere I decided I should take all the piping off and give it a proper clean out. This was when the real issue surfaced. One of the previous owners has obviously had a fair hit with a ripple strip/speed bump/Sasquatch. I checked the rest of the car, from what I could see it was all straight and there is no rust or ripples anywhere so that was a relief. I was lucky enough to see on a buy/swap/sell page an r33 GTR being wrecked locally (this is rare, I live in a small town between Sydney and Melbourne) and just my luck, it had a Just Jap Racing 100mm intercooler. I wasn't sure if it would fit and neither was the guy who was wrecking it, but when he offered it to me for $120 I figured it was worth the gamble. People on forums had said the JJR coolers didn’t fit very well. To those people I say this. Don't be lazy, take the front reo off and they fit perfectly. It was while the front bar/reo was off I noticed how poor the reo was. That was after a fairly long night with the dremel tool, it was very haggard before this. Whoever put the n1 vents in obviously didn’t bother opting for an n1 front reo I also noticed some very minor rust on a small part of it, let the paranoia begin (credit to Antz R32 build for being as pedantic as myself about rust). I spent the next few days (in my spare time) sanding it back to bare metal.....by hand.....yep. Rust treated and rattle can sprayed black. While I was at it decided to break out the nightshade and tint the indicators......first time.....maybe a couple too many coats? lol Before: After: Believe it or not they actually still light up exactly the same, maybe because of the two globes in the indicators instead of one??

So as I said. I fell folly to the ol 'while the motor is out' curse lol. What started as a simple 'pull the motor out, install billet oil pump gears, custom sump, install accusump' job has now turned into a bunch of bolt ons since I figured if I’m going to pay the labor to yank the engine I may as well get something out of it! During my reading I found the factory harmonic balancers were only good for around 350kw. Considering my final aim for the car (still years away) is 450-500kw the factory balancer had to go. I umm'd and ahh'd for quite a while between Ross and ATI but the decision was made quite simple when I found out Ross balancers were manufactured about 10 minutes from my house, so off I went. And returned with two boxes?! This obvious one is Ross' top of the line 'race gold' harmonic balancer. And the other is....... A Ross crank trigger kit! I will be honest, the main thing that won me over was because it looks much better than the factory CAS but also the fact that I really want this car to be as reliable as possible (remembering it is a 24 year old car) and I had heard of a fair few people having problems with the CAS so I figured why not. So now about the same time I bought those I found a site from another build up page on here called perfectrun. Man did that open up many more options for aftermarket parts than i had ever dreamed of! So I put together a shopping list and was getting ready to purchase when I read a post on the SAU FB page. It mentioned a guy by the name of Jesse Streeter. Everyone on the post was raving about how good and cheap he was so I shot him an email.......and they were right. He was even cheaper than perfectrun which were already quite cheap. He was easy to deal with and very flexible. I sent him the parts and part numbers, I received the quote within 24 hours. Can't recommend him more!

So of course when you have a new car and it has its share of modifications you want to research them all and see that the parts used were good right? Well now this is when things start to get a bit more interesting. After a quick google search I found that the MAJORITY (not all) of people had problems with/know of problems with the N1 oil pumps. This made me dig deeper as people mentioned more and more about oil issues in the rb26. After reading countless threads and articles my head was spinning but it was determined I would either need to go dry sump or a gated sump. I was prepared to spend money on the car though as I honestly bought it expecting it to blow up on the way home. I was warned by Andrew Hawkins before I bought it not to get a GT-R unless I can afford to buy two, very wise words haha. I would like to take a moment to give a shout out to Andrew as well as without him I probably would have gone dry sump and been out of pocket much more than I am. After many random inboxes/questions/etc. with Andrew it was decided that instead of dry sump (as the car is staying a street car.....for now) I would upgrade the oil pump and also run an Accusump setup. This setup is a bit above my head when it comes to the technical stuff so the way I describe it to people is it’s like a surge tank but for engine oil. The main feature I liked about it though is that with the electric valve you can set it to pre-oil the engine before start up and save on wear and tear. The next question was who to get to do the work??!! I contacted a number of big name workshops that I had heard of from all over the country. I am not about to name drop but most of them I found their service was quite poor and some not even getting back to me at all. I was beginning to lose hope until the Motive WTAC 2013 DVD arrived on my door. As I was laying there watching, a grey and red R32 GT-R popped up on the screen. It was the BC Automotive GT-R. I had never heard of the company before so I was surprised to hear they had won open class, especially in a time where evo's were dominating time attack in almost every division. Figuring these guys must know what they're doing with GT-R's and figuring I had nothing to lose I decided to contact them. To my surprise I got a reply that night from Brett off his phone saying he would do me up a quote in the morning. Once again I was surprised to see I had received the quote by the time I sat down for lunch the very next day......however this is where I started to tumble down the 'while the motor is out, may as well' rabbit hole lol.

So once the wheels were on i had some free time and some bordom so i decided to give plati-dip a bit of a play with (worst case it looks shit and i'd peel it off). First up was the Apexi Pods. This is how it looked when i picked the car up. And After (i apologize for the below average quality of the picture haha) I also picked up some bolts to put the coil cover back on. The previous owner had it off to keep the coils cool but i really do love the look of the RB26 so it had to go back on. Next up was the windshield wipers. I dont have a before pic but they were faded to the point where you could see the metal underneath. I was actually impressed how OEM looking they came up.

I actually like the standard knob myself. But in saying that I'm saving for a 6 speed getrag conversion atm so it will have a 34 knob. Next part of the build will be on this arvo

Just found some pictures of the interior so thought i would throw them up as well. I was really impressed by the condition of the car for something as old as myself lol.

Ok so i had the car and brought it back without any issues. It was in great shape but as you can see the wheels themselves are not the best looking thing in the world (in my honest opinion). Ozzy tyres were having a sale at the time and i didnt want to splash on expensive wheels until i knew what direction/look i was going to follow with the car so i picked these up. XXR 527's. 18" diam 8.75" wide (for whatever reason) +25 offset. People always talk shit about 'fake' wheels but i am yet to have a problem with these wheels. So we fitted these to the car and although the center caps wouldnt fit everything else was perfect.

Heaps more to come I was just waiting for this to be allowed by the admins next instalment will be tomorrow