Samon

Hi Guys, The brakes on my 33 GTS have been squeeking a bit lately, so today I decided to pull a wheel or two off and have a look at them. Popped the front wheel off, took off the caliper and pads, took off the rotor and measured the thickness with a micrometer. It was 21.3mm. I have looked at the DBA Catalogue but can't find the specs for an R33 non-turbo. Not 100% sure why (I believe it's because I have an LSD, but not really sure) but I have 5 wheel studs... even though it's a non-turbo... meh anyway the GTST is specified as having a 28mm minimum thickness on the front rotors... this means that either my rotors are 6.7mm under the minimum, or I have totally different brakes. After finding this I decided to take a look at the rears. I pulled the wheel off, took off the caliper, but couldn't manage to get the rotor off... anyway i again measured with the micrometer and found that these were 8.6mm thick. The DBA Catalogue specifies 16mm as the minimum for the R33 GTST, so again either my rotors are MASSIVLY undersize (by 7.4mm) or are not the correct discs. I also noted (not sure if this is normal or not) that while the front discs were ventilated, the rears were solid. Basically what I want to know is what the specs are for the new/minimum thicknesses for the R33 GTS, and is it that my brakes are massively undersize or off a totally different car?

My entire system cost me under $1000.. and that included the sound system (well partly... my car already had a nice set of alpine speakers throughout...but no amp or subbie). One word...eBay! old Laptop with cracked LCD - $350 12V car charger - $15 7" LCD touch-screen (second-hand) - $250 (would've been $350 for a new one...) Holux GPS Reciever - $65 Kicker 2x75W Amp (for my front speakers) - $50 Audioline 4x200W Amp (2x200 for my rear speakers, 1x400 for my sub) - $65 10" 600W Sub in ported box - $60 Assorted cabling (USB, VGA, RCA, speaker, power) and connectors - $60 Total: $915

I have a wireless kayboard that i use if i need to configure the system or whatever, and occasionally to browse the web, but obviously this cannot be used while driving, which is where i use the touch screen. As for the mouse, the touchscreen does this perfectly, you just tap the screen where you would normally click. I will post some pics once my screen is repaired and all looking sweet again -Sam

Hi Nozilla, I have just finished installing a Carputer in my R33 a few weeks ago. I used a laptop that i got off ebay cheap because it had a cracked LCD, apart from that it was all pretty much new. It already had wireless, bluetooth, a 60gig hard drive, dvd-rom, etc. I have mounted it up in the boot, running a cable from the audio line-out (headphone socket) to the inputs of my amps (one 4 channel and one bridges 2 channel for the sub). I ran a VGA and USB cableunder the read seats, under the carpet, and up to the dash, where i have custom mounted a 7" Xenarc touchscreen. I am powering the laptop off a laptop car-charger, so no inverters or costly power supplies are neccessary. I opened up the lappy and soldered a set of leads to the power button and power light connections on the mainboard, and ran these with the other two cables up to the front as well. i have an illuminated pushbutton for the power switch this way. I have simply got it set to standby as the battery reaches 99% and there is no power (Power Options > Alarms > 'Low Battery'), and hibernate when it gets to 20% ('Critical Battery'). The charger is switched through a relay from the original stereo wire, so that it is switched off as soon as the ignition is turned off, and the computer standby's in about 30 seconds. The screen is also powered off this wire, so it turns off as soon as the car is switched off. I use a 'front-end' software package called Centrafuse, which allows me to control all my music, videos, satellite navigation, FM radio, phone, etc from one easy to use, easy to see interface. I have a USB GPS reciever that is used with the Destinator software to provide turn-by-turn navigation. I have a USB FM receiver that gives me FM radio, and my phone is controlled via Bluetooth by PhoneControl.NET. All of these are accessed through Centrifuse though. Basically it all just works...or should i say 'Worked'... it was great until my screen overheated and blew up last week....damnit...but once that is either repaired or replaced, it will all be good! Cheers, Sam.

Okay, couldn't resist the temptation I went out and sat in in my car, turned the ignition on, and shorted/unshoreted the pins on the seatbelt connector... The belt seems to slide pretty much the same, although with the pins sgorted there is a slight ratchet-type noise when you pull it, whereas without the pins shorted it is quiet... I can't feel any more or less resistance either way though.

My 33 has these seatbelt tension thingys too... but they are connected to a wire under each front seat... looks like they used to be connected to the seatbelt socket thing. When the ignition is on, i can short the two pins on the blugs under the seat and there is the loud 'clunk' noise that you speak of. I've never really noticed too much of a difference between shorted and unshorted, but i'll have to try it out! It sounds like yours are perminently shorted, so they always clunk when the ignition is turned off... try looking under the seats for a cord, and see if there is anything causing the two pins to be connected (the one on the passenger side is easiest, as it only has two pins, the drivers one has four.)

So you dont still have the silver surround that goes up around the radio and behind the steering wheel, etc? If you do i would be very interested as i managed to totally destroy mine by pouring acetONE on it instead of acetATE... the latter (plain old nail-polish remover) just disolves the rubber coating, the former melted the whole plastic, etc

Okay, a little more information on the topic... I had the trim that is over the seatbelt reel off the other day, and thought i'd investigate a little further. There are two wires going into the seatbelt reel thingy, some sort of solenoid, and yes, shorting the pins out does make a clunk in the reel. It kinda feels like it is easier to pull out when it is shorted out, but i can't really tell... at any rate they dont 'lock it off' or anytihng, so it still beats me as to what they actaully do!

Okay, a couple of things... I must stress that i wasnt speeding, the speed limit is 50 in my street, and then it turns into 80 at the end (about 300m from my place), so i was just revving it pretty hard in first as i left, then just let it idle along in second, etc My dad is like 45, but he used to know a fair bit about cars when he was younger, re-building them, etc... Am I risking blowing it up? or is revving it this hard occasionally (6500ish tops) okay? I don't usually drive it this hard, just for the tool factor

I just bought my first skyline (R33 GTS) last week, and when giving it a vacuum i too found these connectors under both of the seats. The one under the driver's side has 4 wires, the passenger one only has two. Well...being slighly the fiddler...hmmm...well...maybe more than slightly...anyway... i decided to see if it was indeed a seatbelt light. I got a paperclip and shoted out the two pins on the passenger connector, and watched the dash... to my surprise there was no light that lit up, but whenever the pins are shorted, there is a clunking noise in the door pillar (where the seatbelt comes out). When the pins are un-shorted, there is another clunking (release of some sort). After some experimenting, I found the correct two pins on the driver's side to make the 'clunk' on that side too. Someone somewhere mentioned that they were seatbelt pre-tensioners, so that once the seatbelt was plugged in it would lock it off at the reel end. As far as i can tell though, even when the pins are shorted the seatbelt seems to move as per usual, not tighter or looser than normal. Is it possible that the solenoid is disconnected when the Australian Seatbelts are put in for compliance? I would have thought they would have idsconnected the whole lot though...hmmm... If anyone knows anything about this, please let me know!

I know this thread is getting old-ish, and it's not really about a Stagea, but still... I've just bought (like 1 week ago ) my first skyline (R33 GTS), which is also my first manual (yeah, i have a manual license, but havn't driven one for like 16 months (since i got my licence i've only driven auto)). I'm stil getting used to a car that actually has power (I'm used to driving a clapped out 1983 Mitsubishi Sigma for the last 16 months), so I tend to drive it pretty hard. Just wondering roughly what rev's u guys would usually change up/down at, both when cruising, driving economically, and when giving it a bit of juice... My dad cut sick at me this morning because he heard me take off last night (hmm... could be sometihng to do with the 3inch exhaust system... ) and reckons that I'm gonna blow it up, blah blah, blah... That was revving it to say 5500, maybe 6000 rpm tops. I must note that this was not from a cold engine, i had been driving it about half an hour earlier and so it was still quite warm, plenty of oil around the engine, etc. The redline/rev-limiter starts at 7000, and i've hit that once (it just kinda 'breaks down' and wont rev any higher, i assume this means that it'a just limiting the revs...), but i would usually rev it out to 6500 at the absolute max. Because of the exhaust sounding so nice i probably rev it a lot harder than if it had a puny little quiet one, but am i going to blow it up? I mean i dont ALWAYS drive it hard, just when i feel like it...hmmm...that tends to be quite often at the moment Thanks, Sam.

Nissan makes engine identification easy, as all the letters and numbers have meanings. RB = series of engine - don't think it means anything in particular 20 / 25 / 26 = capacity (20~1998cc / 25~2497cc / 26~2597cc) D = Double Overhead Cam (or DOHC) E = EFI (Electronic fuel injection) T / TT = Turbo / twin turbo So a RB25DE would be a 2.5L Double Overhead Cam with EFI, non-turbo. Hope that helps