Beer Baron

yikes! not sure a set of space savers with new barrels welded on is a good idea. they will be heavy as fk as they are steel not alloy like 90% of other wheels. on top of that they are designed with a 2inch tyre in mind. sure with a new barrel they might work but I really don't think it'll be a good thing. For the cost of buying 4 barrels, 4 space savers (actually not that cheap) and getting them welded and balanced you can surely find a nice set of used 5 stud 16s with the offset and width you want. plus you have to hope the bloke welding them did a good job and balancing the things will probably be nearly impossible. the barrels will probably cost you $150-$200 each anyway. buy the time you buy all the bits and have them made and painted it will probably be around $1200-$1500 for the set of abortion wheels. for around that money you could get a set of simmons or ROH or something made in custom size/offset. I would look into that. or just buy some used wheels from ebay or yahoo or forums etc.

we'll he'll need whatever shims he needs to get the valve clearances correct. so yeah he'll either need to make up some appropriate thickness shims or buy the right ones from nissan. it's not a matter of 'standard' shims, he needs to measure the valve clearances, compare that to the stated figures in the manual and then buy and fit the appropriate shims.

agree with that for sure. best gasket in the world will not seal a head or block surface that is not true and cannot defend against improper installation either. MLS gaskets are great at sealing in high cylinder pressures but hopeless at dealing with any kind of imperfections in the head. so if the surface is not prepped properly the best MLS gasket in the world is not going to seal nicely. that's no reason to throw out your MLS gaskets and go back to a standard composite type gasket. it's a reason to ensure your block and head surfaces are prepped right.

yeah I guess makes sense if you can't drive the R33 on the road. but I thought perhaps there was some exception since it's registered in a foreign country. I thought maybe they have a scheme like we do here where tourists, consular staff etc can register their OS vehicle temporarily but I guess it's only a temp solution anyway.

just be careful you don't end up getting them to overturn the EP3 TYPE R SEVS approval to make themselves consistent.....

well we can't all be spanish masters!! or pedantic old f**kers like me now can we? first soarer looks cool but fk me dead it's expensive for an auto 7M powered car. it would be well over the $15K mark by the time you had it hear and even half way decent to drive. probably more like $20K with a 1JZ in it and a 5 speed. way too much. as much as I hate to say it the other one for 100,000 is a better buy. it might be shit but at least you know what you're getting...

there is no adjustment at all in standard castor rods so in most alingments with standard gear it's simply measure and move on. if you need to adjust castor you need eccentric/offset bushes which give some small adjustment or buy some adjustable length arms. in fact from standard you cannot adjust front castor, you cannot adjust front camber, you can adjust front toe, you can adjust rear camber (but only marginally) and you cannot adjust rear traction rod length, you can adjust rear toe. so to sum up on a standrd skyline all you can adjust is F+R toe and rear camber (a little bit).

yeah cusco are good. best i've used are ARC though. still got an ARC set on my car and they come with the adjustable rose jointed links too. but the cost man! my god the cost!!! bang for buck I'd say cusco are the best option and that goes for a lot of their suspension gear. it's not top of the tree but on price v quality it ranks highly in my book. adjustable or not is not that big a deal. unless you are super serious and want to change balance for wet set-up etc. mostly people get a good balance and leave it at that. car will be driveable on most tracks in most conditions with a good basic set-up and can be tweaked slightly with damper adjustment if you have it or swaybar adjustment if you really want to.

32 GTR better than GTST. offset is +30 but being 8 inch wide you loose a bit of that backspace in width. would look pretty cool. you should be quite easily able to get some aftermarket 16X8 or 16X7s in a +20 or +10 though.

"semi-slicks" is really a made up class of tyre. in reality there are 2 types of tyre. street legal and not street legal. if the tyre is DOT or E marked then it's a very good bet it's legal for road use in australia. some so called semi-slicks are not but 90% of them are. full slicks are not legal simply because they are designed for race use only so the manufacturers never bother to get them tested to DOT standards. duncan outlined the facts pretty well. despite them being legal they are not neccissarily the best choice for a road car, particularly if you do a lot of kms. I've used semis as road tyres on many of my cars but they were driven at most once a week. on cars you drive a lot there are better options out. if you want to do a lot of road kms but still do the odd track day I'd get something like advan AD08s or dunlop Z1 star specs. great street tyres and still good on track.

yeah as above, most MLS gaskets are pretty stout and there may be another issue. but i've got plenty of experience using tomei head gaskets personally and never had a problem. they are very high quality and have lasted through plenty of heat, power and kms. I'm always happy using tomei.

blast from the past. I never did it but the idea still hangs with me. I might do it one day. thinking about a small-ish borg warner EFR TS/twin gate set-up. could be nice. since this thread I built my GTR with GTSS, another one with 2530s, and yet another one with 2530s so still rocking twins. current GTR is jun 2.7 engine with 2530s but thinking about putting it onto E85 now and wind up the wick a bit.

evc5 is quite good but I've used plenty of profec BII's with good success too. not sure I'd both 'upgrading' to the EVC5 unless it does something you want that the profec can't do.

I have used carrillo's in other engines but not in RBs. as far as I beam vs H beam vs A beam vs X beam etc and particularly in the H vs I, I also think that the rod's beam design is probably one of the least important aspects of the rod. material used is probably number 1, then manufacturing process, finishing quality, rod design (not the beam, but the shape and design of big and little ends, the shoulders etc), all that stuff is probably more important than whether it's an H or an I. and again looking at the name brand jap rods which are known to support massive power reliably nearly all the 'premium' options are H beam. I'm currently running tomei rods and yes they are H beam too. chose a rod based on what power it's know to support, it's quality, it's weight or whatever else is important to you. choosing one purely based on I beam or H beam is not the right way to go about it. there are plenty of each that will support all the HP you want.

mate get it off and fix it. all the people saying it's no problem are living in a fantasy. the pickup is very close to the bottom of the sump if it's not that's another problem. a dent in the sump also changes the shape so oil is more easily run AWAy from the pick-up. on top of that it can damage the pick-up itself, kinded pick-up tube, broken pick-up tube, squashed pick-up mouth. it's not a big deal to remove the sump and beat it flat. it's a hell of a lot easier than doing a set of big end bearings that's for sure.

good idea. it's a GTR right? quarters look GTR-esque. bit rough on the poor old chassis rails though. ouch! i'm assuming it's RWD now though, with your RB30 and RB25 box yeah? should be a fun car. though why buy a new car just to put your driveline etc in? the R33 was ok wasn't it? and still RHD too which makes the engine bay a fair bit neater. what are you going to do with the new car? drift?drag?street? etc. hope it goes well mate.

I'm watching 1998 season atm. up to race 11 Germany. Don't tell me who wins! lol. it may not be a banner year for overtaking either but cars sure were awesome back then. and the pit stops. they actually fuelled cars in them... crazy. and schuey could drive the wheels of anything including his fairly average ferrari of the time. irvine was mostly mid-pack but schuey was duking it out with hakkinen who had a far superior maclaren.

send me link to soarer above. me likey. PS what the hell is "ke"? do you mean que?

yeah they are awesome and yes they are a bit fragile. the turbos on the S8 are actually very good and make an easy 250kw with basic mods. the factory radiator is already V mount of sorts and actually works pretty well. Personally I bought a Series 8 2001 RZ in japan. it had about 30,000kms but engine was already a little tired so I had a full rebuild done on it in japan at a japanese rotary specialist (amazing work, speed and price). it was fantastic. was putting out around 250kw with just a conservative ECU re-tune, little bit of boost and a nice (LOUD!) exhaust. was such a fun car to drive, amazingly well balanced. makes even a hack driver into some kind of drifting virtuoso. I wouldn't hesitate to own one again but it would have to be another RZ (bit hard as they only made 150 of them) or a spirit R (bit easier as they number in the thousands). I sold my RZ for very low 30K range which was a steal. it had an engine with only a handful of km on it, all the original RZ gear (carbon kevlar recaros, BBS wheels, bilstein suspension etc) along with book and receipts for all the work done. great car but you need to be prepared to spend the money up front to buy a good one, and then spend the money maintaining it and most likely rebuilding it. if you're after a 'bargain' or a 'cheap one' then they are not the car for you. it will just bring heart ache. if you're buying an FD you should be looking at the top end of the market as tha's where the cars worth buying are. or buy a cheaper one and rebuild immediately.

yep willans definitely the nicest imo. and they are the only ones I've seen that have true 3 inch snap ends. all other brands reduce down at the snap ends to 2 inch (harness gets folded through the snap end) where as willans run big 3 inch ends on their 3 inch harnesses. makes sense to me though the ends can be a bit builky...

well steering wheel track map is a bit more common and you'll spot one on my FIA GT cars and even some F1 cars (though not so often these days as there's no room!). but "look through corners" screams 'learner driver' to me! mmm I'd like an R100 sports sedan AND the viper but my fiance will literally murder me if I buy any more cars....

yeah the S8s do have better turbos that last a lot longer too. easy enough to get 250kw out of one with the standard sequential twins and apart from a little drop off over a couple hundred rpm when the first one runs out of puff but before the second kicks in they make for a pretty decent power curve too. agree GTST series would rock and also agree that viper would punch a fcking awesome hole in the scenery with me behind it's wheel! oh the humanity. let's get troy in here and we'll go thirdsies in the viper. rock paper scissors decides who drives it first...

yeah but the thing is people know what the classes are. so if earlier FD RX7s are eligible for EM but late series 7/8 FD's are only allowed in M due to their build date then the easy solution is don't buy the late model car. if there truly is no advantage in it then it's not a problem, just a quirk of cars that have long model lives. there probably is some advantage in a 2001 S8 FD over say a 1992 model if only in the fact that it's nearly 10 years newer with stiffer chassis etc that that implies. I say we all buy various model FD RX7s and duke it out. there's nothing quite like half a dozen FD RX7s brap brap brapping their way through tassie's lovely rodes. although a few forest fires may be started from all those exhaust flames...

it's a classic tactic. downplay my awesome skills then BAM! up the indside and straight into the side of you like michael schumacher.

yeah RPM ones are not bad,. but my fav are the willans with the quick adjusters. they are very nice harnesses and not silly money either. I always buy willans these days. takata are nice too but a bit pricey in aus.