JimX

I bought one for my R33 and while the picture/text/grammar quality isn't really up to scratch, the quality of the paper and the binding is very good. However it serves its purpose as good owner's manual and it makes my car feel more "complete". I mainly bought it for interest's sake, I wanted to see if there were any hidden features of my car and also wanted to have an official record of the service schedule. If you're not really interested in owning it, you could save some money by borrowing someone else's and memorising the bits you're not familiar with. Most of the car you've probably already worked out yourself anyway.

I need new window tint for my front windows, the passenger side has no tint (been stripped off by previous owner) and the driver's side has 2 wide vertical scratches from where the felt window runners touch on the window. I spoke to a guy a tinting place a few weeks ago and he said he's seen this before on Skylines, but couldn't tell me how long they take to develop, and couldn't offer me any suggestions as to how to stop it happening to any future tint. Has anyone fixed this problem before? How long does it take to happen?

Bleeding your brakes isn't a part of normal maintenance. If you have to do it every 6 months or after a track day then you've got a fault in your braking system.

If it's REALLY loud, it could be the top of your bump stop hitting up against the mounting on the car or the stud snapping/stripping off or something. I got a really loud noise like that every now and then when I hit a bump, and when I pulled the seat out I found that one of the studs had broken because I overtightened it. I don't actually know what the noise was exactly but it was something to do with that. When I replaced the broken stud the noise stopped. If it's not too loud it could be your missing central seat belt rattling around under the seat? Either way it's no big task to pull the seat out and put it back together, just set yourself a spare half hour or so to work it all out and do the job.

Thanks for the advice guys. To keep costs down and not complicate things too much I think I'll just leave the Profec in for now, and wire up the S-AFC that's been sitting in its box since I got it a few weeks ago. I have to pay for part of the respray of my car so I can't really afford any extra expenses right now. I know that I could almost break even if I sold the S-AFC and Profec (had offers for both already) and bought a new ECU, but it's all a bit too complicated and I might find that I've lost some of the stuff I want on the Profec. Next year I'll probably sell the S-AFC and get a new ECU and keep the Profec.

ECU replacements like the Microtech offer boost control via I assume the factory bleed valve. I'm wondering if I should sell my Profec-B controller after I get an ECU replacement that has boost control, or would it go considerably better if I left it in place?

INASNT, I'm not sure but I think the guy might have mentioned something about cutting the flange. I'll confirm that with him before I do anything though, don't want a huge 3.5" system running off a 2" flange The pre-fab'd exhaust parts tend to cost more I've found, when I had the Commodore I got a price on a balance pipe and it was about $200 for a special "cross piece". I took it to the place which made my custom exhaust and they charged me about $60 inc. labour for virtually the same thing. But anyway, I'll find out more before I do anything. Dump pipes are really simple. Provided you have the flange the right size and it's a mandrel bend with minimal or no internal burrs, you only have to worry about the grade of the steel used and what diameter it is.

Argh man that sucks, I'm never going to take my car to Macquarie again Is this Flashpoint alarm easy to override or something? Or did they just remove it or the battery and put the car on the back of a truck? If anyone wants to put a lynch mob together to get these thieving scumbags, I'm up for that.

Ah ok, yeah those Jap springs are ultra-beefy. I bought some second hand adjustable JIC's but when I went to put them in I found one of them had a leaking seal, so I took them back for a refund. I was almost tempted to let the shop fix them for free (which they offered), but then they were telling me about how hard the ride would be and stuff, so they effectively talked themselves out of a sale I don't like harsh rides at all, I prefer to use sway bars to control body roll. Anyway, good to hear you got it all sorted, and I'm glad that the lever method didn't wreck your seat

Yep that nut ceased up real good on one of mine too, I had to partially angle-grind it off before it would crack the corrosion. I was replacing my shocks so mine definitely had to come out so I could re-use the bumpstops etc, but the thread on the shock is fine so if I want to put the old shocks back for whatever reason I just need a new nut for it. Btw, not sure if you have factory springs or not but I didn't need compressors for either the old factory setup or the new Whiteline/Bilstein setup. You can push the tops down slightly with your body weight and get the nut started, then just tighten up.

Yep at the top it's just metal, usually there's meant to be a small paper gasket type thing but it's so thin it won't do much anyway. If you're that concerned you can probably buy a pair from Nissan but I don't think it's worth the effort. Once everything's tightened up it's not going to move and you won't be scratching the paint or anything. Also even though you've already done everything up, take extra care with those top studs. They're really fragile and I managed to snap one off without too much effort. I drilled it out and put a bolt through the hole and it's as good as new. Actually better than new because I could do up the high tensile bolt a bit tighter (well, I could do it up a lot tighter if I wanted but I didn't)

So far it's stopped crunching going into 5th, but it still crunches slightly going into 2nd and 3rd until the oil warms up. When everything's warm then there's no crunch at all. Apparently after a few weeks it's meant to improve some more, but I've only had it in the car less than a week before I had the accident, so I'll have to wait until I get it back from the workshop before I can see how it goes from there.

I ordered mine from TTZ Performance in Melbourne and got it delivered. I emailed simon@ttz.com who works there (or owns the shop, I dunno). You can also ring them up on 03 9842 7699. Talk with them to find out what level of crunchiness your gearbox is at and they will recommend light or heavy oil to go with it.

Zahos, you've either got more muscles or less regard for skinning your knuckles than me The thing that twigged me into trying the lever was the fact that when I pushed forwards it didn't seem to move inwards at all. The Commodore seat was a bit tricky but it did move in and up and when you had the seat out you could see the metal hook which you had to push back before lifting it out. With the Skyline it's just a U-shaped bit of thick wire, it doesn't actually look like pushing it back will accomplish anything. Pushing before lifting might do something, I dunno. Perhaps you are meant to do it this way. All I know is that it's much easier to lever it off and it hasn't broken anything or even started to wear out the clip after 3 or 4 removals.

There's a bit of improvement in the shift feel. It now doesn't crunch going into 5th at all (used to do it every now and then), and when the oil has warmed up the whole box is a lot smoother. When cold though it can be a bit hard to shift into 1st or 2nd. Apparently it will improve even more after a few weeks, I'd only had it in less than a week before I got rear-ended. I guess I won't see any improvement for another week or 2 after I get it back from the repair shop (and god knows when I'll get it back). I dunno, the whole thing could just be a gimmick but I had a spare $100 and from the reports I read it was meant to preserve your gearbox more than any other oil so I thought I may as well get it. But if you see photos of a gearbox that has this oil in it, you can definitely see how it sticks to everything inside and lubricates it all properly.

Only need 3.5L or so in an R33. I bought a 3.78L container of Redline Heavy Weight Shock Proof Oil for about $100, and there's about 300ml left in the bottle. This oil is meant to be the best, I guess that's why it cost $100

You don't have to push it in at all. Take a big lever (I use a bigass shifter spanner), and put it alongside the metal bit which hooks into the floorpan. Then push the lever down at the front, it will pop the metal hook bit straight up and out of the plastic that holds it in. It's just a really tight bitch, but if you lever it off in this manner it's really easy. I figured this out myself out of pure frustration! I was trying the push in/pull up method which worked on my Commodore and I nearly broke my fingers. I was at the stage where I didn't care if I damaged the seat or not and tried it. I've done it 3 or 4 times now with no damage to the plastic bit which holds it in. Even if you can do the push in/pull up method (I can't see how it would work) then using a lever is inifinitely easier and you're less likely to hurt yourself.

I don't think it had ever been changed. The service manual specifies 100,000km for "business" use, or *never* for private use! :eek: It's done about 88000km so far, so I guess it may not be an extraordinarily large amount of metal to come out after that time. Anyway the issue isn't whether or not it's about to die (some boxes with no symptoms of wearing out still blow) but what I should do if it happens. I'd rather know what to do before it blows then try to find out after the event

Hmm, don't really know how to quantify it A few grams maybe? Enough to fit in your hand but not a handful. I've thrown it all out so I'm relying on my dodgy memory. Touch wood that it's not about to die, I was just trying to figure out what to do should the worst case happen. Synchro's are a little worn on 2nd and 3rd, but I've got some Redline oil in there now which should hopefully improve things.

I changed my gearbox oil recently and there was a fair bit of shredded metal in it. If this is an indication that my box is on its way out, what's the best way to go about fixing it after it blows? I'd rather fix it than buy a 2nd hand one, which may be in the same condition as the one I'm replacing. Should I pull it apart and just replace the worn/broken bits, or do the whole lot? I can probably do the work myself if I had a workshop manual with proper torque settings for the bolts etc, but if not I think I'd better get a transmission place to do it. Are there any decent transmission places in Sydney that could rebuild it for me for not too much money?

Took the car into Midas last week to change the gearbox oil, and also had them check out the exhaust because to me it didn't seem to match what the previous owner had told me. I had been told by the previous owner that it was 3" cat-back only (he didn't do it himself, it was like this from Japan) but I was pretty sure the front pipe was as wide as the bit behind the cat, so I had the guys at Midas measure it for me. Imagine my pleasant surprise when I discovered that it was actually a full 3.5" system except for the dump pipe, which is smaller and I presume stock. So I've saved a few hundred bucks on the front pipe and high-flow cat because it already has them! Obviously the previous owner had only seen the narrow dump pipe, and the wider bit near the muffler, and assumed it was cat-back only. My question is replacing that really short dump pipe with a wider one going to make that much of a difference? Midas say they can make me a custom 3.5" Mandrel one to match the rest of the system for around $160, does this sound like a good deal?

Have a look in this thread, especially at Jay51's PVC pipe mod down near the bottom. Combine that with an airbox/partition and even the factory scoop and you'll be getting plenty of air in there.

Jay51, can't measure the pod until the car gets back from the smash repairers in god knows how long It's a very small pod compared to others like Blitz, but apparently it still flows very well. If anyone's worried about which pods will fit, I would say that the Apexi is the most likely to be able to.

Woohoo! Another satisfied customer That thread turned out much bigger than I would have thought, a lot of stuff in there deserves its own thread I reckon. Good luck with it, the partition/box is definitely worth doing.

Nowhere yet, got to drop it off tomorrow morning at a smash repairers in my place.