GTSBoy

Money have to change hands?

Will certainly need brakes. (I actually have some I could sell, if needed) Diff will be leading to excessive tyre wear on one side!

I don't hate the R33. I just think it's ugly, by comparison to all the other GTRs. And I don't even count the R35, because, well, comparing apples and pineapples.

That was about Soarers/SC400s.

Perhaps more likely that the external oil plumbing (in particular the anti-drainback valve) has suffered a failure and letting the oil out of the loop? Perhaps your investigation path would be to pull that loop apart when it's cold and/or possibly drained back and see if it looks more empty than it should be.

When they first came into the country - everyone said it. But then they got tired and tatty and the pain faded and no-one says it now. They look a bit like an overinflated Hyundai Excel, sadly.

You see, it's these statements that cause us the most confusion. The R33 does not have curves. It just has smooth, swollen, featureless panels, like a VN Commodore. Look at the front guard on this car. The rear guard is not much better. On the R32, the front guard is much more nuanced. The flare added to it from the base car to get the width they needed made it look wider - whereas the R33 is already just wide. So wide that they had room for that ugly flat guard lip. For cars that are so similar, in length, width, height, weight, drivetrain, all the changes in the R33 that change the design language from 1980s to 1990s were bad. Everything about mid 90s car design language was less good than the late 80s (after the box phase of the R31 era was finished). The best view of the R33 GTR is from a low viewpoint from the rear. Yes, it looks wide and hot. But it is ruined by the 1990s tail lights (more the indicator part, but nevertheless - the lights).

Wow. That's a looooooooong way away from here. Just for clarity, this is a Jap 4 door, not an Aussie 4 door, right? Anyway, welcome. We will require pictures of it in the most scenic location you can get to. We won't ask you to drive it up Mt McKinley or anything like that. But a polar bear or moose of some sort in the back/foreground would be good!

It does sound like a head off investigation at the very least. If you're lucky, it's only collected a few valves and the pistons are sound enough to leave alone.

Try to start it with a 50c piece direct onto the solenoid terminal from the main cable (at the starter motor itself). If it will crank there, then you have a problem with wiring between there and the ignition switch. If it won't, give it a whack with a soft face hammer or a lump of wood and see if it will crank after that. If it will, then the solenoid is sticky, which probably means full of clutch dust, but it could just be warm. Finally, they can get grumpy when hot, when they get old. If it works when it cools down, then there's your answer.

How many are we limited to choosing? 'Coz I'd take them all, but for different reasons. But if I had to choose in order, it would red, blue, black, white.

On the subject of money vs GTR ownership......Because I am sensible and only spend sensible amounts of money on cars. It's why my R32 is still stock in many ways (extensive engine, gearbox, subframe, brake, etc transplants notwithstanding). I daily it, so it needs to work like a daily, not a track grenade. And I'm not defending the R32 GTR. If you look closely at all my posts in this thread, you will see me say they look great, and then I list all the reasons that R33s look bad. I have not reacted to any attempted slurs on the R32's looks, because, in my opinion, these opinions are wrong, but having been expressed by people who think the R33 looks better, I understand that it is not possible to construct any argument that will change the minds of these people. It's like arguing with Christians. Total WOFTAM. They cannot be unconvinced. I can, however, still poke needles in about how bad the R33 looks and simply wait 3 seconds for the inevitable response. It's fun when it's fun. But when people like Bakemono get carried away with huge stretches of logic and bringing in unsupported evidence from other-side-of-the-world GTR communities, it stops being fun. I challenge anyone to go look at the back end of a mid 90s Maxima and not see a lot of common design language with the R33. It's sad, because the R32's back end was unique in the Nissan catalogue. Simply having those taillights on the back instantly set it apart from the S13, which was vaguely the same shape. The R32 non-GTR bonnet was unfortunate, being an effect of some questionable 80s influence on the design language, but the GTRs was spot on, so we will take that as the default front end for R32s. But the front end of the R33 looks a hell of a lot like a Magna from the same era. That's just an unfortunate coincidence, but it ruins the appeal of the R33 for me. And the other things I point out, like the height of the front guard behind the wheel arch and the length of the side panel in front of the rear wheel, are things that most people are simply incapable of seeing on their own. But I think, once seen, cannot be unseen. It appears that you guys like the swollen, featureless panel shapes, odd proportions and unfortunate graphic elements on the car. Great. Go for it. Doesn't mean that they're not there.

Oh, FFS! Point one. If it would not get me in trouble with the domestic authority for wasting more money on cars, I could go out an buy 2 or 3 R33s (yes, GTRs!) with money that is actually accessible. Although "accessible" might mean waiting a few months to get some of it out of term deposit. Point two. It's hardly /Thread. You simply do not realise that I have been teasing the shit out of you sensitive, precious R33 defenders. It's OK that you think they're beautiful. Some people think that all sorts of vaguely unpleasant things are beautiful. Like Chris Bangle's BMW designs, or like pickled fish. Or Lady Gaga. So you're not unique. And please, please, please.....do not think that R33 GTRs are the only R33s. It makes you sound so dumb. Like you can't concentrate on anything except the most recent thing to prick your ego. The original question in the thread was "Why do people hate the R33?" It did not say "....R33 GTR?". So stop being so bloody precious. It's sad.

I like RWD too. I wouldn't say no to a GTR. If I had the budget and suitable storage I would have bought one years ago. And there is no arguing that they are great to drive. But they do flatter the driver. Not as much as an Evo does, but they still make it easier to do everything. If you put silly power into a RWD chassis, you have to work much harder to keep it all together. The GTR would be the closest-to-a-RWD AWD there is, which is why it's the only such AWD car that I would consider owning. (ie, no STIs, no Evos on my list of desirable cars).

I must say, that while I absolutely stick by what I say about the appearance of R33s, you guys are so easy to bait over it.

It's interesting to note that the most famous car movie franchise in history has featured the Skyline as one of the "hero" cars on a few occasions. Both the R33 and R34 were used in the early movies when the cars were as much a part of the storyline as the characters. The R32 has been overlooked as a featured car. I wonder why... Because it was already old at the time. The US is devoid of the R32 culture that we have in Australia. That's the US's fault, not the R32. Car movie makers who don't really give a shit about anything except making a profit are not in it to promote the car culture. They just pick a vehicle that they think will appeal and run with it. The R33 was pretty much the most recent GTR at the time of F&F. R34s would have actually been too new to consider ruining in a movie at that point (~1999-2000 when they were producing it). Hell, if I were looking to make such a movie, I'd pick the R33 too. Doesn't change my opinion of what they look like though. Hell - if the R33 GTR is such a stunner in person.....why did one pull into the carpark at the shops at the same time I did and it took me until I walked past it to realise it was a GTR and not just another GTST? Simply because they actually do not have all that much presence unless they are in that purple colour.

This is a thread about why people hate the R33. Not why they should love it. Arguments both ways are perfectly valid. Although anyone claiming the R33's looks are superior is taking it too far. Can't be superior when there's so much wrong! Nevertheless, I don't hate it. I just hate the way it looks. The R33 preservation society is being beaten by the flatbrimmer-slide-em-sideways-into-trees squad anyway. So it shouldn't be too long before they're all gone anyway. Luckily the last few good R32s were saved by never being sold to the previous generation of those dickheads.

Yes, but you're not listening to what we're saying. It matters not one jot what the OEM fitted headlights were for a car that was not sold in Australia with ADR compliance. Bring that car into the country with those OEM HIDs and if they do not meet the ADR requirements, then they are simply not legal. To be compliant here they must have the levellers and washers (unless they meet the <2000 lumen rule, which I guess is to cover other types of driving lights rather than "headlights".) it doesn't matter if Nissan are prepared to sell headlamp assemblies through their Oz stealerships. What matters is what you then do with them. Fit them to a road-going car and the problem is yours, not Nissan's. It's actually pretty simple. There is no loophole for you, or any other person in the same boat. Are there non-HID assemblies available for these boats?

That's one of the main reasons why it looks like a fat cow. It's not just wide. It's too tall - both at the base of the windscreen and also in the rear quarters. It looks bulky and without any design tension. Just looks like it's been inflated. With lard. I think you get too carried away with how much better the the R33 GTR is over all the others. Nobody really gives a stuff if a stock 33 was 30 seconds (pick a number, I certainly don't care) faster around the 'ring than a 34 was. Absolutely anything to do with performance is subject to modification. Anybody who really cares about how hard you can drive a GTR is perfectly willing to modify it. What you cannot do is change the fact that the R32 has a sweet profile, the R34 has a sharper edged version of that sweet profile, and the R33 just has so many wrong design elements that it is totally unappealing to look at, in the opinion of a significant fraction of people who care. Including me. Now, some guys like fuc[ing fat women. That's fine, as long as I don't have to watch. I feel somewhat the same about R33s. When it comes to non-GTRs, the only that that R33s are good for is brake and engine donors for R32s and Silvias. When it comes to GTRs, I'd probably rather a deal where I get one nice R32 than 2 nice R33s (assuming I'm not allowed to then sell for profit/disposal). I'd certainly take 1 R34 over 2 R33s. Oh. And the tailights. They're wrong too.

And typical OEM lumen output is in the order of 2500-3000 lumens. You will not be able to work that loophole.

Kinda depends on how likely your mods are to get you defected. You live in Vic and you have to face the biggest pack of (unt$ in all of Australia, every time you take the car out on the road.

There is no such thing as an engineer's cert for a non-modified car. That car doesn't need it. I think you misunderstand what the cert is for. The cert is to say that "this mod and that mod and that mod, and only those mods, were made on this car and they are all kosher".

Yeah, the money for the engineer is in the right ballpark, then you have to budget for whatever you have to get done to make it good enough for the Mexican sphincter squad.

That's the point. It's a completely random crap-shoot. The life expectancy of ceramic turbines lies on a probability curve that it approximately Gaussian, although it probably biased like a Poisson distribution (having a maximum point beyond which no turbine will survive). But the shape of such distributions has turbine death all the way down to "never even actually run". Running at stock boost is well within the range of death possibility.

But just so unattractive to look at. Too tall in the rear half of the front guards. Too long in the side panel behind the door/in front of the rear wheel. Too Magna in the front, too Maxima in the rear. Too stupid with the rear guards coming up higher than the boot lid - made it look heavy and slab sided when it didn't have to be. Look at all the other R chassis GTRs (with the exception of the mid 70s where they also lost the plot a little bit) and see that every other Skyline GTR has followed the silhouette cast by the first Mustangs. IMHO, even the R31 coupe looks better than the R33. It looks light and tight, not fat and odd. I don't mind R33 lovers loving R33s. But there are real reasons why the rest of us prefer the other cars.