Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

Is it worth considering a cheaper run down GTR or should you spend the extra money to track down a good example. I am fairly good with all things mechanical and electrical. I built my LC from a bare shell having nothing at all, not even nuts and bolts to start with. I would find someone to do the motor and gearbox but everything else seems do-able. Am i kidding myself here or what?

You can get R32 RB26's for $4K if you look hard enough.

So long as you go in with your eyes open and give it the once over to make sure there's no major dramas its fine. Just depends how much time you want to spend dicking around with your car as opposed to driving it.

Is it worth considering a cheaper run down GTR or should you spend the extra money to track down a good example. I am fairly good with all things mechanical and electrical. I built my LC from a bare shell having nothing at all, not even nuts and bolts to start with. I would find someone to do the motor and gearbox but everything else seems do-able. Am i kidding myself here or what?

The best advice you will get relating to an R32 GT-R is this:

Buy a good one, not a cheap one.

The difference between the cheap one & the good ones is only a few thousand dollars. This will disapper quite quickly is you need to replace major componentry. To use but one example a new set of brake pads & rotors will cost you about $1500 fitted. You get alot of extra bling on a second hand R32 for $1500...

To use but one example a new set of brake pads & rotors will cost you about $1500 fitted.

You always pay a shiet load more when having people work on your car. You could save $300 on the $1500 price tag by shopping around and buying the parts your self.

The GTR price has dropped but there are still good examples out there, good, clean, stockies for $20k and less it seems. I agree they can be cheap to buy but as long as you are aware that running and maintenance costs can be pretty high then you wont be shocked when the bill comes in. I'm hoping to hold onto mine as I think as time goes on the good ones will hold their value as more get crashed and wrecked.

I have two GTRs. I've own the grey one for 13 months and in that time I've fitted new spark plugs, new battery, new front rotors, new pads all round, new braided brake hoses, new coilovers, its had two services, two dyno tunes, tyres rotated and balanced & a wheel alignment. This car came from Japan in awesome condition with all its books and service history.

In the white GTR I had to fit new spark plugs, a new battery, new upper control arm bushes, new clutch, new tyres, had the air conditioner regassed (twice), a service, a dyno tune, all rotors machined, and new brake pads all round.

Bottom line is GTRs cost money - be prepared to fork some out, especially if you're buying one for less than $20,000.

I've own the grey one for 13 months and in that time I've fitted new spark plugs, new battery, new front rotors, new pads all round, new braided brake hoses, new coilovers, its had two services, two dyno tunes, tyres rotated and balanced & a wheel alignment. This car came from Japan in awesome condition with all its books and service history.

In the white GTR I had to fit new spark plugs, a new battery, new upper control arm bushes, new clutch, new tyres, had the air conditioner regassed (twice), a service, a dyno tune, all rotors machined, and new brake pads all round.

Even with a GTST you have to do those things... the cars are getting old now and need work on the a/c, bushes and general wear and tear items.

Heres a list for my general costs over the last four years and 60,km's

$4,200 for twin plate {os gilken} old one was slipping by 120, k

$2,200 discs and pads all round neeeded doing 120, k

$10,000 N1 turbos required, dump pipes, manifold, gaskets etc. OLd ones leaking oil at 130, k

$200 cooling system flush just in case

$800 Air flow meter 3X pain in the ass $300-$350 for meter and $450 dyno and fault finding plus labour

$1000 front bushes Old 1's nackered at 135, k

$600 rear cradle bushes old 1's nackered at 125,k aluminium cones put in . work better, prevent body roll

$1600 100, k service Due and needed timing belt tensioners replaced.

$800 timing belt tensioners nackered again plus service 135, k fishy 1's werth $400

list can go on and on so when you chuck in water pump ,fuel pump, tyres{7 pair's} plus services at 5,thou intrevals as you can guess lots of dollars any way.

Then theres the mod list hehe exhaust, power fc, intercooler ,pipe work, window tint, stereo, alram and speakers to name a few.

now my car cost $35,000 and is the last of the 32 gtr's being a 1994

so i guess it dosent matter how old it is , they a still bl##dy expensive to have and drive

Bloody FUN drive but :PBJ:

Heres a list for my general costs over the last four years and 60,km's

$4,200 for twin plate {os gilken} old one was slipping by 120, k

$2,200 discs and pads all round neeeded doing 120, k

$10,000 N1 turbos required, dump pipes, manifold, gaskets etc. OLd ones leaking oil at 130, k

$200 cooling system flush just in case

$800 Air flow meter 3X pain in the ass $300-$350 for meter and $450 dyno and fault finding plus labour

$1000 front bushes Old 1's nackered at 135, k

$600 rear cradle bushes old 1's nackered at 125,k aluminium cones put in . work better, prevent body roll

$1600 100, k service Due and needed timing belt tensioners replaced.

$800 timing belt tensioners nackered again plus service 135, k fishy 1's werth $400

Your mechanic obviously lives on the French Riviera and flies here 1st class just to service your car.......

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • In the context of cam 'upgrader' I mean generally people who upgrade headers/cams - not my specific change. I mean it makes sense that if I had a bigger cam, I may get more false lean readings. So if I went smaller, I'd get less false lean readings. To a point where perhaps stock.. I'd have no false lean readings, according to the ECU. But I'm way richer than stock. My bigger than normal cam in the past also was giving false rich leanings. It's rather odd and doesn't add up or pass the pub test. Realistically what I want is the narrowbands to effectively work as closed loop fuel control and keep my AFR around 14.7 on light sections of the map. Which is of course the purpose of narrowband CL fuel control. So if I can change the switch points so the NB's target 14.7 (as read by my WB) then this should be fine. Haven't actually tested to see what the changed switchpoints actually result in - car needs to be in a position it can idle for awhile to do that. I suspect it will be a troublesome 15 min drive home with lots of stalling and way too rich/lean transient nightmare bucking away for that first drive at 2am or whevener it ends up being. Hopefully it's all tune-able. Realistically it should be. This is a very mild cam.
    • Messing with narrowband switchovers is a terrible bandaid. I don't want to think about it. You are a cam "upgrader" only in concept. As you said, your new cam is actually smaller, so it's technically a downgrade. OK, likely a very small downgrade, but nevertheless. But the big thing that will be the most likely suspect is the change of the advance angle. That change could be equivalent to a substantial decrease in cam lobe duration. I haven't gone to the effort of trying to think about what your change would actually cause. But until someone (you, me (unlikely), Matt, someone else) does so and comes to a conclusion about the effect, it remains a possibility that that is the change that is causing what you're seeing.
    • The previous switchover point was 501mv. The stock value is like ~360. They now were idling at about ~880. The thing is, most people get a false lean condition. I am getting false rich conditions. This isn't a quirk of terminology, most cam upgraders get awful fuel economy because the O2's read false lean and add fuel - Mine are attempting to aggressively subtract fuel.
    • So... the whole idea was to upgrade the power of the motor from stock. The motor I bought with the gearbox had 'some' stuff done to it in the past, but it wasn't as well thought out/what I had wanted to do. The stock heads typically are a big restriction on LS's and need porting to unlock quite a lot of power. You can then go a bit silly with aftermarket castings to get more, aftermarket intake manifolds for a little more, and then porting those for more. <- We are here. Nobody in Australia really goes down this path (for some reason). It might* make 3kw or something more than doing things the tried and true path for 10X the cost. So that's probably why - I wouldn't even recommend it to people, the money was and is likely better spent on just CNC'ing the stock heads and putting a 6.3L stroker kit in. I didn't want to go down the 'normal' path and then think: But if I'd just done a bit more - I could have had a slightly better result. I assumed the heads were running out of flow and it always annoyed me - Turns out the previous installer advanced the cam 6 degrees so this is likely why it was coming on earlier and running out of puff earlier than advertised. The body panels were just lack of planning/no information on this anywhere on the internet and the fact they came out different was annoying. From test fitting the guard it appears I could have gotten away with GTR guards only, but I got the bonnet and raisers and everything else as well for a pretty decent package deal.
×
×
  • Create New...