Underground Motorsports: Project 800hp Rb26dett 1998 Silvia
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So, first things first, it's had a service for all fluids (2x coolant as it has air/water heat exchangers instead of air/air), new air filters (they were terrible, and one was pinched when installed by NIssan's "technician"). Also, both the boot and bonnet gas struts were shot, so ebay sorted some new ones, the jack handle kept me alive for the first service It needs tyres (more to come on that...) and the brakes are horribly grabby, looks like they've been badly glazed sitting around in Sydney traffic. On the bright side there are no obvious leaks and it runs well. The car goes well with 300kw (stock, claimed, I'll put it on a dyno soon), does good skids and handles reasonably well eg in long medium g corners. It is no cruiser like the Fuga though and is noticeably jiggly on the average (poor) rural road and terrible on corrugated dirt. I'll get some road/race shocks in it shortly which should help. -
So, for those following along at home, I've had the R32 up on stands for a while since a minor incident in the last rally, which required a new rear quarter panel to be welded in after the car had been (pretty much) put back square again. The problem is of course, that some R32 GTR stuff is simply not available (eg front guards) and other things are either expensive (second hand) or very expensive (nismo heritage). In the end I've decided to try out a v37 with some track days, hill climbs etc before going ahead with modifying it for race/rally like the old GTR. To do so I've picked up an ADM Infiniti Q50 Red Sport, rather than a JDM car which offers much better value but might lead to complexities when I discuss spec with the production racing guys. In the meantime it will be my daily (well, more like weekly) driver, mostly highway use to Canberra or Sydney. BTW yes, I did notice it is auto-only, and yes I did know the Z comes with the same motor in manual. Big issue with the Z for me is that it is unlikely I can meet the new rally cage clearance requirements in that chassis so I've gone the 4 door/auto route The colour isn't great for rural lyf, and neither is having a sunroof for racing, but the Q50 market is small and it is what it is. Also...can't say I really like the shape much either, the front is OK but from the rear it is a dead ringer for a mazda 6
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By DraftySquash · Posted
Ahh yes looks like I’m playing with a new cock on the weekends. Thanks for the information @soviet_merlin I’ll search for it later on and try to get it shipped. Looks like it won’t happen this weekend regardless. But the coolant looks fine so far (no floaties of concern). And waiting another week will slow down my money hole 😂 -
By soviet_merlin · Posted
I don't know whether that one should be reused or not. But here's one way to find the part. Go to https://nissan.epc-data.com and use frame number or the menus to drill down to the parts for your specific car. Looks like it is under 'Body parts -> 214 radiator'. See for example the respective part for my Stagea. Looks like it's called drain cock packing, and at least for mine it is part number 2148118000. Searching for that then gives you various places where you can buy it. Amayama can be a bit slow, so it's worth searching around. I'd make sure it's the correct one for yours. At least from amayama it looks pretty generic and fits a ton of cars. And if anyone asks what you did on the weekend, you can tell them that you put a new cock on the car -
Because people like Gregged stories, I'll elaborate. I ordered a front end, being a GTR conversion front bumper, CF hood, to go with my URAS wider front fenders. These took a good ~year to arrive. They had arrived when I dropped them off at paint shop 1 and are in that large pile of car panels. Unfortunately _some_ of it didn't fit very well/at all, though to be more accurate it's safer to say it didn't fit with each other. A lot of GTR conversion parts, really are just GTR parts. GTR fiber replicas need GTR guards. Because GTR fenders flare out more than GTT fenders. Even GTT fenders that are flared out by the same amount GTR fenders are. The GTR conversion/GTR bumper I was sold is no longer for sale as the company involved recognized the issues with it and refunded it, beyond this situation. The bonnet and bumper gap was... this. They then sent a redesigned bumper, but this still had the issue with the width, and then advised me I needed GTR bracketry to fit this conversion bumper. Which, to me, is kind of crazy - Because if you need a GTR Reo, headlight supports, headlight brackets, and the mounting bracket (with the additional plate with the rubber strip) in order to mount your 'conversion' bumper, the bumper itself is just a GTR bumper. And when I mentioned this, not to mention the time and hassle of sending bumpers back and a forth and dealing with a busy company, I was able to make the statement that this is not made to fit a GTT at all, at least in the sense that you can't use any of it with any other GTT part. The bonnet worked, but without a bumper that can actually fit it was effectively just a GTR bonnet with GTT hinge points and latch points. Not much use if I can't use a bumper. Why would I (or anyone) buy a fibreglass GTR replica that costs more than an OEM plastic GTR bar, if I need to use all the GTR hardware to mount it anyway? Funny enough I had test fitted everything else except these bits. Obviously I should have. I saw pictures of things fitted but everything's not quite the same and unmentioned the fact people have made extra brackets or something to pull on these fibreglass bumpers. With the GTR brackets we were able to force the "second" bumper they sent us, but you shouldn't need two big guys forcing a fibreglass bumper over mounts you need to drill to get it to fit, using a lot of tension and a lot of force, the whole thing was completely taut and felt spring loaded to explode at any moment. In any case after all this faffing about, I eventually spoke to someone else at this company who advised I should have been sent the correct parts to begin with given they pulled up all my communications with what I had, what I wanted, what parts I was using, etc. But by this time the car had been sitting at Shop 1 for quite some time now and they didn't really just want to paint the rest of the car from A pillar back while this was all sorted out. I got a full refund and honestly everyone involved was perfectly nice and easy to deal with once I could get ahold of them, though it did need a bit of 'chasing' as you kinda expect. So then I had a stock front end again, and could have just fit the URAS fibreglass fronts and used an OEM front bumper and OEM hood and called it a day. But did I do that? No, I am retarded. Because I was paranoid about Mr Police in the future sticking a magnet to my front guards, or my bonnet and realising they weren't metal, I followed up on a tip I got from a friend who got his metal guards widened out. I had wanted to do this 'in the future some day' but thought I may as well just do this 'now' given I'd be driving around all paranoid about my fibreglass front fenders on my otherwise legal and engineered car. SO ANYWAY I engaged these people during the time I was returning the original body parts, so the car was at Shop 1 with no front end at all, not being fitted or being painted A pillar back even though I was more than happy to just get the front panels painted separately when they existed. (I understand the reasoning for not wanting this, but I was just trying to save time). And you guessed it, the metalbenders took much longer than they said they would take, and Shop 1 man had a medical issue where he had to close the shop indefinitely (legitimately). So even though I had to return a bunch of stuff, and a car sat around for months with no work being done on it, there's no actual bad blood there, so I don't want to name names and say "SHOP X SUCKS" just... do your diligence. Metalbender place returned my Bonnet and Guards to me eventually, which was when I realised THIS: Is going to make my life hard again, because having wider metal guards doesn't make much benefit if the actual point it hits is the connection between the bumper and the guard. Which is why Nissan flared it out, ostensibly. With regards to the bonnet, I needed vents in the first place because the car likes to overheat due to heat soak on 40C days with the aircon on, if the car has been driven for more than like 30 minutes. Only with the aircon on, only on days that hot, only when sitting, and only after ~30 minutes. So the logic behind it all was to cut vents in. I had originally thought to just the flat pieces out (not the webbing!) and put mesh in there, which would have worked fine. Then talking to the metalbenders I was convinced this was a bit agricultural and water would get in. STUPID EVERYONE INVOLVED didn't think of simply using a plastic engine cover on the engine, and we started talking about vent design and rain gutters instead. There was also the issue of while the guards both fit what I asked for, which was: "Can you replicate these URAS Fibreglass flares on these stock metal guards by the same distance, or maybe +10mm wider?" ..the issue was the guards weren't the same as one another when the job was done. Enough that when I fit them and went to paint places, the overriding feeling was "I can't get it painted while they're like that". So, I Karen'ed and they offered to fix them up to get them symmetrical again after I drove back and showed them, and we did the whole lean back from a few meters in front of the car, and: "Oh yeah" "ahhh yeah".. "Ahh, ... yeah, yeah nah yeah" ... and I then took them off and delivered them. I have it all back now, and while the guards are better they're still not symmetrical, and I'm paranoid about a tiny bit of webbing actually being cut with the vents installed, and only slightly remorseful about the fact that METALBENDING WAS REALLY EXPENSIVE, and it would have been cheaper to simply buy all of the Nissan OEM pieces, including $2200 aluminium bonnets, and $2000 guard sets and OEM plastic bumpers and get it done that way. YOU ARE WARNED. also, anyone wanna buy my GTR brackets between the headlights? Useful for someone doing this conversion and they cost about $1000 cause you didn't want to use/mark up/damage the fibreglass replica the company sold you to make their stuff fit (it won't fit).
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