R33 Gtr Development Advice

[fake400r]

Hi Guys,

I have been getting into the sprinting and time attack thing lately and have been having a ball.

I have an R33 GTR that i started in and then bought an R34 to be a race car. Anyway the R34 lasted 2 days at phillip island and blew up so thats in the shed for a while until i figure out my plan of attack and cash up again.

Anyway, im back racing the R33 and ran 19.91 at mallala the other week and then my best of 1.18.9 at skyline nationals on Sunday.

So i have a challenge i want to conquer and thought a few of you may have some advice for me.

The back ground of the car is:

1998 R33 GTR Series 3

Low Km

Modifications are:

Power FC (fitted and tuned before i bought the car, no idea on power output)

3" stainless exhaust, very quiet, maybe a bit restrictive but who knows

HKS coilovers never touched or adjusted. Dont even know if all four corners are evenly adjusted

Project Mu 2 piece rotors (new)

Project Mu HC+ pads front

Racebrake RB74 rear pads and standard rotors

Hi temp brake fluid

Rays TE37 Sl 18x10.5

Now running Dunlop DO3G semi slicks, 285x30x18

Battery triangle and tow stickers

Car is full weight and i race with the spare and the jack still in the car.

I have as aggressive wheel alignment as possible with all standard arm and bushes.

So the goal is to run a 1m 17.9 or better.

The rules for this challenge are:

No money to be spent on power parts. (tune ok, must run pump fuel)

Anything bought must also be usable on the R34

Really want to do it with out taking any weight out of the car

Must remain every bit a street car

Must be reliable

So realistically i am hoping to do this with basic alignment etc.

The issues im having atm are:

Understeer in the hair pins and turn 3.

Tyres get up to temp and get sticky about the same time the brakes fade out

I plan to fix the brake issue by removing the backing plates and running cold air ducts to them

The under steer im not sure. More aggressive wheel alignment id say and sway bars i suppose.

I also only want to make 1 or 2 changes at a time to see exactly what they do. good or bad.

Anyway this is where im at and want advice.

Where should i go next?

Matt

[Victory]

Handling improvements can be achieved with little cash outlay by installing adjustable selby/whiteline sway bars.

These also allow you to easily tune your handling by either increasing or decreasing stiffness at either end of the car simply by moving the link from one hole to the next.

Good wheel alignment is another important factor - I would start with the Sydneykid recommended settings and also look at ride height. Skylines do not like being lowered below a set height as it changes the roll centre and suspension angles with adverse effects.

When you have a wheel alignment done get a printout of the final settings to confirm exactly what they are - I have had one so called "good alignment" that on checking had 13mm of toe out on each front wheel (great for turn in but wandered all over the place in a straight line).

[Ant97GTR]

The good news is that a lot of suspn components are the same between a 33 and 34 GTR...as victory said above contact someone who knows how to setup the suspn for a GTR and spend your coin on that. My R was running on stock suspn and it just didn't want to turn in - since I fitted adj arms etc and had the alignment settings sorted I have cut at least 1-2 secs off every track I have been to. Just be aware that when you go a more track orientated alignment it no longer makes for a nice road car.

As for your brakes....maybe its the pads. The stock setup should be good up until the 300kw at the wheel mark. I run DBA5000 rotors at the front, stock rears with good pads and fluid and never had an issue.

[Blitz]

Good thread Matt, will be watching for updates as I am going down the same path with my 98 Series III and have almost identical mods to you including the wheels, though I am running on Azenis RT615s.

Nick

[djr81]

Modifications are:

Power FC (fitted and tuned before i bought the car, no idea on power output)

3" stainless exhaust, very quiet, maybe a bit restrictive but who knows

HKS coilovers never touched or adjusted. Dont even know if all four corners are evenly adjusted

Project Mu 2 piece rotors (new)

Project Mu HC+ pads front

Racebrake RB74 rear pads and standard rotors

Hi temp brake fluid

Rays TE37 Sl 18x10.5

Now running Dunlop DO3G semi slicks, 285x30x18

Car is full weight and i race with the spare and the jack still in the car.

I have as aggressive wheel alignment as possible with all standard arm and bushes.

So the goal is to run a 1m 17.9 or better.

The rules for this challenge are:

No money to be spent on power parts. (tune ok, must run pump fuel)

Anything bought must also be usable on the R34

Really want to do it with out taking any weight out of the car

Must remain every bit a street car

Must be reliable

So realistically i am hoping to do this with basic alignment etc.

The issues im having atm are:

Understeer in the hair pins and turn 3.

Tyres get up to temp and get sticky about the same time the brakes fade out

I plan to fix the brake issue by removing the backing plates and running cold air ducts to them

The under steer im not sure. More aggressive wheel alignment id say and sway bars i suppose.

I also only want to make 1 or 2 changes at a time to see exactly what they do. good or bad.

Anyway this is where im at and want advice.

Well the first, obvious & easy thing to do is chuck the jack & the spare wheel out. Frankly I am surprised they let you out on circuit with them there. It is 20+kg you don't need to lug about.

Brakes are largely a compound thing. What you plan will help.

It is a GT-R it will understeer. You can only ever half fix it simply because the weight distribution is rubbish.

If you don't have aftermarket sway bars then get some. As hard as like for the rear, adjustable for the front or just plain soft. I would chuck a rear bar at it then think about the front.

As for the street/track thing - forget it. A track GT-R will run heaps of neg camber at the front . I run 5 degrees. Which is a world away from anything you want on the road. So you need to have a think about what you want. You cannot have a neutral car on the track & a nice one on the road unless you change a bunch of things everytime you go to the track.

[fake400r]

ok, thanks for the feedback so far. I think i need to clarify a few things. This project is to keep me driving and learning about car setup whilst my r34 gtr gets built.

34 only lasted one day though until it blew up hence back in the 33. The 34 is being caged, dry sumped, built motor, already has ap brakes, pedal box, fuel system etc.

The challenge here is really to go as fast as possible with standard power levels and full weight. Minimal mods. Its more about learning to drive and learning about car setup and what each change makes. Its not a project all about money.

I was told i would not go faster than about 1m 21 with my current setup so to now be in the 18z is very satisfying. but not good enough.

The r33 does not need to see the road as a road car. it just has to look like one as such.

Therefore the alignment etc can be full track orientation (ie, 4 degrees camber if needed). Ride comfort is not an issue neither is tyre wear. It needs to be as fast as possible.

So i suppose the point of this thread is get feedback from guys who actually race these things and what they do to be fast. Also it should be a good read for others in my position.

So stage one will be the brake cooling fixes. Backing plates off and cooling ducts.

At the same time i will be doing the alignment (no sway bars yet) So i want to do front and rear camber and front castor. What alignment ie. camber settings am i looking for and what products do i need. Will offset bushes achieve what i want or do i need arms (cusco, ikeya etc.).

After that i will do sway bars and test it to gauge the improvement.

After that im a bit stuck. I would like to know what other small changes can be made to make this thing quicker. The main thing is to maintain full weight and standard power.

Thanks

matt

[fake400r]

The good news is that a lot of suspn components are the same between a 33 and 34 GTR...as victory said above contact someone who knows how to setup the suspn for a GTR and spend your coin on that. My R was running on stock suspn and it just didn't want to turn in - since I fitted adj arms etc and had the alignment settings sorted I have cut at least 1-2 secs off every track I have been to. Just be aware that when you go a more track orientated alignment it no longer makes for a nice road car.

As for your brakes....maybe its the pads. The stock setup should be good up until the 300kw at the wheel mark. I run DBA5000 rotors at the front, stock rears with good pads and fluid and never had an issue.

Mallala is very hard on brakes. In my r34 with 350 atw and no interior the same setup did not even get close to fading.

[On Edge]

+1 U are 100% right mallala is very hard on brakes compared to most vic or nsw tracks

[djr81]

The challenge here is really to go as fast as possible with standard power levels and full weight. Minimal mods. Its more about learning to drive and learning about car setup and what each change makes. Its not a project all about money.

Therefore the alignment etc can be full track orientation (ie, 4 degrees camber if needed). Ride comfort is not an issue neither is tyre wear. It needs to be as fast as possible.

At the same time i will be doing the alignment (no sway bars yet) So i want to do front and rear camber and front castor. What alignment ie. camber settings am i looking for and what products do i need. Will offset bushes achieve what i want or do i need arms (cusco, ikeya etc.).

After that i will do sway bars and test it to gauge the improvement.

After that im a bit stuck. I would like to know what other small changes can be made to make this thing quicker. The main thing is to maintain full weight and standard power.

Do the sway bars first. They help make better use of whatever neg camber you have. If you do it the other way around you wont learn anything other than doing both of them is better than just doing the wheel alignment.

If you put the bars in first you can then gauge how much of an effect the change in the wheel alignment has. As you will change alignment more than sway bars you are better off doing it that way around.

[Duncan]

don't do anything to the r33. use it on the road where it is meant to be.

spend 6 months saving and building the car you bought as a race car, keep it simple and reliable as possible. once it is fixed, do lots of track days, lots of practice

[fake400r]

don't do anything to the r33. use it on the road where it is meant to be.

spend 6 months saving and building the car you bought as a race car, keep it simple and reliable as possible. once it is fixed, do lots of track days, lots of practice

hehe. that was the plan when i bought the 34. The 33 was going to be my nice road car that i could enjoy when i get the chance.

However, i want the r34 to be built to the highest possible quality level and that takes time and money. In the meantime i have to keep racing because im seriously hooked. This little project is just to keep me moving forward whilst the 34 is completed.

That aside i totally agree with you duncan but it isnt going to happen. i have a problem.

[fake400r]

Little bit of interesting news. Got out to Mallala last weekend for a practice day and had some success.

Lack of time meant that the only changes were oil and brake fluid but it didnt seem to matter much. I ended up improving my best to attain a 1m 18.3

I ended up achieving this through two key changes. The first was hardening up the rear suspension to full hard and softening the front to 10 clicks softer than full hard. This helped the balance of the car and the understeer reduced a noticable amount. The other thing i did was get my tyre pressures even so they all came up to 36 psi hot. Not sure if this is exactly spot on but it did seem to improve.

The other key change i made was the way i drove my sessions. I did 4 laps with very early braking but aggressive steering which saved the brakes but allowed the tyres to come up to temp. Then i nailed 2 fast laps with hot tyres and brakes that were in their operating range. This translated into an 18.3 and 18.4 lap one after another. I have to thank Simon from Morpowa for his advice here as i think this was the boggest factor in reducing the lap time.

Anyway, thats where im at at the moment. Have Project Mu fluid to try this weekend (big thanks to Autosport and Project Mu here) and also Project Mu h16-03 pads to try. Also have new brake ducts going on so ill see how i go.

Now has anyone got any idea how to beat Martin Donnan in his E85 guzzling evo10?