Charles' R34 Gtt - C89

[Charles89]

After owning my 1999 R34 GTT for almost 6 years, I thought I'd start a build thread. Since my car will most likely never be for sale, I wanted to share my journey of my pride and joy - the good, bad and the ugly. (Disclaimer: The car isn't or isn't going to be a 1000hp monster, but it's just a worthy street car that sometimes sees the track)

Like many other cars and projects out there, this wasn't a smooth sailing journey, it had lots of ups and downs, lot's of blood, sweat and swears.

I've been on SAU since 2007, started my Skyline career with a 1996 R33 Series 2 GTS, imported from Japan via J-Spec Imports, when I was 18 years old.



It wasn't long until I had a 'little' accident in it, literally 2 days after it was complied and registered:



Since then, I learned to respect the power and RWDness of the car, even though it's N/A. After having the R33 for 2 years, I felt the need for something quicker and better, soon after, the R33 was up for sale and this is her when she was sold:

Now the story begins...

About 1 week or so after the fund from the sale was cleared, I started looking at a new car, and I always knew I wanted another Skyline. At first, I was just going to put the fund into a Series 2 R33 GTST, but I thought it was going to be way too similar to my N/A, in terms of the look and feel. So I dug into my piggy bank and decided to get a R34 GTT. I wanted a silver R34 with an Altia kit all along, but at the point in time, they were going for around $20,000. And I was just earning $12 an hour at Safeway, so there was no way that I could afford that.

One Friday night, I jumped onto Carsales hoping some new cars would have popped up and lucky that I did, a new 1999 R34 GTT in yellow has been added 3 hours earlier, for $15,500 (in 2009). So I quickly gave the owner a call and arranged to see it the next morning (Saturday). When I rocked up at the apartment complex in Southbank, inside the dark secured car park, there she was... Sitting in a corner by herself, just glowing...

I started her up for the first time, for a test drive. Sitting in the driver's seat in awe of the more modernised interior compared to my R33, that's when I fell in love with her. Took her out into the empty streets, slightly blipping the throttle to feel what she was capable and wow, it felt incredible, the sensation of being on boost for the first time in my life lol... As soon as I got back to the carpark, I immediately arranged a deal with the seller subject to RWC. On the Wednesday the following week, the R34 was mine, I always loved yellow cars in Grand Turismo on Playstation, but I never once thought I'd actually own or drive one.

The R34 was fairly stock, it came with:

- 18" Buddyclub's, 18x8+35, 18x9+35.
- Teins Type Flex coilovers
- Blitz PowerSUS pod filter

- Blitz return flow intercooler

- Nismo front pipe and catback with muffler (very quiet on idle)

- 3" dump

[Gts-t]

Keep it coming mate, i always enjoy a good rwd skyline build and have noticed yours is one of the nicer 34's on the forum. We need to see the pic in your avi though! Look forward to more soon

[V28VX37]

About time - subscribed!

[Charles89]

Keep it coming mate, i always enjoy a good rwd skyline build and have noticed yours is one of the nicer 34's on the forum. We need to see the pic in your avi though! Look forward to more soon

That photo was taken on the Saturday just past, at SAU Vic's motorkhanna day, so there's gonna be roughly 6 years worth of photos before you get to see it

About time - subscribed!

Haha yeah, just impulsively felt the need to create one after nearly putting the car into a concrete wall at motorkhanna

[Gts-t]

Ok no probs i like the drawn out retro posting. Looks good in yellow too

[Redline_GTR]

Glad to see this up Charles.

Yes have also noticed your car from your posts so will be interested to see how this write up goes

[gtr jet]

Love how your car looks now mate so can't wait to read the rest of the story to see how it got there.

[GH05T]

subscribed

[TM7GTR]

subb'd

(p.s. buy parts off this man! I recently bought some seats from him )

[Jordy32]

Looks good mate, excited to see more

That R33 of yours was clean too!

[Charles89]

First mod!

Being a uni student at the time, I didn't have bags of cash to just splash on the car, so mods came cheaply and slowly, but bare with me! It slowly gets better... A bit like the turbo lag that we experience. Nothing, nothing, nothing, then BAM!

I might have taken the car modding in the wrong direction, normally, people pull stuff a part and mod the crap out of their first car "to learn" by breaking things, but I never really modded anything on my R33, except I learned how to jack up a car and change the wheels, maybe I realised being an NA, it wasn't worth modding. But I promised myself with the R34, I wanted to do give everything a go myself and try pulling things off and mod.

So first mod to the R34... Although it's just a minor tweak, but being on P plates at the time, I needed the R34 to be stealth (how ironic right?), so I decided to take off the Blitz PowerSUS pod that came with the car, replaced with a standard airbox and to spray the intercooler matte black, to make it less obvious. That's when I learned to take off my first body panel.




And guess what? In the next year or so, I never had any police attention, although looking back now, I'm not proud of what I did and if I had to choice to go through this again, I DEFINITELY wouldn't be doing the same and as a WARING to P platers reading this, I strongly recommend that you don't do this, as police are too strict on imports and P platers these days, it's not even worth it... Just wait it out and enjoy having a turbo legitimately without always having to watch who's driving behind you..

So this is the R34 as it stands in October 2009.

[Charles89]

The discovery of carbon fibre vinyl wrap...

Those that have been on here for awhile, might have seen some of my threads about carbon fibre wrapping or even got things wrapped by me.

Again, not having much capital to do those crazy performance mods, I had to focus my money on little mods that I can see (cosmetic). And after discovering carbon fibre vinyl wrap, I ordered a metre from the US and just started to play around with it... And next thing I know, I had half of my car wrapped. Those that has wrapped their cars, will understand how addictive this is!

And yes, that's red thing in the corner, is a JDM flare that I asked compliance to keep for me. I've also installed my Nismo Titanium gear knob that I bought for my R33 (in which I took off when I sold the car).

This little pad below, is a Nissan OEM knee pad, there's one on each side, to reduce the space your knees travels when taking corner - VERY rare.

P.S, 5 years on, those items are still nicely wrapped, the quality of 3M...

[cav33r]

Next minute full car wrap

[Count Grantleyish]

Next minute full car wrap

That didn't happen, I can assure you.

[Charles89]

That didn't happen, I can assure you.

There were other bits that got wrapped that no one ever saw... In which will be revealed in due course

[RBrennan25]

It's not turbo lag, just turbo foreplay

Nice looking car mate, those carbon wraps look amazing. Can't wait to see the story continue

[GH05T]

keeping the cf wrap to a tastefull minimum is half the battle sometimes.

[Leroy Peterson]

more updates please

[Charles89]

keeping the cf wrap to a tastefull minimum is half the battle sometimes.

I completely agree with you! Always have to think thrice before wrapping something haha.

[Charles89]

Getting a bit lippy!

For a couple of months, I thought the GTT's OEM front bar looked a little tame, felt like it needed something else. Having multiple thoughts about getting an aftermarket front bar but I've seen far too many over done R34's with full aftermarket kits which turned me off a little.

So seeking for an alternative while still wanting to keep the OEM front bar, I found out Nissan made a plastic factory option lip for the R34 GT and GTT's, but at the point in time, ordering one from Nissan was just out of the question - due to price. Luckily, after days of looking, I found a 2nd hand fibreglass replica of the same factory lip for $150, and thought why not? What could go right?

After picking up the lip and taking it to my panel beater (Vu @ DT Panels), only to realise the lip wasn't the best quality and needed a bit of work to get it on Having not much of a choice, I decided to give it a go, getting it sprayed and fitted. The quality probably wasn't from afar, but close up was a different story... Nevertheless, I was at the time happy with it; first of many panels added

During the same month (November 2009), I also found some Nismo style garnish for my spoiler blade, which didn't last long at all before I realised it looks a bit average...