Bills 33 Gtst Streeter/track Car

[admS15]

G'day peeps,

My name is Bill, I've recently acquired a series 2 96 R33 gtst. A quick intro about myself, I started off vehicle ownership with an RX4 coupe back in the mid 90's, built and modded it to a respectable 135rwkw in n/a form, was pretty quick and p plate legal. Drove that for around 5 years, also had an RX2 coupe I was building at the same time that was never finished. In the early 2000's I was moving homes to somewhere that didn't have much garage space so I sold off all the rotaries and bits and pieces I had. I then thought I would be responsible and drive a normal looking car, so I bought a vtss ls1 6spd commodore. Did some minor mods to it, zorst, intake, wheels, low, and remap. Drove that for over a decade and finally came to my senses and decided to buy another japper. I was initially looking into RX8's but quickly realised the engines where rubbish. I started to think about what else I could get that was rwd and decently powered and settled for a 2001 adm S15 200sx. I did the usual mods one does and ended up with a decently quick 218rwkw street/track car. Did a few track days and was having a blast. I wanted to do a phillip island day so I joined SAU and did the June 14 track day. It was going well and managed to do a 1.58 in my second session. Car had a few more seconds in it easy. I missed the 3rd session as I was gas bagging with others and lost track of what was going on. I went out in the 4th session and tried to go a bit too hard, too early at the end of the first lap and ended up going off on the inside of turn 12 and slamming the flag marshalls tyre barrier. This was the end of the S15. The S15 was then stripped and sold off. With the proceeds I was able to buy and mod my new ride which is a clean R33 GTST. It was mechanically 100% stock other than coilovers and nismo cat back but the previous owner liked cosmetics and did a fair bit to the body. Photos coming.

[admS15]

This was a week after I bought it. It came with stock wheels so I threw on the 18's off my S15.

[admS15]

More pics and progress reports to come soon.

[admS15]

So I drove the car for 1 day as it was with stock boost control but couldn't hack how slow it was. I then grounded the solenoid so it was always in high mode. It was a little better but still slow as. Drove it for 1 day like that and then put a boost t on it and raised the boost to 10 psi. This made it tolerable for a couple of weeks.

[admS15]

I knew the engine was healthy as I comp tested it b4 I bought it and it was sitting on 170psi across all 6 pots which was sweeeeeet. The same comp tester had m sr20 in the 125psi region. Anyway my next move was to throw the car on a dyno and get a stock power figure at 10psi and check AFRs. It made a respectable 162.9rwkw but afrs where in the high 13's due to a tired fuel pump.

[admS15]

On the dyno

[admS15]

At this point the car needed some more power and some better looking and fitting wheels. I hit the sau classifieds and managed to get my hands on a blitz LM return flow cooler and a set of rays volk f zero winning rims from a couple of members.

[AngryRB]

Front bar looks alright, good comp so looks like a good base for some power upgrades, i can suggest a GT3076 or SS2 depending on your goals, both are great turbo's..

[admS15]

Front bar looks alright, good comp so looks like a good base for some power upgrades, i can suggest a GT3076 or SS2 depending on your goals, both are great turbo's..

Thanks Mark. Yeah the front bar is nice. Its a 400r styled bar made out of real carbon fibre. Previous owner paid a pretty penny for it. If u see a guy walking around minus an arm and a leg, that's him. Turbo has been arranged already but thanks for the advice. I will post more details, pics and stories as I get time. May even include magic dragons:)

[admS15]

As I said earlier the previous owner was cosmetically orientated. The body has a complete 400r carbon fibre kit and cf boot lid which he paid over 5k for and I have the receipts for. There is also rear over fenders moulded in over rolled guards and fibre glass front fenders. The car was resprayed in a Lexus colour from an rx330 when everything was fitted. Not sure of the name ATM I've got it written down somewhere but its a darkish grey with heaps of metallic sparkle in it. He also forked out for active k rear tail lights and some tein monoflex coils. Car also had a nismo cat back a viper alarm and that's about it. The bloke owned the car for 13 years and had it as a weekender and only covered 25k kms in that time. Car was resprayed in 2007 and there's not 1 chip on the bar or bonnet although there is some minor marks here and there and some minor imperfections. He gave me a folder of receipts totalling over 13k not including respray. He said he was happy with the stock power level and that it was fast enough for him. That has been fixed up now. He must of been on some good drugs.

[admS15]

This bloke really looked after the car. Interior is spotless, seats arent torn or anything. The undercarriage is remarkably clean, no rust or oil leaks. Im real happy that I scored something in such good shape.

[admS15]

The volks fitted. Specs are 18 x 9 +22. 265/35/18 tyres all round. Car needs to be lowered but unfortunately there is a bitch of a driveway at work which I wont be able to get get up if I do.

Damn my camera skills are shocking

[admS15]

After this I managed to get a tein edfc kit really cheap so I jumped on it and fitted it. Thought my wife may appreciate the ride being set to soft when she is in the car.

[admS15]

I was in desperate need of more power and was trying to decide what turbo to go with. Ease of installation and stock looks was a priority as this car is driven everyday in Vic, the state of defects. I pondered for a week or two on the hypergear 21u high flow, atr43 ss2 and atr45 sat. The winner ended up being the 21u, I thought for response, bang for buck, stock appearance and ease of fitment It was a no brainer. It was also the turbo that Richo was using on his r33 at the time with excellent results. I bought a used 21u and sent it out to hypergear to get done and that was that.

The High flow next to the stock unit.

[admS15]

Next on the shopping list was a 3" dump/front, injectors, ecu, wide band, intake pipe and clutch. I had 4 nismo 740cc injectors that I pulled from my wrecked s15 so I bought another 2 and that was the injectors sorted. The dump pipe was sourced from just jap for a really good price as they owed me a favour. I was on the hunt for a used power fc but couldn't find 1 at the time but I came across a used adaptronic plug in so I snapped it up quick smart. I scored a brand new npc organic clutch off a fellow sau member who had abandoned his build. A stainless intake was fabricated by Scotty's customs and a innovate mtx-l was purchased through adaptronic. All of these parts where collected over the space of a month.

[admS15]

So that is basically the heart of my setup, my s15 wreck donated some stuff, an apexi panel filter, a mac valve for boost control, some subframe lock collars, a walbro 255, a de-meaow pipe and the 4 nismo injectors.

[admS15]

The turbo was fitted promptly, it's so much easier on an rb than it is on an sr. I drove it around easily for the next week untuned. The following weekend I fitted the adaptronic ecu to check if it was working properly and it was. The following day I fitted the injectors. I then had some issues where the car was running extremely lean if the injectors where set to the correct size. Adaptronic support was fantastic even though I bought the ecu second hand. The problem ended up being the fuel pump being lazy. Although it could run standard injectors ok, it couldn't supply enough pressure for the nismos at low duty cycles. I swapped over the walbro from the s15 and boom everything was sweet. I did a little bit of fuel map tuning using the wide band just so I could cruise the car around. I booked in for a tune and was told the wait was 6 weeks. Faaaaark

[admS15]

A few days later I called in to the tuner to have a quick look over the car and see if he was happy with the way everything was. Once there, we worked out that they had miscommunicated the date of the tune to me and it would be on the 17/9 not the 17/10. This was good and bad at the same time. I still had to install the clutch and have an intake fabricated in 7 days. Fark! Thankfully a buddy of mine offered me the use of his hoist on that weekend and Scotty said he would be able to make the intake for me in time.

[admS15]

The clutch install went smoothly while drinking a couple of jimmy's. After doing it on a hoist, I would never contemplate doing it on the ground again. What a nightmare that is. Scotty came through with the intake pipe a couple of days before the tune which was good as it gave me time to install it and go over everything else on the car to make sure I wasn't going to get a call on the day of the tune telling me something isn't right and they cant finish.

[admS15]

A couple of days later I drove my car down to chequered tuning and left it there for them to work their magic on a 98 tune. A couple of days later the R33 was ready to go with a decent result of 248rwkw. The torque I thought was a bit low, just over 400nm. Trent reckons there is probably another 10-15 kw in it with a better flowing exhaust as the nismo ones usually have some sort of restrictor. Im quite happy with the result considering the quiet zorst and return flow cooler. Here's the graph.