Mistakes were made, my R34 Story

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

Very gregged up, hope the New FY goes well.

[Kinkstaah]

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).

[admS15]

That definitely qualifies as a Gregging. So where's it at now? Painted yet, when do you foresee it'll cruise again?

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

Nek minnit, big reveal, he's bought a G80 M3 😂

[Kinkstaah]

On 7/2/2024 at 1:23 PM, Kinkstaah said:

The car has been dropped off again, at a second shop, last week.

Will see how it goes, again, I suppose!

I said this!

After asking around and looking for second shops, I did find one. I have it there, paid a deposit. Went in to drop off a bracket to fix my reo bar which had a bracket cut off a decade ago to fit a blitz FMIC.

(the brackets need to be replaced/put back on to stop the headlights sagging from the bonnet, which is a whole thing, a replacement reo is $1000+)

But anyway yes. I saw it in a workshop with a bunch of other cars after it's been there a week. For bonus points, it's clearly been moved outside during the week as they make room in the shop. I know this because we've had rain, and rain on untreated newly shaped and raw metal has a predictable result.

They said to give it 6-8 weeks but don't quote him on that. There's a fair amount to do and there's a lot of cars there, so my prediction is about 52 weeks.

I'm sure it'll be fine.

[Kinkstaah]

Here's the gore:

The above photo was me literally at a paint shop thinking "ah, I can't get it painted like that"
Below is the left side vs right side taken randomly with phone.

This is after. I now have a GTR strut brace because the vents actually foul on the GTT strut brace. They also look like they very nearly foul on the GTR strut brace, but it's like 35-40mm lower so that isn't possible, lol.



I will say this though, the vents let out a LOT of heat when the thing is idling. You could literally see the heat haze in a wall just flowing out of the vents when the car was parked, so the theory about it letting under bonnet temps out when stopped is sound.

Though if I had my time again, I would have just cut these out (or just bought GTR bits and cut these out of a GTR bonnet). This photo *before* the whole lot was covered with Carbuilders insulation mat which probably didn't help.



Would have looked similar to the below, but in the pattern of the above. I'm sure you understand.



Or I could have just raised the back of the bonnet.

TL;DR

[Milkmun]

Does raising the back of the bonnet actually work? So much conflicting information.

[GTSBoy]

21 minutes ago, Milkmun said:

Does raising the back of the bonnet actually work? So much conflicting information.

When stationary/slow....yes. When going fast, no. High pressure builds at the base of the windscreen and will either inhibit or reverse the flow.

[Kinkstaah]

Yeah, I should state I have no overheating issues except when it's sitting idle, with AC on (and only then) and only on VERY VERY hot days. And it stops if I turn the AC off. But I put a lot of effort into making this thing run like a regular car, I want the AC to work when I want it to work. I need no excuses as to why I should make some other thing a daily!

And tbf, the thing does heat soak pretty bad, not much I can do with the exhaust running under the driver's seat, you can feel it through your shoes/pants when you step out of the car, too. Point being, aircon inside the cabin is on pretty frequently. I did think about removing heater hoses to simplify the engine bay/back of engine because I cannot imagine a scenario where I ever need a heater. Except for defogging, but doesn't AC do that, not the heater?

So in this very limited situation, raising the rear could work, purely to let hot air out. I've ran the car at the track on a 35C day with the aircon on, and it doesn't overheat in that scenario so that's why I thought it was due to heat soak/heat buildup and not just general overheating under load.

I had previously tried shrouding the radiator, changing my balancer to a non-underdriven one to spin the water pump more at idle too, and installing two more thermo fans on the other side of the radiator/AC condenser. (So I have 4 now, 2 pushing, 2 pulling from the rad) neither really helped in this very limited scenario.

I don't know if the vents will, but visually seeing the heat steaming out of them did give me hope, not to mention the temperature of the vents was MUCH hotter than other areas of the bonnet. Enough that one of the paint guys was unsure as to whether paint would stick to it long term.

I'm sure that will be fine also.

[The Bogan]

I had the Blitz bonnet on my old boat and never had a issue with overheating anywhere

Same car, but, after I sold it, weirdly I cannot find any pictures of it when I had it, maybe I deleted them all because they "triggered' me...LOL

[Kinkstaah]

It appears that work has commenced and this work shop is doing work, and selling that work for money, like some kind of a work shop.

Bare metal vents and fenders are no longer bare metal, which is great with that whole 'turning into rust rapidly' problem.

The panels look to be fitted, though I don't know how permament this is. Given I drove by a few days ago and saw the whole side of the car sanded down (but no panels fitted) they are probably permamently affixed now:



Rear bar and skirts look like they fit and line up as god intended, which is nice.

Rear lip has been removed and filled in, and can see the templates they are using to mount the wing back there, instead of just drilling and eyeballing it which is nice lol.

And I did buy the brake light for the S1 which lines up with the OEM hole, Nissan just uses some tunnel thing to get the light to the light inside the lip which isn't really a light, directly. I was smart enough to test this before I dropped the car off :p

They have also installed (this is temporary tac welds for testing) the bracket I came up with, and made something for the other side, in the event that some idiot cut those brackets off to fit an intercooler at some point in the past.

They also have moved my oil cooler back, so that it is no longer hanging off the headlight support. There was a bit of forcing the front bumper on there in the past. I mentioned it to them because I can see paint people finally finishing up a front bar then wincing if they have to force the damn thing on in a weird way. Now there's plenty of clearance for OEM levels of fitment and gaps which is just nice.

I do wonder how low that will actually sit with a bumper on and such, but it wouldn't be a massive task to move it up a little, or a different angle in the future given there is literally nothing in this space for now.

Until I get talked into getting a dry sump tank made and fitted in that entire space, after going to WTAC...

[PranK]

I love those vents! 😍

[Kinkstaah]

The car is still in paint jail.

Here are some paint jail photos of things in primer and disassembled. I visited yesterday, though these photos were from about a month ago, the status is much the same. There's just more dust now. Especially inside the car too, which apparently is fine and normal... but I think I'll be never ever having a clean interior ever again lol.

 

As this has dragged along, a few new parts have also arrived which was supposed to be well after paint... where Greg replaces every single bit of the engine except the bottom end. This is extreme LS nerd stuff dialed to 11/10 that's probably not really suited for target audience here. (and there's more in the mail, from the US).

.

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

Weird looking RB, but looks great.

Can't wait to see the Ver. 23 of the car.

[admS15]

Pic of Nos, turbo kit and sequential not loading. 404 not found

[The Bogan]

Which manifold mate?

Meanwhile......Mark is wondering how bonnet vents would look on the NC 🤣

[Kinkstaah]

I visited again today:

It would appear they have painted the main body of the car and some parts of some of the panels, so I can say that I now have BMW parts in my car, much to the envy of @Dose Pipe Sutututu

It is still covered in dust which is quite the tease but I did look at a few circumspect spots that will be behind bumpers and such and wiped some dust away:

After my repeated begging to PLEASE DONT PAINT OVER THE ENGINEERING CERTIFICATE (you have to re-engineer the entire car if they do) I see THIS:



Which is great. Excellent job tbh at least to me.

A better non dusty example would be the backs of the doors that have been painted:

Giving a reasonable contrast between old and new (I know the old isn't clear coated on the inside of doors).
The door card will well and truly cover where the old paint is, you can see in the second pic some of the black butyl/whatever shit is sticking the plastic sheet behind the door transfer that has happened since it's clearly been stuck back on.

The most maddening thing about this colour is every time I saw it in the wild it looks like another colour, same with photos of many cars with the same colour looking wildly different in every photo anybody ever takes and this is no exception.

But stand a little further back and it suddenly looks dark AF.

I did tell them when I was discussing which of the 70 million charcoal colours to choose from (a porsche one, a BMW one, or a R32 GTR one etc) that if they just ignored me and chose one at random I would probably never notice.

Maybe they did. But the colour is supposed to be B39 (BMW Mineral Gray). Boring I know, but the R34 sedan (to me) really shows off it's boat-ness when you paint it in a bright colour like bayside blue or white or whatever else. I do have a fondness for AR2 Nissan Red, but decided against that because it'll have pretty odd contrast to random bits unpainted (like engine bay, bits of trim etc, and maybe it'll fade). And people will always fkin comment on AR2.

Everything remains super dusty.

I have tracking numbers for the new heads, as well as some Improved Racing goodies, but they probably will be a next year thing by the time they end up on the car.

I did some maths on the heads and I know why nobody goes to this extent in Australia, because it's really not worth it, given I could have just CNC'ed my current heads, bought a FAST102/TB and used my current rocker/spring/cam combination and get a 383 stroker (or stroked a 6.0 GenIV bottom end to 6.6L) built for the same price of just the setup in the mail/on the floor here.

Or I could have bought a LS3 and a Drysump system.

And then have a complete engine to sell.

Oh well

[Kinkstaah]

I went back in today (I just wander into the body shop on a 2 week interval now).
Hmmm.

Slowly but surely! Various other parts around the place done/half done/inside done but outside yet to do, etc.

Still have no real idea as to what colour this car is, just like all the BMW's I saw online (and in person). Just looks a different shade of colour from any angle at any picture taken of it. The differing levels of dust obviously do not help.

 

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

*waits* for chop idle videos and TT kit hanging off the motor.

I like these sounds now, my inner bogan is growing.