George's R33 GTST build

[pogman]

As a long time reader I thought I should contribute and share my "build". Had the car for nearly 4 years now and was purchased and has been used as a street car. Now starting to take it to some track days and having tons of fun its starting to turn into more of a track based car. 

Basic information. Built RB25 with a GTX3582R gen 2 with the lovely T51R mod. Oil cooler, surge tank and a plazmaman plenum have recently been installed in preparation for the track. Front APG BBK with factory calipers and DBA T3 on the rear. Unfortunately still a stock 25 turbo box which is starting to show its age. Basic suspension setup to give a decent allignment for now. 

Plans for the car. Basically I enjoy working on it and doing stupid stuff most people wouldn't bother with so i want to clean and tidy the car up and hopefully do some more track days and see how long it lasts before copping a yellow sticker really. 

 

 

[pogman]

So with the last few days off finally decided it was time to paint my boot so im not ashamed of it anymore. decided to go with QX1 white pearl to match the cam covers and its the colour I plan on painting the car one day. 

Removed all components and started to fix up the surface rust which thankfully there wasn't much of. removed the sound deadening from under wheel well and battery tray to give a decent finish and im a fan of my car being loud so I wasn't going to miss it. 

The battery tray was painted in wrinkle black and turned out better then I was expecting, the white pearl didn't pop as I was hoping but I finally feel like I can actually look at the boot and not feel like I own a shit box.

[pogman]

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Edited April 4, 2021 by pogman

[reaper]

Wow that came up super clean, well done

[pogman]

On 4/21/2021 at 5:13 AM, reaper said:

Wow that came up super clean, well done

Thanks mate, surprised that the white actually looked good. Now it's just the struggle of keeping it clean ahahaha

[maddy400r33]

Looking clean, does it let in much water or have you resealed or replaced sealant around boot edge. 

[pogman]

On 4/28/2021 at 6:11 PM, maddy400r33 said:

Looking clean, does it let in much water or have you resealed or replaced sealant around boot edge. 

Its never let in water even when I give her a wash the water never makes it into the boot itself fortunately so I just left all sealants as they were.

[pogman]

so slight update on the car, installed a set of hypertune billet cam covers along with a PRP billet diff hat to go with the new Nismo 1.5 way diff. finally sorted my power steering setup with a koyorad oil cooler and a new reservoir to keep everything cool on track. a new IRP short shifter was installed and wow that totally changed the feel of the box and looks very tidy. had an awesome weekend at powercruise recently where the car was flawless but upon a gearbox oil change i found a tooth off an unknown gear so now the plan is to find a dog engagement gear set to install once the box does finally let go. if anyone has any good or bad experiences with gear sets and companies that do them as of late please let me know as i am very stuck rn ahahaha

[Neil]

Love the build George. Did the car come with the top radiator guide or did you buy it?. I'm in need of one.

Cheers

Neil.

[Komdotkom]

Interested to hear about this shifter, did you really pay $1k for it or do you have a connection for a more competitive price?

https://www.carmodsaustralia.com.au/short-shifter-5-speed-gearbox-skyline-r33-r34-gts

 

[admS15]

I've said before and I'll say it again. Love the number plate, how very appropriate 👍

[pogman]

On 10/18/2021 at 9:27 PM, Neil said:

Love the build George. Did the car come with the top radiator guide or did you buy it?. I'm in need of one.

Cheers

Neil.

thanks Neil, i bought it from carbonetics over in Sydney definitely tidies up the bay nicely   

[pogman]

On 10/19/2021 at 7:09 AM, Komdotkom said:

Interested to hear about this shifter, did you really pay $1k for it or do you have a connection for a more competitive price?

https://www.carmodsaustralia.com.au/short-shifter-5-speed-gearbox-skyline-r33-r34-gts

 

i bought it direct from IRP just make sure you don't pay VAT as you don't have to and if you have any issues email them, they are very helpful. https://www.irp.lt/individual-racing-parts-product/short-shifter-nissan-skyline-r33r34-gtsgts-t-5-speed-gearbox/

[r33cruiser]

Boot looks great mate.

 

I'm thinking of doing something similar. The images look really blurry for some reason but did you get it done professionally or rattlecan it?

 

[pogman]

On 10/20/2021 at 1:38 PM, r33cruiser said:

Boot looks great mate.

 

I'm thinking of doing something similar. The images look really blurry for some reason but did you get it done professionally or rattlecan it?

 

thanks mate, yeh im pretty sure i uploaded them from my phone which is why they are blurry but not too sure honestly. i just got some good paint match rattle cans made up and did it with about 6 cans, 3 of the base and 3 of the 2nd layer of the colour

[Robzilla32]

It is probably just the thumbnails that are blurry. The pics look fine once you open them

[pogman]

so after a while without an update some things have changed, unfortunately the stock rb25 box said no more so after a lot of back and forward decided to just go for it and get a samsonas 6 speed for the car so that kick started the next round of "while im there i may aswell do this".

while saving up some more and waiting for the box i decided to make the car look less like a nice street car and into another stupid race car so of course the interior got stripped and painted in QX1 white pearl to match the boot of course, all sound deadener was removed but of course i didnt want to do it the easy way and use dry ice i wanted to use a scraper and a hammer... didnt take long to realise this was a mistake but for some reason i continued with this method but hey we got there in the end. cleaned up all the glue and prepped the surface to be painted in the back yard. 

it came out honestly better than i expected as im no painter and it was done during a nice rainy period which made it oh so much easier but certainly no professional job, then it was time to install the agi bolt in half cage and a test fit of the new to me bride seat and all in all i was pretty happy with how it all turned out and got me very excited for the samsonas to arrive and start the install.

 

[pogman]

finally after 3 months or so the box rocked up and while i would not be installing it anytime soon due to an upcoming surgery and 3 months off work it was still an awesome time and had me pumped for the upcoming build process, and while i waited gave me time to research all the other parts i wanted or could convince myself i needed. it was time for a new and updated ecu and retire the old vipec which had served me well, so i purchased an emtron kv8 to give me some nice smooth shift cuts and better utilise some more sensors.

 

but then the time came to install the box, managed to grab an auto box and use the bellhousing off of it and bolt it to the samsonas, was a surprisingly easy install considering its a "universal" box some light love taps needed and we made a custom gearbox mount it all fit up really well to my surprise,

part of the update was to remove the silicon joiners which kept giving me grief and install the new plazmaman pro series intercooler and shiny new bosch 72mm DBW TB with some red plazmaclamps for both the hot and cold side to eliminate the blowing off issue and clean up the bay abit, decided to go with 3' piping which was a tight fit but with some great work from the fab guy fits awesome.

[pogman]

so i was having issues with blow by with the new hypertune covers especially compared to the rb26 covers with the baffles due to the hypertune covers having no internal baffling, thankfully PRP came out with a nice smooth cam cover with extensive internal baffling which would hopefully improve the blow by issues i was having at the track so another colour change was in order 

i had found a 2nd hand titanium exhaust of an r33 on marketplace so i had purchased this but for some reason it just didn't seem to work out on the car so it was time to brainstorm what i wanted to do, someone jokingly suggested a side pipe to me and after watching some skyline/rb side pipe videos Aswell as seeing/hearing Laine Brandis's 32 in Perth and WTAC it was rather stupidly decided i wanted a side pipe, we weighed up how we wanted it to look being to stick out past the body or a twin pipe but c'mon that was just silly i wanted a tame looking side pipe ahahah so after some awesome welding and not much in the way of keeping the noise down its fair to say its loud and i love it not sure my neighbours do but hey track car right?

 

had the driveshaft made up deciding to go with a 2 piece as i had heard of people having issues with a single piece, made to "suit 1000hp" it was nice and chunky and certainly wont be testing the strength of it. the it was time for the really important jobs like relocating the kill switch and installing the emtron keypad along the the ed7 dash with the mako motorsports mount.

 

after checking the bank account i now regrettably decided to try and utilise the stock harness for the emtron and make a seperate harness for the sensors much to the sparkies displeasure but he got there and it was time for the first start, with so much changed and so much done by myself we were all abit nervous but when it fired up i had a huge smile on my face and all felt worth it

 

 

 

 

[pogman]