Frankiman's street/track GTR project

[frankiman]

sorry, no new chapter for at least another 2 weeks,
its super crunch time at university

[NismoS-tune]

Where do you find time to work and pay for all this?!?! haha always making homemade stuff! Nice

[LuckyGTR]

gj pareille mon frank moi je laime bin ton build tread ca ma prit 2 mois dma vie le lire au complet mais bon ques quon ferais pas lol

GTR LOVER

[frankiman]

Where do you find time to work and pay for all this?!?! haha always making homemade stuff! Nice

i get 1 internship each year, thats how and when i do everything,

i don't have one this summer because i took a layed back summer semester (3 classes), so i could finish in autumn and get my ring at christmas

but since i do projects like an engineer, each yeah theres just less and less stuff to do on the car to acheive my ''vision''
and also because budget is a big issue, i'm only doing a dozen or so changes to the car this year
actually, most are just maintenance/slight upgrade

i've only received half the parts i need, but ohhh are those awesome

[Sri-LanKING]

sexy ride bro, sexy ride...

[frankiman]

Chapter 45 - Enlightening
week8 - 2011

disclaimer :
the following story depicts actions that occured between June 20 and 28 2011
information is recalled purely from memory, give me a chance

if you've read the last chapter, you know i was working on making extra brackets to finish the installation of the Top Secret CF rear diffuser


the wheels were off (for some reason...) and the car was more looking like a hovership


when i was done with all the brackets, this is what i had come up with,
i was only able to reuse 1 bracket that came with the diffuser, but alot of bending and twisting was required,
i made all the others using aluminium flat bars, only painted to ones that would be seen;


i installed those between the bumper and the diffuser;


and even hid the screws with little caps;


for the front of the diffuser, there were already holes in it that could be used, so in the middle i bolted the twisted bracket to a fuel tank strap bolt i think;


and for the left and right sides, the longer brackets were bolted using un-used M10 threaded holes in the body;



because it was difficult to reach some spots, i had to get creative with the tooling;




-------------------------------------------

diffuser wize, i was thinking about how road debris and water would get on top of the front diffuser from the tires,
that is because there is a huge opening in front of the front tires between the inner-fender and the diffuser;



so i bought a sheet of plastic and cut a portion of it to block the opening;



then drilled both the diffuser and inner fender to place little screw clips in specific spots;




that way i could easily cover the opening with the plastic sheet, while keeping it easy to remove/install;



and or course did the same on the driver side;



then painted both pieces with epoxy black paint;



and this was the result,
you can't actually see it, which was the point, it looks "clean"



but with the camera flash, now you see exactly how its placed,
eventually i put the lower portion of it inside the diffuser lip, otherwise the tire would be scrubbing against it;





------------------

something else i worked on was swapping my HID kit,
my -then- currrent kit was old, like really old,
it came off my crashed GTR and had been on it for probably years,
the ballast were blown as the headlights kept turning off every now and then,
and when it was cold, it took 4-5 tries before the HIDs would stay on,

so a friend oy mine pointed me to VVME.com,
there i found that replacement ballast cost the same as a brand new kit,
so wanting to swap out my blue-ish 6000k kit, i bought a brand new white 5000k kit,

or course its cheap, chinese made, but since its not a mechanical part of the car, i don't really feel bad,
the kit is a plug n play affair and it comes metal brackets to help fasten the ballast into the engine bay, which was very handy;



on the passenger side of the car, i mounted the ballast with its bracket right under the intake filters, using an unused 10mm tapped hole;



on the driver's side, i made a hole in the rad support to mount the ballast vertical by bending its bracket,
i really like the brackets since you can simply slide the ballast in and out of it;



and i tucked all the wiring under the rad support;



this is how my headlights used to look, pretty blue, too blue for me;



and with the new kit, it was almost pure white;




this kit as yet to fail, and being only a 35w kit, it still lights up the road as if i had suns as headlights


------------------------

bonus pic from underneath the car that i really liked;




thats it for the 8th week update, i saved up alot of stuff that i'll be talking about in the next update,
i felt that i didn't want to slip that info into 2 updates,

so check back in a couple days and i should have the week 8,5 - 9 update up !

thanks for reading

[gtrjon]

how much did the hid kit run you? you seem pretty impressed with the quality. im in the market for a kit

[frankiman]

75 ish dollars

[leeaspin]

Ebay kits are really cheap and worth it imo...have had my kit for 4 years never had any issue with it. I also have 6000K 55W kit but im thinking about changing like you did to the 5000K for the more white look. Cops here hate HID's . Looks great

[bellis_GTR]

Nice work my frien. When do plan to have the first track day?

[frankiman]

Nice work my frien. When do plan to have the first track day?

june 3rd, ASE Time Attack rd2

[RABBIT]

paint the top of your headlights !

[frankiman]

paint the top of your headlights !

what do you mean? and why?

[bellis_GTR]

sweet, I got a track day that day as well. Think you gonna make it down to any Ontario events?

[frankiman]

maybe mosport