Frankiman's street/track GTR project

[DynamiteQC]

The way back was so freaking long. I was alone and rigged my steering lock bar between gas pedal and seat to have a ghetto cruise control.

[garetth]

Nice update, and love the rear diffuser!

[tman7878]

Congrats on winning! You shouldn't have been surprised because GTRC members appreciate quality work when they see it! There's nothing more inspiring than someone that puts a lot of time into keeping their car in immaculate condition! Wish I lived in eastern Canada so I could see this beast!

[frankiman]

Chapter 48 - Skymeet 2011 and more
part 2/2

disclaimer :
the following story depicts actions that occured on July 16 and july 23 2011
information is recalled purely from memory, so F off if it doesn’t seem perfectly accurate


a vote was held by GTRC members, and suprisingly i got the prize for best R32 GTR, didn't expect that with so many awesome cars present



and finally a ceremonial group picture was taken, showing just how many people made it out



sadly, just has RightDrive was packing stuff up, everyone scatered, leaving us Montrealers alone, with just a few

so a couple of us stayed to chat while Marc, Sunny, and Trickey blasted out to go party of whatever

so i had the chance to chat with Matty, Daryl, Ryan and Harvey for awhile, which was super cool,
even let Ryan and Harvey drive my car back and forth in the parking lot to try my awesome clutch, which to this day i still don't think they can beleive how great it is

when the RightDrive guys started parking their cars back into the lot, it meant we really had to leave
so around 6;30, me, Luigi, DynamiteQC and DarkCaporal headed back up the 401 again

hit some warp speed on the way



at one point we stopped back into Brockville to fuel, and part ways since DarkCaporal was taking a different route from then on to get to Gatineau/Ottawa

a funny story this Brockville...

at the exact time we pulled up in the gas station, we where greated by a caravan with none other than Trickey at the wheel, WTF

after leaving TO, on the way his clutch pedal support broke and barely made it back, tried to fix it with his buddies and met us again while on a snack run
really unexpected


so for the remainder of the way to MTL it was only DynamiteQC, Lugi and I



drive under a full moon at midnight of course





just before getting back home, i stopped for fuel, for statistic purposes, and realized what a genocide i had done driving in the dark with HIDs





no joke, it took almost 10 minutes to clean all the bugs off, it was crazy, it was like a paste of the side mirrors

finnaly parked the car in the driveway around 3am

the next day i cleaned up the car and found it was a **** hole, lol



so.. statistics

1150km driven
14 hours of driving
21 hours with no sleep
150 liters of fuel burned
13 water bottles + 4 redbulls (just me)
won trophy for Best Modified R32 GTR
saw 50+ awesome skylines
Skymeet is win

(the 401 is the best highway ever)

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a week later of so, i took the GTR up to my chalet, another 600km drive, almost 2000km within 8 days, this car is solid

took the oportunity to snap some pics





but.... the car isn't even all that low, still scrapped sand of the road









fail fitment, during the last 30 minutes of the drive to chalet, i usually go fast and tight through nice twisty roads, and my front wheels kept rubbing on my front fenders, even pulling them out at some point

of this will be taken care of in the next update,
see you next week, or maybe before

[frankiman]

Chapter 48 - Skymeet 2011 and more
part 1/2

disclaimer :
the following story depicts actions that occured on July 16 and july 23 2011
information is recalled purely from memory, so F off if it doesn’t seem perfectly accurate

on July 16, the first Skymeet (East) event at RightDrive Inc. was held

alot of GTRCers from Ontario where coming out to the event, so i wanted some Quebec representation, so i organized a little convoy of a few Quebec GTRCer

but since RightDrive is in Toronto (its actually is Vaughan, but to make things easier to digest, let's just say its TO), and is ~6.5 hours away from Montreal, we had to get up earlier to make it to TO for lunch

because of my size (+large) and the driving position in my GTR, i have problems keeping my right foot steedy during long highway drivers, and because hell be frozen over before i'd do a 12+ hours drive without some company, i enlisted a co-driver, Louis-Gil (Luigi) a fellow GTRCer (Vulcain) to come with

the plan was to leave home with my buddy at 5am to meet the other Montrealers at the most western place of Mtl and leave there at 6am, then meet some other guys in Brockville around 8;30am and to To afterwards, with a few pitstops

this would be our route, in general;



to leave at 5am , my buddy actually had to get up at 4am to get to my place before we could leave, ouch

around 6am, we arrived at the "Flying J" in Vaudreuil where others were already waiting on us;
Nelsonxmarc, Sunny, and DynamiteQC
3 GTS-Ts and 1 GTR



because my buddy forgot his sunglasses (since he got up at 4am) he bought some cheap 15$ gas station sun glasses, took the wheel and me where off the Brockville



it was an incredibly hot and sunny day



since it was my first time going to TO from Montreal, it was funny to see such a sign;



finally drove into Brockville on time, around 8;30 and of course sprinted to the closest Tim's for breakfast

when i came out, a couple of skyline was added to our group of hooligans







it was Trickey (from Brockville, or Brothville has he pronounces it lol) and DarkCaporal from Gatineau


after shooting the shi t for awhile, we got on our way and blasted down the beautiful 401 (in terms of road quality, from a Quebecer's perspective)







Trickey's Yoshi ornament was so funny,



so Marc had to jump on the band wagon, and he did just that during the next pit stop, somewhere around Odessa
he left the group for a good 10 minutes, and just before we started looking for him, he came back with a doll



or course it (or she) had to have a awesome pose, he called it (her) Lashanda or Lashhhhhhhhandaaaaaaa



too much laughters we had that day



it might have been 35+ degrees (Celcius, no kinding) that day, super freaking hot, and while all the GTS-T drivers seemed like they were getting cooked, with their - stripped out - no A/C - windows down -machines, my buddy and I were perfectly fine in my comfy cooled GTR with just a bit a music on, it was like ridding in a Cadillac



at one point i saw Marc putting on taning oil, and driver with his ipod on



i must say, since it was my first time in TO, the 8-lane-wide super highways confused the crap out of me
but in the midst of all this confusion, a wild slammed Corvette appeared, wow!
took of so fast my buddy only had time to snap 1 pic




ended pulling into RightDrive just after noon, with a nice cheer from all the attendees already there



alot of members were already there, parked with their nice machines;



i had the privilege to park next to this fine beauty;



but my GTR had suffered during the 6+ hour drive, it was hella-dirty




alot of pictures of the event can be found here

http://forums.gtrcanada.com/media/49718-skymeet-2011-pics-please-post-all-pics-here.html

also, an article on Autoblog.ca about the event

http://ca.autoblog.com/2011/07/19/nissan-skyline-owners-gather-in-record-numbers-for-annual-skymee/

it was cool to finally meet GTRC members in person after talking to them on the boards for so long
guys like Daryl, Matty, Adam, Brian, Amin, Justin, Chris, Ryan(s), Paul(s), Vlad, etc..
i know i'm forgetting alot of names, so i'll just "everyone that showed up)

and Chris was handing out awesome custom GTRC stickers; that i still rock on my car to this day;





Really can’t say enough good things about the event, it was awesome, the guys at RightDrive were the perfect hosts for such an event, the place was packed with cool people and great cars

continue on to part 2

[DJ]

hello! Congrats on the job Frank!

[Rush_in]

congrats on schooling!

Thanks for another hit of the crack pipe i was just starting to detox!

This has to be the most EPIC thread of any epic thread on the internet! EPIC!!!

[MarusGTR]

I'll probably be a customer (and an applicant if I have trouble finding work in my field). Anyway nice job, congrats!

[PurpleStreak]

Franki, awesome that you're working for TWM, they have a good rep in other communities..I used to have one of their STSs on my Escort, and I carried over the shift knob to my GTR! Amazing quality for sure..Anyways, hurry up and get one made for the Skyrine!! :-)

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

[frankiman]

Chapter 47 - Playing Catch
week10 - 2011

disclaimer :
the following story depicts actions that occured between July 6 and july 12 2011
information is recalled purely from memory, give me a chance


so that week started with a trip to a Nissan dealership to get an alignment done, I have a Nissan so i thought the Nissan dealership would be the best place to get this done, i was wrong

if you have a modified car, bring it to a place where they know how to deal with one,

before i left for the dealership, i had to fix the extreme caster on my front wheels because of my previous alignments,
i had the passenger side wheel rubbing on the back of the inner fender and the beginning of the side skirt, while the driver side wheel was rubbing in the front of the inner fender

so all i did was reajuste the tension rods, but i hadn't checked the repercussion of this wrong doing, my camber and toe got all fawked up, but the dealer was only about 12 minutes away, normally

but with my alignment soooo much out of wack, i couldn't safely drive faster then 40km/h, so it took 25 minutes to get there, with my dad following me with his car

so i left it there when my appointment was the next day;



before leaving the car in their hands, i had actually printed pictures of my parts with written notes on them explaining how to adjust them and lock them in place, i've lost those exact sheets but the one pictures i now i gave them was this one;



i even wrote in bold letters, ''if you have any questions, immediatly call this number ####''



obviously, they called me but 2 hours into the job, WTF
cuz they so smart

so the next day i came by, to pick up the car, didn't really look at it properly since the service counter was closing,
i got really pissed since they charged me 3 hours, i didn't have to argue so i paid and left

eventually when i got home i found out that the caster was really badly adjusted, still rubbing the inner fenders

see how the front the side skirt is bent outward


then i was pissed even more


but my dad, friendly as he is, told me would take the car to a suspension place where he gets his 26' truck serviced and get the car correctly aligned there, 2 days later

- i get a first call from him while hes there, simply asking the chassis code for the alignment specs in the system

- then i got anothe call a bit later, telling me that one of my tension was jammed, so jammed him and the mecanic were scared to breaking it



after a bit more info, i found it was only jammed on one side of the turn buckle, so now the only way to adjust it was to do full turns with one end, limiting the precision of the adjustment by a big margin

anyway, it took them about 90 minutes to correct Nissan's error and get the alignment right

so at that point, a simple alignment had cost me 4.5 hours


that very afternoon i went back to Nissan, with proof, the "before' and "after" spec sheets from the second place, i asked for the service manager and asked him why it would have taken them 3 freaking hours to do a 90 minutes job, and still mess it up

he told me my car was "special" and what not
i also asked him why they waited so long to call me when they didn't know what to do
he had no answer, even was i told him they broke a part, which they "weren't responsible" since the part wasn't OEM

anyway, he asked me what he could do for me, he wanted to redo the job, to which i replied that it had already been fixed, he was like; "well, why didn't you bring it back here so we could fix it"
to which i replied; "are you serious?! you ****** it up once, i'm not letting your stupid mecanics touch my car again, its like if i were in a restaurant i wouldn't send my plate back to the kitchen, like they're not gonna spit in it... right"

so i told him i wanted to get my money back for the 2 hours more than it should have taken.... no cookie
in the end he agreed to split the apple in half and reimburse 1.5 hours of work (which only matched the cost of the second place's work), and i agreed to never have any work done there, ever


/end rant




back to the project


the year before, i had issues with my catch can system, since it was only using 3/8" hoses, but the adapter were even smaller than 1/4", so it was recirculating very badly, and filling up the catch can way to quickly
but it also created positive pressure in the Cusco can, which made it leak from the gauge hose on the side

at one point i had made a CAD design of a can that would fit perfectly in the space i had for it, where the battery usually goes on R32s;



but after getting quoted 400$ and a 3 week wait, i decided to keep my Cusco can and modify it

the original 3/8" ports;



new 3/4" ports drilled out;



i grabbed a 3/4" NPT tap from where i was working then, and using my press drill to keep it straight, managed to tap both holes pretty good;



and these were the new fittings i was going to use, which i got from a Motion Canada supplier that was next door to where i worked;





but the way those fittings are designed, they don't actually need any hose clamp at pressures below 50 psi (which a catch can setup should always be below), so hoses are really difficult to push on, and almost impossible to get off

so i started grinding down the fittings till i got a good fitment with the hose;




and finally got this after a bit of hand-sanding;



i threaded the fittings onto the can with teflon tape, using o-ring to visually fill in the gap, since NPT thread is tappered the fittings will eventually jam by themselves, but i didn't want to re-tap the can any further since aluminum is so easy to mess up

and this is how i originally ran the hoses;


but that would eventually change

after all, the 3/4" hose has a section area 4 times larger than the 3/8" for much better flow





while i was working around that spot, i noticed power steering fluid leaking onto the ground, and quickly traced the cluprit back to my open braided hoses connecting in and out of my P/S cooler, it was freakin dirty;



the eventual fix would be to change those lines to normal rubber ones, since a hose clamp, even a fuel line t-bolt clamp can't create enough clamping force to seal a SS braided hose on a nipple, but the quick fix was to try and tighten the clamps anyway, using a cool new tool, a crank ratchet, it was the only way to reach the clamps without taking everything apart;







on a side note, i also tried fitting my sheet metal, 20$ brake cooling deflectors;



i cut/bent them to better channel the air;



and did a simple test fit, using the tension rods as mounting points;



but since those deflectors are made for SPL tension rods which have the bracket to mount the deflectors, i had to get creative with hose clamps on my Cusco rods, which will be covered in a later update



on another side note, i also tried painted the letters on 1 of my tires with an industrial paint marker, it didn't look half bad, but quickly wore out;





so this is it, for my first update in 9 months, still 17 months late, yeahhh ouch
but on the plus side, i'm done with school, i've finished all my classes and only have my final project to do, will be finally getting my degree in April, and i'll be a true engineer

since my last update, i've started working at a small compagny called TWM performance, as their R&D engineer
they specialize in short shifters and shift knobs, but also getting into other domains, which is now my job to design good, quality and functionnal products
check out their site for info on products;
http://www.twmperformance.com/
all the products are designed in house and fabricated in North America, mostly in Quebec, no chinese copies crap
don't worry, there will soon be products for skylines, the days of ordering short shifters only from japan will soon be over
if you are serious about a product for you daily car, PM me and i'll give you a good discount
also "like" their facebook page to see glimps of projects i'm working on


see you next week for another update

Franki out !

[RABBIT]

Intensive for updates ;

[RABBIT]

I'm finishing my last ever university classes this week, so after xmas ill be updating again, and around march **** will be getting epic to a whole new level

Engineer gonna engineer
For realz this time


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[frankiman]

I'm finishing my last ever university classes this week, so after xmas ill be updating again, and around march **** will be getting epic to a whole new level

Engineer gonna engineer
For realz this time


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[bellis_GTR]

Lesssssssssssssssss taaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalk

[frankiman]

i've fixed all the links in the last chapter,
my bad, i used pics from my FB work-in-progress album and they changed the URL adresses of their pictures, had to update them 1 by1