My 1995 GTR project thread.

[cortexx]

Well it's not really a project thread , just a log of the trials I experience as i work on this fine piece of machinery.

If you take the time to read through the various drivell im about to write you'll no doubt experience some good ol' English dry humour with a touch of sarcasm , plenty of bitching and a few simple "how i did this" sections.

My car came from rightdrive last July , its a 1995 GTR midnight purple and is in very good shape considering it's age , wait ... thats why i bought it from them and paid what i did so on with the immediate task at hand.

While spending the 5 months before the car landed here reading all the info i could about this platform I had formed a few strategies which i decided i'd follow , i mean I bought a great car so that i could just drive it and enjoy it right ? I wouldn't be getting my hands dirty just yet .. wrong!

Turbos , the factory ones with the ceramic wheels . Driving home my new 15 year GTR was a great experience but looming in the back of my head was ( your running 14psi of boost each time you overtake a car on the 407 , they have 102k on them the exhaust wheel is going to blow).

So a plan was formulated to make me a bit more confident in mashing the go pedal ... this is my train of thought :-

Hmm set of turbos , JRP sale and a pair of GT2860r -5 turbos found their way into the back of my car , along with a mishimoto rad and a few other bits and pieces.

Of course if im going to remove the old turbos and put new ones on , im sure as hell not going to make a habit of doing that job so I figured id do a few other things at the same time.

This caused the ordering of a pair of tomei headers and dump pipes , and an HKS Y pipe that i didnt need because i was unaware that i actually had a greddy/trust equal length y pipe already on the car. I took the Y pipe back to optionJDM and returned it for store credit which i used to put towards a set of defi gauges (boost , water temp , oil temp , oil pressure , control unit).

Another thing i discovered that the greddy profec B II boost gauge was not really good at controlling the boost , id go out in the day and get it set up to work great then i'd drive in the cooler evening and have boost spikes along with surging so i figured id order a blitz DSBC controller that i was familiar with and have used before.

Unfortunately BLitz stuff is now almost impossible to obtain here so i hunted around for another option and ended up buying an Apexi AVC-R unit as i liked the ability to tune boost profile per gear.

[gtrjon]

moar!

[cortexx]

OK a few pics so that you get a view of my diamond in the rough so to speak

pickup day at rightdrive





finally made it home

[frankiman]

******* gorgeous

moar

because moar

[cortexx]

So after spending a few months running around town, confusing the country folk with "the car that steers on the right hand side" . I decided to put it away for the winter and do a few things to it.

The long term plan for this car is a reliable road vehicle that can provide me with some fun at the track everynow and then . I used to track cars when i lived in England many moons ago and the fun that was had has not been forgotten.

One trip down to London to show it to my new insurance company (Urszula at Allstate) was a bit of an eye opener. It was around 34 degrees outside and as i went down the 403 to London it became apparent the GTR didnt like the hot weather too much . The tacky water temp gauge someone had glued to the dash reported that if i cruised over 110 klmh the water temp would steadily and surely rise , along with the oil temp gauge , this corresponded with a drop in oil pressure until at idle in the heat in traffic i only had a reading of one on the preassure gauge.

This made me concerned that the car would not fare well in our ontario heat waves and i planned to fix this over the winter.

After a bit of reasearch I came to the decision to buy an HKS oil cooler kit and a mishimoto aluminum rad to help with the cooling. I also bought the mishimoto twin electric fans to mount on the rad but test fitting the assembly proved that the power steering pump line was in the way of the passenger side fan. Not to mention that the mishimoto fan assembly fitted onto the mishimoto rad like a right hand glove on a left hand , what a piece of crap.

The HKS kit came after 6 weeks and looked like this unpacked :-



and after 2 days of frustration and reinstalling the lines about 6 times looked like this :-



notice i had an uninvited guest overnight



the block on the side of the engine was the worst part to install , given that the engine was still in the car i removed the oil filter by feel , and then proceeded to install the oil line block in its location where the oil filter was - what a pain in the frikkin ass , the stupid seal kept dropping out of the adapter as i attempted to install it - again - by feel as you cant see anything down that side. I guess it took about 15 goes before a put 2 dabs of superglue on the seal and smothered it in grease to keep it in place and finally got it secured - then a trip to napa autoparts to buy a 1 1/8 deep socket i'll probably only use once to do up the huge fitting in the middle .

One thing that pissed me off with this kit is the lack of english instructions and the pictures represent black and white postage stamps that look like they are a bad photocopy of a bad photocopy . I still have a small bracket left that i can't for the life of me figure out where the heck it was supposed to go.

I also had one hellof a time fitting the giant lines to the block and had to make a special wrench to get the job done , I sacrificed a mastercraft open ended wrench and a spark plug socket to make this. this allowed me to slide the open ended wrench end down the line to the block and tighten the giant 32mm hose fittings where i could not swing a wrench. time to make the tool - 1 hour - however time to tighten both lines with it - 30 seconds

[cortexx]

Next issue which for me where i live is one of safety, the lights on the 95 GTR are as about as effective as a couple of tealights . We have alot of deer and other critters that wonder the roads in the dark and it's great if you can see further than 2 seconds into the distance . Deer are the obvious threat but not being able to see a dead skunk on the road means that the low slung muffler really give off an obnoxious smell in the drive way when the car unwittingly scrapes a previously killed skunk carcase with a burst scent sac. Believe me the smell was worse than the perfume counter in sears.

Sooo off we go to JPR and get a set of HIDS , the car has 2 units on each side ( low beam and High beam ) and takes the H1 bulbs.

I had to modify the rear of the headlight bulb locations to make the new hids fit. Also installing 2 bulky ballasts on either side of the front is not the easiest thing to do in a R33 GTR . So when the front bumper was removed I hid them infront of the engine bay attached to the bumper Rebar using a home made bracket mount on the driver side , and utilizing the main oil cooler kit bracket on the passeneger side :-

the light bulb cover before modification



drilling out the back of the cover




fitting the new grommet that the HID wiring passes thorugh




installed back into the light assembly



comparison between HID and 1995 lighting technology (dipped and mainbeam)




quite a difference , the low beam is so bright I almost never use the highbeams at all

[C-unit]

Nicely done! Why didn't you update with the 97 headlight light though? They come stock with HID.

[archaeic_bloke]

that hks cooler is damn nice though....

[cortexx]

Nicely done! Why didn't you update with the 97 headlight light though? They come stock with HID.

because the only ones i can find are $2500 on ebay , so 2 hid kits will fit the bill until i finally replace the light units. At the moment there are other mods more important to spend $2500 on

[326_godzilla]

^ great write up!!!

Looking forward to more updates.

[Phastwon]

Good write-up so far Paul. I'll be interested to see the final product.

[cschepp]

Where did you get that beautiful oil cooler? That duct that comes with it looks great as well.

[cortexx]

Where did you get that beautiful oil cooler? That duct that comes with it looks great as well.

That beautiful oil cooler came from HKS Japan Via JRP in oakville , they ordered it for me last year. Pretty expensive though- over $1000 . AND it didnt have the filter relocation unit , i have a trust one which i might fit on the HKS block but not sure if im going to use it yet.

[LuckyGTR]

sick car props midnight purp ftw!

[Oakville]

Yeah Ive never been a fan of JRPs pricing but they dont screw around when it comes to in-stock items and speedy ordering.

Did the kit come with that duct?