Dr. Marus or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the RB26DETT

[MarusGTR]

Hey Marus!

I just found a YouTube video of yours, and like the exhaust sound!

Thanks!

Is it decat and Kakimoto Full mega N1? And is it too loud to your neighbours' liking?

I am choosing an exhaust and personally like the kakimoto mega n1 premium single but worry if it's too loud for daily driver.

A modified original Full mega N1, yes. In its original form its actually quiet, the resonator cuts any raspiness. On the video the car is decatted and the resonator was removed. Also if you really want legitimate quietness (and flow), look for Kakimoto's sucessor to the Fullmega, the Regu 92 (named for the 92dB limit).

As for the neighbours, last I saw them noticing the car's sound I got thumbs up.

[amnash]

Just went through this whole Thread again because I was bored, great read.

[leung23c]

Thanks for the info! I think I will go Kakimoto regu + decat. Tomei expreme-Ti is abnoxiously loud....

[bobbo]

Thanks for the info! I think I will go Kakimoto regu + decat. Tomei expreme-Ti is abnoxiously loud....

Speaking from experience you are correct. With that said it sounds like $1mil with an equal length DP.

[StarkTemplar]

I just spent the last hour going through this beautiful thread. I hope you're able to drive her more in 2016.

[MarusGTR]

I just spent the last hour going through this beautiful thread. I hope you're able to drive her more in 2016.

Thanks! Time flies... things change, and I'm hoping for the best.

As a small 20k view update, she's out of permanent storage and I brought her home with me. I'm sharing a garage with a colleague. I'll be making a short chapter on the few weeks I've had her out, so keep a lookout for that.

If you have 40mins of your life to waste, here's an unedited ride along video:

[MarusGTR]

2014-2016______________________________________________ _____________________________

Three years. It's been a long time. This thread is both something I've neglected and a sore point every time I saw it. While a lot happened in this last year, and because of time and personal reasons I just couldn't sit down and write about it. I guess with some speaking out of how this forum is more of a ghost town for us old-timey members, I'm finally wrapping this up.

Catharsis.

As you saw a couple pages earlier, the GTR was in extended storage for 2 years, from oct 2013 to late 2015. Two reasons: 1) I was out of money 2). I didn't have access a garage now that I had moved and studying was a top priority. Unlike most studies, this was different. I was on a pilot program where the doctorate had a huge budget and was a proportionately huge undertaking. However. I was on contract to finish in 3 years.

For those who don't know, 5+ years is on par. After 10 the faculty respectfully asks you to wrap up.

The work was atrociously hard. I had become accustomed to sleeping at the institute, aligning three (surprisingly comfy) desk chairs together and making the most of a few hours of sleep. Things weren't exactly going at the pace I needed to make project landmarks, and the predoc was coming. I was unprepared to defend myself against the entirety of macroscopic physics; most doctorates focus on one field for christ sakes. My body, my mind and my Sentra were letting go. All three were breaking apart, literally.

And then I failed the oral test. And I was left broken.

While the written test had been more than adequate, I came had come in that day completely and utterly defeated before I had even started. Hadn't slept for the past two weeks, and it showed. But they gave me another chance. For my director, it was the first time in 15 years he had done so. Around the same time a colleague had just bought a raggedy house in the middle of town, a house which we'd (rightfully) laugh about how he had gotten it for free with his double-wide garage. I gratefully had half of it to myself, for a price. Fortunately for this thread, my priorities for work had skewed a bit and I was bringing her back.

And pretty much the same weekend the Sentra lost it's exhaust.

And when I brought her to the garage and lifted her up the jack went through the floor.

For NB's MVI, she was wrecked, unfit for the road and no two bit mechanic would even touch her at this point. This was in sept 2015. And I did bring my GTR. It was honestly the only thing that would give meaning to my life at that point. Yes that's sad, but it's the truth. I only had one month to savour it.



And I did, in my own way. Started with finally washing her.



City chickens aren't exactly something you see with bro car builds with disposable income up the wazoo but I called it home (away from home). This was around the time I made the one-take video.



After this photoshoot I decided to do an oil change and sparkplug tune up. The oil had been sitting (fresh) in the pan for nearly a year. I should have done a change back in NB before 900kms, but pressed for time... I don't know what I was thinking but a filter biopsy showed a lot of debris, chalky pebbles. I chalked it up to oxidation that had aggregated in the oil, for a lack of a better way to tell if anything was truly wrong.





And then I went for the sparkplug tune up. Last I had driven her (in 2013) you might recall that she had a bad missfire problem that I fixed with a coil tune up. I wanted to check things out and change the 2 year old plugs. Cold was settling in pretty quickly as it getting was late at night; while unplugging the battery the wrench flew out of my cold-snapped hands.

And this was the end of my N1 headlights. I nearly broke my hand on the metal counter. I was done.



While I wanted to leave everything there, this was my last week with her. So I came back and changed the headlights and finished the job. I still had my projectors. Don't know if it was foresight in my incompetence or that the projectors were going to increase in value. Ironically I bought these N1s at the peak of their popularity (and price); inversely the projectors that were coming off the car were so cheap that it was better for me to just hold onto them. I didn't know that in the following years, trends would give favour to painted projectors, crashing the prices of the N1s.












As for the tune up, pretty much all was in spec, 150 psi throughout IIRC. I'd have the numbers logged but my colleague hastily threw away the paper. The guy can be such an ass for being such a (genuine) genius.

For the plugs, I was pretty damn surprised at what they looked like, they were perfect.




While I'd get to drive her again one last time, it was all over when I came back to the garage on 12:15 am Nov 1st. I had a new predoc to defend.



Which I never did.

I'm finding it hard to write. I'm just some guy that's, right now, finding catharsis is on a dying forum.








My mind finally broke early 2016, unraveling, peacefully, silently. All my intellectual prowess left my body. My director was expecting progress for my predoc for when I was coming back from the christmas break. While I had made tremendous work before the break, I was hiding trouble doing the simplest arithmetic. Then the sudden stop for Christmas just gave me whiplash. I hadn't been able to open my books out of searing self loathing. Or fear. Or both.

The caveat was the contract. While it nearly destroyed me, my director found that it was conceivably independent of the doctorate. So I told him that I'd like see the project through, at the cost of giving the reigns of the project to him. I'd have the same (poor) salary but without the shackles of academia. I was in it to better myself, never satisfied. Sadly though I'd lose oversight of the project.

So we agreed. I dropped out. Crushed the Sentra and bought another car, my ex-roomate's.

A few weeks later, I would get a call while I was at work. It was my mom telling me that my dad had passed away around noon, while bowling with friends. Right around then, what could be NB's second most massive snow storm in years hit. It was only surpassed by the one that came on the day of his funeral. Of everything I wrote on here, giving the eulogy to those who had made it was the hardest thing I did in my life.







When I finally got back I got a month's notice for the garage. My colleague found someone who would pay 5 times as much as me. This would coincide with late may to the GTR could be out and about. I just needed to find a new place to crash (haha.). I found some place outside the city, a mechanic just a few years older had a grandfathered commercial garage on his residential lot. I'd pay less than my colleague and gain his expertise. Too far to drive her often, but the garage was equipped with a bathroom so I could plan working on her in advance to spend the day.





Couple things I did:

>> Lurked for parts. Things here and there, bought some R34 GTR dump pipes, as I was looking to replace my ceramics. I'd love to have GT Lemans turbos. Just to tickle my purist fancy and future plans. Also bought a half melted cat (guess it's what you should expect from a used performance cat) and used brake lines.

>> Changed the coolant

>> Investigated that bad sag I was getting on the FR

For the sag I randomly thought of looking at the FR while the car was on the blocks and noticed that the ZEAL coilover was pretty much bottomed out, static, on a flat plane. It kind of explained why I had to lengthen that side so much when I changed the bushings in 2012. Now I had to change the springs, but which brand or what specs? I have gone apprehensive of Japanese tuning shops for (most) of their half-hearted designs and exorbitant prices. However, being that they were japanese coilovers, I was under the impression that they were metric-centric so japan was the only choice, right? So I did a bit of sleuthing. They were so old I couldn't find any information on them specifically, but on Endless' site, they list all of their coilovers springs at 60mm ID.

That was a start.

The hard part was the distance between me and the car and my workload... at uh, work. So I cross referenced what Endless was suggesting for coil specs. They all came out at around 177mm front, 203mm rear. The harder part was stiffness; there was a sport level, 7kg/mm F, 6kg/mm R or 10F, 9R. Being that my valving is fixed (Endless nowdays only sells adjustable damping coilovers), I had to match the dynamics of the old coilovers. So I bet on 7kg 6kg.

Now for the brand.

Looking at my options in Japan, they were slim and pricey. I wanted Cusco, Tein or Endless. I then turned to FRsport to check their selection. All of their selection was NA-made coils in imperial sizing. One thing caught my interest; if you filtered for 60mm coilovers, they'd give you a selection of 2.25"ers. Engineer sense tingling. This intrigued me, especially given the non-whole length numbers Endless were listing.

A quick google convert confirmed my suspicions: 203mm=8", 177mm=7". They were using rebranded NA springs. I hopped on Eibachs; they were on sale for a quarter of the price of the Japanese equivalent. I went for a ballpark rate converted from the purported metric rates, 400lbs/in F, 325lbs/in R.



Wasn't I surprised once I took the coilovers out and noticed the part number?



If you can't read that, its 07040. 7", 400lbs. Why? Because rears were 0803X. 8", 3XXlbs (last number was missing.)



Strangely, after installing it all, I still needed to prop up the FR 10mm. That would mean I have 70kgs on one corner of the car. Why's that? I mean it could be the suspensions geometry that's out of whack but...

All in all, it was money extremely well spent, the ride has smoother stroke while still being stiff enough to not bottom out.

And then some crap about getting pulled over and getting two 200$ tickets for excessive noise while short shifting to 3rd at 60kph. Kids in a slammed Jetta yelling out "Mongole ton char!". Overheard the cops say they couldn't see anything wrong with the exhaust while taking pictures of it (car's noise proofing is stripped idiots, I can hear everything). Didn't contest it because of test pipe. Broadcast an APB of the car on their way out, just because I didn't feel unwanted enough.

As for the brakes, being silly old me last weekend I spent a good part of an afternoon cleaning the old SS hoses. I wanted to feel the brakes actually working before storing her. With the front lines being SS, the rear rubber ones were seriously affecting bias and pulsing the pedal on hard braking.





It took a few hours to install them (yes, even with the mechanic bud). As we fought with the circlips to hold the line on the bracket, I unfortunately noticed that the male to male fitting of the line I was working on was loose. I never thought to check it since the grime on them showed that they had been used that way for decades, but lo and behold -they were all loose-. Had to pull everything out and restart.

Immediately took her out for a spin. You have never seen a guy run so fast with a torque wrench. I had forgotten my lugs were only hand tightened as I rolled down the street. While I still have to get some air out the lines, my last test showed good bias and the pulsing is gone.

With that last bubble hopefully coming out, she'll be stored in NB next week. Possibly for another extended storage. I've got a few life changing decisions to make.



++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

So with his all said and done, and a thread name that's not very apropos anymore, this is the end. If I ever have anything else interesting to share, I'm thinking of vlogging on youtube. Maybe I'll turn up in another thread in some forum somewhere.

Have a good one. Marus out.

[michealkirwan]

i cant see any images, beyond pissed, ******* photobucket