My skyline GTST journey

[nkee]

I probably should have started this while back when I actually bought the car. I always wanted to document this little build but kept getting sidetracked and never got around to posting anything here. So I figured later is better than never. And I imagine anyone interested in checking this thread out would want to see things all in one go anyways, rather than updates a few times each summer.

Well here we go:

A bit of background for you to start things off. I went through a few cars before I came across my skyline. I first had a 1992 Honda Civic. I know, pretty weird for a current Skyline owner to have. But I just got my license, it was cheap and I needed a car to get around. Drove that thing for 4 years, did the typical Honda thing where you put on a horrible fart cannon and pod filter thinking you'd make big power out of a 1.8L 4-cylinder, plus an excessively loud sound system...

My love for the Civic started to fade and I wanted to get something more mature. So I sold the civic and bought this...



A 2006 Mitsubishi Lancer. My first Manual transmission vehicle. had lots of fun with this car till I started working at BestBuy as a mobile electronics installer. My co-worker had a Gts-4 which he let me drive one day. Ever since then the Lancer lost its appeal. There was no power to it and I fell to the tuner bug. I needed something turbo.

So I sold the Lancer and began my hunt for a Skyline. I checked out quite a few but most were either high priced, or had some major issues with them. I finally came across a reasonably priced and relatively clean matte black GTST.




So in the spring of 2012 I was now a proud owner of a 1992 Skyline GTST. I was so excited to finally drive this beast and I couldn't wait to get it insured. But of course the engine Gods said no and cursed me with a busted water pump, coilovers with blown seals, and an insane amount of weird sounding turbo surge.

So I parked the skyline in the garage with only enjoying it for the 20 min drive from the sellers house. I then set off to fix the issues at hand.
The engine was fairly clean making it a bit easier to work on. However, since I was a student at the time I was limited on money and definitely had no idea what I was doing. I wanted to do all the work myself so I just dove in and started trying to fix things.



The engine had the OEM BOV plus an aftermarket HSK BOV welded to the upper charge pipe. I figured it was the reason for the weird turbo surge I was getting, so I removed it. I then began dismantling the engine and ordering a new water pump and belts.



Since I was waiting for parts I added some flare to the engine bay with some new silicone couplers. I also took the seats out and shampooed them and the floors (the previous owner smoked in it).





Note the JDM swag sticker, I definitely kept that on there.

[nkee]

After fixing up the engine I got a chance to drive it for a bit mid summer. I was still repping the blown coilovers so I was pretty much driving a boat. I ordered some shiny new coilovers from Powered by Max and swapped them out as quickly as I could. the blown suspension was destroying the tires so I had to get new rubber after the swap.



Since the car was now sitting properly with the new suspension It needed the camber to be adjusted to prevent inner tire wear. So I picked up some GSP adjustable upper control arms that, when fitted, looked pretty sweet with the clean coilovers.




With that all taken care of I moved on to the overly large exhaust pipe that was sticking out of the back.



I bought a new shiny stainless steal exhaust and straight piped the car, removing the cat of course.

Here is a comparison of the old massive cannon and the more sensible one.

[nkee]

Now straight piped the car sounded fantastic. I still had some very noticeable turbo surge that sounded like sort of like a horse dyeing. It was an odd noise that needed to be fixed. I thought the oem BOV may have been shot and thats why the car had another BOV welded to the charge pipe. So I purchased a Synapse BOV to see if the issue would be fixed




While removing the oem BOV I noticed something solid inside the outlet hose. What I found was what looked like a skateboard wheel stuffed inside the hose.




I assumed it was put there to prevent the recirculation so the aftermarket BOV could vent to atmosphere. With that removed no more turbo surge. Now the vehicle was mechanically sound so I went on to doing what any young male would do and fit the car with a soundsystem.

I wanted to keep as much trunk space as possible so I hunted for a dual sub box small enough to fit in the trunk. I also rigged up the amps in a way to keep them out of the way and keep things somewhat clean looking.

[skylinerb20det]

Looking good!!!

[S13Jordie]

The Skateboard wheel in the OEM BOV was to block it off and to divert the air out the aftermarket one. Looks like a fun little project.

[nkee]

The Skateboard wheel in the OEM BOV was to block it off and to divert the air out the aftermarket one. Looks like a fun little project.

Yeah it definitely confused me at first but I eventually figured that was the case. So now everything is running smoothly apart from some recent hiccups in boost which I will add to this build thread in the next few days.

[nkee]

It was an eventful first few months with the car. Lots of work was done with it and I was finally able to enjoy driving it. But then there was an unfortunate incident with some engine degreaser that damaged the un-top coated matt black paint. I was now driving a car that had fading, spot damaged paint. After a moment of depression is decided I would re-paint the car. Of course, being a student I couldn't do it professionally so I went ahead and prepped it my self to be painted in my garage.





After about a week of careful patient painting the skyline was all done



Rolling out with fresh paint



Before:


After:

[Ho-Sik]

Looks good, Post some more pics up haha.

[nkee]

Looks good, Post some more pics up haha.

Thanks! I'll add some more today I think. I've been secluded to the Kananaskis research station so I have lots of down time and lots pics to put up still of the last 2 summers.

[nkee]

After the paint job winter hit so it went onto the driveway to sit for the 9 months of winter we here in Calgary seem to get. Once it warmed up and the roads were cleared of their gravel I got bored one day and decided to paint the engine bay.



The end result:


I am quite proud of how good It came out and it is definitely the show piece of the car now (atleast I think so).

[nkee]

So drove the skyline around for a bit. Got a boost controller and brought the boost up to 13 psi. This made a bit of a difference but I started to feel like the car needed more power. This was the beginning of my nightmare brought on by myself. I ordered a front mount off Ebay that had the inlet and outlet on the same side so I could maintain the stock pipe configuration in the engine bay. My first mistake was trying to adapt the OEM piping to somehow fit the new intercooler. I eventually finished it after probably 2 weeks of painstaking work.




Some pics I took with FM in a nicely lit Nissan dealer parking lot that I worked at




Its not the best fitting FM but you don't really notice it unless you really look.

Also in these images you may notice the hood is blue in the first image. That is because the other hood was a gtst hood cut to look like a gtr hood. This wasn't done by me and it was starting to rust so I managed to find a hail pitted gtr hood that I got for free. I was fortunate enough that it also had the N-1 hood lip on it! I was also very lazy and decided to vinyl wrap it instead of paint it after I fixed the hail damage.