A Little Trip Down to Nissan Prince Shinagawa Today

Ever since my track day at Tsukuba with SSCT on the 5th, had not had a chance to properly wash the car, or have the OS Giken gear oil replaced. In fact, as of today I had not only done the track day with the brand new LSD, but had also driven another 300kms or so.

Consider the LSD broken in! (and yes, it was making more noise at low speed than before).

So, as we had some nice day today, parked the car outside, got out my claybar and PorterCable, and proceeded to do a quick detail on my car.

A couple of hours later, I found myself driving down to Nissan Shinagawa. It had been awhile, and something I saw when I did my oil change at Zama had given me cause for concern.



What is this? Why, it's a stripped bolt - the filler bolt for the rear LSD in fact. I was planning on doing my own diff oil swap at Zama last week, but decided against it when I saw this. And, given that Hiro had installed the LSD and the cover, but did not mention this, I am a bit upset as to why he did not. Anyway, it was worth paying a bit extra to have my car checked once over by people I trust.

Here is my car being worked on by the best mechanics at Nissan Shinagawa, Yamada-san and Sugimoto-san (check out this month's GT-R Magazine - November issue - if you don't believe me)


An interesting Z-Tune look R34 was being worked on before they kicked it off to work on mine (sorry, whoever it was).



I also spotted this interesting specimen in the back:


As well as this:

Don't know much about R34 coupes (this was an auto), but I did like the way they spelled out "SKYLINE" on the lip spoiler! (ok, a bit cheesy, but heck it was something I had not noticed before).

And when I arrived, the SSCT had just finished a director meeting - with one of them (Tobe-san) driving this!


I guess his UNISIA JECS replica R32 is just a bit too noticeable as a daily driver, so he drives this toned down "Lexus" iQ.

I also had Yamada-san and Sugimoto-san check out the rest of the car for any problems, as well as raise the front by 1 cm - car has been scraping a bit too much lately. They also installed a new diff filler bolt at no charge - throwing away the mangled one above. (they remarked that it looked like someone didn't have the proper tool and had tried to remove it using pliers...I'm not pointing fingers though. I'm just happy we fixed the problem!)

Driving back home - no noise coming from the rear, and the car livelier. Whatever it is, it's a relief to know everything is working perfectly.

PS - SSCT tells me that on the next track day on November 23rd, they will be arranging to have ALL of the Group A R32 racecar replicas there... should be interesting.