Wednesday, June 12, 2019

A Quick Visit to NISMO Omori Factory...

As long as I've owned my car, I've never had my car actually worked on or even inspected by the guys at Nismo Omori Factory. Granted, I've had many many different Nismo parts installed on my car over the years, and Nismo trained mechanics (the guys at Nissan Prince Tokyo Motorsports Factory (Yamada-san in particular) as well as Ninomiya-san at BeAmbitious) but maybe it's not quite the same? 

Time to find out! A few weeks ago I received an introduction to Takasu-san at Omori Factory, and went down to visit him. I show up at the appointed time, and had to park next to this very nice Nismo Z34. 
Cannot believe how small my car looks next to the Z! Maybe it's the angle?

After the pleasantries, I first made clear to the guys at Nismo that I was a regular working man with a growing family - i.e. I'm not going to be able to spend as much as some people and reproduce a Clubman Sport car. And in any case, I am not going to change the way my car looks  - I just want to see what they can do to fix/improve/modernize.
Master Mechanic Takasu-san checking out the Mine's engine...
I know my car intimately - both good and bad - and so what I thought was going to be a short conversation ("how about this?") turned into a long one.  Truth be told, to make the car perfect/brand new would simply cost too much. Basically anything Nismo Omori does is NOT cheap - whether engine work, body work, restorations, etc.  And apparently more and more owners throughout Japan (as well as a select few from overseas) are now contacting Nismo Omori with the same thing in mind - can you make my car better/newer/more special. So basically, Nismo has no incentive to give me a discount on anything...(time to start playing the lottery?).

Here is the view walking BACK to the public area. Love that R30, and that 33 is actually PURPLE, not black!
As a Nissan employee, even though they didn't give me a corporate discount (yet...), they DID let me walk around and check out some cars they were still working on (Ale's car, for example) as well as a very special R34 Z-Tune from Australia. And of course the cars shown above - most of which had come in for body work - except for the R30 which is being gradually rebuilt from the ground up (this time it was for an engine refresh, previously it was the body, maybe next the interior....??)


Just LOVE the way my car looks. Classic lines, smooth body, still looks fresh.
Unfortunately for me - Nismo Omori in the end told me that they could NOT work on my car - at least in its present state. You see, as an OEM manufacturer they apparently can't take any short cuts. Takasu-san had noticed that my shaken (registration) papers weren't quite up to par.  This is because when I got my GETRAG 6-speed installed, I had failed to properly re-register my car - technically it's no longer a "BCNR33" but a "BCNR33-kai" (BCNR33改).  At the time - it just didn't seem important and no one at the inspection center seemed to care.

Anyway - I guess if I really want Nismo to take a look I'll just have to fix the problem - take the car in and get the paperwork sorted and then see what Nismo believes they can do to improve the car...hopefully I can get this project started soon. It sure would be interesting to see what they suggest I do to improve my car.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't think it's in question that Omori Factory does some incredible work but I am a little doubtful that they can do much for you. Maybe R35 coilpacks, MAFs, and fuel injectors and a retune? But they don't have an engine like yours so any retune would be custom. And all of those things are already well-served by tuners other than Nismo.

Funny comment regarding not being able to go all out and do a CRS conversion.

Anonymous said...

Hey Aki,
your car looks amazing after all this years.

some questions if you don´t mind:
- Will you go standalone ECU and get rid of MAFs?
- What do you think about HKS GT3 turbos on RB26/28? Do GTX turbos worth more on these engines?

Anonymous said...

I would really advise against getting rid of MAFs. It's a very bad idea for these cars. If you want to convert to a blow-through setup that's one method but I really do not recommend speed density. ITBs and speed density do not work very well together, it requires a lot of hacks that don't work as well as advertised.

Standalone ECU is fine though, if you do your research to make sure you're not losing functionality over the stock ECU.

HKS GT3 turbos from what I have seen are a waste of time. They are functionally identical to what they replaced with even higher cost. You may as well just source the Garrett turbos directly.

Dreek said...

Always a pleasure seeing your post and this beauty of a machine. Keep it up and come visit me in Oki man!!