Nissan Gearhead Lunch, Chance Encounter with Blog Readers, Nissan GT-R/Z Chief Product Specialist Reviews My Car

Hi everyone,

So thanks to all of you who have reached out to check to see if I am still alive. The answer is yes, and yes I still have my R33 GT-R.  But, this year is a particularly busy one at work (involving a huge deal for Nissan), it really reminds me of my days in the law firm where I literally went home only to sleep and shower (having eaten all my meals at the office). It may not be that bad, but without any real updates to my car, tech-wise, or travels in it, I decided there really was no need to do any blog updates.

But now...

This adventure began as an offshoot to one of the many virtual meetings I now have as an in-house lawyer at Nissan - a few of my internal clients who happen to work for Nissan Motorsports and Customizing, Inc. ("NMC") (better known as Nismo and Autech, respectively, before they merged into NMC) decided it would be fun to meet up for lunch on a Sunday and just nerd out over cars.

So I show up to the appointed place and run into this guy:

Backing into a spot with the precision to leave only a few centimeters between the wall and his car

So this yellow R34 GT-R is a VERY interesting car. Not that it changes my opinion on R34 GT-Rs, but it was actually one of the very first R34 GT-Rs ever made - in fact it was built as a press vehicle, meaning that Nissan took pains to make sure it had the stiffest body, best drivetrain, best suspension, etc. taken from all the early cars rolling off the assembly line. (i.e. literally "handbuilt" to have the best components).  Back then, most press vehicles were purposely created this way in order to ensure the motorjournalists got to experience driving the theoretically "best" vehicle... and if you recall what happened with Drift King Tsuchiya, it explains why he was so pissed off at the difference in his own brand new R33 GT-R and the press car R33 GT-R he drove. 

Some of you may have seen this same yellow car in this Best Motoring video, with Gan-san driving and praising:

Somehow, my friend Narita-san (who is actually now the Chief Product Specialist for the GT-R and Z... it is no longer Tamura-san for many reasons) got his hands on this car and made it his own. See photos later.

Anyway, since this blog is about R33s, yes I had also parked underneath the restaurant - and the beautiful 911 is owned by one of the senior guys at Nismo:

Of course, these car nerds were all quick to realize that the brakes on my car were superior to the 911's...

The nerds will spot it, but maybe I need to get my calipers painted Bright Yellow with the Nissan Carbon Ceramic lettering on it, to ensure others spot these rotors too?

Anyway, after a leisurely lunch, we decided to go for a quick drive. Both the Porsche guy and I live close to the restaurant so we decided we needed some expressway driving to properly warm up the cars.

And right as I was about to get on the expressway I saw this!

Hakosuka!!!

Because some us had other afternoon commitments, we kept it relatively close. We were thinking of Daikoku, but decided that was way too hectic. So of course...

... we ended up at Nismo Omori Factory.  Note the Mazda Roadster owned by another in our group, who works for what used to be called Autech.

But I was glad we did end up here, even though all of us are super familiar with this place.  Not only was I able to say hello to my friends Ochiai-san and Takasu-san, I had the pleasure of meeting the young man who approached me and showed me his really well kept Series 1 white R33 GT-R!

You know, I just noticed that jade thing in the background...

Ricky just graduated from the University of Connecticut and is now living in Japan.  I can tell he has lots of school pride...

Yep, beginner driver sticker, a nice touch!

And isn't afraid to show it! And his car has over 180,000 km on the clock, but check out how clean and well maintained it is!

First, the interior - no tears, no dirt, nothing broken, super clean!

Ok so he has some Nismo seat covers - and he told me he was bothered by the red dots in the middle suede portion clashing with the blue headset inserts.  My kind of OCD, nice!!!

But this door - definitely in better condition than my car was in before I sent off the interior to be redone in leather.

Oh but interior is not a big deal, have to check the strut tower area for rust, you say? Look at this! 

And yes, Ricky has now started to slowly collect Nismo items as well, too...

And from the side, the car looks great as well.  In fact, other than some dirt I really couldn't find anything to complain about, and neither could any of the Nismo guys! No rust!!

Anyway, Ricky if you are reading this, please stay in touch and thank you for showing me your awesome car! Good luck with it!!

During all of this, our group ran into some other people from overseas - a father/son duo from California (who collectively between them own a 32, 33, and 34...) as well as a (hopefully) soon to be 34 owner from Switzerland. 

Here's GT-R/Z CPS (Chief Product Specialist) Narita-san being photographed with his car by the guys from the US/Switzerland

Narita-san had been super curious about how the carbon ceramic brakes on my car worked/felt, so we exchanged keys to our cars, if only for a few minutes.

His first words - "What clutch is this? The meet point is so high!" (Nismo...)

Meanwhile I took the opportunity to check out his car while I waited for him to return (I took these photos before he left).

Obviously not Press Car spec...

So I think he was trying to convert this car into a high speed Bonneville Salt Flat Run capable car...

But he told me that the car simply was not as stable at high speed as a 33, so he gave up

He has the Special Order Umbrella option, I see

Still, it has some interesting features so next time we go for a drive I will get more details from him.

So, what did the current Nissan GT-R/Z Chief Product Specialist have to say about my car? First, he was totally impressed with how the car was super nimble - having less unsprung weight means lane changes are super quick and accurate.  Second, he loved the bite of the brakes, absolutely no problem in how they were set up.  Third, he told me the car was sprung perfectly on the Ohlins DFVs. And finally, he was super impressed at the high level of finish of the car, the very low NVH, meaning it really felt like a proper high spec GT car.  He thinks that I may have surpassed my goal of "this is what the 33 would be like if Nissan released it today."

Amazing what the pros pick up in only about 15 minutes of driving.  Anyway, Narita-san came back super excited after driving my car and has already proposed a 0500 group run in the Hakone mountains soon... stay tuned and maybe some of you out there reading this in Japan can join us!

Modernizing the Stereo, Part 6 - Almost Done!

While doing a decent job (if I may say so myself) on the rear speakers and deck,  the Alpine X series component speakers finally arrived (thank you WoofersEtc!), meaning that in reality, I was jumping back between these two jobs. For clarity of process I've posted the tasks separately to avoid confusion. 

So here are the Alpines - to say I was really looking forward to hearing them in action is an understatement!

Securely surrounded by styrofoam:

I unwrapped the tweeter and crossover first:

You can see the grills but also the zip ties (to secure the crossovers, if you choose to run passive) along with some screws and double stick stickers (to mount the tweeters).

And then took a close look at the woofer:

Always surprises me how compact the magnets are compared to the Morels I removed earlier:

Anyway I went ahead and started prepping the doors to receive the new speakers.  As you may recall, I had, during my install of the two sets of speaker wires, taken pains to make sure the tweeter wires differed from those for the woofer.

Blue and silver tweeter wiring

Passenger side door too - these are the speaker spaces I had previously purchased a few years ago from the same Yahoo Auctions guy that did the rear speaker spacers:

Now comes the fun part. In the Audio Technica door dampening kit, were a couple of products I hadn't tried before.

First, these foam "clip dampers" which are designed to be placed over the holes into which the plastic clip connectors fit in, for the purpose of reducing any sound leakage and squeaking from the clips.

Then, these "sound proofing wave" foam strips (with adhesive side) that are designed to go around the outline of the door, providing a solid foam barrier between the door panel and the metal frame.

These are attached as such, along the edge of the door:

Meanwhile the clip dampers as follows (see green arrows):

When finished I had added the arrowed portions to the door (the existing dampening was either what I had done a long time or what had been added by Worx - heck if it works I'll keep it...):

So the woofers were going to be straightfoward. The tweeters on the other hand...

I had to carefully pull off some of the dampening material, but with all the old adhesive, decided to first wrap some protective sheathing around the tweeter wires.

And then simply funnel these tweeters leads so they ended up inside the door behind where the woofer speakers would be (and where the blue and silver wiring for the tweeters ended).

As for tweeter location, I did not want to touch the Alcantara lined A pillars by Robson (absolutely perfect) nor did I want to cut up my leather dash or leather covered door panels.  That left only one real option - the sail panels (the black plastic that covers the area where the green arrow is pointing).

I'm not experienced enough to take the tweeter apart and create something more flush (although when I undid the back, I found a nice quantity of acoustic wadding behind the tweeter magnet, likely used to dampen the back wave - so I am guessing these sound the best in this unadultered form), so for now I followed the instructions and attached the tweeters to a pair of spare sail panels I had. (Photos taken after I re-attached the door panel):

Lastly, although I was forced to run new wiring into the door (because Worx had removed the OEM speaker harness), I had to solder on these connectors to the wires (including the wiring coming from the Alpine tweeters - so 3 pairs on each side!)- just in case in the future I change my speakers.

Now just need to find some more projects....

 After installing the front speakers, and before I sealed up the rear seat area, I made sure to test to make sure the amp works - the blue LEDs are a definite bonus, although I will never see them in action!

Then I sealed it up (you can see that I had finished installing the rear deck speakers):

And then it was matter of putting it all back together (the seat was last):

Same in the trunk - making sure all the wiring is tight and in place:

Before I sealed up the trunk access however I tested the speaker polarity and found the front woofers were showing reverse polarity for some reason:

This was quickly rectified by reversing the speaker leads at the amp.  Then I installed the bracing:

And then the trunk lining (yes need to get it fixed looks weird):

Then it was matter of putting the stereo back in, making sure the carpet was as flat as possible and then bolting the seats in.  Everything works! Except now the best is yet to come...

Modernizing the Stereo, Part 5 - Rear Deck

So while waiting for the Alpine components to arrive, I decided to clean up the rear deck area and at minimum run new speaker wire from the DSP amp to the new rear speakers. I had actually already removed the rear parcel shelf while working on installing the amp and the wiring.

You can see how the amp isn't installed yet,
but I had already gone ahead and removed the rear parcel shelf!

A closer look at the speakers showed that there was some degradation.

The plastic ring surround on these Pioneers were about to fall off!

The parcel shelf itself needed some help as well:

Quick glance and you can see the OEM felt lining was bunching up in some places.

A closer look at the speaker grills showed a mottled texture, almost like mold.

So I removed them both to try to figure out a way to clean up.

Obviously this is beyond saving. I guess Nissan used this black tissue-like cloth to protect the OEM speaker? Thin enough to let sound out, thick enough to protect from fading or degrading from sunlight?

Since I didn't want to remove the grill from the plastic housing, I had to be very patient and use a small screwdriver to slide the tissue cloth out of the nooks and especially the corners. Check out this dust!

The end result:

And yes I was tempted to cut away the supporting plastic ribs, but given the age of the part decided to leave well enough alone for now. Then it was onto first removing the old Pioneers (and yes had to figure out how to tuck away the existing speaker harness/wiring):

Whereupon I found out that the Alpine coaxials would not fit!

The reason is obvious when you take a look at the shape of the speakers from the side - they are both 6.5 inch in diameter but:

You can see how the basket of the Alpine (left) is much wider and taller, with the magnet actually incorporated into the basket body. The wide basket doesn't give enough clearance to allow the speaker to simply drop into the speaker hole. The Pioneer is a more traditional shape, with a minimal basket and larger magnet on the bottom.

And even though both are supposed to be 6.5inch (17cm) wide, the Alpine looks larger. 
Certainly the tweeter core looks like it uses a wider diameter tweeter too.

Luckily I knew exactly what to do, which is to get some MDF spacers which would have a larger diameter cut out than the OEM plastic ones - and I went to the guy I had purchased the spaces for the front speakers many years again (from Yahoo Auctions).

Of course I immediately painted these with some flat black lacquer paint to protect from moisture, and to ensure they blend in with the interior.

Test fitting it to make sure.

And here is where I found another problem - while these spacers DID fit properly, they still did not clear enough of the metal (pink arrow). However after fiddling around with the spacers, I hit upon a solution, which was to flip them over and use only the front bolt hole, while drilling out another hole on the opposite side (in mirrored location) below the elongated tip (green arrow below).

While I was doing this I measured and drilled out the holes (orange arrows above) to screw down the speakers:

Despite the silver ink marks, to make sure the lower holes were accurate
I drilled the holes with the speaker in place. Nerve wracking!

So now it was time to install the speakers, but before that, I wanted to install some sound deadening and dampening to the rear deck. For that, the easiest solution was this door sound dampening kit from Audio Technica Japan.

I had previously used a similar kit for the front doors way back when I first added sound deadening to my car (way before my misfortune with Worx). So I knew I was getting a good kit, and rather than buying parts separately a kit is always easier (plus I figured if I didn't use all the pieces I could add even more material to the doors).

Here is what the kit contained:

First, these foam items - here you can see the round "clip dampers" (designed to go around the clips used to connect door panels- to prevent squeaks); the thinner "sound proofing wave" on the left (designed to be applied to the door metal as an outline to the panel - to plug any gaps between the door frame and panel (and thus prevent further sound leakage) and the thicker "sound proofing wave" (designed to be applied around the speakers to direct sound up and out):

Here are some "vibration controllers" (small sizes for "point tuning")- to dampen vibrations:

What Audio Technica calls "noise-less rug" - a sound insulator material

More "vibration controllers" (cut for door application):

Application tool with clip remover on one end:

So the usual stuff, plus some stuff I hadn't used before (the "sound proofing wave" and the clip surrounds). 

At the same time, the foam speaker gasketing tape had arrived, so I decided to apply that first.

Pretty simple stuff, just cut to length and attach. Looks like Alpine expects its customers to do so, judging by the pattern on the underside of the lip of the speaker:

Green arrow shows how the tape width was perfect!

Just a few minutes per speaker and:

So this gave me reassurance of no rattles between the speakers and the spacers. But what about between these spacers and the rear deck itself?

Right before I started adding parts from the sound dampening kit, I wiped down the rear deck for dust and dirt (but it was actually really clean!) and first applied this gasketing tape to the outlines of the speaker holes (purple arrow below). As you can see I did not cover the entire area with the sound deadening material. I first laid out as much of the vibration reducing material ("vibration controllers") and then on top the "noise-less rug" sound insulation but made sure to leave space for the spacers to fit completely flat and snug on top of the gasketing tape.  I also got clever (I think) and added some of the vibration controllers and sound insulation material to the area next to and above the rear coilovers (green arrow):

Eventually, the rear deck was sufficiently covered - given how loud the car is and how the rear board already has some factory insulation, the emphasis was on vibration reduction and patching up holes that lead into the trunk - to try to get better bass response from these speakers) and I had the spacers installed as well. After this I only had to drop in the speakers (note the red wiring - that's the 16 AWG speaker wires for the rear speakers):

But before I did that, one more thing to do -  fix up the rear parcel shelf itself. First, I had to re-glue some of the insulation that was coming off.

I let it dry overnight (and yes, see those two white clips in the middle - I DID apply the foam "clip damper" things to them during the install).

One more hurdle - turns out the OEM holes in the parcel shelf are too small for these larger Alpines (and how the speaker locations had also changed a bit as I shifted the spacers) so I had to widen them a bit - as you can see there was plenty left to cut out:

Using my jigsaw, I managed to cut cleanly cut out the extra space needed:

To get this:

Pretty clean if I may say so myself!

Finally, before re-installing the parcel board, I attached the speaker foam surrounds (pink arrow below):

Meanwhile as I was doing this over the course of a few days the Alpine X-series component speakers had finally arrived... so in my next post I'll show the unboxing and then how I installed those speakers.

Almost done!!