A Necessary Mod? This Should Have Been An OEM Option...

In taking out all of the unnecessary and sloppy wiring that had been installed by others, there was one item I actually kept - kind of.  In fact given how quickly the battery tends to go dead in these cars, I think all GT-R owners should have one of these.

Ok not the best shot but here is how it arrived in its package:

I picked this one up in late 2011, but until I took my car to Worx I had simply used the included clamps to attach the leads to the battery, putting the CTEK charging unit itself into the trunk, and leaving the trunk slightly open to run the power plug to the wall.  

Nakamura at Worx had used the included direct connector (that connects directly to the battery) lead (circled in green below) and modified it.

And it was clever, right above the rear license plate there is an OEM rubber plug/grommet with wiring coming out to power the light bulbs for the rear license plate - and so it was easy to pass the wiring through this plug and leave the connector to be easily accessed (and then tucked away behind the license plate when not in use).

Green arrow points to the connector

The problem, however was that in order to extend it so it was long enough to connect to the battery he hacked this connector lead - in essence using the connector portion but dispensing with (cutting off) the in-line fuse holder.

If you look at the below, the arrow is pointing to the wiring he connected to the CTEK connector, which he then ran all the way to connect to the fuse holder he had mounted in the area next to the battery.  The fuse is still there, however it is now mounted on this fuse block, with other circuits (all positive side leads). So in theory this should work just fine. 

Green arrow points to the CTEK positive lead

But once I removed this fuse block, I was left over with only this really long lead, and without an in-line fuse holder; as with all things Worx I was really, really tempted to remove it, but since he had done a good job of tucking the connector behind the license plate, and then passing the lead through a rubber grommet into the trunk, I decided to keep it - but only after I improved it.

First, I had to restore the in-line fuse holder. After some searching online I found this:

So it was then just a matter of soldering this in, and then soldering a flat head electrical terminal (to allow a bolt to connect it to the battery) but the next problem was, for some reason the wiring he had done was unnecessarily long - so I ended up actually cutting off quite a bit off to eliminate excess. This then allowed me to zip tie it in a relatively stealth way to the OEM loom (green arrow).

You can also see how here I have wired up the fuseholder and then connected it to the positive battery terminal.

And the end result?

Yep, able to charge the car battery without opening the trunk lid, with no excess wiring taking up extra space inside the trunk - AND with the reassurance that the CTEK circuit is properly protected.  

More to come!

Almost Done...

Photo courtesy of Takasu-san at NISMO Omori Factory

So I got a call last evening (Friday) from Takasu-san from NISMO Omori Factory. It seems that the used G&Yu NeXT battery that Nakamura at Worx Autoalarm had installed without my permission (and thrown out my trusted Optima Yellow Top - he claimed they were well marketed but not a good battery!) had reached a point where it could not hold a charge. And in fact, attempting to charge it (whether when the car was running or by charger) resulted in a weird chemical burning smell... not good...

Here it is - Model number is NX 115D26L

So I did some research and I think G&Yu (formerly Yuasa) had stopped making this model about 2-3 generations ago. It does appear on Rakuten and Amazon but doesn't look like you can order it anymore.  In any case, looks like it has a capacity of 68Ah (higher than the Yellow Top, as below) but I couldn't find any CCA rating.  Also, I am sure there is a technical reason why this one is no longer made but the Yellow Top still is... and of course being a USED battery, who knows what state the NeXT battery was too when it was installed in my car.

Who da F installs a USED battery in a customer's car??

So, I'll have to buy a new Optima Yellow Top, as I think they are the best out there... Good news is that NISMO agrees and recommends the Optima Yellow Top, so I promptly went online and bought one (model number YT925S-L/YR R 3.7?) from the online dealer I had dealt with before (in order to avoid the NISMO tax, of course...) and had them send the battery directly to NISMO for me.

Here is a closeup of the battery that fits the 33/34 GT-Rs. You can see it has a claimed 660 A Cold Cranking Amps and capacity of 48 Amp hours
From: https://www.soundwavemeiwa.com/SHOP/OPY3704.html

This is the GT-R specific mounting kit they supply.
From: https://www.soundwavemeiwa.com/SHOP/OPY3704.html

Showing this shop is an official Optima dealer, the terminals are pre-polished, compatible with the smaller type battery leads, this is a deep cycle battery, etc.
From: https://www.soundwavemeiwa.com/SHOP/OPY3704.html

Also Takasu-san informed me -  good news - my car is almost done, for real!

The next day (today) being Saturday I decided to drop into NISMO in the afternoon. Yes, NISMO Omori Factory is currently closed to the public due to the coronavirus scare (from March 4 to March 18) but hey this is where being a senior Nissan employee has its advantages...

So as I have written previously, the initial goal of having the car serviced at Nismo Omori Factory was to verify the extent, and then as needed, undo the damage incurred when the car sat outside the Worx Autoalarm garage, exposed to ocean winds, which I suspect then led to rust on parts of the car's undercarriage.

I did take care of the rust that had savagely appeared on the rotors, as I wrote in this post.

And for those suspension parts and links that developed rust, as I wrote recently I simply had those parts removed and replaced.

Then there are some places on the body that simply had to be repaired at a body shop.
For example, here is how their body shop fixed up the sills (the jack up points, having been scratched up in use, had developed some minor rust even before the Worx episode but the amount of rust seemed to increase tenfold afterwards).  My sills weren't bent up like many I've seen, but the outside flanges seemed to be more skewed to the outside than they should be. So now no rust and straight sills!

So you can see how the middle part of the bottom chassis - where the exhaust and driveshaft are - were left alone.
Just dirty, no rust. A future project for me!

So while I left the fixing up and re-protection of the bottom of the car to the pros, if all the rusted parts had to come off anyway, what other parts could come off due to age, not functioning and wear and tear?

 Funny you should ask...

Box of mostly banged up, but still quite usable, NISMO suspension link set parts!
Nothing new bushes and some paint can't fix! Anyone interested?

The hub bearings

Driveshaft boots and steering bushing

Nitrogen accumulator thing for the ATTESSA. After 23 years, pretty much non-functioning apparently...can't wait to take that first corner in the wet and see how much more quickly the front wheels get power!
 (I'd always wondered, why even with Do-Luck's digital G-sensor, response seemed a bit slow...hope this resolves it!).

More Nismo links and body rigidity parts. On the bottom, what remains of my Nismo brake air deflectors (that were attached to the tension rods - these are out of production now, replaced by the 10x more expensive dry carbon ones)

As mentioned last time, the driveshafts had to be either overhauled (front) or replaced (in the rear) with rebuilts
-these are the rears that couldn't be rebuilt at Nismo

The rear suspension member was taken off too and replaced with a new one. 

So, some parts were a simple replacement of the various Nismo parts I had installed long ago. Other parts were OEM parts that had not been changed out since the car left the factory, such as the rear member suspension brace!

Basically - I had the NISMO Omori Factory's Chassis Refresh done - plus a few cool extras.  In my next posts, I will show photos of all the new parts on the car, so you can see the difference, as well as the extras!

Fuse Tuning! (Yes Another Gimmicky Mod...Placebo effect?)

A few years ago, I read an article on "fuse tuning" in one of the many car /car parts magazines here in Japan.

The whole concept was basically an extension of using gold plated fuses to improve the sound quality in hi-fi stereo systems. (A Google search under "Fuse Tuning" will show a bunch of links on this.) The claim was that gold plated car fuses would enable the car's stereo to sound better, and the ECU to operate more accurately, etc.

But 24K Gold plated car fuses??!!   Just goes to show you that, with the proper marketing, car owners in Japan will try just about anything to extract just a bit more from their cars.  And yes that includes me, except I wasn’t about to spend 1050 yen per fuse(!)… imagine how much it would cost to replace ALL the fuses in your car?

However this concept seems to be a gimmick that quickly ran its course... still, the logic seems to be undeniable, we all see those gold plated stereo wires...

The leading company was called Ritz (which apparently now is out of business, surprise surprise) and had these types as well other types of these fuses:

From: http://www.geocities.jp/bigsingleworks/ritz.html

On this website that sold the Ritz fuses, they even have a dyno chart showing the before and after, and even better the car used was an R33 Skyline which shows a 0.5kg/m increase in torque, plus 18.7ps increase in HP!!

Apparently changing 10 fuses is all it takes!!

But 1000 yen per fuse?  Even back then, my cheapness won out…. However, just the other day, I stumbled on these very similar G-Fuses  (car fuses with 24 gold plated terminals from Amon, a popular car DIY company) on Yahoo Auctions – except now it was 490 yen for a pack of 10! So yes, couldn’t resist, although the fact that these are now clearance items tells you something…that in the end, even the Japanese consumers didn’t buy into the propaganda!

These aren't made anymore... and are listed as out of production on Amon's website here

According to some here in Japan, with the 33 in particular, having the battery located in the rear, plus the longest wheelbase (requiring the longest electrical harnesses and thus a drop off in the strength of the current) of the RB26 GT-Rs is the reason why, the 33 car tends to have electrical related problems - although I’ve never had a problem myself.  Then again, I’ve installed an earthing kit, and at the moment I’m not running electrical devices that would strain the system. However, in my quest to modernize the car, I suspect that it will require more electrical items to be added – thus if these G-Fuses provide any benefit at all, and they are cheap, then well worth installing them I think? Even the slightest benefit might help.

Let’s back up a bit – do a Google search, and you will see lots of debate on whether gold plating actually makes a difference.  The debate is particularly loud in the audio/video world:

http://www.avrev.com/forum/cables/1849-gold-connectors-bad-idea-make-connections-worse.html

 http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=123403

http://www.cnet.com/news/are-gold-plated-connectors-worth-it-morrisons-mailbag/

The consensus though seems to be that gold, while not as conductive as copper or silver, does not corrode like they do, and also does not react with other metals.  Additionally, gold is malleable.  Thus, a malleable, non-corrosive and non-reactive metal (in the audio world, as gold plated terminals, speaker wire, etc.) appears to be the best way to improve electrical contact and thus connectivity.  People agree, however, that there should be no difference in sound quality.

So what would that mean for car fuses?

  

In most fuses, the metal used is zinc, copper, silver or aluminum, or an alloy of those metals. In car fuses, the metal most commonly used is likely zinc, for cost reasons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuse_(electrical)

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/wfc2.htm

So if you look at these G-Fuses, you can see that the terminal blades are plated (they claim) in 24K gold.  As a layman, I think that unless the entire fuse itself is made of gold, there won’t be any difference in conductivity of the entire fuse circuit, assuming that the metal part of the fuse is made of zinc overlaid with a thin layer of gold.

However, the packaging claims otherwise. 

For the 10A fuse, the company shows an improvement of about 2.7mmOhms difference in electrical contact resistance.  For 20A fuses, the difference is smaller.  So, like the audiophiles claimed, these fuses apparently improve electrical connectivity.

But would there be a difference in “sound quality” – in other words, would the improved electrical connectivity somehow improve the overall electrics of the car?

To answer this question, I found people’s impressions of these on Minkara (the Japanese all things car site):

http://minkara.carview.co.jp/en/partscatalog/parts.aspx?pt=78085

To summarize, impressions are all over the place, some saying no change at all, others saying they feel a difference, etc.   The reality I believe is, if used in a simple, isolated circuit, you are more likely to detect a difference. But in a typical car, with hundreds of circuits and dozens of connectors (that don’t use gold), the likelihood of a single gold plated fuse making a noticeable difference, is slim.

Still, objectively I think these are “better” fuses than what is typically used.  So, let's try and see what happens?

First, the 20A fuse for the right headlight:

Before I switched the fuse for the RIGHT headlight

After: See the difference? Not really, yeah me too...

Ok how about the rear lights? 10A so maybe a bigger difference?

Before

After...I tried to stand in the same spot...a very slight difference? LOL

Conclusion: it's always smart to have extra fuses lying around, just in case, so IF you can buy these at a serious discount, then why not? Doesn't hurt, and in the off chance there actually is an objective difference, then great.  At the very least I can go around bragging about having gold plated fuses on my car now, lol!!

R33 GT-R - Cold Climate Region Spec Option

Well with the continuing cold weather... this is still timely...

So how many of you R33 fans knew that, when Nissan sold the R33, they offered a "cold climate region spec" option? (in Japanese, 寒冷地仕様). Actually, not just the R33 GT-R, but all R33s were offered with this option.

Not sure if it was a box you checked on the order sheet, but I HAVE been able to research and find that the option was comprised of at least the following items:

1) A larger standard battery
2) Heated door mirrors
3) Trunk liner

There is not much else to be found, however. The only other interesting tidbit I learned is that all 422 of the 4-door R33 GT-Rs built were "cold climate region spec" models. I could not find any information whether these spec cars had any mechanical differences, however. I was looking for, but could not find information on the typical "cold weather" improvements such as different coolant, better anti-rust protection, larger alternator, de-icing wipers, etc. So if anyone has any info on this, please let me know!

Anyway, assuming it's only the three items I listed above, then modifying your R33 to become a "cold climate region spec" car is not too hard. In my case, I have already installed a huge Optima Yellow Top battery, and so I just had to find the other two.

As for the heated mirrors, a happy accident - a while back when I lived in Tokyo and suffered the curse of mechanical parking, I damaged my left side mirror when backing in (I clipped it... Enough to crack the housing!). No matter, I just went on Yahoo Auctions and picked up something the same color. Wasn't paying too much attention then, but now when I had the doors apart for the sound deadening, I realized that I had gotten one with a 7 pin connector. The standard model is 5 pin, the extra 2 (blue connector) are used for the heating element. Lucky me!



So now, I have to find one for the right side, and THEN figure out how to wire it to the defogger switch, which activates the mirror heating elements.



(both of the above photos courtesy of http://minkara.carview.co.jp/group/r33skyline/bbs/5827926/l10/)

Honestly, while not urgent for me to have, as I live in Yokohama, it would still be cool to have my car fully accessorized this way (never mind that I almost never take my car out in the rain, and of course never when it's snowing). So, if anyone out there has the right side one in KR4 color, let me know! Thanks!

Finally, in keeping with my recent theme of trying to make my car more "comfortable" I found that you can still order the trunk liner and the 16 clips you need, so I did. (Parts number 84966-22U00 for the liner and 01553-04941 for the gray clips- thanks Matt!).

Here is the liner:


Here are the clips:


The trunk lid before (note the sound deadening I put on):


The trunk lid after installing the liner:


Is it just me, or doesn't the trunk lid look WAY better with this liner?

BTW - as I am updating, on an occasional basis, the R33 GT-R Technical page, please check back once in awhile. New entries are in green.

Preparing, Cleaning, Painting, Cleaning...

Ok people - I have to say I am sorry for not posting as much lately. In between trips to Hong Kong (to eat, mainly) and Hawaii (to eat, and sunburn) I haven't had time to do anything with the car.

I did manage to order THIS between my trips:


This being Japan, came with an (optional) GT-R fitting kit...


Of course - Murphy's law. Once I ordered it, had NO MORE PROBLEMS with the standard battery. Recently it had begun to not be able to hold a charge, so after a week or two I'd be nervous starting the car. Maybe it's the summer heat, but lately no such problems?

So the Optima remains uninstalled. Will do a post when I do put it in, though. Supposedly just having a better battery does wonders for the electrical system. So we shall see.

I DO have an SSCT Track Day, this time at Tsukuba Circuit, coming up September 5. So, as I had been pretty lazy about cleaning my track wheels, and figuring out why the "glass coating" I applied wasn't working as well as it had in the past, these past 2 weekends, I've spent some free time cleaning the RE30s.

As you can see from this first picture, the wheels never got properly cleaned after my last track day at Fuji.


I think what happened is, I applied the "glass coating" too thick - you can see the excess dried up in a line (looks almost like a crack). The consistency is like sap - slightly sticky, I can remove it with my fingernail, no problem. So I have been finding droplets of these all over, and tediously inspecting each wheel, in an effort to get the wheels as clean as possible.


The plan is, if the glass coating is still on the wheel, to improve its protection and slickness by applying a thin coat of Zaino, which I use on my car's body and also happens to be pretty tough against brake dust (apparently, from what I have seen on the internet forums). So I have 2 more weekends to finish the wheels and put them to the test!

The end result of course should look like this!


Meanwhile of course, I decided to detail my car again - went over with a fresh claybar on the flat surfaces, found some dirt, then used Zaino again to do a final cleaning and protect. Then applied a final protective coat. Took me all day, but I think the end result was worth it!

If I have time, will apply at least one more coat of Zaino before the track day!

Meanwhile, an experiment of sorts - my friend Miguel challenged me to paint some RB26 engine covers, claiming it was "easy" - and even sent me some instructions from the GT-R forum to show me how!
http://www.gtr.co.uk/forum/94090-cackle-finish-paint-step-step-cam-covers-2.html

Well, it wasn't easy. The items first had to be stripped of the existing paint, and the previous owner of the panels had used, I swear, Navy aircraft quality paint that DID NOT want to come off!

Then several sprays later, I got some beautifully painted covers - but no or uneven wrinkling. Despite sticking them into a plastic oven I created, and ruining my wife's hair dryer!

Eventually, my friend Russ came to the rescue - just spray it on thicker than you might imagine, he said - and he was right! And I did NOT require an oven! So I just waited for a really hot sunny day, left the items out in the hot sun, as well as the spray can of VHT wrinkle paint, then sprayed a faily thick layer as Russ suggested instead of the usual thin coats one normally does to paint with a spray can. Let it dry for a few hours - and the result is as below!


Anyway, I screwed up on the inlet plenum, so last weekend I stripped the paint off that (again) and if this next weekend is hot and sunny (should be), will spray this, and I will be done! Will post pictures then!

Oh, and as for the upcoming track day - yeah, got a few things left. Oil change, brake fluid change, installation of a new OS Giken LSD (!!!) and re-installation of a cooling hose for one of the front rotors!

Don't know if I have time, but will certainly try to get it all done! Stay tuned!