Daikoku Futo Night

Apologize for the low quality pics. Am working on getting a better camera...

Dino's car:


Good shot of my engine, with the Garage Defend GT Cooling Panel:


Me and two new friends from Spain - Rene (Tsuchiya-kun on the GTROC forum) and his friend David). These guys are in Japan on vacation, and rented a Nissan El Grande just to come to Daikoku Futo this evening. And convinced their wives to come too. Wow.


Miguel's 86. Now THAT is an ENGINE!!


Something about the alternator wires...Adam, Tom and Miguel work on the 86.


Tom's (tom80) Supra.


Good to see you guys again - Miguel, his buddy - "Extreme," Dino, his brother, the two guys from Yokota - James and Dillon, Tom, Adam, and the people from Spain. Hope everyone made it home ok.

Mine's - ALMOST done - but meanwhile. マインズ： もうちょっとで完璧に完成だね

We are quite not finished, but at least the engine runs very, very well! Yay! I picked the car up on Sunday - the O2 sensor was replaced, and the engine runs very smoothly, with no overheating. Yes, the idle is a bit rough compard to a normal engine, but otherwise, the response of the engine is fantastic, as is the power - wheel slip in second and third (it was raining, but...)

Anyway - the only thing now I am waiting for from Mine's are new engine covers - the ones fitted to my engine have a sheen to them, so they look pretty bad (e.g. the photo for the plastic oil filler cap - you can definitely see the sheen from improper painting).

Anyway - had an itch to do something - take a look at some of the photos here. I spent this evening changing 1) the GT-R badge for a new one, 2) changing my GReddy carbon fiber radiator cooling panel for a Garage Defend carbon fiber radiator cooling panel, and 3) changed the plastic oil filler cap with a billet aluminum NISMO version (thanks Mo for your generosity!).

New (left) and Old (right):




I was planning on keeping the old one for track days, but as it's somewhat of a pain to access, may just order another new one for back up.

GReddy Panel:




Garage Defend Panel




I plan to test and see if the Garage Defend panel is any better than the GReddy one, which is a design similar to Mine's and it seems everyone else. The theory with everyone else is that the half design lets hot air out on the sides. If that is correct, then I may change back to the GReddy one for the summers.

Plastic Oil Filler Cap:
プラスチックオイルキャップ


Nismo Aluminum Billet Oil Cap:
ニスモアルミ製オイルキャップ：


Here, I will probably keep the Aluminum one for looks only - for track days and days I will take the car in for service, will probably switch to the plastic one for ease of use.
展示のためだけに使います。走行会とか修理に出すときは、使いやすいプラスチックのキャップに再び交換。

Before:


After:


The end result:


Here is a better picture of before:
外したエンブレムです。画像をクリックしたら、どんなに劣化してるかよく分かります。

Two very cool photos

In keeping with the R33 GTR theme, I present:




and



copyright twinturbo.net (thanks!)

from what I gather, some folks from twinturbo.net were recently granted special access to Nissan's car storage facility in Zama. These were just two of the cars there.

More photos from the UK GTR guys! My car at Mine's!

Thanks Steve for the photos!! (Mo, still waiting for yours!)

These were taken when they visited Mine's and found my car on the lift, being worked on.

1) From underneath, looking from back to front:


2) From underneath, a look at the HKS Kansai carbon fiber undertray:


3) Some of the UK guys with the Mine's guys:


From left to right: Graeme, Yonezawa-san, Mo, Nakayama-san, and Steve.

my 15 minutes? how come I have no photos of me and my car??

Because of a request by a motorsport journalist in the UK (Andy English), found this old photo of me and my car. I was contacted because I had met motor journalist Peter Lyon a few weeks ago at Daikoku Futo, a parking lot in the Yokohama area where various sports cars congregate on occasion. At that time, Peter and some other journalists were in Japan to talk to people who owned Skyline GT-Rs. I was the only R33 in the group (the other 3 cars were R34s), so naturally attracted some attention. Anyway, Mr. English, who is at a leading UK newspaper got my name from Peter, and asked me to talk about the GT-R, and have a photo ready of me and my car. Because I was late in finding this, the paper might use a more recent photo of me in the new GT-R from this blog... Oh well.

Anyway, I had to dig into my hard drive to find this... This was taken at the Tsukuba Circuit at a Skyline Sports Car Club Tokyo track day, about two years ago. Note the lack of modification to the car, as evidenced by the standard suspension and lack of carbon fiber in the rear wing.



Here is another photo of me on the race track, this time at Fuji Speedway, about to get into the car as event organizer (and fellow R33 GT-R owner) Honda-san looks on.


Talking to Nissan mechanic Yamada-san about the tires getting too hot for the track.


Finally, just a picture of the car I took when waiting to pick up the girlfriend.

Mine's Front Pipe Pro

So while my car was at Mine's last week in order to solve the overheating problem, I decided to go ahead and have the Mine's front pipes installed.

I had changed my normal standard exhaust for the Fujitsubo Super Legalis R (89.1mm main pipe, 117mm exhaust tail pipe) quite some time ago, around the time I got a boost controller which raised the boost on the standard BCNR33 turbines to 1.0:



I also changed the standard catalytic converter for an Apex'i sports cat, and the standard front pipes for Fujitsubo front pipes.



I had not considered, however, that the radius of the cat - on both ends, was 80mm. And now, with the new GT-SS turbos in place - these have outlets measuring 70mm. So, the Fujitsubo front pipe dimensions are 60.5, 60.5 and 70mm. So - we are missing 10mm on each end.



The Mine's front pipes, however, fit perfectly - 70mm at the turbo side, and 80mm on the cat side.

Mine's Front Pipe Pro:


I considered getting the titanium version because it's nice and light, but 1)it's also more expensive and 2) prone to cracking, according to Nakayama-san. So, got the regular SS version above.

The car now SOUNDS different - definitely less constricted, but also more baritone at full throttle. And, it seems that the engine response is a bit better than before. When I had picked up the car, Niikura-san had said that the front pipes were causing the car to sound a bit different. I now see what he meant.

Overheating problem... solved?

Picked up my car today. I was planning on returning it after a quick blast, but events conspired so that I couldn't return it. No matter, it runs! There is STILL one problem left, but this time it's something Mine's Nakayama-san found which is not related to the new engine - a dead O2 sensor.

Which makes the car idle very poorly. Mine's has ordered the part, and we were set to have it installed on Monday, but it will have to wait till the weekend.

Anyway, the good news is that the overheating problem is solved! Apparently there was crud from the old radiator that became dislodged. So this was all flushed out, and a new radiator installed. A Koyo Type-Z - a nice big aluminum radiator.



I drove the car very, very hard, and the temp never got above the horizontal line. In fact, it hovered about 10 degrees south of the horizontal. So, I'm very, very happy!

Did I mention the car is now extremely quick? Almost frighteningly so. Boost is set at 1.3, which Nakayama-san says is somewhere above 500ps, even with the GT-SS turbines. We could set to 1.5, but this isn't good for the sport catalyzer, so were are being conservative. Yikes, how much more power could this car pump out? Although I'm tempted to put in a straight pipe, and set for 1.5, just for the next track day... I wonder if I could go to Top Secret to take care of this? Mine's was a bit reluctant to do this, in case I got caught. BTW, anything above 1.5, and the turbines can't respond effectively, supposedly.

So here is a pic of the engine, check out the enormous new radiator:



Also note the new Samco radiator tubing I had put in. Somehow though, the engine just lacks "flash." Maybe I need to get some chrome bits, or carbon fiber, or something to spruce up the look. I do have earthing wires already installed, but the silver wires don't do much.

Maybe I should have gone with the purple Samco hoses, to match the Mine's purple crinkle finished engine covers.


Here is another shot of the rear - apparently they are still working on getting the new Mine's logo in - the one with the red "S" - can't wait to put that on. I do really like the subdued look of this, though. Very Mine's philosophy of not being flashy.



Will keep the car in the garage at my apt this week - and will drop off again at Mine's on Sat, when they will fix the O2 sensor. Hopefully, I get it back on Sunday. Stay tuned!

Oh, PS - check out this link - when the UK GTROC guys were in town, they paid a visit to Mine's and found my car being serviced:
http://www.gtr.co.uk/forum/upload/85923-akis-bottom.html#post780345


Great pics, thanks Rob!!