Inaugural Club R33 Brisbane Member Meet

So yes folks, even on vacation I do R33 GT-R and car related things. Case in point, last week when I vacationed in the Gold Coast, Queensland Australia, I realized it was quite close to Brisbane... and that Club R33 had several members who live in Gold Coast as well as Brisbane.  

So I reached out, and then suddenly a Club R33 GT-R owners meet was on!

First however, I wasn't going to show up in some econobox. Being Australia, I figured I should rent something ADM... something not only made there, but uniquely Aussie. So I ended up getting this:

Holden Commodore SV6!
This is the last Commodore series to be made in Australia, from next year they are all imported!

Dual Exhaust hints at performance

Healthy looking V-6 engine, rear wheel drive!

Unfortunately, I could not believe how cheap the interior was, for a "Premium" level car - fake and poorly done carbon fiber everywhere, pleather... and the entertainment system blanked out and then rebooted itself once...

Anyway, on the appointed day Mark was kind enough to pick me up at the hotel I stayed at in Surfer's Paradise, to lead me to the "Hungry Jack" at "Upper Coomera" wherever that was.

I felt like I was home all of sudden...

One thing I noticed... Wow the 33 sure has PRESENCE on local Aussie roads!

Anyway, we soon arrived and we found the others had already arrived.  Since I had my Nikon DSLR, I immediately started taking photos. I'll let the photos tell the story...

Here, Mark checks his phone to make sure we are at the right spot, given that there was a 944 in the mix
(more on that later).

The mutual admiration has begun...

And in particular, Rhys and his ex-Targa Tasmania car!

Ok, I hate those "replica" wheels. Cast and heavy, unsprung weight places undue stress on suspension components.
But, I understand these are temporary which is good...

Full welded in CAMS 6 point roll cage. Total fighter plane cockpit!

Ok now this is getting interesting. 

Loved this custom catch tank! Nice detail on the vents!

Very clever placement of the oil cooler. Love the custom brackets!

And of course, the all important ClubR33 sticker. Required for all serious BCNR33 owners.

Mark's car. Love the number plate! 

Interior is mostly stock, including that GINORMOUS Series 1 steering wheel.

Now this is cool, I loved it! Apexi N1 dual flow exhaust. Looks almost OEM from afar, but sounds amazing!

Glenn's car. OK, I was impressed. Super clean!
And yes I even checked the BACKSIDE of the Enkei wheels... no brake dust!

Love the color of the engine covers? Me too. Glenn tells me it's a Holden color, "Prussian Steel Grey"!
And yes I noticed the wrinkle paint on the surge tank too. 

I was interested in these stickers. Apparently no longer in stock at Nissan (I checked here in Japan).
Hopefully I can get one of the Club members to scan them and we can reproduce one day...

Clean + Sticker = extra 100hp!

Tox's car. Looks ordinary from here but note, the tracker on the front grill for track days...

Also running those Enkeis! Except none of the OCD clean that Glenn displayed.

This was AMAZING. Anyone know what this is?  I've seen it only in old Nissan Skyline option catalogs.
It's the base Unit for the "Holographic Marker"

Upper left - the unit is called the "Holographic Marker" - the Unit sends out two beams, orange and green - and when viewed in the dash mounted "Combiner" - orange shows where an obstruction is, while green is 10 cm away. Supposed to help in parking...unfortunately Tox doesn't have the Combiner so we couldn't see how it worked.

Timm's 944 was impressive too. His brother Tom's 33 is "undergoing treatment" so they arrived in this.

Have to admit, very nicely done. Most of the paintwork was done when the engine was out of the car.

As Rhys left early, we asked Timm to take this memorial photo. 

As there were a few members who could not make this meet, I hope they will do so at the next one, whether I am there or not.  Actually, it's my hope that people read this and start organizing their own events, so that we start having Club R33 meets all over the world!

How cool would that be? R33 FTW!

Minor Mod: Nissan Sports Horn

Truth be told, this wasn't something essential that had to be replaced. However, for my next Speedhunters post, I am trying to demonstrate to those readers how OCD I am, and so I am going with several engine bay touch-ups which I hope to share with you soon.

One item, though, that I discovered during my engine bay clean-up was the dirty/oxidized condition of the OEM horn, which is actually two horns - one for high pitch and the other for low pitch which together generate the following sound:

So this is what it sounds like, normally.

During my "engine bay refresh" I discovered that the horns, while they still work without issue, looked horrible.

The "lo-tone" one on the right, I sprayed with Rust-o-leum paint as an experiment.

As the above photo shows, I initially wanted to "save" the OEM horns - and while I could have, by for example spraying each with anti-rust Rust-o-leum paint, I decided, why not go with quality aftermarket?

So of course I did some research, and found someone in Japan who was even more OCD than me:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAzOtSblbBAYpk_TAVkeaD09ybypoMzM2

This guy tested over 70 car horns, mainly aftermarket.  As a result, I decided to stick with a Nissan aftermarket part, the "Nissan Sports Horn." The one I found was offered as an accessory for the Z34 Fairlady Z car.

So I ordered and a few days later...

Each one comes wrapped up like this.

As you can see, much larger than OEM. 

And the horn elements are encapsuled in a nautilus shaped black plastic

Installation was NOT plug and play, however.  Not a major issue, but unlike the OEM horn, which is grounded though the bolt connecting to the frame, the Z34 horns require a wire to be run from a lead - here I've shown with the green arrow where I had to run a short wire lead.  In other words, the Z34 has 2 wire clips, one for the positive terminal (which are the same as can be seen below) and then one for ground.  All I did was ground using a wire.  Then, it was a matter of slightly bending the brackets for each horn to ensure they fit in the space behind the grill without rubbing on anything.

Interesting, grounding by way of the bracket and bolt does NOT work with the Z34 horn. At least when I tried.

I should mention that Nissan apparently offers this "Sports Horn" (aka "Euro Horn") for every single car in their line-up, so installing the Sports Horn doesn't give a unique sound to the car. Just a different sound.

So what do people think? Yes, not one of my best posts, but I think when you see the before and after photos of what I've done, you might be impressed.  Patience my friends as I get around to taking Speedhunter quality final photos...

A Recent Video Review of the BCNR33!

Well it was bound to happen. Someone saying nice things about me, this blog, and of course the R33 GT-R.  Thanks to Paul and Derek from Let's Drive Japan.

"Full disclosure"-  I know both of them but I really had no idea they would be reviewing the 33 so early in their series (although, I was meaning to suggest they do so soon in their series).

What I found interesting was Derek's immediate analysis, compared to the BNR34. He's right, the BNR34 is "more refined and softer" - as you may recall from reading this blog, that is exactly what Nissan wanted, as they felt that the BCNR33 was fast enough, but it took a skilled driver to get those results.  And having driven a stock BNR34 myself, I was surprised that it felt more like a luxury car (in terms of smoothness of ride and the level of power assist) than a sports car, at least at around town speeds.

I suspect that this car they drove was fairly stock. Perhaps I need to extend them an invite to drive my car?

Meanwhile, well done boys, keep the videos coming!

Titanium Bolts Engine Cover Dress Up Project (Part 2)

So as I described in yesterday's post, we (ClubR33) had ordered custom titanium bolts for the engine's Rb26 front cam cover, the CAS, and the coil pack cover - some 18 bolts in all.  In "burnt blue," "nitride gold" and "nitride black."

Of course, as I send out the bolts to the ClubR33 members who ordered, I wondered how the bolts would look on my car. So I took advantage of a rare break in the rain and took the follow photos. Enjoy!

Installation Examples:

Burnt blue coil cover bolts

The bolt on right has "ClubR33" laser engraved.

Here is a close up

Nitride Gold

Frontal shot

Better shot to see the coilpack cover bolts

Close up of laser engraving for Nitride Black bolts

Here you can see the OEM bolts (circled in red) vs the black titanium bolts.

So which do you like the best? For some reason, I am drawn to the black ones. Understated, but with purpose. The gold is too flashy for me, but I think of the 3 colors I like them the best (overall finish, and color quality).  The burnt blue is attractive, but honestly the coloring is quite susceptible to scratching (not important under the hood, really), and the coloring is not consistent (actually that is good, no one will have the exact same set) and so for someone with OCD like me, sticking to a solid color may be the way to go. I guess I will just have to experiment...

Weight Savings!
And of course, for those who may be skeptical of the whole exercise, these bolts DO have a practical purpose. Being titanium, they ARE lighter than the steel bolts they replace.

So a 26 gram weight savings for the RB26 cam cover

Since there are 12 bolts in total, we would have 9x3 = 27 grams of weight savings

And 3 of these on the CAS. So 5x3 = 15 grams of weight savings.

So in total, we would have 26 + 27 + 15 = 68 grams of weight savings! LOL. As you can see, no one can deny that they do not have an actual purpose, although I am sure there are more cost effective ways to drop weight from the front of the car!

What do you guys think?

Titanium Bolts Engine Cover Dress Up Project (Part 1)

As many of you know, I am quite active in ClubR33, the invitation-only R33 GT-R owner's club Facebook group. It's a great bunch of guys and because it's closed to the public (we screen potential members before we allow them access) we can focus on, and be proud of, all things R33 without worrying about the usual detractors we often see in more public forums.

Anyway, one of the nice things of belonging to a group like this, is that we can embark on projects which might not be worth doing by oneself.  For example, after we discovered that, someone was selling colorful titanium bolts on eBay for RB26DETT engine bays, but at a premium, I wondered if the Club could do better - could we, for example, have the OEM engine bolts replicated, but also in titanium? And in attractive colors? Would it be expensive and not worth it?  I mean, this DressUpBolts guy is smart, by limiting the dimensions (both threading and the heads which area all Allen head) of the bolts he offers, he has enormous economies of scale.


In any case, I put out some feelers on Alibaba, the e-commerce site that connects the world directly to Chinese factories, and found a dealer who not only was willing to do the job, but impressed me by taking the photos of the measurements I took of the following bolts (these are just a few):

This is the bolt for the RB26 front cam cover.

Same bolt as above.

This is the bolt for the CAS. Note the captive washer

This is my homemade jig I use to measure bolts.
Here, I found that the bolts for the coilpack cover (green circle) are M5, while the CAS bolt is M6.

and coming back in a few hours with the following:

They got everything EXACTLY right!

Anyway, I was pretty happy with how these guys understood how picky I was. I wanted exact replicas of the OEM factory bolts, and I wanted them removable by the same tools as the OEM bolts as well.  Hence it was very important to get the dimensions correct, not just of the thread but of the heads as well. The only compromise I made was on the CAS bolt. Instead of a having a Phillips head, the factory only felt comfortable doing an Allen head. But I realized that I usually use a socket wrench for this bolt anyway so in the end I capitulated.

Because the factory however required a minimum order of 100 bolts, this is a project I would not normally do on my own. But, with several like-minded members, this was a go! And, the pricing would be much lower than the generic aluminum and titanium bolts we had seen on eBay.  So we placed our first order and a few weeks later received this:

Nice huh! Color is "burnt blue"

We were thrilled - these came out much better than we had anticipated. But then, there was overwhelming demand - while an earlier poll had shown that only a dozen or so members expressed interest, once people saw this photo there was more demand than available bolts.  Luckily someone then pointed out to me that, we were missing one bolt, the third short bolt found in the middle of the RB26 front cam cover. Oops.  But just the excuse I needed to order some more and have enough for everyone.

And, based on demand, we (the admins of the Club) decided that we needed to make these bolts even more special.  The way to do that, would be to have one or more of the bolts laser etched with "ClubR33." A small detail that reflects the Club brotherhood!

So I placed another order, and in addition to the missing bolt and the engraving, ordered the bolt set in two anodized (actually "nitride") colors, gold and black. This time, the wait took longer, but the results were definitely worth it.

Nitride Black

Nitride Gold

Here are the new blue ones, with the laser engraved club name

Bagged up for the members, ready to be mailed out!

So far, so good. But I wondered, how good would these bolts look on the engine of MY car? Check in tomorrow to find out...