Hello again just thought I'd share my story, don't know if anyone will read this but not too fussed. Anyway live in SA bought my 33gtst 3 years ago for 4500, used to own a vr Calais what pos it was. Bought my 33gtst with 175000 on the clock std. At first I just drove it around enjoying the handling, went a lot better than the v6 vr, in short I just loved it. It's probably one of the most boring looking 33 out there, stock rims, no bodykits, fading paint on the roof etc. but to honest I don't gaf. After about a year or so developed a misfire at high rpm, not really knowing a lot about turbo charged cars, thought I'd stick to the basics fuel, spark, timing. Sorted it out with a new set of plugs and split fire coil packs and set timing with a gun using the wire from no1 coilpacks. Kept driving it until it hit 200000, then took it off the road to upgrade a few things, slowly but surely I started to buy a few things listed below
K&n filter, plasma man air box, 600x300x76 fmic, different pipe work, gfb boost bleed valve, external pump& surge tank.
Put all these things in turned the boost up to 11 psi on my aftermarket guage and away I went....... What a fkn muppet.
Few weeks later after hissing my way around the hills started to hear a exhaust leak when cold, then all the time. That was about the time a mate of mine informed me about this Internet forum he said you can research to find how to fix things, upgrades etc
So took it off the road again did a lot of reading on sau and other forums downloaded a engine and service manual. Basically I should have researched before I started throwing mods at it like I said a fkn muppet.
So now with a bit of knowledge, it was time to find and fix exhaust leak wasn't hard to find in the end, turned out I had 5 snapped exhaust manifold studs. So I took the head of replaced them as well as every required gasket, replaced every hose, joiner , hose clamp,drive belts and a gates racing timing belt. Put it all back together using the manual. Once completed I turned the boost down to 8 psi. I have a lot more torque now. My enginebay look a lot cleaner with new hoses, bkts, clean parts.
Next thing I did was install a new 3inch turbo back exhaust, then bought a rb20det ecu with a nistune from Garage 7, also got some 660cc injectors and fpr , hoping to install these at the tuner and get dyno soon
So there's my story so far did miss a few things,
what I've learnt
-Do the exhaust and ecu mods first ( basically I did everything backwards)
-Listen to the advice the experienced guys tell you
-Be a bit humble sometimes you will learn more
-Skylines shit all over Vr Calais
