Hella_GTR

Pretty sure you're right about that. The chat bot picked an old post too. And G&K has been able to get cars with upgraded turbos through compliance testing just fine.

Sounds good I'll attempt some hard braking back-to-back from high speeds. It's actually really hard to do that in tokyo area but i'll find a way lol. The brakes setup is pretty new, like no more than 8,000 kilo's on them. I've definitely encountered surface rust from washing the car or rain, but nothing like this. It was like flooded the same weekend I washed it though and drove through some pretty deep puddle but thought it would have dried out by the time I got home. I hope the rotors are not warped. The rust is only where the pad met the rotor overnight. So when it hits that lifted rusted spot, you can hear it and feel it when braking... Thanks for the advice. It sounds salvageable!

I talked to Nismo and they said I need to go do some more back-to-back high speed hard braking. If that doesn't clear it then I need new rotors and pads which would suck.

That's the plan. No way I'm giving up on these new expensive rotors lol. These are times I wish i had a house with a garage to work on a car. Thanks man and I gotta get an update from you on your progress. Next for me is a Nismo intercooler. I'm still hoping for a California plate in the future...

It's just strange because I've washed my car 100 times and this never happened before. The car is parked underground as well so I don't really get what happened. We did have some pretty serious flooding/rain before the wash and it was humid as heck but still. I did park it like right after washing though. I'm also disappointed that this happened since the brakes were ￥￥￥￥￥￥￥￥

Dang, I was hoping just hitting the spot with a flex-hone would work. That means I gotta go to a shop cause Tokyo living means I'm in a tower with a vending machine parking lot and no place to do that kind of work myself lol. Thanks for the guidance. Surprised this happened in the first place.

Good morning folks, looking for some help on how to treat my new Endless Brakes. I recently upgraded my bcnr33's brakes to Endless Racing Mono 6. All was good until I washed my car and parked it overnight and drove it the next day to work and the brakes felt like the rotors were warped shaking about and the pedal pulsing. I took a look and found these rust spots on the rotors as shown below. It looks like where the pad meets the rotors, rust formed overnight. I spent a week daily driving for 250kms, doing hard braking as often as I can when the opporutnity allowed. It got better but still the rust spots remain and the pedal pulsing remains. It's been humid here in Japan so it must've rusted bad overnight. Anyone have experience with this? I'll keep pounding on the brakes whenever I can but I feel i've done that enough. My pads are endless street spec so not too aggressive. I was thinking about hitting the rust spot with a flex-hone but don't want to do that if I don't have to. If anyone has any advice, I'd appreciate it. Thank you! P.S. The last photo is before the rust occurred just to show off how beautiful the brakes are. Info on the brakes: https://www.endless-sport.co.jp/products/brake_caliper/index_RacingMONO6.html

LOL that is definitely love. I'd regret it if I sold it. Pretty sad story my old home town won't let my car in. Trust me, next time my work allows me to do an overseas tour, Australia is a top choice. Definitely doing a lot of things right there.

Agreed man. Unfortunately G&K won't work with me so I'm stuck unless I just tell them I put it back to stock and hope they don't notice. Just some risk in that for me if I take a job in California and they decide they won't help me.

lol ok JK said to return it to stock or register it in Nevada and they can't help. Good times.

Sorry I thought G&K was the only one who were certified to do CARB compliance. I assumed I had no choice but to use them. Didn't know there was another route. Also, there's just not much info out there which is why I've been looking for any good US based forums sites. That said, I just looked at JK and they do say they can do CARB but it's not that clear. I have no idea how they do it from Maryland unless it's not necessary to be in California for the testing. Either way I will reach out to them and see if they can help and willing to work with me. Or maybe you mean I should have just not told G&K about the turbos I have. I always planned on running the car with a virgin OEM ECU for compliance work. No boost controller on the car so should be low boost. This would probably be easier if I was stateside... I'll do more research as well. I just don't want to relocate to California and find out I can't get my car in compliance. I only want to move there if I know for sure it'll get through. If not I'll find a job in a different state basically. Hope that makes sense. Thanks for the help.

Welp, Nancy at G&K just told me no, they can only accept the car if it is 100% stock

Hmmm yeah my worry is that he's too busy to even give me the time. I wrote him a nice email and tried to explain that the R1 turbos are similar to original with all connections the same as it was at the factory, no stand-alone fuel management, no external boost controller, original fuel system, and everything was installed at Nissan Prince Tokyo. I also said I will buy an original un-opened ECU to plug in during testing. I offered to pay the additional fees as well if it requires additional time. But yeah if I get no help from him then I'm out of luck unless there's another shop that is certified and willing to help but no idea if that exists. I'll let ya know if he agrees to work with me on getting a California plate man. Thanks again

Thanks again. Hmmm it kinda sounds like I should just tell him my car is original and let him try. Just worried that if he won't accept it when he sees it in person then I'll be out of luck. Basically if they won't accept my car then my plan was to not move back to California so I'd really like to know before I find a new job back stateside. I don't want to move to California then find out I'm out of luck basically. I was hoping Top Rank could give me some advice too. I appreciate the offer for checking out the data from my ecu but yeah the plan was to only move to California if the car was OK, rather than the other way around. I'll try George one more time and go from there I guess. Also thanks for the tips on exporters to the US! Thanks again

Hi Josh, So you're thinking the same thing I'm thinking. I was planning on just using an original series 1 ECU on the r1 turbos and also bring a 95 RON Minex VX ecu to swap in after the compliance work is done. I don't know if I'd need to swap back in stock turbo elbows or not but as you said, the R1 turbos are pretty similar to stock and I run the OEM MAF sensors and air intake box. I only run 0.9 BAR to keep things safe on the car as well and no external boost controller (boost is controlled by the ECU). Hmm ok let me ask him if he'll consider doing my car with the R1 turbo's and an original unopened ECU and they can install however many cat converters they need on my OEM exhaust or another one I pick up while here. Hopefully he'll entertain the idea at least. If so, it really opens more doors for places to work and it was pretty much why I got the 1995 BCNR33 in the first place (to get through CA compliance). That is also really good news about the Nissan dealers having access to Skyline parts. I was worried about that. I love being able to run to Nissan when I need a part. Thanks man and I'll report back with what George says. ---Evan

This whole emissions thing sounds like a pain. George from G&K said my car needs to be 100% stock to go through CA compliance testing which would be a pain for me to put back the old turbos which are 26 years old. I was hoping they can use the Nismo R1 turbos, manifolds, original ECU and install a front pipe/exhaust with a bunch of cat converters on it to pass emissions testing. Guess it's not that easy. I also don't plan to swap back the turbos so I guess i'll try to find a job elsewhere. I was hoping Top Rank could help facilitate and make any necessary temporary changes to get it to pass but no luck in getting a response from them. GT-R life in Japan is so much easier lol.

Dang man if you've got any recommendations on companies that have access to the dock to get the car through customs and out of the port, please let me know. I hear Top Rank won't work with people unless you buy from them. I will do some additional google'ing as well though. I was thinking of doing container shipping for my car versus roll on roll off but haven't looked at the price differences yet. Gosh, it seems so much easier just staying in Japan lol. Also I met again with Nismo over the weekend and they recommended not to do the Nismo fuel kit for going to California just to be safe. They said they can do a fuel map for 95 RON for California or even 96 RON if I end up in Washington though which is nice. My current Mines fuel map is stellar, car runs like it came this way from the factory and I get about 18-20mpg depending on traffic. How do you go about buying parts in the US? It's so nice here how I can just run to nissan to get what I need and/or yahoo auctions. Either way I hope you get your car running soon and into G&K for that Cali plate. Would be pretty sweet driving down PCH in a BCNR33. Thanks man, cheers. ---Evan

Hi Josh, Thanks man, always appreciate your input. So two things, for the California 91 Octane, Mines actually has fuel maps for lower octane. Nismo asked me to teach them the octane of the state I'll end up in and they'll install the appropriate fuel map. Apparently they've done quite a bit of work with the American market and have made maps for fuel octanes in the US, state specific. For the fuel kit, Nimso also worked with Mines and has a map for it. The plan was to install the intake manifold, fuel kit and Mines VX rom fuel map for it. Sounds like the good news is the mods that i've done/plan to do won't impact what G&K need to do too much. I have the OEM exhaust but after what you said I think I'll pick up another beat up one before I head back. I will probably follow your lead as well and go Haltech one day, however, I may do another tour here in Japan so I may just leave it alone until I figure that out. They really like Mines VX ROM maps here. Also on the page as you about the plate. I don't want any trouble with the police. Not worth the headache and 1995's are lucky to be eligible to even get a CA plate since it's before OBD2 requirement kicks in. One more question for you, are you or do you plan to work directly with G&K or will you use Top Rank to facilitate things? I'm thinking I won't be able to get any support from Top Rank on importing so I may go through Garage Defend but not sure how it works on the US side of things upon arrival. My two year shaken (like Smog) is coming up in March 2022 and was thinking to just ship the car to my Parent's house in CA until I move back later in the year. Not even sure if I can just ship it and pick it up at the dock then tow home.

Hi All, Looks like my job is sending me back to the US from Japan in the next 3-6 months. I'll 90% end up in California so will need to do the FTP testing, then California BAR. I'm tracking it'll take some time, perhaps 6-12 months at G&K, and cost at least $10k. My car is not stock though so wanted to find some good resources on if my car would even pass. I also am trying to find a good resource for importing the car from Japan to the US. I reached out to TopRank but I know they're busy and since I didn't buy the car from them, they may not be interested in helping me out. Are there any good US based forums like this site or is it all on Facebook pages now? I'm 4 years removed from the States but back in my Honda days it was all about Honda-tech. Not sure if there's something like that for Skylines in the US. I did do Google but the ones I found didn't look too active... I bought the car full normal so have all the original parts but would like to avoid putting it back to stock. All work was done at Nismo Performance Center Tokyo. Mods are all in the spirit of OEM/Nismo. Longblock is stock. Only things I've done are Nismo R1 turbo kit (looks OEM), HPS elbows down to a RSR front pipe to HKS cat converter and exhaust (JASMA). Before moving to the US, I also plan to install the Nismo intake manifold and new Nismo Fuel Kit (R35 injectors, air flow sensors, new fuel rail). All of it is tuned on the Mines VX ROM inside the original OEM ECU (that's how they roll here). I love the car and it's pristine so want the best for it and will keep it forever. I know there's folks using out-of-state plates as well but don't want to deal with the trouble/worries of it living in CA. I'm also searching for non-CA jobs but not sure if that's going to pan out. Thanks for any assistance! Kanpai! ---Evan

For what it's worth, I ended up going with the Nismo quick shift and it is awesome. Solid, tight, and not too short of a shift. It's not quite Honda s2000 status (my favorite shifting car) but pretty close. Granted I get my car worked on at Nismo Performance Center Tokyo so going with nismo was hard not to do lol. Cheers kanpai

Hi Josh, wow dealing with G&K sounds not pleasant at all. I never understood how they have a monopoly on the system. Hopefully the nail polish smell will go away soon but it's good you did a body coating. I did the echelon nano-fil coating here but i think most places are behind the times here as I haven't see many places do ceramic coating. Anyway, I did not push my car as I don't have the fuel system to do so, so I only run 1 bar and use the OEM injectors, MAF's and fuel pump. I do not plan to go over 400hp anytime soon. Maybe mine will pass as-is. 6 months down time for nothing doesn't sound fun... I was having some idling issues with my car which Nissan determined to be my AAC so I had it replaced at Nissan and it ran a lot smoother after that. Not a cheap component though. May want to do it though in case they ever stop making that part. Thanks for dropping knowledge on me with fuel maps and tuning and the FTP-75.

There's PLENTY of Power FC's here. I just didn't go that route as the Tokyo Prince folks and Nismo recommended to stick with the MINES VX ROM. I know plenty of cars running well on it though, even if old technology but so is the original ECU. I'm not sure if there's many Power FC tuners in the US but that'd be cool. Wish there was like a system universally used lol.

Wow did you already get through compliance? Is so, that's awesome. I was hearing it takes up to a year. I'm glad to hear it runs ok on 91 octane with the stock tune. I still don't know why the car couldn't pass CA compliance with a VX ROM with proper tune unless they check the ECU to see if it's been opened. My plan was to swap out my ecu with a OEM one and hope it passes with the r1 turbos (similar to you GTIII-SS's) then put back the VX Rom ecu until I get a haltech or nistune or something of that nature to properly tune to CA 91 octane gas. I currently don't have any fire coming out of my tailpipe. I don't know if that would work if I went ahead with the tomei engine overhaul though. Bummer to hear about your car troubles but I'm sure you'll learn alot along the way. So my car also idles at about 1050rpm which Nissan says is normal. When my car is cold it's a little twitchy but goes away quick when warmed up but not too. I hope you get all the tweaks worked out soon. I can't imagine how it is there without having the resources for the car like I do here. Once you're all done it'll be so worth it. It's such a visceral car and sounds amazing.

lol yes yes Haltech is the best. I was planning to wait until I get back to the US to tune the car to the fuel I'll have available. 100 RON is nice. Hopefully I can find something equivalent in the US. I also totally don't trust myself to tune the car myself! Open up a branch shop in Japan!

Dude yeah keep me posted on your process. You still going at it with your upgarded turbos? I've got R1 turbos on mine and was thinking of doing a tomei engine refresh while I'm here. I just don't think i can pass CA compliance after that. not even sure with just the r1 turbos And MINES is fully aware of the gas differences from the US and Japan and can make adjustments accordingly. Once back stateside, I'd be wanting to get it properly tuned for US gas though like what you're doing. Can't do that with a VX ROM.