GoHashiriya

When I re-wired/installed my Walbro 255 the fuel supply line in the engine bay popped off. Check them all thoroughly during the first few drives.

From Japan, I would recommend Trust Kikaku, based out of Ibaraki. I believe they already have a US-incorporated office for the Japan-US sales, although prices are high - they're absolutely aware of what they have. I bought my car from them, albeit domestically in Japan, and their service was tremendously good. As far as the export agents in Japan go (auction access cos), it's really a mixed bag. I've met with several and half of them were full of sh*t - I would not be trusting them with 10's of thousands of dollars. Tweed Autogarage, although I have not used them personally, the owner, Jordan, is a pretty nice guy so would be happy going with him.

Is the car lowered? Might have chewed through the harness in the wheel well

You and me both. I actually wanted an E46 or E36 but finding them without rust is next to impossible. Bought the e90 sight unseen for the bargain price of £2,700 - roughly 5k AUD

I agree with GTSBoy on this, but I will say that 19x10 +25mm will be a stretch on an R34 sedan body. Out of your options, I'd wager the 19x9.5 +25mm as being the closest to perfect (flush), but I'm not considering the implications a 19" wheel will bring over an 18". When you get real close to making it perfect, your alignment settings will have an impact too; I rubbed very slightly on hard corners/rumble strips at -2.5 rear and not at all when set at -3.0.

Brackets for brake lines can be had from Nissan - I've replaced all of mine within the last couple of years. Try Amayama if your local Nissan won't help you.

265/35*** lol

I'm running 18x10 +20mm rear on an R34 2 door GTT and it's too wide. It works, just, with 265/23 tyres and rolled fenders. But it would be about perfect at +25mm offset. If I were buying the wheels again - bought originally for my 350z - I would opt for 9.5 rear then f*ck around with a 5mm spacer if necessary. Edit: I should add that the coupe has about +10mm body width at the rear fenders.

Good to know, I'll have to evaluate it when the time comes. The appeal of Nistune was how dirt cheap it is, but it'll be stupid not to speak with tuners in Europe before buying. Back over on the Europe side I've got sn N53 E90 325I which, to be honest, seems more appealing to sink money into going forward just on the basis that the chassis are so prevalent I don't need to care if I bin it. Cons: parts are f*cking expensive.

A reminder for everyone to keep an airtag (or two) in their car. I hope your car was insured.

It makes a lot more sense if you're in Europe (or US) too, given the abundance of BMW motos. M52 was always pretty well regarded, if I recall. It's been a while since I paid attention to the BMW scene, S65 (E9X) was the last one to make me moist. But what to do with RB; my bet is it stays in its current (stock) form for the next couple years, Nistune has been on the cards for well over a year now

Cheers, yeah, ended up with pepper spray and a breaker bar at the front door. Japan is beaut but makes me bipolar. Dare I say, kinda want an M3 now.

By this point I had added parts here and there to help with the cooling: a large radiator from Blitz and a higher-flow fan set up. I haven’t gotten around to fitting an oil cooler yet. Additionally, I have replaced some parts as preventative maintenance such as the crank sensor, ignition coils/harness and the fuel pump. Since late last year the car has been relatively good, I’ve fixed a plethora of oil leaks and now, since the car was to be heading back to Europe, I have replaced parts that will be a pain to get back in Europe: AC compressor, steering rack, windscreen and several of the worn plastic interior trim pieces. I attended 15-20 track days in 2023, I did five over the course of two weeks and I'm still sh*t, better, but still not as good as I would have liked to have gotten. I blame having a car that's now as valuable as a downpayment on a house, but here we are. I shipped the car back a few weeks ago - piece of piss. It's right now somewhere between Singapore and the Suez Canal, ready to be attacked by some houthis - might save me more trauma if it goes out this way. Japan was a f*ckin' blast but can I continue to live here permanently, no, I don't think so. I have dreams to return for holidays, build another car here and keep at it but that requires some big bucks, so we'll see.

It was 2022 that I really wanted to push my drifting ability. I’ve always been a grip driving kind of person but I figured that drifting was a necessary skill to have to really become faster, plus its fun. I bought a cheapo bumper, as the Altia ones were claiming £500-£1,000 on yahoo auction and kicked it off with a sort of drift-academy-type event held monthly at YZ circuit. I thought, being a noob event it would be safer. In some ways it was, as they lets us practice corners individually, but it was really busy in the open track sessions and filled with amateurs. I recall a guy in a GT86 who claimed to be part of the “fast group” at orientation, then go on to tailgate everyone during the open sessions only to stack it by mid-afternoon. After several track events I started to feel the Recaro SR3s as quite limiting, this and the OEM hand brake shoes were too weak. So I bought a BRIDE Zeta 4 which, despite triggering arthritis every time I enter/exit the car, is much better for fast driving. For the handbrake I installed Project MU D1 spec brake shoes which are fantastic.

2022 came along and I recalled Abe-chan at Trust Kikaku telling me the RR brake was binding; I had never noticed anything but figured the brake system could do with some attention. I tasked my mechanic with rebuilding the callipers whilst I installed some Dixcel Z type pads, Dixcel slotted rotors and Nismo braided lines. Braking performance was always okay, it was just that the old rotors had a lip and it was running stock pads. I toyed with the idea of getting 350Z Brembos but it didn’t seem necessary. It was around this time that I decided my Japanese car was not sounding Japanese enough. Along comes the exhaust. What I will do with this when it comes back to Europe I do not know, I never thought it was that acceptable to be over 100db. Perhaps I’ll weld another resonator in. Around March, I was working from home when a couple of fellas came to check out my car, see video below. Whether this was an attempted car theft or not, I don’t know. What I do know is, they shouldn’t have been skulking around on my driveway, particularly at a time when these cars are being stolen left right and centre. This prompted me to make some security upgrades: I bought a couple of wheel anchors, installed an alarm, bought pepper spray and now keep the breaker bar near the front door. Alarm installation is rare in Japan and on my hunt for a quote found that the price of installation for alarms was two to three times more than in the UK. I was looking at the best part of £1k for the most basic viper alarm. So, I decided to do it myself. Alarm price was around £200 and it took two weekends of my time.

Next to address was that cursed transmission, I couldn’t confidently bang gears around knowing I was a shift away from stretching my broken Japanese ability to begging for a tow truck. This was a whole chronicle on its own: I decided, for the English support, to use *undisclosed company* to purchase a new 30A transmission. I coupled it with a Nismo clutch and lightweight flywheel, life was good. I was thrilled, I restarted drifting with my new “bulletproof” transmission; after, of course, adhering to the internet’s wisdom on transmission break-in periods: 1,000kms and an oil change, then it’ll be clutch-kick galore. No. The transmission developed a loud whine after 3,000kms. We pulled the box out, drained the oil, it looked significantly metallic, however, who knew what the metallic content should look like on a 3,000km-old gearbox. Despite the noise, usage was fine. I complained to within an inch of my life to *undisclosed company*, asked my boss whether I could leverage the company’s legal team, he agreed. Just as I was about to give up, *undisclosed company* offered to refund my money for the transmission – win – so I bought another one.

The suspension saga continued for a while and consisted of me replacing all of the arms – whilst suspecting a shot bush somewhere - and then lastly the rack bushes, which fixed the problem. I wasn’t so bothered about this except I ended up wasting time with about three alignments over the course of six months. And only after all of this did it start to feel better than a stock 350Z with coilovers.

By May I had installed a 1.5 way Nismo GT LSD, this combined with the Nismo ARBs were some of the best additions I had made to the car. I also installed some more appropriate tyres, Accelera 651S in 255/35 and 265/35. The Acceleras are some sort of Nankang-NS2R-esque tyres people use out here. Honestly, I find them pretty good but the sidewall stiffness is lacking and I’ve had two sets turn up egg-shaped. Still, they’re roughly £160 a pair.

Then April came and it was about time I took the car on track, we headed to Mihama circuit which is around 45mins from home and is essentially a karting track that lets cars on in the afternoon. The car was really, really badly set up: I hadn’t preloaded the suspension correctly so these were bottoming out, the rear tyres were again grinding against the bumper tabs and the viscous LSD was, well, an open diff. The steering felt off.

For the next few months we went exploring, took the car to Kyoto, Nagano and around central Japan.

Of course I took the wheels and seats from the Z before its departure. These were quickly transplanted to the Skyline along with some new coilovers. I was grateful I opted to go with a more conservative 18x10R and 18x9.5F on the Z, as this was already a struggle to fit on the new car. A 9.5 in the rear would be a lot more suitable, however, it was around this time RAYS and the used parts market whacked around a 100% premium on the TE37s, so the 10J stayed. To begin with I was experimenting with tyre sizes, a 255/40 rear and 235/45 front which really wasn’t good at all; too narrow for the rim and the rear was too high a profile for the body, therefore kept catching on the bumper tabs.

We then went on to the Fuji area for a short thank-f*ck-she-got-into-Japan-during-covid celebration. The car was great, actually drove really well considering it was ancient and no doubt had completely original suspension. The oil was, and still to this day, remains a clear yellow colour for the first 4-5k kms after a change (without track use ofc).

On the last day of her quarantine, some friends invited us to a car meet in Hamamatsu.

We drove back to Nagoya, I locked her up in quarantine and four days later the car was delivered to me. Amazing. We were especially lucky this winter as it really wasn’t cold enough for them to grit the highways outside of the mountains.

After speaking with them and negotiating for them to take the Z off my hands for a price I would rather not go into. I got in the car and limped the Z six hours and two hundred and fifty miles to their shop in Chiba, a bit north of Tokyo and next to Tsukuba Circuit – I was ecstatic. It took about two months to get the car registered as they were having issues with the damn transmission. I was eager to collect my girlfriend from the airport on December 20th so they gave me a loaner ER34 which was incredibly kind of them.