Beer Baron

yeah they are chinese core. check out their website. justjap.com if you really don't want a chinese made core, then I would consider buying a 32/33 GTR core over an evo core. the GTR core is much better and being only 60mm thick you should be able to fit it fairly neatly. if you do go evo core or GTR core you are still going to need custom piping and it's expensive. there are lots of choices in kits out there, and if really on a budget buy a second hand kit.

bummer the car sounds like it may not be repairable. even though it may not be roadworthy is there chance it could become a full time track car with proper repairs of course? otherwise I guess the best option is to cut your losses and either sell it as is (someone who is a panel beater may be able to take it on as they don't have to pay for labour and may have access to chassis aligner etc for free), or part it out. sorry to hear it's not saveable.

I have a question, where were you driving when you got defected? I must be out of the loop but I've owned more than 10 skylines in the last 10 years and never been defected once. the closest I came was getting pulled over by highway patrol in a silvia I had just bought. it was heavily modifed, it started life as a CA non turbo auto, but was no SR20, manual, turbo, with trust turbo, stainless mani, nismo 2way LSD, twin plate clutch, 5 stud conversion, full uras kit, coil-overs etc etc. lots of mods. he said mate either get it engineered or take it off the road and make it a race car. he said "my advice is do the second option as it'll never pass rego". he let me off though with just that advice as I had only recently bought it.

no it wont, but if you did weld the doors shut it means you could basically remove everything (including latch etc) except the outer skin itself, could even remove the hinges with some thought. but yeah it loses a little bit of rear access.

here you go. you can see what mark did on the 34 to mount the kagotani bar I got him. basically the bar at the front is so strong you can tow the car with it. it holds the bar VERY firmly. there are 2 bolts on the front that secure the bar and there are a couple more to tie the bar into the front guards, and then underneath the splitter has a frame it bolts to. the splitter and bar are 1 piece and this makes it nice and solid when mounted up.

yeah mate that's pretty much it. I think ERD's problem with it is this. usually when balancers come loose and damage the keyway sometimes they damage the rest of the crank snout too and the balancer. in those cases just repairing the keyway wont help with the balancer fitting properly on the snout. fixing the whole surface properly and replacing the balancer is the way to go. as far as the balancers being weight indexed to a certain spot I'm not sure, but I think they are not. each component from the factory is balanced separately. they are not actually a balancer anyway, they are a harmonic dampener and crank pulley. there is a slight difference between the two. still I have no problem using a repaired crank as long as it's repaired properly and the balancer and bolt etc is replaced. would I used a repaired crank as the basis for a mega $$ engine? probably not. but I had no problem revving my old one to 8,300rpm after it was repaired.

I've never seen an FD for 300 AUD in japan or anywhere else. even as scrap they are worth more. are you sure it was 300 AUD? not 300,000JPY? and what do you mean by new-ish? even the 'newest' FD is 10 years old and the early ones are another 9 years older than that...

well yeah but he is just obviously setting up his excuse book for later in the season when it all falls apart. he could at least be a bit positive saying he's "happy with the progress and car looks to be competitive and besides we've got lots more development to come over the year". something like that would be a bit more suitable. he's just a massive whinger. always has been.

sounds like a good event. anyone done any of the stages they run? possibly not since they are claiming 'brand new event'. still I imagine there are some good pieces of road up there.

i haven't personally had any major f**kups as i'm pretty careful when towing cars but we used to lend our trailer a bit and literally half the time it would come back with a fked jockey wheel. we should have just bought a 10 pack of the bastards to save money. saw our mate rob with his porsche GT3 cup car on the back leave the jockey wheel down and pull out in a hurry. made a massive bang when he got down the driveway and it smashed into the road at the bottom. nearly sent the whole thing over. i have had one pretty awful towing experience. back in 2002 or so I went down to wakefield for a trackday. on the track my car split it's turbo oil feed line. in hindsight it wasn't too bad, but being a small hole in a high pressure line it looked like a shitload of oil was coming out and not being able to easily see exactly where it was coming from and not wanting to start a massive engine bay fire I decided to tow the car home to sydney from goulburn. so I drove into goulburn and headed for some hire place. they decked me out with this old half rooted trailer that was built like a tank. I would say it was well over 1000kg possibly even 1200. they then gave me a clapped out little ute, 5spd manual, from memory it was 2.4L petrol engine and I'd say had about 60kw max and nearly enough torque to pull the skin of custard. the other problem was I'd say it weighed less than 1,000kg. maybe 1200 tops. i then had to put my 1200kg car onto the trailer giving me well over 2,000kg to tow behind a piss weak, light weight ute. i pulled out onto the freeway and started trying to get the thing going. you would have to wring it's neck in every gear as otherwise when you shifted up the thing would just not keep accelerating. you could get it into 4th and then rev the nuts out of it in 4th but it would just not go anywhere in 5th. with slight downhill you could kind of cruise in 5th at 90-100km but on a flat road or god forbid a hill it struggled. that was ok though and no where near as bad as the problems I had once the wind got up. with such a big load on the back and such a light pussy trailer I basically just held on and pointed in the general direction I wished to go. which lane I was in at any given moment was up to the trailer and the gods. having truckies blow past at 120km/h 2 inches off my mirror didn't help much either. I was shocked to make it back alive and undamaged. the worst part was I had to drive that heap of shit back to goulburn the next day and then catch a train home.... fun times.

not bad at all! 8.3 is awesome for a first time out. hell it's awesome for the 100th time out... i'm sure there will be plenty more to come. it probably will be a bit of a challenge off a pro tree but the easy way around that is get into the burnout as soon as poss, don't run it too deep so you can back it up quick and get it into stage before the other bloke. once he starts getting into stage then get it up on the stall and that should be plenty of time to have it building boost and have it up on the launch limiter ready to go. but i'm sure he knows all that anyway. there's plenty of little games you can play to turn the advantage your way. as far as the insults and threats on both sides. try and keep them to yourself. it just makes both of you look stupid and adds nothing to the forum and in the end all that happens is you get banned.

yeah I know the owners of OP made the right decision for them but honestly sydney needs more housing in the sticks like we need a hole in the head. the problem is everyone wants to live within 20kms of the city. once you get out near narellan there is just no infrastructure to support huge developments like that. I mean it's a rural area, not the suburbs of the north shore. i wonder how well the places out there will sell. I know there is a lot of people who can no longer afford to be in the sydney property market so maybe it will be attractive to some, but quality of life when you have to commute a total of 3 hours a day is questionable. I just wish our government could have seen what a great place it was and what wide appeal it had. a huge cross-section of the community used the place and even those that didn't use it benefited. when you had a place like 'drifland' running open, affordable drift events every week people are far less inclined to try and practice their 3rd gear entries down at the local suburban street. having less people 'hooning' around is surely a good thing too. now these guys have no-where in sydney to practice. so if they want to do it they have to break the law. Oran Park benefited a lot of people in a lot of ways. and aside from all that it was just a damn fun place to drive. It should have been bought by the government a long time ago and run properly for the people of NSW. This state is so harsh on people speeding, or owning modified cars, or drifting etc but where the hell are they supposed to go? if we had a few tracks and some options I'm sure plenty more people would take their silvias etc off the road for good and use them only at the track. my guess is the government doesn't really want that as motor enthusiasts are an easy targert and a registered car generates rego income, defect fine income, speeding fine income etc. an unregistered track car generates $0 for the government. Overall it's a pretty sad time to be a motor sport enthusiast in NSW. When I went to europe back in september to spend some days driving nurburgrin and Spa etc it makes me realise even more how bad things are here.

hey mate! glad to hear you got a diff sorted. one of our staff fell ill and I got called away to tamworth for a week and a bit. just got back yesterday. hehe, probably cheaper than mine too!! project looks awesome. it will be a piece of gear once finished with all the body bits and the new engine etc.

looks like a good project. lots of nice bits going it, so hopefully some good results coming out. hey if it goes really well I might have to bring in my 32 for a tune. it's running motec too with a jun 2.7 and 2530s. very conservative at the moment and I'm keen to put in some boost and revs and some E85 for some decent power. and yes, please take the time to upload some pics and info here (preferably some slightly bigger pics too).

I say go all the way and weld the rear doors shut! refresh my memory, do 34 sedans have doors with window frames? from memory they do. it should make fitting the lexan a fair bit easier. it's a bit of a bitch on GTRs as with nothing to support the top of the windows they flex a lot.

yeah fatz knows what he's talking about. loosing weight is for poofs. come on bris. are you old school irish? or new school faggoty irish? tell me your fken old school irish mate.... tommy gavin would be rolling over in his alcohol soaked grave.

not worth importing a 33 GTSt these days. japan side FOB costs $1,200 broker fee $1,000 Freight cost $1,800 AQIS, customs, clearing costs $600 AQIS cleaning $200 towing from port kembla to workshop (if in NSW) $200+ compliance $2,000-$2,500 rego and CTP and blue slip $1,000 service, fluids, incidentals $500 total approx $8,750 That leaves you with $1250 to spend on the car. that is just on 100,000JPY. not much money to spend on the car is it? My estimates are a little conservative in some areas (ocean freight is a bit cheaper now since billed in USD) but that's the basic idea. probably need things like a new battery as they die after a few months with no use. and this is assuming the car is perfect and you don't have to spend any money on fixing anything. that's a big assumption for a 15 year old car... seriously, there are so many R33 GTST in aus already. and the market for them is pretty depressed. I would buy one here.

yeah they have multiple layouts but look at them. they are (permanently) changing the direction of the main straight so what is now turn 1 will be instead the last turn coming onto the straight. and what is currently T12 will now be T1 which is pretty much a double apex hairpin... yeah brighty, I am still not over the loss of oran park. it was my favourite nsw track too. for all the shit facilities and all it's faults some of my fondest track memories were there. and like you said a lap of the GP circuit was like a roller coaster rids. when you were on the pace there for a good lap you fking knew about it!! a good lap there meant you were a bees dick off throwing it on the grass 3 or 4 times in the lap. yes the bits in the nth circuit were bit 'dicky' with the stop and start 2nd and 3rd gear stuff but once you come up over the bridge balancing it on the throttle, then guide it in to the right-left S before getting back on it to get up the hill for the big left hander, then short shift in that short straight before you hold on over the flip-flop, run it down the hill as late as you can, on the brakes and turn in for the final corner and then slide it out to the wall on exit (fold your mirror in on the wall if you're good, or tap the quarter panel if you're not!), grab another gear as you get it straight and then blast it down the straight for another lap whilst wondering just how deep you can go through T1 this time and still pull it up for T2... not to worry though, plenty of run off at T2..... sigh. I miss the place a lot. it was hard on cars and a long way to go for city slickers and in the afternoon breeze it smelt like pig shit but I would honestly swap it for eastern creek any day. eastern creek is a motorbike track and as such doesn't really have much soul in a car. yeah T1 gets your butt muscle clenched up in your stomach somewhere and there are some fun spots too but overall it doesn't have the same satisfaction that you get at oran GP circuit. there are only so many laps you can do there and still really enjoy it. I feel badly let down by our government to be honest. Look at all the money they poured into WSID and as far as I can tell all it did was make more money for victor bray and his family and friends who he gave jobs and contracts to (not to mention his own fat salary). Granted you could still argue WSID as a success but all it does is allow drag racing and burnouts which appeals to a limited group of people. Oran Park on the other hand was a true multi-purpose facility with a very wide appeal. It was also an excellent location being far away from any residential or commercial properties so it's (negative) impact on the community was practically zero. I also have to question if what we really need is masses of low cost McMansions in Narellan when there is basically no infrastructure there to support it. There are no jobs out there, there are few schools out there, there is no train line there which means anyone living there will need to commute to work (in a car) and a long 1hr plus commute at that. This just adds more cars and more pollution. When Oran Park was around it was the best motorsport facility in NSW. It had the GP circuit which offered racing to classes from basic track days, driving training up to V8SC races. Alternatively you could operate the sth circuit for racing or driver training and run the nth circuit at the same time for go karts or drifting. They also had a rally track used by rally schools, they had a off road motorbike track which was also heavily used and a 4WD course too (also heavily used). It also had a skidpan which was used for drift practice and driver education courses. Peter Finlay also ran his formula ford school there (which I attended and loved). So many different groups of people used and loved the place and yet even combined our needs where not even considered. You look at all the people who were deprived of a place to enjoy their motorsport. Rally drivers, off road 4WD drivers, Kart racers, drifters, club level circuit drivers, state level circuit racing (in dozens of classes and types) and even national level competition. Not to mention all the businesses like Finlay and rallyschool etc that operated out of the place. What does eastern creek offer? 1 circuit with 1 layout. a skidpan. the peanut track. ummm. that's it. and now they want to destroy the character of that circuit too. so instead of one good circuit we'll have half a dozen worse ones. great plan. I still think that $9Mil would have been better spent saving oran park and maybe even some change left to resurface the place. eastern creek is fine as is. it was oran park that needed some bloody money. with money spent oran park would have been a premier multi-purpose motorsport facility for years to come.

lol, don't get your panties in a bunch ash. I never named any particular workshops. But I've seen it happen all to often where workshops don't know how to deal with GTR or RB specific problems etc and the customer ends up paying for it. on the other side there are plenty of great workshops in aus too of course. I know and deal with many of them. I was simply answering a question put to me by dan. he asked me if I thought it was good value and I simply explained that while they have reasonably high rates (still not really higher than any top aus workshop) they get things done fast and done right. and I said if I needed another engine buit I would consider using them again. in all probability I would get a local shop to build it but I would have a think about it first.

sounds good matt. sounds like you have it all under control.

yeah it was pretty good. their labour is not exactly cheap on a per hour basis but what I found is they can accomplish in 1 hour what an aus workshop will bill 2 hours for. unlike many workshops here they are not 'learning on the job' as they've been building big RB engines for literally 20 years and build dozens of them each year. if i was going to get a 2.8 build or something I would seriously consider having Tets build it for me again, they just do such nice work and prices are quite reasonable. nothing good is cheap though.

yep, same basic way as herman repairs his (he does have another little trick too). most will also need a new balancer as mentioned above as if they have come loose they tend to wear. the main thing is getting the crank snout repaired properly so the new balancer is a good fit. then with new keyway, new balancer bolt, new washer and new backing plate it should all go together nicely and live just like a bought one. herman is at http://www.envyimports.com.au/contact_us.html 02 9907 4144

yeah, I think you need to take a look at the head again and see where the lobes will foul. there is not much material that needs to be relieved (well obviously varies a bit on just how big you want to go with cams). and as above, be careful it's pretty tight in there and the last thing you want is to f**k it up and have a throw away head.

god what a surprise. hamilton is already whinging about his car performance and he hasn't even started a race yet. I bet that feels great for the guys who have worked their arses off over the off season to deliver him a new car. he really is a crybaby. webber was more upbeat than that when he was in a farken minardi!

well it still smells better than oran park does being next to pig farms. but no way known to remove the smell of eastern creek. it is a dump after all. ever wonder what 'the hill' is made out of????? i wish they could have used the $9M to save oran park instead. I'd much rather have 2 circuits than one super duper circuit. and to be honest I'm not sure how great the new reverse layout is going to be. it removes a lot of character from the circuit. no more fast turn 1. instead it's long straight then hairpin. lame.