Truffles

Could fit most of those items yourself pretty easily. I'd suggest researching it and doing most yourself. Most Skyline owners are pretty handy their cars. Comes with the territory. But incidently, it saves large sums of money which can be spent on parts rather than labour. 7,8 and 10 are the only ones that might be more difficult without the proper equipment and knowledge. Intercooler setup is pretty straight forward. Your boost controller comes with instructions. The cat is bolt in. Don't see why you'd need an aftermarket bov for a pretty well stock car and your basic 5000km service can be done by anyone.

People are just like that. Old mate probably thought "it's from Japan, EWW". He obviously was only concerned if it was a euro. Funny what a badge can do. People an't appreicate a good car for what it's worth. I almost think it is jealously/envy a lot of the time. I think it's evident when people initially hang shit on your car but then ask about 10 follow up questions about it. All while you're sitting there thinking "if you hate it, why do you car so much about it?". Skylines are generally one of those cars you love or hate (given the nature of this site, the majority of us love them).

All Skylines 32-34 are imports, with the exception of the 100 (now substantially less) R32 GTRs that were Australian delivered. End of story.

People often mock what they don't understand. Whether I bother to correct people depends on the situation. Sometimes people try to hang shit on my skyline and I come back with "what do you drive?" ect ect and it turns out to be a camry. Others I just don't bother, because they're so ignorant, there's no point you can possibly get across that will change their misguided opinion. That being said, people just harbour stereotypes about the whole thing. People often compliment the car when they see it. Before hand, they think it's the average run-down wog mobile.

So the dash cluster says 83,000km and you believed it? How cute. I wish you the best of luck, but you may have an expensive few years ahead of you.

I'm up in Brisbane, so probably no help. If you have a decent jap wreckers there, go see what they want for a cluster. If it's an alright price, ask if you can test it and if everything works out then buy it. I hate tacky mods like that.

Don't give the troll cannon fodder.

It does reflect the price difference, which was my point. However, what was also implied was the market being overflooded with said "clapped out" examples. Skewing the price. People see 20k examples and think "why would I pay that when I can pay 15k for one?" and either lowball the immaculate example, saying "I can get one for 5k cheaper." or they go and buy the clapped out car for 15k, realise it's a heap and resell it for 13-14k just to pass it on. Just perpetuates the cycle. EDIT: I was guilty of this in my R32 in a respect. I saw ranges in price from 5-11k and thought 11k for an immaculate example was a rip-off. So I bought a 6k R32, which was very clean for what it was but it needed work (bit of paint, replacement parts, servicing) and wasn't registered. By the time I'd finished with everything, the car owes me over 10k and it's still lacking some power mods that those 10-11k examples I looked at initially. Go figure. I don't think they fetch money beyond correlation with age and features. These cars were not cheap run abouts in their day. They were the pride of japan. I don't know what they retailed for in Japan, but they definitely weren't a cheap car. The offered features in the early to mid 90's that only Euro cars had at the time. A 2000 model R34 fetches about the same as a BMW 320 from about the same year. I'd be guessing their new retail price would be about similar. The Skyline might have been a bit less, but you have to add in that it had to be imported and complianced in Australia, which bumps the value.

I know you're not 100% serious in the statement, but as you know; All cars of a certain spec were created equal. 10-15 years on, this is far from the case. Thinking that a 20k+ immaculate R34 is overpriced because you can buy a clapped out one for 15k will only hurt your wallet and the market in the long run.

If you can get your hands on Cusco sway bars, they're a quality piece of kit.

This. Would be dealer ignorance/error. Unless they specialise in imports, some dealers may not be as knowledgeable as we think. It's clearly a GTS-T, so they're not trying to de-fraud anyone by passing a mock-up as a GTR.

It's always the way. More often then not, people try to sell these cars for unrealistic prices. Therefore, they're for sale for longer periods of time. Skylines/performance cars alike are not cheap to run. Generally run on premium, with quality oils and parts. So naturally when the GFC hit, a lot of people tried to offload and not a lot wanted to buy. You need to keep in mind that cars for sale on this forum in particular don't move very fast. Reason? The vast majority of cars for sale are skylines, and the vast majority of us already own skylines. Unless it's a rarer/cheaper car, you'll tend to be trying to sell it for a while. I wouldn't get a loan for a car, ever. Can't see the point in borrowing money for something that becomes less valueable everytime you turn the key. End up paying 25 grand back for a car your purchased for 17 grand and is only worth 10 grand by the time your loan is paid off.

Have a mate with an R32 cluster you can swap over? Does it still run an RB20 + box? I think it would be the cluster itself, as the rb20 still uses a mechanical speedo. Given that you have problems with the tacho and the speedo, I think whoever played with the cluster shanked it.

How far are you through your P2 license? Becuase I've got news for you and it's all bad. It's not just as simple as removing the turbo to make it "P-plat legal". The engine is designed for a turbo and has a much lower compression ratio than a N/A engine. If you remove the turbo, the car will run like shit and be completely underpowered. And guess what? The car still isn't tehnically legal, because it's registered as a turbocharged car through the transport department. People have tried this on more than one occasion, despite all common sense. The one conclusion they have sadly come to is that it's a waste of time and money. Pro-tip. Drive a P-plate legal car until you're on an unrestricted license and buy a turbocharged car or buy a turbocharged car as a project, whilst still driving your original car.

He doesn't own the car. Which is why we came to the conclusion that any price difference between the two would be negated by the cost of a conversion. Therefore, you might aswel just buy a factory manual and cut out the middle man.

There's a lot of common misconceptions about Skyline ownership. One is that they're very hard/expensive to maintain. I don't find this to be particularly true. They're getting to be an old car these days, with old parts. People think they breakdown more than any other car of that age, but how many 15+ year old cars get driven this hard? They're a high performance car and breaking things will be inevitable. The best thing you can do is find a nice, clean example and really look after it. Replace worn parts, service it thoroughly, don't over modify it for your use and generally treat it well. Look after you car it it will look after you

Thank god you appear to be joking

I think you'll stuggle for more than 8k to be honest. Given that every P-plater wants a manual, you're at a big disadvantage trying to get that much for an auto. Can get clean R34 autos for that much and manual R34's are going to as little as 13-14k these days and I know you said it's modded, but kids are stupid these days. They'll sooner spend a heap of money modding their stock car rather than save money from the beginning and buying a modified one.

Not sure if serious.. They did a decent job on the photochop though.

It is definitely feasable. But it's something that needs an immense thought process to nut out all the possible "unknowns", since it's not a common business plan. I think the most practical option would be for an existing workshop/mechanical shop owner. Running the workshop as normal during the day and hiring out equipment/workspace at night. From say 6-10pm on weeknights and 8am-6pm on weekends. The only problem is having each party clear the space when their day/night ends. As well as the massive hours/staffing requirement for the shop. There's plenty to think about; like how to handle bookings, customer car problems, storage. Would you source aftermarker parts for customers cars to increase profit? Could additional mechanics be sourced for customers to pay for help/supervision? I think the way it would work is that customers use the service to do all the 'shit kicking' jobs on their cars (oil changes, sparkplug changes, unbolting/bolting parts together) and then pay for a mechanic to do the technical parts. It could be a win win situation, with the customer paying less if they do labour at the shop themselves and the mechanic being able to take on more jobs as they're spending less time completeing tedius tasks. However, all of this probably only exists in a perfect world.

I really do like all these ideas with initiative, but unfortunately they're all thrown out in good faith. There's so many logistical issues that would make it A) Too hard to make a profit or B) Too expensive to get any clients. Not being a mechanic personally, few things I have done on my car have gone as smoothly as I wanted to. For example: The last time I changed the turbo on my R32, I unknowingly sheared the oil feed pipe. Lost 4 litres of brand new motul oil and had to order new braided lines. I just let the car sit in the garage in the mean time. Couldn't do that with this proposal. If I'd only booked 4-5 hours for a turbo change, I'd be in trouble. Unless you can offer a really good deal then people will either do it in their garage because it's cheaper or take it to a workshop because it's easier.

This. Cost me about $120 and fitted in less than an hour.

I think most manfucturers take what top gear says like a grain of salt. The show is good, but it's purely a entertainment spectacle rather than a factual review. If you bought you car on the advice of Top Gear, I'd feel sorry for you. That being said, I can understand an electric car company trying to get its foot in the market will take it more personally than BMW or Mercedes, whom have been building good cars and selling a lot for a long time.

You didn't even own the car yet? *sigh*

Use the search function next time. If you can't afford a factory manual, chances are you can't afford to buy an auto and convert it to manual. The cost is easily $2000 minimum for parts (chances are closer to $3000) without labour. Then if you want to do it properly, you'd need to change the center console, cluster and other associated items. Here's a thread that provides some good information - http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/topic/139916-diy-r34-manual-conversion-using-r33-parts/ But as I said earlier, chances are that if you can't afford a factory manual, you can't afford to convert an auto to manual. The conversion is mainly for people whom own an auto already. Chances are you won't save a cent by doing this and you'd be better off saving for money for a while longer.