GT-Ricer

If I ever damage my Lower Spoiler, or maybe even sooner, I am bying a CF one-piece for less than half that price to match my new rear wing and bonnet scoops. If we added up all the component replacement parts Nissan deems so precious, this car would be worth $10 Million in a knocked down form. Then you pay the dealer $200 per hour to put it all together and it will take them a year....

I stand corrected: here is a new Enkei wheel with two valves!

The "BEFORE" shot is a general GT-R photo from the internet, not my specific car. I was only concerned about the rear seats. My front seats still have red perforated inserts as all Premium cars do.

Thanks, the front seats will be fixed shortly too. Speak to Robert at Doyle's. I provided the leather which was double the price per sqm they would normally use. I also had to buy a whole hide and almost half is still left over. I am guessing, but if they did it all using their own leather, it would come in at around $1000 or so.

Leather seats now installed.

My rear seats are now re-upholstered in top grade German Wollsdorf leather as used in the First Class of Airbus A380, which I sourced locally. Robert at Doyle's Leather of Artarmon in Sydney did a great job re-upholstering the seats, even sourcing the special grey thread to closely match the arm rest and door trim stitching. Here are some before and after shots of factory vinyl and custom leather.

I've decided to re-trim the rear child seats in good quality leather to replace the horrid vinyl / pleather, which detracts from the rest of the interior. Just another cost cutting measure by Nissan not meant to be noticed by us, the crazy "speed freaks" who never look over their shoulder. ( Yes, I really do love my car so don't all jump in telling me the usual things, how fast and "affordable" it is etc) When I removed the rear seats it became painfully apparent to me how much mechanical noise comes from the transaxle, suspension and rear tyres road noise. Most of it is remarkably well muffled by those flimsy rear seats, but not all. Also, the heat which the transmission generates goes straight to the console and the rear seats- just touch them when the transmission oil reaches 90deg! You can boil a soft drink in the rear cup holder after one hour in the car. Solution: line the rear seat compartment with heat shield fabric and 3 layers of recycled cotton Removalist Blanket sandwitched and stuck with double sided tape from Bunnings. Total cost $50 + 4 hours. The job takes a bit of effort, but it's worth it. My car has been transformed to a much higher level of interior ambience, which added just 2kg to it's weight and $100K to the way it sounds and "feels" inside. If the clunking noises of the gear box, the thumping of the rear suspension over the pot holes and the roar of the rear tyres add to your overall enjoyment of the GT-R, this mod is not for you, because they are all gone now and I can enjoy the sound of the engine and the BOSE sound system uninterrupted. I love it!

It is pretty tricky and does not work 100% of the time.It took me quite a few tries to figure out what the other guys were trying to explain. 1. Press the brake hard with your left foot and hold. 2. Stab the accelerator as fast as you can: the ECU reads that speed of the gas pedal movement to the floor. You should get 2800-3000RPM in 70% of attempts. If you press the gas pedal just a bit slower, it may seem fast enough, but your revs will only climb to 2000-2200RPM and stall. 3. If you get the 2800-3000RPM at the first attempt, let go of the brake before the revs stall at the limit and hold on to the steering wheel! You should hopefully record 0-100 in under 4 sec. If the engine stalls at around 2000-2200RPM, you won't get any lower than 4.1-4.3 sec. The 0.2-03 sec difference is in the first 20m. Good luck.

Very nice! Challenger is designed and QA in the US, fabricated in South Korea, not China. It has two resonators on the Street Spec and no resonators on the Race Spec, which looks similar to the above, with shorter flex joints, wider Y-Collector, same power delivery as Street Spec but louder. I would pay $250 more to guarantee no cruising speed drone, as it would drive me mad and force to remove it and flog it on ebay for half the price. These pipes are polished so they look a bit better finished, not that it will matter much to most.

Challenge Street Spec Y pipe : good quality pipe, no drone, good gains. AU$1050 landed at your door. http://www.gtmotoring.com/product_info.php...products_id=162

Victory at last! I managed to launch twice cleanly without LC by stabbing the gas very quickly, revs shot up to 2850RPM and 2950RPM, let go of the brakes and got 3.9 sec both times! 0-20 m 2.254 and 100m 5.278 sec. I then managed to rev to 3000RPM, let go of the brakes, revs shot up to 3200RPM and got a neat 4.0 sec. Lastly, stalled at 2500RPM and it went back to 4.4 sec. So it seems that the launch "sweet spot" is somewhere between 2850 and 2950RPM. Auto trans with 3 "R" settings. Shell-V-Power and K & N Filter back in. If the revs don't go up to 2900-3000RPM immediately, there is no point waiting : the clutches just start slipping as the revs try to slowly creep up from 2000RPM. Disengage back to neutral and try again by stomping on the gas very quickly. Thanks for the advice mate!

Yes, but they were all JDM, not the stripped down ADR versions. Maybe the Japanese consumers are more demanding and not as gaga-eyed over the GT-R as Nissan presumed the Australian buyers would be after all these years in the wilderness since the last GT-R disappeared from our market?

I still have the same problem with take off. After my clutch adjustment I did 5 runs, all 4.11-4.14 sec, like clockwork, same hesitation followed by a surge. I got my clutch reset back to factory after a few days. just not worth it. It was too creepy at slow speed, like parking against the back wall of my garage (scary!) and did not allow the car to rev past 1200rpm against the brake. Then I came home and strted experimenting with my stalling technique. I can finally stomp on the gas really fast and get it to 3000rpm with my left foot hard on the brakes. So far I did it only in my driveway and I am yet to do another 0-100 run with this technique, which I learned from you last week. Thanks. Sub 3 sec, eh? Since you have already done 3.22 sec with the HKS piggy back ECU, why do you think the COBB AP can improve on what HKS did?

+1 What happens with the atmospheric pressure air that is still in a deflated tyre before they put in N2? Same goes for Bob Jane selling you N2 tyre inflation. Unless you suck it all out under vacuum and make your tyre shrivel like a prune, you will always have a tyre full of air before you pump in any more nitrogen. Nobody bleeds the tyres to flush out air and replace it all with nitrogen. You would need two valves for that. This means that topping up with air afterwards is not going to significantly make it any worse than it is in the first place in terms of air vs. nitrogen mixture. Oh yes, fresh air is almost 80% nitrogen and so are our "special Nissan tyres" after they had been inflated with N2 outside a vacuum chamber. In other words, it is all marketing BS.

This is obvious to everybody except Nissan Australia and Nissan Japan... it is a natural product, you know...!

Some people think that saving face means not admitting they've made a mistake. On the contrary, dealing quickly with this festering sore will give them a lot more credibility than pretending the problem does not exist. I am not going to just fade away, am I? As to natural products, there are many natural products out there but few of them are fit to be used in high-end sports cars interiors.The statement is patronising to say the least, as if I hadn't had leather seats, all of them of better quality, in every car I've owned in the past 25 years.

Using a "very sophisticated" GPS SPEED-O-METER App. on my iPhone, I noticed the same 5kph difference. GT-R over-reads the speed to compensate for not getting there fast enough...LOL

Your car is truly impressive and goes like...a stock JDM car, just kidding. Looking at CRD dyno graphs I doubt that your car is getting 840Nm at the wheels. The torque graph shows uncorrected 8300 N after and 7200 N before, which is +15.3% gain. If the GTR comes from the factory with 588Nm torque, you add 15.3% and get 678Nm at the crank less 17.1% loss = 562Nm at the wheels, not 840Nm. Power gain: graph shows 354.5kW after vs. 295kW before= +20% kW gain. Starting with stock 357kW, add 20% and you get 428kW at the crank vs. 354.5 at the wheels = (-17.1%) loss thus confirmed. But don't be disappointed by these numbers, you still have the fastest and loudest GT-R in Sydney and we are all jealous as hell!

That is truly fantastic! Congratulations. How exactly does your engine make use of all this extra HKS "plumbing" to achieve these numbers without a new map? Or did I miss something and there is an HKS tune in the package? What do you expect Cobb AP will do?

I haven't used any octane boosters in my cars since the 98 fuel became available a few years ago. Clearly all fuels are not equally good. Similarly, not all octane boosters are all they claim either. Which one do yo know to have the best "kick" in terms of octane numbers increase per bottle?

You are probably right. I have an E55 AMG with beautiful Nappa leather and gorgeous birds' eye maple interior and now want to repeat the experience. Silly me. I am very happy with 95% of the GT-R interior as exactly what I expected, if only they hadn't inserted that freaking off cut where I can see it! You are not wrong with the 997 Turbo either. I actually walked away from buying one at the last minute to get this monster! That 250K saved is very nice, thank you Nissan. I will be tracking this baby just as soon as I get my first service done next week and the Ozicozi clear film goes on the front. Those flying pebbles at Eastern Creek can really sand-blast the paint. We will bond for sure. Thanks, mate.

Wow! That's very impressive. Could you PM me all the details?

Thanks for the PM. Email sent. Ha, ha, what a coincidence. My son who drives EVO X told me that the Woolies Caltex 98 I've been using was causing problems in his EvoX and that many guys on his forum swear by BP98. I immediately refilled my car with BP98. Even though it probably takes a few hundred klicks for the ECU to re-adjust, today I tested my car again, after only 15km with the BP98 in the tank. The first run, with a passenger 65kg and a full tank, all "R", but transmission on Auto cancels out "R" transmission. Launched against the brake with 2400RPM stall. The first run 4.04 sec! Five more runs with different combinations, all 4.22-4.19sec range. Big improvement on 4.35-4.45 sec previously. The prevoius launch sequence of QUICKISH START-BOG-TAKE OFF changed to a GENTLE START-FLAT SPOT-TAKE OFF sequence, presumably BP98 octane is higher than Caltex98 and the ECU does not retard timing as aggressively. Still, this initial flat spot hesitation is costing me at least 0.5 sec. My mate, who bought his car at the same time but did not bring it today, did four runs in mine and said that his GT-R takes off without any initial delays and flat spots. It just rockets away from standstill. It will be interesting to re-test my car after next week's service when it has had a chance to fully digest the BP98 fuel. I keep my fingers crossed.

That would be great! Send me a PM with your email address and we'll get together. I am using the GTech Pro RR which in the past has been pretty consistently accurate with many cars. My car bogs down EVERY TIME. I tried every launch combination possible over 12 runs on two different occasions. There is no wheelspin at all. I have not switched the VDC off though, as we have been assured by Kazutoshi Mizuno that it is not necessary to achieve the 3.5 sec. My car takes off very smoothly for 1 sec, bogs down for 1sec and then goes ballistic. Time after time after time, like clockwork. What fuel are you using? I have been using Woolies Caltex98 from the start. I just filled up with BP98 and will give it a go. Maybe Caltex98 is a bit dodgy and my ECU pulls back timing? I am clutching at straws here as you can see. Today I will get my mate, who bought his GT-R the same week as mine, to try my car. His GT-R wheelspins from the start and accelerates in a totally linear fashion without any hesitation.

I returned the car to the dealership 12 hours after delivery and asked the dealer to replace the two front seats. They politely declined and showed me four other cars which were no better. Then it escalated to Head Office and after three weeks Nissan Zone After Sales Manager showed up and took some photos. Two weeks later they blew me off with this gem of a PR fiasco: Dear Mr. GT-Ricer, In reference to the concerns you have raised regarding the seat leather used in your Nissan GT-R. Being a natural material, the leather upholstery in your vehicle may contain imperfections in grain and finish which are an inherent characteristic of the product. Based upon an inspection of your vehicle by a Nissan Australia regional representative and review by our Engineering team, we can advise that there is no evidence of a defect in the upholstery. Should you have any further concerns or feedback regarding this issue, please do not hesitate to contact your Nissan High Performance Centre. Yours Sincerely, Jo Nightingale Customer Service Delivery Manager If Nissan Australia has the audacity to deny warranty on something so obviously deffective that one can see it, touch it, feel it, I dread to think what will happen with warranty claims on invisible issues deep inside this complex machine. We will never be able to prove anything! Brace yourselves guys, this is going to be a very "rewarding" car ownership from the point of view of Nissan head office support for their proud creation. We might as well tear up the ridiculous agreement they made us sign at the point of a gun and modify these cars within an inch of F1 performance and stuff their silly warranty!