GTSBoy

80% overlap will mean the amount of "bend" that can occur in the centre plate is approx 2% of f**k-all.

OK. Please go back and read your own OP. Then try to pretend that you're me not being able to work out exactly what you damaged and what is going wrong. Then come back and ask the question again. Are you asking what thread the stripped thread is?

Just fix it.

That was 130000 km overdue for a headgasket, ignition coil failure, and all the rest.

See here's the thing. For the last 20 years R31s have been exclusively owned by people who only frequent Centrelink, the cheesecake shop and the bottle-o. Most of them can't even spell teeth, let alone say the word, let alone have more than 30% of their originals. It hasn't led to R31s being very well looked after, for the most part.

The sticker is probably the extent of it.

I'm upset with the market because I would prefer it if my car was still worth $10k instead of probably $30k. Given that I am never going to sell it, the "value" now does me no benefit now, never will, and only actually causes me problems (insurance will cost more, replacing it should it get damaged will be impossible, mongs will want to steal it more than they did 5 years ago, etc etc).

Poncams haven't been the answer for about 20 years.

Well, there's ya problem.

Well, actually, removing hail damage is probably a bit different. Depending on how badly dented/bent the lower rail is, it might be straightenable by spot welding on rivets and pulling on them with a slide hammer, and other more direct means of applying force. But if it's quite bad, the answer would probably be to slice out the bottom steel work, re-make it out of sheet with the same features in it (folds/ribs/pressings/etc for strength, holes for drainage, screw holes for fitting the undertray and so on) and just welding it back in. Classic body building metal work. Same as they would do for badly dildo'd chassis rails.

We weren't. To be fair, while those things happen on RBs, they happen because of people being stupid in one way or another. When it happens on Subarus, it happens just driving down to the shops.

That's what I'm talking about fixing. A panel beater can make that look good.

Bullshit! All three happen all the time, continuously and simultaneously.

I wouldn't unstitch the whole front of the car just to repair that. The lower rail can probably be quite satisfactorily straightened in situ.

Oooh. Surely it's better to go 370? There's 5 times as many available and while they are admittedly double the money, we're talking about something that's only ~7 years old, not something that's >12 years old, for the most part. But, having said that....there are a couple of manual 350Zs available for <<$15k. That's disturbingly cheap and I feel like I should buy one for later on.

Yes. A dildo did that.

As in - it's not a crossmember. It's the whole front panel - just the bottom edge of it.

The bottom of the radiator support panel?

I'm of the opinion that NA Skylines are only good for LS2 conversions.

Yes, essentially. The original wiring from the ECU will currently go as far as the igniter, then the coil loom runs from there to the coils. When you go integrated coils, you basically have to patch in the ECU wires that would have triggered the old igniter to now trigger each coil's igniter (so straight through) and clean up the power supply and earth stuff. There are guides available, but the fine detail depends on which car you're doing it to. They're mostly the same, but don't go trusting wire colours - trust terminals. Splitfires are direct replacements for whatever the engine originally had. RB20 and earlier RB25s were all dumb coils with the external igniter pack. Later RB25s and Neo25s have built in igniters. They don't even physically swap from engine to engine, because the coil mounting brackets change. You can see what Splitfires go with what engine by looking up the model number (say SF-DIS-001) and it will tell you what it suits. There are several models across the RB20-RB26-RB25 group of engines. Splitfires are a good easy swap and used to be the only game in town. They were probably never really any better than the OEM coils - they were just available new when OEM ones were old, burnt and cracked. Someone has done you a favour by putting them in there, and if you do follow the recco to replace them to banish the igniter, at least you can try to sell them for a few bucks to offset the cost of the upgrade. It's not as if you likely need to be replacing your coils. But if you're going to pay for a new igniter.....I know what I would be doing.

20k seems horrendous for an NA Skyline. But maybe I'm out of touch with what they're "worth" these days. That pod filter takes you almost all the way up to the legal limit for intake tract modifications in Victoria too! Is the original bonnet available? Because that one on there is unlikely to be legal.

I was thinking in terms of making sure a copied cam would work with the original HKS controls. But otherwise, yes.

Just get the master that you have resleaved. Take it to a decent brake shop and hand it and a small sum of cash over and come back for it the next day. Street car? The Intima pads are pretty good. RS front, SS rear works for me.

Well you could try fitting a fuel temp sensor or faking it with an appropriate resistor value and hoping that that is the only cause of the trouble. If it were me and I wanted to spend the least, I would buy an RB20DET ECU with Nistune fitted and use that.....except that if I was at that stage I'd now just buy a Haltech or a Link.

I was just thinking about this and figured that the grub screws would have to have been possible to copy if you had access to an original HKS cam to see where they have to go. I was thinking of shrink fit steel rod/stake/plug. But grub screw + loctite is just as good.