GTSBoy

I shall assume that was primed, not running. Now it is time to suspect the wideband sensor.

Put a pressure gauge on the fuel rail.

Some of them keep working fine. 9 out of 10 of them end up causing an absolute misery bleeding the system and get thrown on the workshop floor in a tantrum and never thought about again because they were never really needed and just added crap to the car that we could have done without. Same-same with HICAS, A-LSD, and various other stupidities that over eager 10x engineers thought we had to have.

Poor bleeding. That stupid damping loop in the plumbing that should be completely replaced with a braided hose. Just the first 2 that come to mind.

Clutch is same same. Tailshaft is not. Diff will drop in. Half-shafts will not mate up (5x1 on turbo, 3x2 on NA). There is also the strong possibility that your auto NA gets its speed signal from the sensor on the diff, not the gearbag, and that will leave you without a speedo. You can do all this, you just have to do a lot more than you thought.

Dude - we all run massive clutches on the original non-GTR master on everything other than a GTR.... The boost was never required.

Paint is only structural when applied to the outside of Chinese and Indian cars. Otherwise it should never be present between mechanical joints that were intended to be metal to metal. Pain slips, slides, cracks, compresses, and add thickness that wasn't intended to be there. It comes firmly under the category of "just no".

And boosters can be rebuilt by the same sort of brake shops that will rebuild a brake booster.

Yes, but no. You need to keep the mating surfaces bare (ie the flat faces where the caliper and upright pads touch the dogbone) and also the internal threads will remain bare (unless there are no internal threads - do they use nuts on all the bolts?). So you can slow down obvious external corrosion, but not all of it. Anodising would be required to provide decent protection to the alloy, but I'm not actually sure if you should anodise something that is all about the strength. Anodising does reduce strength significantly. Like, up to 50% on some alloys for high thickness coating.

'Sgot nothing to do with them being Japanese. The climate in the north of Japan has similarities to the UK - the cars are made in the knowledge that they have snow and salt, and they rot there. Cars made in the US rot like buggery in the US. British cars have always rotted regardless of the weather. They will rot indoors in a climate controlled bubble! The brackets are not unsafe yet, but they will get that way. They may well corrode where the bolt threads are in contact and the bolts could just jump out without warning.

Dissimilar metal corrosion. Aluminium is less noble than steel/iron, and will corrode preferentially when in contact with it and a conductive solution (ie, wet road salt). Tends to suggest that those brackets should be made in steel for a shitty climate like the UK.

I've not looked at a GTR without the booster there. Is the hole and mount on the firewall not just the same as GTSt? I would have expected it to be. Nissan don't change panel stampings if they don't have to, and you'd think they'd just order/design the booster to mount to the same place.

They have all sorts of "failure" modes. When they are brand new, the can either be very very tight, or reasonably mobile. If they are reasonably mobile, you'll probably have a good start. If they are very tight, then they can catch/grab at every little motion, and they mark the ball or the outer race, tearing off whatever teflon lining is in the outer race, then they can rapidly degenerate from there. If they get wet, they can just rust. They are just steel and will turn red pretty quickly. Water can get in behind them and sit and cause them to become crunchy and then proceed to tear themselves up, as above. Same with grit and dirt. Manufacturers and OEMs of the arms that use them will tell you that because they are teflon lined (well, the good ones, anyway), you shouldn't grease them. If you do grease them, then the grease will catch any passing grit and dirt and hold it in place where it can cause damage. Race teams that have them will lubricate them thoroughly. They will also inspect them every 5 minutes and replace them every 10 minutes, if need be. Some manufacturers of arms will provide dust boots. These can help, but they are seldom perfect, and sometime just make the situation worse, being a place where crap can collect. I have made nappies for some of mine with PVC sheet and race tape, to try to minimise the access of crap. When they wear, you can get a tiny tiny amount of movement between the ball and the outer race. This will make clicking noises. It will also make the arm have "slop" in that the tiny amount of movement available at the inner end of an arm can cause a lot of movement out at the outer end. 0.05mm at 5mm from the pivot becomes 4mm 400mm away from the pivot. If they are too tight and binding, they impede the proper motion of the suspension arm and put loads into it and the rest of the suspension that are not supposed to be there, and can cause failure. Think broken welds, broken threaded sections on the adjustable parts, mounts ripped off the chassis, etc. All of these are possible, which is the main reason why they are essentially illegal on the road in Australia.

Well, they really shouldn't rot like that. Have you been driving over spilled caustic soda or something?

What drama? The only drama you're going to have is the near constant work to maintain all those sphericals. I only have sphericals in my front caster rods and front upper CAs (because both of these are near compulsory in an R32). I have had the front arms out of my car 34 times already this month, and if the new replacements arrive today, I will have them out and apart again tomorrow. Chasing clicking and clunking that comes from sphericals being a.....poor choice for a road car. Moisture and dirt are not their friends. I have been contemplating a change to my rear subframe that would require me to use sphericals in my lower CAs. And.....I don't want to have them that close to the road.

Um...self respect?

Um...that thing looks terrible. I'd be looking for replacements tout de suite. WTF is it made of? Die cast cardboard?

Even GKTech's short nuts are only intended for 15mm spacers, and the OP's look like they might be only 10mm. So he'd have to rely on pockets in the wheel hub face to accept what sticks out past the spacer's face.

Yes, an R34 workshop manual is downloadable. The R32 GTR one which is findable everywhere would also do the job, seeing as almost all those bolts are same-same enough.

Obviously you need shorter studs (don't just cut the original studs off!) and really short nuts that will fit in the spacer. Thus exposing the problems with thinner bolt on spacers.

Nah. There's not shit tonnes of pressure in there. Just drill with a 1.5mm drill or something equally tiny. When the drill goes all the way through thee gas will start to come out, but with such tiny path through the flutes of the drill bit, it won't be at all dangerous. You can be as paranoid as you like from then on. I'd just pull the drill out while keeping my face out of the line of fire. But then, I spend half my time looking into pressurised furnaces. So my risk acceptance is somewhat higher than most!

Drill hole to release pressure. Draw circle around hole with pink paint pen. Put in scrap metal bin/take to scrappy's. Walk away.

Let's just fix the problem by f**king the rest of the gearbox.

Unlikely, as per Greg's post. This is not helical diff behaviour unless one wheel is up off the ground. Shimming what? You don't "shim" a mechanical LSD. Probably not in the sense that you have heard of people "shimming" a diff. And the process that Nissan f**kwits call "shimming" a diff involves super-preloading a VLSD cartridge against the side of the diff to create a friction/wear point (in a place that it wasn't supposed to have one) to make the sloppy, useless, viscous diff into a hybrid viscous/mech abortion. In case it isn't clear, I consider the process to be stupid. Nike.

No. Well, some people "seem to use redline shockproof in the diff". Most do not. I would only contemplate it if you have badly worn CW&P gears. And no. No-one in their right mind has ever put ATF into a diff. Any normal diff/gear oil of the right viscosity will do. Whatever takes your fancy. Castrol, Nulon, Penrite, Redline MT range. Whatever. It's just gears. 75W-90 or 80W-90 is typical. I think that GL-5 is hard to avoid these days, although I think that a GL-4 is probably preferred, given the vintage of the equipment. At least Redline offer a number of GL-4 oils. If you have a clutch type LSD instead of the VLSD, then of course you need a proper LSD oil. Anything from any of the same names above. If you have a helical LSD, then it does not require LSD oil, and the recco is the same as for the VLSD. You don't want the LSD friction modifiers in the oil for a non-clutch type LSD if you can avoid it.