Duncan

She loves it. (apparently)

well the good news is my upper arm bushes have been lasting twice as long (you know 3-4 weekends instead of 1-2) since I move the LCA mouting points outwards 20mm. Its definitely a 30 year old geometry issue.

well....obviously we were interested to know. even on the hottest days racing the battery temp never moved off average discharging it, we only ever saw the temp move when we fast charged the car. Pic below was from Bathurst on a 30+ degree day. So on data in front of us, no way to say it caused any trouble. Certainly the car performs exactly as it always has which is nice. Just took this battery report from our car, interesting to compare to the 2 posted earlier. Our car is a year older older and has more klms and the battery is 4 and 10% worse respectively....so my guess is racing it has made stuff all difference.

hmmmm....I saw a pair of gtech upper arms snapped at the welds just last week. the car looked hard to drive after that. I suspect there is no good option for 32 upper arms, maybe the nismo brackets are the best idea. I did run nolathene bushes back in the day, pretty sure they went broke and got bought our like Andy said. They worked fine but degraded quickly over time, they only lasted 1-2 seasons before needing re-doing which was a PITA to do again.

Sorry mate didn't realise you were in NZ. All the aussie ones are 2011 models but you guys get proper options, and far cheaper than here. Good on the dealer to post up the Leaf Spy data, that really helps buyers and saves you the time stuffing around to do it. I might have misunderstood the second one but it is reporting 5,000 quick charges and only 376 regular charges which is very strange, maybe it is an ex fleet or taxi of some sort? Nissan recommend avoiding quick charging as it degrades the battery; it has lower kays, same age, but worse battery.... The first car is even stranger as it reports 0 miles, 0 quick charge and 6 regular charges; my guess it is has a new onboard charger which is where that data is stored. These can either fail with time (in particular a diode dies killing the whole thing), or maybe someone has been stuffing with it and damaged something... Yes, the state of health (SOH) is the figure that matters, and yes the first one is reporting 82 vs 75. Basically that is % of new battery capacity left. Ours is around 70 after 5 years but obviously they keep declining. One thing I forgot to mention is the cabin heater uses an electric element to warm coolant, and these do fail. Make sure you crank the heat on test drive to confirm that works. About $1000 to repair if not. Also, find out what they come with for charging and how fast it will charge. In Oz they came with a 10A cable which takes about 8 hours for a full battery, and it needed a 15A Oz power point (or mods to the cable). Proper Level2 chargers cost 1-3k and will do it in 4 hours. Either way is OK for overnight charging but you just need to plan ahead for the slower one.....

definitely not universal. actually it's been one of those annoying things where everyone went with their own standards. Tesla are tesla only, and there was one more common in europe and another more common in japan. hacked adapters are available for most things and people who do long / tricky trips just tend to carry a few of them. Oz Leafs come with 2 ports, standard and quick charge but there are other types out there. I honestly haven't kept track of them all. We do charge out and about at times, especially overnight when a hillclimb goes over 2 days. 99% of the rest of the time we charge at home and plan/monitor so that we don't need to charge while out. If we stuff up for some reason there is a slow charger in the boot that can work with a standard power point But realistically you get a lot of control over the range because it is directly related to speed. ie, if you think you are 20% short on range just drive 20% slower, it makes a big difference. You just kind of get used to keeping an eye on range when you start a trip. Maybe one day there will be chargers everywhere...but even the quickest ones are at least 30min to charge and who wants to stop that long multiple times on a long trip.

And no, it doesn't dose

The main thing over 5+ years of owning it is the battery has degraded. They have a battery meter with 12 segments, and owners who lost something like 4 of them in under 5 years go replacements batteries from Nissan; I know of 2 in Australia of the 200 cars (so 1%). Ours is down to 4 cars now which is about 70% of the original capacity. If it is linear that suggest it will have 35% capacity after 10 years. Everything else is perfect, mechanically etc. Motor still gives the same power when it was new which is not something you'd get out of a petrol motor that hadn't been serviced for 5 years.... I think it's wierd but Nissan are not selling retail batteries; they refuse to quote for them. Perhaps the actual price is so high it is just embarrassing to say. So basically we get by on 70% of original range (so say 100klm on a charge instead of 160). Since we've moved out of Sydney the current battery literally gets us to town and back at 110, a round trip of about 70klm which is fine, we just plug it back in until next time we are driving to the little smoke. Resale has been very strong on these, probably because they are the only really affordable electric vehicles. Anything new is 40k plus and Tesla second hand is still over 100. They are hard to find under 20k and are all 5 years old. If you are looking at one the main thing is to understand the battery health as everything else is unlikely to be a problem. You can use one of those bluetooth/OBD (ELM) adapters and leaf Spy app to get a reading on each individual battery and overall health. If you understand the range and that it will continue to degrade over time, they are a very cheap and trouble free way to get around town. Even in a few years it may actually be worth to pay $5k+ to replace the battery because you basically get back to brand new performance and range in a cheap starting point.

Man, I really did let this thread go for a while without updates! So first mods: ..... Nope, changed absolutely nothing since the nismo wheels in 2015. Second: Use Well Kel was driving it every day to work in Sydney and it was super reliable, never needed anything at service. Still ran at about $2 per day average to charge it for a 50klm round trip. Perfect commuter car. Then the NSW Hillclimb champs created an electric car class, so we decided the only fair thing to do was enter it and take the car racing all over the state. Kel and I both raced it and were the only electric entrants at most rounds other than a homemade electric "special" that did a couple of them. Since the championship rewards attending rounds, I won that and Kel came second. Whole bunch of vids on my youtube if you like quiet motorsport, eg this run from Bathurst As far as I was concerned, with a 1600kg, 80kw race car I was happy with any round where we didn't come last. At Kempsey we were top 20 in the wet. Last year we did the Hillclimb series again, but this time with a set of soft semi slicks (yokos) to go a tiny bit faster. We did end up with quicker times at every track except Huntley which was flat throttle all the way, even on the road tyres. Again I won the state champs and Kel dished it up to me at one of the rounds too. And we were 11th of about 120 entrants at Grafton in the wet, the car was a f**king ball. Pretty sad I didn't have the camera on because it was sliding around like crazy and you would have heard my laughter for sure the helmet. This year we are not going to be able to make every round although we are entered for r4 at Kempsey next weekend. Also, there is a Tesla Model S racing which is naturally destroying our records from the last 2 years. But we will still go and have fun. We also did a couple more motorkhanas including the nulon nats where we ran top 10 as well. So it's no good for top speed but it is competitive in tight stuff.

And, the tail light fuse may also provide the dash power, so it is possible something was shorted and damaged in the new dash when you installed it (or it had a pre-existing problem you didn't know about)

Interesting issue, I'd have thought the style above is the best chance of fitting as it has a very narrow wall for a 12mm threaded stud. 17mm socket is the smallest I've ever seen for M12 studs What didn't fit with the rays nut? Was it that the nut could not run onto the stud, or that the provided tool did not fit inside the wheel? If the latter you might have luck which a specifically designed thin wall deep socket. Personally I wouldn't use aluminium but that's for race nuts not road ones where it may not be such an issue.

wrecker motor. anything else is a slippery slope that ends with a million $ time attack car that gets driven once a year and comes second.

well....my point of view is spend as little as possible on the car, and as much as possible on entering interesting events in it. I promise there will always be someone at every event who has spent more money than you have to go faster, so just go and enjoy motorsport with what you have

Well I haven't yet seen how the car turned out, because Kel and I borrowed a dirty evo and went and did Targa Tas last week. We took "Lucky" the evo which has all sorts of problems each time she competes but never fails to finish. In our case it blew a cooler pipe about 1klm into a 25klm stage turning it into a mirage instead of an evo for the next 10 minutes, but otherwise it did well. We ended up 8th in Early Modern and would have been 5th without the cooler pipe issue which is OK for a pretty rookie driver (although the nav was awesome all through). The main thing I remembered from doing Targa High Country a few years back was that tyre wear can be a killer, so I tried to minimise it Oh, and well done to Liam and Larry for second in Early Modern.....great effort for the week

Whoa. Does that mean the black pearl is returning?

Or Yavuz and Mark at Unigroup. Most likely something is wrong other than the tune eg a boost leak or bad AFM, unless you have put the PFC in and never tuned it but a good workshop will work it out

I haven't heard of any of the steel subframes cracking. Later aluminium ones like M35 stagea do. I don't know anything about the S series ones Also the setup for the diff nose was changed between r32 vs r33/34 and no longer had the 4 bolts and extra support; nissan obviously thought the extra weight was not required. One thing to consider is the lower arm mounting points were also moved between 32 vs 33/34 to improve handling. S14 may also have the better geometery

I don't think anyone here can guarantee the car can be registered....There is some risk that re-registering will have requirements you can't meet. But I can say that my rally import car has the vin stamped with punches onto the strut tower sheet metal. The main checks are the number engraved on the strut tower matches the rego papers, and the japanese vin matches the import papers.

All skylines look like that, those parts are unpainted steel from the factory. Don't worry about addressing it at all, it's just surface rust

So I can't claim to be moving quickly (but then again this build never has....) but the car is in the paint shop now. Initially they thought they were going to just even up the current surface a bit and respray it....I did warn them this was the 4th time the car had been painted. As you can see, after they got started and saw what they are in for, they are taking most of it back to bare metal to prep, prime and paint. Car should be about 50kg lighter now too. Also fixed the small modification I made against the bank at Targa High Country. They are doing inside and out, should be back in a few weeks. The only real challenge has been the front windscreen which is pretty much irreplaceable being one of Dell's heated ones. They are very nervous about taking it out knowing how hard and expensive it would be to replace....

You need to obtain a copy of the import papers from DOTARS. There are multiple schemes that a car can be imported under and from memory the old 15 year old scheme which became the 1988 scheme which is becoming the 30 year scheme did not require an australian plate. Is the car currently registered in the state you need?

Yes, that should be correct. remove ABS module (unplug), bypass the brake lines (either custom or non-ABS factory lines) and your 4wd should be fine.

The quick answer is that both ABS and ATTESSA use the same computer. So all of the inputs go in, like wheel speed, throttle position etc that both systems need, and the ABS and 4WD control go out again. There is an N1 model that had a no ABS option, in those cases there is a different ATTESSA computer but I bet it has the same sensor inputs.

The good news is, if you are certain you haven't turned the balancer or the cam, it will all still be in the right place

If the problem is only the cam journals you put another head on it and replace the cam. If the oil pressure issue also caused a crank bearing to spin then you will need to machine the crank, and put in new bearings and probably rings at the same time. The crank, pistons, block, oil pump etc will probably be reusable but the machine shop will have to confirm. As for fault...in my experience shops only tell you how responsible they are for any issues before they get your money. After some expensive failure has happened you learn that they don't actually stand behind their work, that they can't actually afford to fix the issue either, or that their workshop's insurer has a whole bunch of lawyers who are willing to spend money on telling you why it's not their fault instead of spending money fixing it. Find a local mechanic you trust to strip it unless the guy in Tas has agreed up front it is his fault. Get the new guy to take pics all through and if they form the view it was the original builder's fault send them the bill. At least that way you save the 000s it will cost to ship a dead car to Tassie for them to tell you they are not at fault (in their opinion).