Babalouie

FD is very top-endy, you end up taking it up to 8000 all the time, so I'd put it at being a bit more fun (stock vs stock)

Well I have an FD as a daily, and (touch wood) it seems to do fine. In terms of cooling mods, I have a $450 Koyo rad and a $200 metal AST and I replaced all the hoses. It's been my daily for 2.5yrs now, and trouble free. My personal theory is that if you want them to be reliable, you keep them to stock boost, and keep the cooling system well maintained. The FD is my second rotary, the previous one I owned for 6yrs and it was a daily for most of that time. The engine was built in 2006 (the whole car was a resto project) and is still running strong today. Never gave a lick of trouble. In terms of handling, the FD is miiiiiles ahead. Mine is stock power and on road tyres does 10s at Wakefield. It's true that they are small inside tho. If you're 6ft and a certain ratio of torso to leg, you won't fit. Economy is 18L/100km in city traffic, too.

Thanks, Terry! My car was next in line in the Heritage Display, and it's a 1971 KGC10 Skyline GT, or Hakosuka, as most people call it. But first here's the story behind the Hakosuka generation of Skylines. As Terry said above, the Skyline nameplate began on a sedan made by Prince. The best way to understand what the brand stood for, was that it was sorta like a motorsport-obsessed Lexus of the 1950s and 1960s Japan. They only made premium products, and shied away from the small-capacity kei-cars that made up most of the cars on the road in Japan at that time. Sadly, this wasn't the smartest business model ever, and by the mid-60s, Prince was flat broke. Japan was in ruins after WW2, but by the early 60s, was in the middle of a dramatic economic turnaround. The government couldn't afford to let the economy lose momentum, and when it found out that Prince was about to go under, it basically forced Nissan to take it over. By 1965, the S54 Prince Skyline was already getting old, and its replacement was already on the drawing board, but the company itself was on life-support. The project manager for the Skyline model was a pragmatic man called Dr Shinichiro Sakurai, and he, along with a team of his engineers, went to visit their deadly enemies at Nissan in Oppama. There, they saw the 510 Bluebird on the drawing board, and they liked what they saw. Back at their Tokyo design base, Dr Sakurai and his team hurriedly adapted the C10 Skyline to use Nissan engines and running gear, and they knuckled-down on the detail design work to adapt Nissan component suppliers (brake master cylinders etc) to their design. Soon after, the takeover of Prince by Nissan was announced in 1966. And remarkably, the Prince Skyline had enough respect in the Japanese market, that Dr Sakurai was allowed to keep the Skyline design team separate from the regular Nissan design team, and they remained a separate team until the 1980s. This of course caused no end of politics behind the corporate curtain, and certainly on the racetrack...but that's another story. And in July 1968, not even two years after Prince was taken over by Nissan, the C10 Skyline sedan was unveiled in four cylinder form to great acclaim in Japan, and for the very first time, the Skyline wore a Nissan badge. Dr Sakurai said that he wanted a stylish, 100mph family car that would be at home on touring roads, and that's exactly what he delivered. In its first year, it tripled the best ever sales year of the Prince Skyline, and was a commercial and critical success. Later, a 6 cylinder GT version using a 2.0 version of the L-series would be added to the range. The sedan is naturally a little boxy and square looking, so it was nicknamed Hakosuka by the public. Hako means "Box" and "Suka" is the abbreviation of how you might say "Sukai-Line" in a thick Japanese accent. So that's where the name comes from; it actually dates back to the original 4cyl sedan, and the term Hakosuka isn't reserved for the GT-R version. But the best part was yet to come. The Prince Skyline has built itself quite a reputation as a sports sedan, and Nissan unveiled the 2000GT-R. This had a high-revving, 160hp 2.0 straight six with a, 24V DOHC head, capacitive-discharge ignition, LSD, a 100L long range tank, and the whole package came stripped out, with not even a demister or radio fitted. On its racing debut, it decimated everything, lapped the second-place car not once...but twice...and won at a canter. In late 1969, the sedan was joined by a hardtop coupe, which naturally had a 2000GT-R version too, which was shorter and lighter than the sedan, and so it made a better racing platform. The race wins continued to come...and in fact, since the racing debut of the sedan, the Hakosukas never lost a race, and had an unbroken winning streak that ran for 49 races and almost three years, until December 1971, forging a Skyline motorsport legacy that we still feel today. Today, a 2000-GTR is quite a prized possession. Unlike the modern-era GTRs, which were made in relatively big numbers, the Hakosuka GT-Rs were handbuilt in very small quantities. Only 2000 were made back in the day and today, a few hundred survive and you'll need a quarter of a million dollars to bag one. But all C10-series Hakosuka Skylines are a product of the turbulent times at Nissan and Prince during that era; a combination of Prince design and styling, with Nissan engineering. Anyway. Enough waffling on My car is pretty typical of a Hakosuka in Japan today, which is to say that it's somewhat of a hotrod or outlaw. It's relatively hard to find a stock one, and most surviving examples have gone down the path that mine has. My car started life in January 1971 as a 2000GT. Which meant that it looked like this, with a narrowbody, no flares or spoilers and a 120hp single-cam, single-carbed L-series straight six. All 6 cylinder Hakosukas have a very similar chassis to a 510; which is to say, McPherson Struts at the front, and an independent rear end with semi-trailing arms. Somewhere along the line, it was turned from a humble GT, to a race replica. Its not really fair to call it a GT-R clone, as the GT-R doesnt have the front flares or front spoiler that my car has, so my car takes more of its visual inspiration from the factory touring race cars in the early 1971 season. Apart from the visual mods, the 2.0L six is now a bored out 2.95L six, with a lot of headwork by Tony Knight, triple Weber DCOEs and all the goodies for 200hp at the wheels. The suspension is Koni coilovers at the front, and GAB shocks at the back with a 2-way LSD. Its fun to drive. Being part of the Heritage Display was a blast, and thanks to Terry for inviting me and the Hako along. Thanks for reading!

Ah yeah, gotta watch out for that bloke with the silver Hako, he's an idiot

I spose it's no different from foreigners coming to Oz and saying that they can get this and that car for what an XY GT Falcon costs...it costs what it costs, value for money doesn't really come into it Dropping that sort of coin on a classic GT-R might be a dangerous financial thing to do tho. They may be worth that sort of money in Japan, but outside of that it might be hard to get your money back if you wanted to sell. I giess it's the same as the XY GT Falc example again...what's one of those worth in the USA or UK?

Well the mo Well the most exxy one I ever saw on public sale was this car, which had a Y15mil sticker on it : It was off the chain Y15mil is $170,000, so call it just a tick under $200k landed. It's possible that ex-race cars with the right provenance, or road cars with really rare Sport Corner (ie Nismo) options might go for even more, but those sort of cars tend to change hands behind the scenes. Like I said, to put the values of classic GT-R's in context, you have to think of what a Z-Tune would be worth in 30yrs time

In terms of availability, you can't compare the older Skylines to the 32/33/34. IIRC, Nissan made 80,000 32/33/34 GT-Rs, and so they're relatively easy to find. But back in the day, there were only 2200 Hako/Kenmeri GT-Rs made, so they're much rarer. Also...32s and 33s are starting to get rusty already, so imagine how hard it will be to find a clean one in 20yrs time. Hakos are four decades old now, so in terms of rarity, even a non-GTR Hako is more like trying to find a 32/33/34 GT-R in 25yrs time. And as for the genuine Hako GT-Rs, there's only a few hundred left, so those are more like finding say 400R/Z-Tune...in 25yrs time Needless to say, Hakos are priced accordingly in Japan.

You might be able to get a nice (but not *that* nice) sedan for $30k landed. Nice coupes would be more like $35-40k landed, and that's buying from auction.

What they cost here, is a function of what they cost in Japan. They're like the oldschool GT Falcons of Japan...the clones are expensive, and the genuine ones are even more ridiculously expensive Real 2000GT-R Hakos would start at about $90k landed, and that would be for a car that needed some work. Real mint ones would be about $150~200k landed. What drives the value in Japan is the rarity...they're only a few hundred 2000GT-R's left.

The car ain't in Balcatta, it's in Adelaide I'm sure if you call the number, you'll get some fabulous story about how the seller used to be vice president of Rauh Welt in Nigeria or something, and how you need to pay for the car upfront before he can show it to you :lol:

Total scam. The current owner of the Edward Lee car is in Adelaide, and has sent an email to eBay telling them the ad is a fake.

Got sold. Dude lives in Sydney.

A mate of mine recommended this as an alternative to changing the subframe mounts. You modify the bell-shaped washer locating the bottom of the subframe bush to squash up the rubber mount to reduce movement. http://www.the510realm.com/viewtopic.php?f...73&p=143439 I figure as long as your bushes aren't totally gone, this should help.

I did this recently on my own car, mate: http://www.japanesenostalgiccar.com/forum/...&start=1035 IIRC, for the R180 there are 2 sizes of diff bush, and the bigger one is 45mm in diameter. I got 'em from SW Motorsport.

You running front flares Danny? I reckon you could prolly go for 8+0 or 8-5 if you were planning to lower it a bit with some camber. The rear sizing is spot on for flush fitment though with the factory-size flares.

I reckon an L28ET, with all those cubic inches would be a brilliant thing, heaps of torque

Why not something in the middle? Say, stick with L20ET, but buy an L28 block and bolt the manifolds to that, throw away the L20ET turbo, replace with T3, and it'll have a lot more power than an L20ET and be a lot more unstressed.

A couple of really good books to get if you are interested in the Hako, are: G-Works KGC10 Vol 2, which is more on the modified Hako side, got lots of info on wheel sizes, parts available, etc. Not so much of a book on the 2000GT-R but more of a modifier's guide to making a GT-R clone/hotting it up. http://www.g-works-web.com/?tag=kgc10 The other one is C10 Complete Book, which is purely a reference to the stock cars, so it's chock full of catalog scans, colour charts by year, differences in the badges etc by yr, differences between the variosu trim levels, etc. Pretty good if you want to create a realistic GT-R clone, since it has all proper info on the real thing. http://www.geibunsha.co.jp/shoseki/car_c10skyline.html If you're in Sydney, the Kinokuniya bookshop has copies of both, the last time I was there

In my case, the list of things were.... - wrong inlet manifold (the head ports were bigger than the flange = air leak) - carbs set up for 2L, not 3L - carb linkages set up all wrong - ignition wiring problem (coil wasn't getting full juice) - dizzy cap worn, electronic module wasn't earthing - 2 dud plug leads - wrong crank pulley, didn't match the timing marks - mystery cam timing that was 1/2 a tooth out - MASSIVE cam that wouldn't have worked below 6000rpm anyhoo (278 degs at 50 thou lift!) - insufficient fuel pump flow - butchered sump baffles/oil pickup/mismatched dipstick ...and prolly heaps more I've forgotten So I'd find one fault and fix it, then be scratching my head wondering why it still drove like crap In the end, I tried to fit a street cam to it, and then realised that the retainers, valve stem heights, etc were all non-std. So that's when I threw in the towel and as you suggested, started from scratch. From the first 100m after the rebuild, it was a totally transformed car. But in the end we got lucky...it turned out the motor was a very recent 3L overbore with 11:1 pistons and heaps of headwork, so all it needed was a freshen up and it pulled 175rwhp straight off the bat. With a bit more tuning it's at 190rwhp currently, so it's all good I guess what must have happened was that the previous owner in Japan started collecting cool parts, then ran out of time/money, and then everything was slapped together very roughly and the car flogged off to be someone else's problem. But the L-series is a great motor to drive behind, tons of grunt, tons of personality

I dunno if it's gonna be the same in WA, but in NSW the engo accepted that Klippan non-inertia reel seatbelts were okay, front and rear. At the back, you'll find that the c-pillar sheetmetal and floorpan will already have seat belt mountings behind the trim At the front, it's just the regular Klippan kit, but with the longest available stalk buckle (i think 450mm, cos the mount is so far back on the tunnel). Umm...apart from seatbelts, I think I didn't have to change or add anything else for rego/engo. Tail lights and indicators (which blink red) were ok for the age of the car. I think the only hassles I had on rego were things like noise and ride height

Ahh, so you bought Jash's car? Awesome project The KGC10 build thread on PF is my car, whaddya need to know, Denzo? Oh and btw the issues I had with the L-series were 99% casued by the person who built it in Japan. We ended up starting from scratch, and the cylinder head was redone by Knight Engines in Adelaide, and Nathan did the bottom end and assembly. Ran sweet as a nut after that. Puts out 190rwhp and sounds great, so yeah I'm happy with it.

Great vid mate! (Thanks for the great angles of the Hako too)

Congrats on a great show from Japanese Nostalgic Car Magazine Our coverage and pics are up here: http://www.japanesenostalgiccar.com/forum/...opic.php?t=7738 Enjoyed it heaps, and very glad to get Project Hako in front of some new ppl

Thanks mate

What's the word on how the cars will be arranged in the pavillion? Are they going to be just in the order that ppl show up, or will there be an area for old cars, new cars etc