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Hey.

After reading through everyones projects, I thought its about time I started my own build thread. The car is a 1989 R32 GTS-T. I purchased the car just over 12 months ago. When I bought it, it was not running. The car had what I thought were some tasteful mods. After getting it home and starting to see what more it needs to get running, wasnt I wrong.

The car was equipped with a

  • HKS 2530 fresh rebuild turbo
  • RB25DET motor and RB20 gearbox
  • Home made front and dump/screamer pipe (internally gated, very gay)
  • home made mild steel cooler pipes painted black (looked good till i saw inside them)
  • greddy inlet plenum
  • hard wired microtech lts-12x
  • superspark coils
  • gtr wheels
  • stock kit
  • very nice trust catback with twin 4" tips :)
  • walbro fuel pump
  • gizmo boost controller (uninstalled)
  • gtr interiour
  • square momo steering wheel

So after some thought I decided there is no use getting this car running and tuning it with such a small turbo to only want to upgrade at a later stage and then try to sell a second hand turbo. So i went out and bought a Garret 3076 0.86 rear b-band housing. Then I did a 6boost group buy on manifolds, and picked up myself a highmount manifold with a 44mm tial wastegate.

When i fitted the radiator up it was draining itself overnight... and I could not find where the water was going, turned out the water jacket inside the greddy manifold were badly casted and the water wasleaking ontop of the valves. So I purchased another plenum, this time a polished greddy copy.

I wanted to check what fuel pump was in it, so I pulled the cover off the floor in the boot only to notice the fuel pump cradle was sikaflexed down, so I had to purchase a new viton o-ring to suit. When I pulled the fuel pump out, the filter sock had fallen off and sucked up hair, a spider and heatshrink and loads of crap. So i threw it in the bin and bought a walbro 500hp pump.

I then took the car to my local tuner Adrenalin Performance, to get some pipework done. I had them make a 3" dump off the turbo and a 2" dump off the waste gate, merging to a 3.5" pipe, running down to a trust box muffler, then exiting at twin 2.5" and following through to twin 4". They also made 2.5" stainless cooler pipes and welded on a new greddy plumback bov right befor the throttle. With a 1" stainless return line off the bov going back to the 4" 90 degree mandrel bent intake pipe.

So after a few months of trying to iron out all the bugs we thought it was time to start the car. So I hooked up the laptop and gave the car some juice from a odyssey battery. And hello... the red power light on the microtech was not turning on with the key.. so I traced the power wire back through the loom to ... nothing... someone cut it half way to the battery and didnt even tape it up. So I extended it, fused it and plugged it in. And we connected to the ecu....

A friend of mine was tuning the car and could not get it to start... And all the stuffing around with the microtech I got the shits and sold it. Bought myself a V44 vipec and a new wiring loom. Hooked it all up and presto, first turn of the key, and it started. So first day of tuning, and there is voltage dramas... the alternator isnt charging.

I tried 2 other alternators and still no avail, so I started to pull my hair out and try everything under the sun, back tracking wires over and over. I got my hands on a 4th alternator and put it in, was my final resort, and IT WORKED!! I was just really unlucky with the other alternators.

We did a quick tune on the street, probably about 4 hours worth. Used the autotune feature, which is awesome, and then touched it up a little. Never got to adjust timing on the first go though, but this thing hauled!! Was running 17psi. A week later I drove 1000km south to Queensland Raceway and gave it a hiding on the track, my first time ever on a track and I only just got the car. Was a awesome experience and I learnt heeps! After I got back I never bothered tuning it further. It would fry second gear coming on boost, and a quick change to third had it straight to limiter again. This thing loved third gear limiter.

After I got back I got a GTR front end off a mate and wasnt going to fit it until I got it painted, but then another mate needed a favour and I gave him the bonnet off my gts-t and fitted the gtr bonnet. Then another mate needed a front bar, so I sold him the stocko front bar. Then the indicators broke so I put the GTR quater panels and indicators on. Then my car looked like shit. Had a matt black front end with a silver rear. My best memory of that was covered in dirt, the front bar was hanging off on one side because the ziptie snapped when i went over a speed bump, and it had a massive exhaust leak from the manifold gasket, and I walked away from a 6L v8 fresh off the showroom floor... now thats gotta hurt.

So after I gave it a good hiding it started to get a few oil leaks and gasket leaks and I was just put onto probational licence, I thought its time to buy a ute. So I put this old girl off the road for a fresh up. Was originally going to fix the oil leaks on motor, paint the engine bay and outside, and put it all back together...

And now we have the fun part.......

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https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/327377-r32-gts-t-rb2530/
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here you can see...

Original hks turbo the car came with.

The old plenum that I had painted before I found out it had a leaky water jacket :thumbsup:

The glitter flakes in the paint of the rockers

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I tried to roll the guards using a 3" piece of pipe... the gaurds both looked to be in good nick, I knew there was a tiny bit of bog, but yeah... didn't know it was this bad..

The car has had repairs done on the LH guard and there is new bits of steel in there aswell as the original guard being cracked in areas under the bog.. well it's all exposed now

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I knocked the guards right out with a 4lbs hammer and angle grinded the excess off... and bought a set of WORK VS-XX 18x10.5 +26 and 18x11.5 +26, both front and rear have 245/40/18 tyres. I'm waiting to weld the guards up because I've gotta borrow a mig from work and I need to weld a heep of holes in the engine bay, all the ones marked with white pen. I'm also waiting to hear from Lindsae Stone from Townsville about welding the cage in and welding in a few other little bits inside the car.

I pulled the turbo apart, it's a garret 3076 with 0.86 rear housing Vband external gated. Im polishing the front housing and made up a neat little heat shield for the exhaust housing. The photo of the polished turbo is actually off my brothers s14, I'll be doing the same as he did, its the same turbo too. The little HKS badge is actually from a trophy shop, they laser etched a bit of stainless to say HKS, looks awesome!

Just last week my GTR rear quater panels turned up, I'm not going to weld them in though, I'm going to cut the outer skin off and rivet it on like an over fender, but steel and 100% fitment

Started to pull all the seals off the door jams, and the rear bar, tail lights, and started to rub off all excess left over sound deadening from the interiour with thinners. I am still undecided on what colour to paint it yet.

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Waiting on a few parts from import monster atm... I have them holding them in their japan warehouse while I shop for more :banana:

Clear tinted GTR indicators

Wheel alignment measuring tools

Massive duck wing :ermm:

Roof Wing

3% tint on rear windows and 13% on front windows

EL Dials

Cusco front camber arms

Nismo 2-way LSD

and still trying to find a decent clutch atm...

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I havent done it yet, they are still on hold in import monsters warehouse in japan.. im waiting on a few more auctions. I have them in my r33 gts-t and I pulled the cluster out to check something and there is some pretty wild wiring in there... I hope these have some good instructions, otherwise Ill try look at the r33s one for some ideas.. Ill try get some pics and post them up when I get to it.. Although it wont be for a few months as I still need to spray the interiour befor I fit the dash back in.

Justjap R33 rear camber arms just turned up. I have a r33 GTS im wrecking so I thought well I may aswell put the cradle into my R32. So I need to machine up some offset spacer bushes which im hoping someone can help me out on specs with them?? If you have some laying around please measure them up for me!!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hey..

Well yesterday my order from Import Monster turned up so I was pretty happy about that. There is a few pics of the Duck wing and roof wing in there, I love them!

The GTR rear quaters got hacked up today too. I cut all the inners out and separated just the outer shell.. I drilled out the spot welds on the fuel tank filler and knocked it out.. There is still a little more cutting to be done before they fit perfect. For those who are wondering I'm going to rivet them on like over fenders and probably filll behind them with expandable foam. I've got a few ideas I'm toying with on how to mount them... putting blocks of wood under areas to pop it out a little to make it a bit wider again. Then im considering heating the guard with the oxy and machining up a little steel roller for the guard roller to flare the guards nicely... the rims still dont fit perfect, and I want to roll them out to about 1 degree negative camber.

Anyways thats the latest here, and a few pics of the garage and my other project for a daily other than my ute, an r33 gts-t with custom metallic blue / gold pearl paint.. and the orange rb25 out of my r32 is going into it.

There is also some photos of the r33's old motor that I pulled the sump off today. It was not mine when it blew up but it was making 298RWKW and there is alot of contributions to what blew the motor but it isn't pretty in there, talk about sludge! the piston was missing too... but I found it.. The crank decided it didn't want to have anything to do with that rod and they parted their own separte ways

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...

The other night the power went out and I was bored shitless so I pulled my r33 diff from its cradle in the back yard and took it into the garage and started to pull it apart.. didnt get real far, but I was going to fit the nismo centre but I decided ill replace the bearings and seals anyway so Ill have to pull my finger out and order them.

Tonight I started to pull some of the arms out to lend to a mate who hit a gutter :thumbsup: and while I was at it I fitted my cusco upper camber arms. There is a pic of how short they are compared to standard. I was hoping they were adjustable but they arent, they are just a fixed lengh. Hopefully its not too much negative camber. Im tring to get decent lock out of 10.5" rims

so here are the pics..

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  • 2 weeks later...

Okay so yesterday I finally fitted the s14 nismo 2 way into the r33 GTS housing. Im not too sure about the rear housing cover off the GTS diff though, it hasn't got any fins, and its got less oil capacity than a GTS-T or GTR one, so I might get a greddy extra capacity one, only because it will be too hard to find a diff cover alone. I had one out the back but its a 4 stud one for R32 cradle.

Anyways the diff looks pretty, painted in metallic blue, really similar to the cusco colour

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Oh and keep a spare input shaft handy.

oh dear haha... Im using a GTR box so hope it holds up... Although I did just purchase a full set of 265/35/18 Federal 595 RS-R to go on the 18x11.5" rears and 18x10.5" fronts.... probably going to break a box........... or two. I got them from the guys at Option 1 Garage. I highly recommend them, and awesome prices on tyres.

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