Duncan's F50 Cima Build

[Duncan]

I’ve been pretty remiss and haven’t started a build thread for HGE-45L…so here I go!

About 3 years ago I picked up a contract down in Canberra, meaning I’d have to drive back and forward from Sydney each week, putting about 800klm/week on a car.  The Cube, although mighty, was not going to cut it.

My budget was about $20k because it was only going to be a work car, and I figured I’d be selling it after a year or 2.  After giving up on a decent v36 skyline at that price, and figuring v35s were a little old, I stumbled across GF50 Cimas, Nissan’s copy of a mid 90s S class styling but with a much cooler interior and driveline.  Steve at Justjap ended up digging up a 2001 VX (mid spec) rwd for us with about 60,000klm and in great condition within the budget.

This is how it arrived (complete with garish gold badges that I replaced courtesy of Jesse Streeter with some smoked black ones)

4.5l direct injected v8, power everything, and super comfortable highway cruiser, it’s like driving a lounge chair

[Duncan]

First order of business was getting the A/V system under control, Chris Rodgers from Audio Express in QLD was super helpful. After some pics back and forth I sorted an FM expander (it was an unusual setup) and he also modified the TV system to support a reverse camera (an option my car didn’t have) and Oz TV input (not that I’ve added one), as well as a 6 cd stacker (yes, how quaint)

 

 

I also added a front table…….because VIP

[Duncan]

I also added some DRLs due to all the highway klm (using a NC relay, they turn off when headlights come on)

 

 

I also added an LED light bar which comes on with the high beams to see the wombats coming. They only draw a couple of amps so I just tapped the high beams

 

I’ve put a fridge in the boot, and changed the battery to an optima because they deal better with being drained and recharged, and also a voltage sensitive relay that cuts it out to protect the battery if necessary (sometimes it is required on a hot day)

 

Also some better lights in the boot because I use it all the time in dark garages, but no pics of them at the moment. All interior lights have been changed to LEDs as well, and there are about a billion of them. No pics of them at the moment, I'll grab them when I get a chance

[Duncan]

Well that was pretty much it for the next 120,000klm and 3 years, just heading to Canberra and back and changing the oil.  The only issue in that time was a flat tyre and the front LCAs needed replacing (can’t get the bushes separately). I did new discs, pads, auto trans fluid, brake fluid and drive belt along the way too.

 

Still giving awesome fuel economy between 7.5 and 10l/100 which I think is great for a 4.5l v8

[Leroy Peterson]

Awesome! had no idea you had one.

I was tossing up the Cima and the Gloria 2 years ago, and for a proper VIP platform I think the F50 just needs too much work to make the exterior look good. (and I prefer the gloria interior) just my 2c. President or nothing, for me.

I'm yet to see one in person and go for a ride, but I know a few people with them. Strange how people bring them in and then chuck them on carsales. I assume there something they dont like about the car or wanted the full pimp lifestyle but cbf'd or no money.

There's a few enthusiastic F50 owners with the VIP club http://www.zeitakuvip.com/2016/

LEDs in the grille looks great. kind of like crystals and I dont know how you've had the car for so long and kept stock wheels.

[Duncan]

Yeah I think the very conservative external looks really don't help it. It's not ugly....just very boring.  But on the other hand it's probably the best car I've owned for it's purpose of highway cruising so I think it's been an awesome buy. And the ones for sale seem mostly to be overpriced which wouldn't help considering they are not common in the first place.

And I'll come the the wheels etc later, but I guess the point is I really didn't buy it to be a pimped VIP car, just a super comfortable highway car....so much bigger wheels would not help at all.  It definitely had bigger wheels in it's past some time because I could see wear marks on the strut and inner guard from some rubbing....

[Leroy Peterson]

The car size just dwarfs the stock 16's. 18's would still have decent sidewall and better options for tyres and road noise. but it's money that could be spent on other cars...

[Duncan]

Anyway, with a recent change of plans, I’ve decided to keep the Cima longer term…so the only sensible thing to do was to modify it a bit

I took it up to Castle Hill Exhaust to see what they could do with the stock system (it came with 2 cats in the manifolds, 2 cats and a muffler in the mid pipe, 3 mufflers in the rear pipe and even a factory installed valve that closes off the main exhaust and just uses a pea shooter when putting around town). 

 

This is what was replaced

 

The main issue was that it was way too quiet so I asked them to fix that The manifolds and mid pipe stayed, and the rear pipe was replaced with 2.5” and one large muffler in stainless. Much lighter than the old rear pipes too.

 

 

Can’t show you a pic of how awesome it sounds…..so I’ll try and take a quick vid one day.

On the down side, the before and after dyno runs confirmed my suspicion that it was misfiring at high revs. Yes that sounds silly not to be sure but it’s very hard to hear the motor and it runs so damn smooth it’s hard to pick the issue.

look at those AFRs diving and the power get uneven as the missfire kicks in from about 3000 (the scale at the bottom was wrong, redline is 6,500 ish, not 7.7)

I’ve replaced the fuel filter and it’s a bit better (it was veeeeeery overdue), but I think I’ll let Yavuz work out what else is wrong, I’m hoping it’s just the intank/low pressure fuel pump (since it runs direct injection it has a mechanical, high pressure fuel pump at the engine, and injectors are as dear as poison to replace. Could also be the coils as it’s approaching 200,000klm but I’d rather be sure before spending on 8 coils as a guess.

[Duncan]

To the most recent change….the brakes have been a problem for 2 reasons; the discs and pads don’t match anything locally which is a pain with all the klm I do with this car, also they’ve warped a couple of times.

So, I decided to move to larger brakes, stuffed round one afternoon with the racecar brakes trying to measure offset etc. At the end I figured 32 GTR was a good enough match to fit OK and headed to the justjap website to order some 330mm/6 piston fronts, only to find they had a listing for F50 Cima on there anyway! Couldn’t believe it….how many limo drivers need 6 piston brakes anyway.

This is the size comparison

Sadly I had to swap up from the 16s as well…I wanted to keep as close as possible to the awesome stock ride with high profile tyres. Old wheels and old brakes

I picked up some cheap 34GTT 17” wheels in the same width and offset as stock, cleaned them up with the dremel and then Chris at Craved did an awesome job powdercoating them back to standard colour after the repair.  The only problem with powdercoating factory wheel is the centre caps are plastic and have to be painted instead, still need to get that sorted.  This is how they look with the ATTKD 330mm rotors and calipers

And that’s hopefully it for now….get the misfire sorted and put another couple of hundred 000 klm on it

[Leroy Peterson]

nice! There's enough demand in Japan for aftermarket kits for every nissan

funnily enough I just finished a brake upgrade on the Y34 today. Wasn't worth the hassle of sorting rotors, though I believe they're the same as M35.

 

Exhaust looks good. keen for a video

[kris_s14]

Nice to see another Cima!

Brakes were the first thing I did on mine too. They were incredibly warped.

[Duncan]

Had the front of the car painted to deal with stone chips, and the rear bar done too due to some gronk scraping it while leaving a park. Just got it back from detailing, I reckon it's come up great for 15 years and 200,000klm

Ahh those big sexy gtt wheels....

[T04GTR]

sik! #goes to nismo fesival and steals a vk45 race motor from a super gt....#

[KiwiRS4T]

Clearly the Cima has served you well. Do you have examples of the Fuga 450GT available in Aus?

[Duncan]

I haven't seen one, a quick check of SEVS say Fuga aren't eligible for import. It looks like Infiniti are selling the Y51 model as a Q70 for about $80k though.

[KiwiRS4T]

Heaps for sale here but hard to find under 100,000km

http://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/used-cars/nissan/auction-1160404129.htm

 

[Duncan]

hey at least maybe the klm are genuine there then!!

Had my Cima at Unigroup this morning to sort the missfire, a new set of plugs have done the trick.  Looks like it could do with a tune or similar because it's pretty rich at full throttle with the new exhaust.....here starts that slippery slope again....glad I've never learned my lesson 

[Duncan]

so I had a frustrating day with the cima on the weekend, maybe this post will help someone else who has a locked key on an F50 cima.

basically, i was changing the courtesy globes on the roof to LEDs when they all stopped working. I figured it was probably a fuse issue for some reason, but before I got to checking it out I went to start the car and found I couldn't turn the key, even when the alarm was disarmed. Dumberly, I then tried the emergency key to start the car which triggered a security light and the car not starting. Went to remove the emergency key and it physically locked me from turning it back to "lock" and removing it.

To cut a way frustrating story short, I found a post on a US altima forum about a similar issue that mentioned that the body control module (BCM) fuse controls both the console lights AND the key lock functions. Wasn't the same in the Cima (the BCM was the ONLY fuse marked in english) but I checked all the other BAT fuses and found one of them was blown.  Replacing it fixed both the overhead lights and allowed me to remove the emergency key (and start the car with the standard key) which was handy.

Bottom line.....the ignition key includes an electric lock, and naturally there is a fuse protecting that system. Once it blew everything went bad. And incidentally the same thing can happen with low battery voltage where the battery allows the systems to start up, but there isn't enough power to undo the key lock if you are trying to withdrawn it.

[niZmO_Man]

Modern cars aye, just pump everything through one control module that's can crap out. Save costs over redundancy systems.

[Leroy Peterson]

damn, thats annoying. but also an easy fix.

would rather that than a BMW 7 series with 7 different error codes and engine lights for out of date navigation software.