Modifying a Skyline - An Honest Perspective

[Birds]

37 minutes ago, Dose Pipe Sutututu said:

that rule applies to VIC only.

In NSW any mod is a defect.

Really? I thought it was a federal EPA regulation.

Have to say, touchwood, thanks to the scarcity of imports these days, I just don't get any attention from police...only police reports for theft attempts

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

7 hours ago, Birds said:

Really? I thought it was a federal EPA regulation.

Have to say, touchwood, thanks to the scarcity of imports these days, I just don't get any attention from police...only police reports for theft attempts

You would think so but Australia being Australia it's state based. Same reason why each state's registration and licensing system/process is different.

TBH it's bs, but it is what it is and I can't change anything lol.

[inmaniac]

Holy over a month since an update. I've been slack.

Well, I finally hooked up my Wideband (Innovate MTX-L) and it's running great. Got more visibility on what's happening with my engine and, despite still no O2 being hooked up to the ECU yet (will be connecting MTX-L signal soon) it's still running great, and up in high boost, which it wasn't originally tuned for, it's sitting between 11.5-12 A/F R.

Now to the big part. I finally pulled the trigger on some coilovers and, upon taking the advice of fellow SAU'ers, I got myself some MCA Blue's. After speaking with a few people I decided to go 10kg Front and 6kg Rear. I've got the dampers dialled in to 4 clicks (from full stiffness) front and 6 clicks rear.

While chucking in the coilovers, I attacked 2 other bits that were annoying me. Firstly, after feeling a little loose in the rear, I chucked in some sub-frame lock collars. Not particularly hard to do.

The second was finally chucking in a HICAS lcok bar. I just got the ebay special TAS Autosport variety but it should do the job.

I can't give feedback on the setup yet as I haven't had an alignment and everything feels wayyyyy off, so I'll have to wait until it's aligned (tomorrow) to give proper feedback. What I can say is that immediately the car feels way more planted and extremely direct to inputs. It's sensitive to bumps but that's expected. When I have an alignment and the car is settled in, I'll come back here to review everything.

Learning: If you're going to attack either coilovers or subframe collars, use your jack as a tool. I used the jack to raise up the wheel assembly for fitting the coilovers, as well as pushing pressure up on the sub-frame when bolting in the collars. It helped a lot in both cases.

 

Edited September 24, 2017 by inmaniac

[Dale FZ1]

Depending on your ride height, it could be worth installing a set of camber arms and traction arms in the rear.  

Objective being to have the tyres running at an appropriate camber, and minimise/eliminate bump steer as the suspension goes through its range of motion. 

[inmaniac]

On 9/24/2017 at 1:47 PM, inmaniac said:

I can't give feedback on the setup yet as I haven't had an alignment and everything feels wayyyyy off, so I'll have to wait until it's aligned (tomorrow) to give proper feedback. What I can say is that immediately the car feels way more planted and extremely direct to inputs. It's sensitive to bumps but that's expected. When I have an alignment and the car is settled in, I'll come back here to review everything.

Ok alignment is done and all I can say is WOW what a difference. My rear left toe was -11mm (apparently a lot haha) and it's now been set to -0.5mm

After throwing the car through some tight turns on the way home I can't believe what a difference this has all made. I got a cheeky slide going without even meaning to and the car responded so god damn well.

I'm so, so stoked with the results. Thansk to everyone who suggested MCA Blues, they seem awesome. Also shout out once again to @Dose Pipe Sutututu for being my Yoda.

Once everything settles in I'll report back again. 

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

Woohoo now let's iron out your tune and make more power lol

[timmy_89]

Nice thread mate. Good power figure to have on the street. What's your plans for the car next? I found when my car was on the street swaybars made a huge difference to the handling (more so then coilovers and adjustable arms).

Not sure if I missed it or not, but I'm assuming the $90 eBay "Z32 AFM" turned out to be dodgy also?

[PranK]

Great thread! Looking forward to updates.

[inmaniac]

Ok so guys, the theme of my thread has always been about being transparent to silly mistakes so as to not make them again, and deter others from making them as well.

Unfortunately, this update is about a silly mistake, one that could have been very bad.

Driving along, I happened to hit a large pothole with my front left wheel. Within a few minutes of driving, I heard a whirr and then a slight repeated clunking sound The car pulled slightly to the left. I pulled over, checked my wheel, it looked fine, so I checked all the arms and everything I can see looked fine.

On the way home, the car sounded gradually worse to the point where I didn't want to drive it. After jacking up the car, I noticed a little bit of play in the wheel (ever so slight) and that combined with the sounds made me think it was a wheel bearing. This was just before I went away for 2 weeks so I thought f**k it I'll order some wheel bearings and sort it out when I get back.

The day I had a mechanic friend coming to look at the car, I decided to jack the car up again and see if I could have a better look, notice anything weird, etc. This time I decided to take the wheel off. It was then that I noticed the nut was barely tight. I checked the next one and it was also finger tight. I had a little wtf moment and pulled of the wheel completely to inspect everything, and then put the wheel back on when I couldn't see or notice anything, this time putting the wheel on extremely tight (and checking all other wheels).

After a test drive, everything seemed ok! The sound and issue had gone away completely. It turned out that my wheel nuts were loose and that the pothole likely just put the wheel slightly off centre from the right. It's extremely scary thinking what might have happened to my wheel at speed and I'm just thankful I caught the issue when I did.

TLDR: I thought I had a stuffed bearing when in fact my wheel nuts were loose.

For those wondering, yeah it was I who had the wheels off last (when I did coilovers) and I zipped the nuts back up with a rattle gun, which has always been fine until now. I've learnt my lesson and will always be using a torque wrench. The other wheels were still tight which makes this case very strange to me. In any case, always be careful of your wheel nuts! (and also, as always, try to eliminate obvious issues before thinking they might be more extreme).

Hopefully my next update is more exciting and less about being silly  

[PranK]

Hey @inmaniac I once did the same thing. Driving along and felt weirdness on the front left wheel and so I pulled over and noticed I hadn't done the wheel nuts up more than finger tight.

I tell ya what tho, you'll never do it again! I check 3 or 4 times before i drive my car after the wheels have been off. 

Thank Christ it didn't turn out worse. 

[inmaniac]

I thought my last break between updates was long. Here we are at almost a year. Jesus... A lot has actually gone on with the car, too much for me to write at 2am. So hopefully I'll update this shortly.

What I will update for now to get me started is - I bought new wheels! I actually bought these a while ago but I went through quite a lengthy battle with the seller of these wheels, which leads me to this statement:

DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM OZZY TYRES!

There's such a long, convoluted story that resulted in 3 months of pain. So rather than writing that whole thing out, let me just say that when I went to jump in my car after getting the new wheels installed (XXR 527 equivalents in Chromium Black, 18 x 8.75 +20) they ended up being the WRONG COLOUR with the WRONG OFFSET on the WRONG RUBBER. Ozzy Tyres only offered me a refund of the price difference of the tyres. They refused to replace the wheels to the correct ones. I went to the extent of contacting the owner, pleading with them to fix it, I then got Fair Trading involved who tried to essentially mediate between us, but those guys are all bark and no bite. When I showed Ozzy Tyres that the wrong offset wheels had actually rubbed on my front calipers they finally caved in replacing those, but then refused to fix the rears!? Again I was speaking to Fair Trading but the only action they offered was referring me to Legal Aid to pursue legal action. It was at this stage I gave up as two rims just wasn't worth the effort.

To then fix my situation, I ordered 2 x XXR 527s online in the right offset to match the replaced fronts, however, the colour was slightly off. Therefore I got myself some satin black paint and did a garage job. They didn't end up too bad.

So yeah, that's the wheel update. I'm actually really happy with the final result, however, it cost about 50% more than it should have and put me through months of misery. Again, let me repeat, DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH OZZY TYRES!

I'll be back soon with more (fun) updates

Attached before and after photos.