My car is BACK!!!

[Snowman]

I'm sure no one but me really cares but after 10 long weeks I finally have my car back on the road. It felt so good last night to slide into those seats and hear the roar of my RB again! :wassup: I just hope that this long lasting drama is finally behind me!

For those that don't know here's the story of my wonderfull tail of woe.

May 23rd at Sandown for a Murcott motorsport training day my 3rd gear synchro went. Disappointing but my own fault for having sucky gear changing skills.

Pulled the gearbox out, pulled it appart and found the broken bits plus noticed that several others were looking very very average and needed to be changed whilst the box was appart. This is where the drama's really began.

Contacted Nissan to source spare parts and was informed that Nissan do not do spares for the getrag 6 speed gearbox (wft!!). All they could offer was a brand new complete gearbox - $14,500. (double wtf!!!)

Contacted the 3 major gearbox manufacturers in Oz (hollinger, pfizner and PAR engineering) about replacement parts and was again informed that they didnt have spares for the getrag 6 speed - no worries if it was a 33 box however. Again they could only offer a replacement box - all of them ranging from $9-18K)

At this stage the stress was starting to build. I was then informed that the Supra 6 speed was also a getrag and that someone in Syd had rebuilt an R34 box with Supra parts. So we got copys of drawing from both boxes and sure enough it turned out that both boxes were basically identical with the excpetion of the input shafts.

Toyota do sell spares for their boxes so this was the first piece of good news. There were 9 parts that needed replacing and 7 of them were available in Oz but 2 of them had to come from Japan. Was told that they would be here in 5 working days (this is going into week 3).

A few weeks pass and they still hadn't arrived so after a few calls to Japan it turns out that the parts needed from Japan they didnt have either so they had to be made. Finally after a few weeks they were done and were shipped. They arrived in Oz..... and then somehow got lost in customs. Took them a week to find the bloody things which brings us up to about week 5.

Parts arrive at the gearbox reconditioner - and you guessed it they sent a wrong part. Something about a part number on one of the drawings being the wrong number so off we go again. And of coarse the part we do need isn't in Oz and also has to be made so the weeks go by again.

Eventually last week the part arrives and low and behold it is the right part. The box get re-assembled and everything SEEMS sweet. Put the box in the car at the start of this week but because my car hadn't moved for 9 weeks the battery was dead. So it was on charge for 24 hrs and on Wed it was ready to fire up.

With the car in neutral but the clutch engaged the car was started and the farken gearbox sounded like it was going to disintergrate. *sigh* So the car was stopped, the gearbox pulled back out and returned to the reconditioners.

After pulling the casing off what was discoved was that a small metal pin (about 8 x 1.5mm) from a guy working on another gearbox had flown through the air and amazlingly landed inside my open casing when it had been sitting on the workbench being rebuilt. This is about a 1 in a million change to happen. If thats not unlucky enough but if that was to happen normally the pin would have fallen straight to the bottom and got attached to the large magnet.

But because the gearbox was just being built they use a white jelly like substance (like vasoline) to slide the gears on - this stuff melts the first time the gearbox is heated up. So it seems that this little pin when it has flown into the casing has landed in some jelly and got stuck rather than dropping to the bottom and onto the magnet. Another one in a million chance.

So the gearbox was started, the jelly melted and the pin dropped into the gears. The first good bit of luck here was the pin dropped right on the edge of the gear and the damaed caused was extremely minor - just enough to cause a slight burr that was easily cleaned up.

So that was done - gearbox was put in late yesterday afternoon and I FINALLY got to drive my car again last night. The big stress for those that don't know is that Im doing the Dutton Rally which is next week so I ws running out of time FAST. But damn it felt good to get back in my car after such a long time. I'm sure there are others that can appreciate that feeling as well.

[skylinechik]

congratulations!

[doxximus]

holy shit on a pretty large stick, batman!

well good to hear its all sorted. and 15g for a gbox new!? shit didnt realise how expensive they were.

and i thought pfizner did a rebuild for gtr gbox's, what i read in hpi anyway. weird

anyway, congrats for you

[Snowman]

pfitzner do, so do hollinger and so do PAR engineering - but only for the 5 speed box in the 32/33 - not for the 6 speed getrag in the 34.

Farken everyone does stuff for the normal gtr box but no one does shite with the getrag box cause its too damn complicated.

[NS2500]

Good to hear it's finally back.

Was fitting the 5-speed an option?

[funkymonkey]

pfitzner do, so do hollinger and so do PAR engineering - but only for the 5 speed box in the 32/33 - not for the 6 speed getrag in the 34.  

Farken everyone does stuff for the normal gtr box but no one does shite with the getrag box cause its too damn complicated.

that's what you get for being special... coulda brought down a getrag for around 6k from japan, but it'd have taken around 2 months for the next container...

ah well, lets hope your performance at Dutton makes up for lost time hey and don't blow it on the weekend.

[Snowman]

Nice avatar greg

Everything was an option for a while there. Need a few other changes than just the box however if I went that way. Plus there's something nice about a 6th gear. I didn't want to get rid of it if I could help it! haha.

[ferni]

Finally, gotta be happy now you have it back, hope it didn't hurt to wallet too much!

[KamikazeR33]

welcome to last yr!

oh hang on

haha congrats dude, must have felt like one headache after another

g/l for dutton 2 - hopefully its got some highlights televised

[beefy]

Geez what an ordeal.

Glad you're back on the road.

[inark]

lol lets hope this one doesnt brake at the next track event... gees ud be spittin if that happend

[KamikazeR33]

now uve jinxed him...

[doxximus]

nah, that was like saying "break a leg" "break a gear" etc im sure he will be fine, he has the prayers of SAUVIC

GO TEAM!

[inark]

lmao yeah what doxx said

[INASNT]

Nice little tale of voews there snowman.

Same type of weird shit kept happening to me when my new setup was going in.

Gotta expect that with modifying cars, but at the end of the day when you get back in the car and drive it after ages you forget all the problems (until somehting else ***s up again )

[meshmesh]

about bloody time!

Now all you to do is propose a business plan to the Bank on "The economic fundementals of GTR modifications"... and suck'em dry for as much moola you can get.

[Downforce]

about bloody time!

Now all you to do is propose a business plan to the Bank on "The economic fundementals of GTR modifications"... and suck'em dry for as much moola you can get.

Other way around, the bank will be sucking him dry.... in the form of interest and repayments

[adznight]

About bloody time....

[heartbrkr]

I know a guy who is an apprentice at hollinger. i keep asking him to hook me up with a cheap gearbox, but he keeps telling me it would be 16 grand.

He tells me you can get some knock offs in asia, but of course they are shit.

[Roy]

I think i liked yoy car betterwith no 3rd gear, may have been my only chance to be quicker the you around Winton

Im getting butterflies about tomorrow ...first time i will have been able to wind boost up and run the car at the track with the TD06:wave: