Mistakes were made, my R34 Story

[MBS206]

The real question is, on some of those wild roads they call highways, how many times did a farmer in an old ute from the early 2000s blaze past you over double lines?

 

Tassie is a wild and really cool place, and after doing a work related road trip there January of 24, I understand why Targa Tasmania is ran there, and is so tough to do well at!

We had a brand new Camry Hybrid that handled quite nicely, and thankfully weren't in an old car, because cresting some of those hills in a 100kmh zone for it to suddenly be like "surprise f**kers, this is a recommended 30kmh hard right turn" wouldn't be pretty. We weren't racing the Camry around, but we weren't slouching in the bends either. But my lord those old farmers know their old clapped out utes, and those roads, as they were absolutely hammering it!

 

You're also super lucky to make it up to Mt Wellingtong this time of year. It's often road closed with snow/ice!

Also, I hope you hit up Salamander Road in Hobart for some insanely good food (I highly recommend the dimly lit Irish pub for a Guiness Pie, or even the bangers and mash!!!)

 

How long did the Ferry take to get across? I want to do a road trip of Tas on my own time, but I get horrifically sea sick, and I don't want me on the Ferry, just the car 😛

Edited August 14 by MBS206

[GTSBoy]

56 minutes ago, MBS206 said:

Salamander Road

Was that deliberate?

[Kinkstaah]

Actually everyone on the roads was really well behaved. The only person that did any minor tailgating was a local hoon in a Turbo Focus. Unfortunately we weren't going the same way so there was no grand initial D touge battle.

Lots of people pulled over and let me through. The amount of "Hey man nice car, omg skyline, nice 34 man woo" was suprising. Like really suprising. Like almost annoying. My partner was obviously surprised, she'd never seen anyone in the real world point out the car/like the car/want to chat about the car before, so to have like 3 people per day mention it was notable, I could finally say SEE? SOMEONE THINKS THEY'RE COOL.

Everyone was also pretty suprised about the weather. Every day was dry and about ~13-14C. Mount Wellington had a sign that said they close the gates at 9pm and I was heading up there at about ~7:30. It was VERY apparent that conditions were getting significantly worse by the minute on the way up and down. The road on the mountain was terrible though, it's no driving road. I have various suspension related questions now. Luckily it was only about 20 minutes from where we were staying to the top of the mountain as said Google maps.

We only had the 2 nights in Hobart. We went to the Farm Gate Market though which was really good - And went down to the Hastings Thermal springs/caves down there during the day. I'd definitely be up for going back again, so luckily there's a few more sights yet to see. Didn't get to do the west coast/queenstown/cradle mountain so this was supposed to be a 'scouting' trip anyway of sorts if I were to one day do/take part in/organize a more car-focused trip.

As for the boat, it wasn't bad. Well it was bad, but not in the way you're thinking. We did the night trip which leaves at 6:45 (though you have to be there ~2 hours earlier) and arrives the next morning at about 6am. There is nothing to do on the ship. If you plan accordingly and bring a book/tablet/show to watch/charger you can just chill out, take some Travacalm and just sleep through it. The food there is an extremely basic buffet that costs $32 a plate, or $14 for a $3 pizza.

The way back we had a travel kettle and a few different types of cup noodles and made our own tea/coffee in the room. This was a far superior way to do it. At the very least book one of the rooms with beds. I guess as we were in the off season we didn't have room mates. You get an option for rooms with 4 beds (2x bunks) or a room with just the two bottom beds. There's also some option for a deluxe queen bed but it's much pricer. We've been on sleeper trains in Asia before so we figured this is similar (and it was)

[MBS206]

21 minutes ago, GTSBoy said:

Was that deliberate?

That was a fark up, it's Salamanca Place I was thinking of.

And now I'm curious as to what potential slur/gaf I have caused with Salamander Road, ha ha!

[GTSBoy]

16 minutes ago, MBS206 said:

And now I'm curious as to what potential slur/gaf I have caused with Salamander Road, ha ha!

Nah. Was just wondering if you were having a small stroke or if there was some slur/gaf/inside joke that I wasn't aware of.

[Kinkstaah]

So, updates.

I have not washed the car since it came back from Tassie. I've driven it around a bit but not got around to actually sorting it out.

I DID raise it because I cracked the rear bar leaving a hotel which was very distressing. Interestingly, the car drives more compliant now that it's raised a fair bit (5mm front, 15mm rear). Also noticed that my FR height was 10mm lower than FL. So that's now sorted out, too.

I also bought this and had it printed:
https://www.etsy.com/au/listing/1576422240/wheel-and-tire-fitment-tool-universal?ref=shop_home_feat_1&dd=1&logging_key=08f604d9fa4cc383550ba985e6ac85cd5cac7fbb%3A1576422240

Now, if I was smart I would have taken my brake calipers off to actually use this correctly but it was evident enough to me that in the region where the caliper was... there was nothing to hit suspension/guard/arm wise. So I'm going with "it'll be fine" after using the tool to hopefully very precisely measure the wheel clearance.

Also while doing this, I had the very VERY bad idea of jacking one of the wheels/suspension arms up while the rest of the car was on jack stands. I did this to see how the arm would travel. This all was well and good until the car slid off the stands and went through a fence.

So don't do that.

Incredibly nobody was hurt and there was only minor damage to the rear bumper as the car didn't have far to slide, and had 3-4 wheels on it.

The only damage turned out to be the fence itself which was easy to fix, and a little bit of damage to the fibreglass rear bumper trim.

I had already planned to try a touch up paint kit to fix the time I drove into my garage door to see if it'd help in the interim before I get it fixed properly.

I used the Dr Colorchip kit after looking online and seeing everyone talking about it. Yes it's made for chips and not huge broken missing pieces and I'll be 500% recommending it for stone chips after using it for stupid things like me.

This took about ... 10 minutes and looking at the half assed photo the 30 second job I did on the bumper corner was almost perfect just by using the tiny little brush and painting it in. The sealact stuff to remove over-painting is really useful, so if/when I do it again I'll likely slather the touch up paint well over it and then clean it up with the cleaning solution.

The wheels should arrive in a couple of weeks. I am still kinda confident after doing a stupid amount of measuring (and borrowing a set of 18x10.5+15) that they will not fit because I overlooked something, somehow and flew too close to the sun.

ALSO

R34 GTR guard liners do not fit on a GTT. I bought the undertray brake duct guides and had the wonderful problem of them not fitting my intake, my oil cooler and the liners themselves were even worse. Attempting to fit them won't work in general - You would have to cut them up as another poster mentioned as the bodywork is different on the GTT. At least I can try to resell them.

So instead of cutting those up, I cut up my old already-cut-up GTT liners and extended them by using some PP plastic and drilling some 8mm holes for some nissan clips for the 'extra' bit. Because I was happy to cut them I was able to mount them pretty damn forward so I now have some semblance of guard liners, and the brake vents seal the bumper from the bottom.

It sort-of-looks like this, to give some idea - If you look at the GTR and then the GTT this is when I realised that I needed to seriously measure as the inside of the rim area is entirely, entirely, entirely different and could not take any internet measurements for granted. 
 

[Duncan]

jeebus. glad you weren't under it while performing the stunt.

Also thanks for the link to the wheel measurer, exactly what I needed

[Kinkstaah]

6 minutes ago, Duncan said:

jeebus. glad you weren't under it while performing the stunt.

Also thanks for the link to the wheel measurer, exactly what I needed

If you like - I have the STL files so I can email em. There's a couple of gotchas (i.e the holes are not threaded so you might need/will need) to utilize some M3 melt-in threads for some of the points.

However if you want to be super accurate, and are willing to remove your calipers and your SHOCKS it's a really good tool. You also might need to scale the part that measures the tyre width a bit wider. It defaults to a 7.5in tyre and I mean who is running that. Luckily with the magic of CAD this is very easy to rescale.

[The Bogan]

Take the fall as a warning sign for future endeavours 

Stay safe mate