R32 GTR - Where to begin

[Duncan]

Actually to extend on that....the problem is it is very easy to make double or triple the power that Nissan engineered the cars for. If you are going to do that you have to accept that you have to re-engineer everything associated with your decision.

Most of the club motorsport world is much more mildly modified, with people spending a track:broken ratio that skyline modifiers only dream of

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

3 hours ago, Duncan said:

Most of the club motorsport world is much more mildly modified

this... hence I said what I said previously, SMSP nights you see mainly Hondas, Evos, A90s, F80x and the odd VW. The 5 or 6 times I went, I only saw 1x R32 GT-R, and other than that I was the only one in a shit box Skyline.

[joshuaho96]

17 hours ago, Kinkstaah said:

I specifically said buy new performance car because of the use case here (i.e, no track use and fun livable everything/do it all easily if not especially amazing as a drivers car).

Tracking an 80K Skyline and an 80K M2 makes the BMW the obviously more risky purchase WHEN something goes wrong you suddenly can't easily fix it with hand tools and readily available parts that you may have a community of people you know available, or years of your own knowledge on the platform to apply.

There's reasons you see Hondas and Vettes and RB's and Miatas and such at tracks, you can easily hand-tool repair 99.9% of it in a shed, usually with the tools and the skillset of the owner to apply to it.

An i30N is not going to beat a R chassis unless it's got massive problems either.
The old cars can, and still do work great.

The problem is - and always has been - social media would have you believe it's simple and easy to achieve the results you see online. 

People want their car to be like "one of those cool JDM cars" which is the default image people have when they think of  "cool JDM cars"

You are paying 25 years of catchup R&D to achieve. Or the knowledge somebody else has to do it for you, which is big dollar restomod stuff.  The bar has been moved and every R chassis that people see/like/enjoy has 25 years of R&D thrown at it, or is owned by someone who did all that work and has that knowledge over the past 25 years. All the survivors have been progressively resto-modded the entire time.

OR you slowly bring it back to how it was stock. Which is also prohibitively expensive, done for the love of it.

This is what the JDM community is now. This is fine, but "Where do I start?" is either:

1) Don't
2) Take your own slow journey but you cannot compare your progress with others who have had 25 years of R&D and experience building their own cars unless you pay for it.

Maybe I have Stockholm syndrome but working on an M2 isn't that hard. Getting parts cheaply and quickly is hard, but getting parts same day isn't necessarily hard if you're willing to pay way too much for it at local dealers. There's a lot going on, you need to have a build of ISTA on a laptop and the right cable, if you don't have the mindset of "do it exactly right or not at all" you will probably start seeing cascading failures. Skylines are a little more tolerant in that regard. The car doesn't potentially trash itself if you bought the wrong oil filter like a BMW would. Or trash the entire cylinder head and potentially spin a bearing because someone took the anti-drainback valve out of the plastic oil filter cap.

An M2 will also do just fine on track, zero oil starvation concerns, factory brakes are great if you change the pads for a high temp compound + flush with track-ready fluid.

Edited March 5 by joshuaho96

[r32-25t]

You’re all still going on about track cars, he has said multiple times doesn’t intend to take it to the track, 

just stick to what was said at the beginning and do the pump and ecu, it’ll get you enough for 230kw at the wheels and has enough poke to be fun for what you want it for 

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

Leave it stock, once you mod, you can't stop.

[Murray_Calavera]

40 minutes ago, r32-25t said:

You’re all still going on about track cars

Can't help it, its an illness. 

[joshuaho96]

57 minutes ago, r32-25t said:

You’re all still going on about track cars, he has said multiple times doesn’t intend to take it to the track, 

just stick to what was said at the beginning and do the pump and ecu, it’ll get you enough for 230kw at the wheels and has enough poke to be fun for what you want it for 

I'd still recommend rebuilding the turbos too. That will eat up a lot of the budget especially if you aren't willing to put in the labor to R&R the turbos yourself but it's a huge risk to ignore it at this point.

[r32-25t]

7 minutes ago, joshuaho96 said:

I'd still recommend rebuilding the turbos too. That will eat up a lot of the budget especially if you aren't willing to put in the labor to R&R the turbos yourself but it's a huge risk to ignore it at this point.

Why bother? Keep them under 1bar and be happy, I had it for 10 years and never had an issue. once you go beyond that the budget blows out fast and then keeps on blowing out 

[joshuaho96]

5 hours ago, r32-25t said:

Why bother? Keep them under 1bar and be happy, I had it for 10 years and never had an issue. once you go beyond that the budget blows out fast and then keeps on blowing out 

My R33 never ran more than stock boost but it was unclear whether the turbos would last. Maybe OP's car is less of a question mark but for my stock turbos had over 175k km on them + 25 years of use. That's a very long time to hope nobody has ever accidentally put physical shock through them, no debris in the exhaust gas stream, no boost leaks that could cause the compressor to spin faster than it otherwise should, no oil coking in the journals, no wear scars for any reason, etc. You could pull the turbos and disassemble to inspect/overhaul as needed but for that kind of effort you may as well replace the ceramic turbine with something that can take a bit more abuse no matter what you find in there. Stock boost ceramic turbos really don't make that much power either.

[r32-25t]

I think you are over thinking it again 

[Predator1]

7 hours ago, r32-25t said:

Why bother? Keep them under 1bar and be happy, I had it for 10 years and never had an issue. once you go beyond that the budget blows out fast and then keeps on blowing out 

Regardless, its peace of mind swapping the factory twins for something else. Personally if it was me:

Link G4X
Additional sensors for engine protection
Twins
Oil pump mods(maybe throw extension to sump)
injectors/Pump
Clutch
Exhaust
Oil Cooler
Good pads/suspension

Should be good for 3-350kw depending. Granted thats closer to 15k but still.
 

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

$20K would be a more realistic number with a good amount of DIY.

Parts these days all have David Jones price tags on them.

[joshuaho96]

38 minutes ago, r32-25t said:

I think you are over thinking it again 

I subscribe to the M539 restorations approach to car maintenance and modification, maybe not as necessary on these cars but I have seen what underthinking does. Genuinely the number of trashed RBs I've seen locally is shocking. A local owner is trying to sell a new in box cylinder head for 5.5k USD, 05Us are being sold for 6.5k USD, 24Us are going for 15k USD. I'd rather not risk having to go down that route because I didn't want to spend what, 1400 USD rebuilding turbos? Call it a flat 2000 USD including a ball bearing CHRA.

[r32-25t]

3 minutes ago, Dose Pipe Sutututu said:

$20K would be a more realistic number with a good amount of DIY.

Parts these days all have David Jones price tags on them.

This seems more realistic but the OP has said he would be paying someone to do the work and at 20k you’ve already double OPs budget 

[MBS206]

3 minutes ago, r32-25t said:

This seems more realistic but the OP has said he would be paying someone to do the work and at 20k you’ve already double OPs budget 

Adding in labour, now you've likely tripled it knowing how places like to charge.

[r32-25t]

6 minutes ago, joshuaho96 said:

I subscribe to the M539 restorations approach to car maintenance and modification, maybe not as necessary on these cars but I have seen what underthinking does. Genuinely the number of trashed RBs I've seen locally is shocking. A local owner is trying to sell a new in box cylinder head for 5.5k USD, 05Us are being sold for 6.5k USD, 24Us are going for 15k USD. I'd rather not risk having to go down that route because I didn't want to spend what, 1400 USD rebuilding turbos? Call it a flat 2000 USD including a ball bearing CHRA.

I bought mine when I was 20 and the only mods I did are what I described and it lasted over 10yrs like that before I decided to pull apart a perfectly working car to make it go faster. Do you know what a 20yr old does with a GTR? He flogs the f**k out of it, I’m talking 7,000rpm side step the clutch launches and nothing broke 

[r32-25t]

I wish phones had cameras back then because there would have been some cool videos of it 

[joshuaho96]

3 minutes ago, r32-25t said:

I bought mine when I was 20 and the only mods I did are what I described and it lasted over 10yrs like that before I decided to pull apart a perfectly working car to make it go faster. Do you know what a 20yr old does with a GTR? He flogs the f**k out of it, I’m talking 7,000rpm side step the clutch launches and nothing broke 

I mean sure, but locally I've seen people actually break oil pump gears, especially narrow drive even without hitting the rev limiter. And that was decades ago, locals here are buying cars that have lived that life the whole time and are finding out what happens when these cars have been run hard and fixed on the cheap for 25-30 years. I do think most of the failures I've seen are cases where people "let the nissan out of it" doing improper rebuild but sometimes people really do just get unlucky after 30 years and their "60,000 km grade 4B" car decides it wants to be naturally aspirated now.

[MBS206]

41 minutes ago, r32-25t said:

I wish phones had cameras back then because there would have been some cool videos of it 

They did have cameras. Except the top of the line ones only took photos with 8 pixels.

I still remember how we all used to run around with a phone, a camera, AND a window mounted GPS. 3 separate devices!

That was the era I bought my Skyline too. Before the iPhone 1 was even made!

Oh, and the Dolphin era Pioneer head units. Ha ha ha.

19 year old Matt with an R33 Skyline, doing really dumb shit. Heck, I think I'd already done my first RB25/30DET swap with big high mount before the iPhone 3 (second iPhone) was released!

I definitely had my Twin Turbo Supra too before the iPhone 3.

[r32-25t]

Just now, MBS206 said:

They did have cameras. Except the top of the line ones only took photos with 8 pixels.

I still remember how we all used to run around with a phone, a camera, AND a window mounted GPS. 3 separate devices!

That was the era I bought my Skyline too. Before the iPhone 1 was even made!

Oh, and the Dolphin era Pioneer head units. Ha ha ha.

19 year old Matt with an R33 Skyline, doing really dumb shit. Heck, I think I'd already done my first RB25/30DET swap with big high mount before the iPhone 3 (second iPhone) was released!

I definitely had my Twin Turbo Supra too before the iPhone 3.

In 2003 no one could afford a phone with a camera, most people where more amazed about the phone having a blue screen instead of a green one