Jump to content
SAU Community

R33 as a weekend track racer. Any good?

CrazyNuts
 Share

Recommended Posts

JCMarshall_Law Proficient

JCMarshall_Law

Posted
Posted

I have mine for a while now and I take to track days about 3 times a year, personally I think the 33 is a great car for daily driving and a few fun track days.

Just spend $1000 on the whiteline handling kit and polyurethane (spelling?) bushes all round. Get decent brake pads and keep the car in good condition and you will have a really fun and reliable track car.

When I bought mine, I was thinking I would spend money on getting more power but after my first track day my cash has gone into handling - much more rewarding I think. Having said that I still plan on doing the intercooler, Power FC, boost controller.

So far I have got Bilstien shocks and springs (damping adjustable up front), front and rear strut braces, whiteline swaybars, polyurethane radius rod bushes, 17" wheels with 235 falcons and bendex ultimate pads all round. Engine mods are just the basic exhaust, pod filter and grounded boost solenoid to give 7psi. All this makes a fun track car and I keep up with skylines with 40kW more power but standard suspension.

I'm just planning on getting a new set of dba4000 front rotors and pineapples (rear subframe bushes) then I'll move onto the engine.

Trust33 Grand Master

Trust33

Posted
Posted

Have another drive of your friends r33 and get another veiw of it.Boost that is.Cause you wont get the turbo to spool quicker than the stockie unless you downgrade.So when you do upgrade the turbo you can kiss your dreams of earlier spoolup.But having said that you could allways throw in a set of cams,or just make do with what you have got with whatever turbo you choose.

R33's are quick and honestly unless you know how to controll drift/oversteer you wont want that much more power to start with unless your suspension setup is an equal match for driver and vehicle.

The mods you have listed are a good power upgrade for the 33.The pfc is a must if you want any hope of making 200rwkw.

Because as you probably have allready have read the stock ecu will run the fuel maps dangerously lean when upping the boost with the above listed mods.

HAPPY BOOSTING :)

CrazyNuts Apprentice

CrazyNuts

Posted
  • Author
Posted
R32's make better track cars..

I don't want to get an older car than 10 years. Plus i don't really like the look of the R32

I think a stock R33 with suspension mods will suit me fine. I don't want to build Gondzilla...i just want something fun.

When i DO get a dedicated track car, i will be looking at a R32 GTR and mod the shit out of that instead.

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share
Go to topic listing


  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • Turbodoc
      Noobie Stagea owner..

      By Turbodoc · Posted

      Hey Dave, welcome aboard! Good to see another soon-to-be Stagea owner here. The wagons are awesome — plenty of space, still got that Skyline DNA, and loads of potential if you’re into mods. Definitely post up pics when you get it, everyone here loves seeing new builds. What model/year are you looking at?
    • GTSBoy
      Duncan's V37.......race car?

      By GTSBoy · Posted

      See if you can thermal epoxy a heatsink or two onto it?
    • Duncan
      Duncan's V37.......race car?

      By Duncan · Posted

      The other problem was one of those "oh shit we are going to die moments". Basically the high spec Q50s have a full electric steering rack, and the povo ones had a regular hydraulic rack with an electric pump.  So couple of laps into session 5 as I came into turn 2 (big run off now, happily), the dash turned into a christmas tree and the steering became super heavy and I went well off. I assumed it was a tyre failure so limped to the pits, but everything was OK. But....the master warning light was still on so I checked the DTCs and saw – C13E6 “Heat Protection”. Yes, that bloody steering rack computer sitting where the oil cooler should be has its own sensors and error logic, and decided I was using the steering wheel too much. I really appreciated the helpful information in the manual (my bold) POSSIBLE CAUSE • Continuing the overloading steering (Sports driving in the circuit etc,) “DATA MONITOR” >> “C/M TEMPERATURE”. The rise of steering force motor internal temperature caused the protection function to operate. This is not a system malfunction. INSPECTION END So, basically the electric motor in the steering rack got to 150c, and it decided to shut down without warning for my safety. Didn't feel safe. Short term I'll see if I can duct some air to that motor (the engine bay is sealed pretty tight). Long term, depending on how often this happens, I'll look into swapping the povo spec electric/hydraulic rack in. While the rack should be fine the power supply to the pump will be a pain and might be best to deal with it when I add a PDM.
    • Duncan
      Duncan's V37.......race car?

      By Duncan · Posted

      And finally, 2 problems I really need to sort.  Firstly as Matt said the auto trans is not happy as it gets hot - I couldn't log the temps but the gauge showed 90o. On the first day I took it out back in Feb, because the coolant was getting hot I never got to any auto trans issues; but on this day by late session 3 and then really clearly in 4 and 5 as it got hotter it just would not shift up. You can hear the issue really clearly at 12:55 and 16:20 on the vid. So the good news is, literally this week Ecutek finally released tuning for the jatco 7 speed. I'll have a chat to Racebox and see what they can do electrically to keep it cooler and to get the gears, if anything. That will likely take some R&D and can only really happen on track as it never gets even warm with road use. I've also picked up some eye wateringly expensive Redline D6 ATF to try, it had the highest viscosity I could find at 100o so we will see if that helps (just waiting for some oil pan gaskets so I can change it properly). If neither of those work I need to remove the coolant/trans interwarmer and the radiator cooler and go to an external cooler....somewhere.....(goodbye washer reservoir?), and if that fails give up on this mad idea and wait for Nissan to release the manual 400R
    • Duncan
      Duncan's V37.......race car?

      By Duncan · Posted

      So, what else.... Power. I don't know what it is making because I haven't done a post tune dyno run yet; I will when I get a chance. It was 240rwkw dead stock. Conclusion from the day....it does not need a single kw more until I sort some other stuff. It comes on so hard that I could hear the twin N1 turbos on the R32 crying, and I just can't use what it has around a tight track with the current setup. Brakes. They are perfect. Hit them hard all day and they never felt like having an issue; you can see in the video we were making ground on much lighter cars on better tyres under brakes. They are standard (red sport) calipers, standard size discs in DBA5000 2 piece, Winmax pads and Motul RBF600 fluid, all from Matty at Racebrakes Sydney. Keeping in mind the car is more powerful than my R32 and weighs 1780, he clearly knows his shit. Suspension. This is one of the first areas I need to change. It has electronically controlled dampers from factory, but everything is just way too soft for track work even on the hardest setting (it is nice when hustling on country roads though). In particular it rolls into oversteer mid corner and pitches too much under hard braking so it becomes unstable eg in the turn 1 kink I need to brake early, turn through the kink then brake again so I don't pirouette like an AE86. I need to get some decent shocks with matched springs and sway bars ASAP, even if it is just a v1 setup until I work out a proper race/rally setup later. Tyres. I am running Yoko A052 in 235/45/18 all round, because that was what I could get in approximately the right height on wheels I had in the shed (Rays/Nismo 18x8 off the old Leaf actually!). As track tyres they are pretty poor; I note GTSBoy recently posted a porker comparo video including them where they were about the same as AD09.....that is nothing like a top line track tyre. I'll start getting that sorted but realistically I should get proper sized wheels first (likely 9.5 +38 front and 11 +55 at the rear, so a custom order, and I can't rotate them like the R32), then work out what the best tyre option is. BTW on that, Targa Tas had gone to road tyres instead of semi slicks now so that is a whole other world of choices to sort. Diff. This is the other thing that urgently needs to be addressed. It left massive 1s out of the fish hook all day, even when I was trying not too (you can also hear it reving on the video, and see the RPM rising too fast compared to speed in the data). It has an open diff that Infiniti optimistically called a B-LSD for "Brake Limited Slip Diff". It does good straight line standing start 11s but it is woeful on the track. Nismo seem to make a 2 way for it.
×
×
  • Create New...