0R10N

^^ done that many times in the past, but kinda hard/pointless now as WOFs on both cars have expired

also dunno how many times I've said it, but the coupe is too dangerous to drive on the open road with the super hard springs of ball touching. Motorway cruising and low speed driving around town is ok, but forget about taking it on our wonderful potholed state highways/B-roads.

Just about everyone who's been for a cane in the coupe has come away complaining about how shithouse the ride quality is.

New square wheels = awes as. Fully worth it I erckon :F

Yer it could go a bit lower but still looks nice at the current height.

gsduhfsduih

Attempted to swap CAS's this weekend, gave up after 3 hours of cunting around under both cars, swearing my head off etc. Broke my socket set too.

srsly, whoever decided to locate the dizzy directly under the intake manifold needs to be shot

FJ20 FTMFL.

on the flip side, might be able to score a transporter and a tow vehicle for teh weekend, so there's a fair chance you'll be seeing me at the OS Nats photoshoot. No cruise for me, don't want to get wanged for no WOF/A-rego.

chuck the coupe springs in and wheels on while ya at it

Got a plan in mind for the coupe springs, gonna get some copies made with less harsh rebound and kg/mm ratings, current ones = ball touching.

man, fuck those early 80s interiors always make my eyes water

Looks like a massive great block of cheese, but in a good way!

Would be epic if you could make it along for the os nats aye. I wouldn't worry about not having it 'ready' if thats all you are worried about

Could still make it down if I trailered the coupe, and hoped like fuck no cops decided to give me the eye if I decided to cruise round in the convoy on teh saturday. (No WOF, A-rego, wrong plates)

Last time I drove the coupe to Hamilton I almost ended up in the swamp a few times because the car literally couldn't stay on the road basically it's because of the stupid shitty springs vs. stupid shitty road surface.

I got my other springs all ready to chuck in but what's really holding me back from taking the coupe to the OS Nats is the lack of WOF. Long story short, car can't be WOFed at the current ride height because the rails are only 65mm above the ground. Scored a dodgy last time, but the Arab cunt I went to has disappeared and my regular mechanic won't go near it with a barge pole until I fix the height

Also my SSR rims probably won't be here before midway thru July, I want to fit the springs and wheels all at once to save time and cash.

And of course my sedan is dead, no CAS means no engine go. Since its hiluxed on those rubbish Cobras = ftl.

sometimes I view it as a massive fucking comedy of errors, but it ain't all bad really. Just needs TIME

eventually hoping to have at least one of the wedges respectable enough to display at shows and other events etc.

OS Nats would have been a good event to aim for, but too much bullshit happened in the first half of the year (had one of my cars stolen, mainly) that all my deadlines kept slipping further and further into the future Next year perhaps.

Hehe, don't worry folks, I'll be un-hiluxing the 4dr eventually. Looks too awkward and rude at its current ride height

Are any parts from teh Optical CAS in the L-series switchable with the FJ? I have an optical dizzy or two here I can look at if you wanted to get some specific pictures and/or part numbers/casting marks of what you're looking to replace.

The optical senders are the same as far as I know, but the rotary disc (the one on the dizzy shaft with all the grooves cut into it) will be different due to 4cyl vs. 6cyl.

according to one of the guys at Petroject there are two types of CAS that are suitable for the FJ, difference is in the way they bolt/screw to the dizzy housing. I should probably pull the dizzy off the sedan and take it down to my mechanic, but it's in a super cuntofski of a place - srsly, whoever decided to locate it directly under the intake manifold needs to be shot

sup Jeff.

And yeah, Laser TX3 turbo. Familia in disguise

Churs all round for the comments folks

As for the Yahoo Japan thing, it deserves a thread of its own really. The biggest problem with my mate extending the 'business' to cover more people is the whole issue with bidding. Basically he'd have to work out a system whereby the interested buyer specifies a top bid, pre-pays that amount to him plus commission, then if the auction is won shipping is added on top of that which you're then required to pay. In my experience the best way to do it is to specify your max bid and be prepared to pay up to 20% extra on top of that amount in case some cunt shills you at teh last second.

IMO there's still a bunch of "what ifs" to sort out, and let's not even think about how messy it can get if a bidding war breaks out Give it a few months I reckon, maybe I'll sit down and hammer out some ideas with him one night, or one of you guys might even come up with a mint ordering process or something!

but if anyone is honest-to-god serious dead keen on a specific item or set of items off YAJ, I may be able to pull some strings on your behalf to get a one-off order done... a deposit will be required of course, and certain things can't be shipped so might pay to check first.

Otherwise we could form a club account with a middleman service e.g. http://www.rinkya.com but it again ends up boiling down to one person with one credit card doing the bidding, handling all the money transfers and shipping etc.

just so you guys get an idea of costs, the SSRs were 1 yen reserve, my mate ended up scoring them for 12,500 yen (US$120 at that day's exchange rate), shipping was US$260 by sea ($65 per rim) and taxes/commission/handling fees were an additional US$75. Everything is worked out in US dollars too which can be a pain.

yeah if someone wants to start a thread about it, or pitch some ideas my way, you're more than welcome to do so.

Just querying something you said, why did you have to check the calibre of the cars on the site before you posted your own?

Ah, was just thinking that with all these people going hard with restorations, stripping down and rebuilding things piece by piece etc, a thread about "sticking some new wheels and springs on it boe" would pale in comparison to theirs everyone's idea of a project is different I guess.

Try owning a car that was produced with 100% Japanese mechanicals for an American car company with the intention of selling on the Australian market, while at the same time being assembled and sold brand new in Japan instead...

some days you just don't know where you rightfully stand in the grand scheme of things

Of course one DR30 should in theory be enough for most people, but I tend to do things in multiples (e.g. I also own two TX3 Laser turbos)

So I imported another one. Same year, same RS-X tekamen spec, same early FJ20 engine. Like the coupe I don't really want to mess around with it tooooo much as it would probably hurt the car's value in the long run, but when I saw that it was already slightly tickled I decided I could justify modding it further...

Towards the end of 2006 I spotted this "mild boso'd" 1983 DR30 sedan on a car yard during my daily trawl of all things oldschool and JDM. Made some inquiries and found out the place mainly dealt with pre-1990 classics (link: http://www.nostalgiccar.com for anyone interested) and yes, they were quite willing to sell to the right buyer.

Bonus: all of the OEM stuff came in the boot, so I could put it back to factory if I wanted. How's that for service!

Goodies: 1980s-era GReddy intercooler and piping, Trust adjustable pressure relief valve, oldschool HKS blow off valve, remote oil filter setup, Cusco adjustable front strut tops, and some distinctive Work Ewing III deep-dish rims (15x7.5 front, 15x8.0 rear). The huge exhaust tip gives me the shits, and I might get it changed to a smaller one, but the system itself isn't overly loud nor droney thanks to the JASMA standard. Perhaps NZ should introduce similar rules, would sure as hell cut down on the number of bumble bees teggin' it up with their fartcans (that I can hear from 5km away)

Now for some reason people in Japan love to sack out DR30s to the point of undrivability, and this car was no exception. Thing is, unlike the coupe which had proper springs (just with hardly any rebound), the sedan had MEAN CUTTIES BOE! Only 3 coils were left on each corner, naturally the workshop had a fit when I took it in to be complied In fact the car was so stupidly low I had to pay the Japanese agent an extra 5000 yen for a flatbed/kneeling transporter to pick it up from the point of sale and take it down to the wharf.

The car upon arrival in NZ, at my friend's car yard:

and yep those are 195/60/15s on the rear 15x8s, mean stretch stz.

jesus

I took it for a drive on the day it arrived, and I now know why people say chopped springs are dangerous as hell. First hurdle was clearing the very slight angle on the driveway at the yard, then avoiding any and all potholes/drains/manhole covers/speed bumps. The steering was even more unpredictable than in the coupe, and the left front shock was making all sorts of horrible clunking noises. Finally got it back to the yard in one piece and booked it in for compliance that same afternoon...

Got it back a month later, fully road-legal and looking like this:

Hilux as, lol. Cobra R30 "lowering" springs are rubbish, just so everyone knows. The super stretched 195 tyres on the rear were binned in favour of some 215s, which are still stretched but not as badly. The clunck in the left front shock hasn't gone away, so I think it may be fubar... with the car sitting tall, the Ewings no longer look good as they now stick out a full 2cm from each rear guard.

So they'll be coming off - and will be for sale soon - in favour of some RS-Watanabe F8s Gotta thank my mate who can get just about anything shipped off Yahoo Auctions - and he might be keen to start advertising his services for the benefit of oldschool members...

Have to get them painted up and polished first etc, so I'll be fitting my standard DR30 rims off the coupe while that's in progress.

So... other future plans?

1. Replace optical CAS in the dizzy - a common fault on all Nissans supposedly, makes the car cut out and stall when warm and then you can't start it again for an hour. Didn't do it when I drove to Taupo at the start of the year for the A1GP (thank god) but since then the problem's progressed to the point where I can't drive anywhere without breaking down. So I'm still waiting for my regular mechanic's auto sparky friend to source a replacement.

2. Reupholster tops of rear seats - yeah, sun-baked and perished FTL. As stated earlier I'll swap the ripped driver's seat from the coupe over and get it all done in one go. I'm almost too scared of the cost though, have heard it can be uber expensive

3. Fix clunky left front shock and fit new springs - a new pair of fronts would be good actually, and I can still adapt my Cusco strut tops. Springs are easy, sourcing another identical set to the ones that are going on the coupe will be a piece of cake, or alternately I can get some custom-made - whichever option is ultimately cheaper I suppose.

4. Turbo/engine work - my arm has been twisted into doing this by some over-eager friends of mine who reckon FJ20 + forgies + disco potato GT28 + 18psi = HUGE POWAARRR. Unfortunately I still have two other projects to finish first, so this won't be happening for a while yet. Basically for the foreseeable future (i.e. end of this year - hopefully) I'll at least have all of the teething problems ironed out so I can use the car as it was originally intended, as a comfy weekend/evening cruiser with the capability of carrying more people than my TX3... 4 doors = practical etc.

So yeah, there you have it. Given the amount of money I've spent so far, if it wasn't for these two Skylines I'd probably be the proud owner of a nice 3-bedroom house instead... and paying off a mortgage for the next 40 years. Lesser of two evils perhaps?

and some final photos to round off this mini essay!

Fuckin' mean as red/black striping, makes it go faster

After seeing the calibre of some of the cars on this forum I finally felt compelled enough to post my rides up... but regrettably, being tied up with other projects means I can't devote as much time to these cars as other folks can with theirs Still, I try to do what I can.

So anyway, this is my 1983 Nissan Skyline RS-X. Genuine DR30 tekamen (iron mask) coupe, has the factory non intercooled early FJ20ET with a lower compression ratio and the big housing T03 turbo. Privately imported and complied by myself in 2005 with a shade over 119,000km on the clock and in the last two years it's only been driven a further 2000km. It's all stock standard except for a couple of things detailed below.

The aforementioned non-factory items are the springs, the exhaust and the clutch, everything else is the way it left the factory. The former make the car sit rather low (TOO low for my tastes actually) but the downside is WAY too much stiffness, so the car's handling is lethally bad on our bumpy open roads. The standard adjustable dampers still work (shocks have been shortened to fit the springs), but your kidneys literally start to fail on anything other than the default "Soft" setting. The exhaust is just a simple 2.5" JASMA approved system with a fully functioning catalytic converter and a nice rear muffler, so the fumes smell like lollies and the clutch is a brand new heavy duty item, thanks to some idiot wharfie cunts who decided to take the car for a thrash up and down the ports prior to handing it over to MAF for inspection, they ended up wrecking the original clutch and put holes in both cylinders. The shipping agent who handled all the freight forwarding also reckon the wharfies stole some bits off it as well. Fags.

Had the car dynoed to see what the stocker output was like, it managed 114kW at the rear treads running a paltry 5.5psi of boost (again, standard). Not bad at all...

Future plans... the key word here is "standard". Being a bit of a collector's item I have no plans to outrageously modify this vehicle, but there are a few things in the works:

1. Replace torn trim - the wharfies weren't the only ones to defile my car, some overzealous cabbage at MAF got too eager when steam cleaning/fumigating the interior, and ripped one of the rear trim panels to shreds as well as putting a hole in the driver's seat :x But thanks to a mate with the right contacts I managed to score a replacement one direct off a wrecker in Japan.

2. Driver's seat - Easily fixed. Can just swap the mint one out of my sedan into the coupe, because the sedan needs a bit of upholstery work anyway.

3. Springs - at the moment I'm way too scared to drive the car any great distance because of the springs and their shithouse handling. Too much rebound and not enough dampening means every pothole and bump sends the car heading off in a random direction each time. but once again my mate managed to track down a new set of springs in Japan with the correct rating. Tradeoff is the car will sit about 25-30mm higher but I never really wanted it stupidly sacked to begin with anyway.

4. Rims - the stock DR30 wheels are O.G. and all, but I need to rax them temporarily for my sedan. So with a bit of effort I managed to find some 15" SSR gold reverse meshies going for cheaps on Yahoo Auctions Japan (love that site) through the same friend mentioned above. They're on their way now, should be here within the next month or so and will give the car a nice clean oldschool JDM look

Anyway, enough prattle, here be a couple more photos

Interior needs a vacuum boes

I've yet to meet someone who can actually put their money where their mouth is when it comes to cars like that.

It's pretty much the same deal when it comes to selling old school Jappas (or at least attempting to), too many eager young cunts wanting to kick the tyres OR go for a cane OR find out where the car is stored so they can rax it later, but hardly any legit buyers at all

LHD can be imported and complied as a personal vehicle as long as the car is older than 20 years old when it arrives in the country and the ownership and importation paperwork must match your details; you're also restricted to importing only one LHD per year, and you must own the vehicle for at least six months after registration so you can't just turn around and sell it again straightaway.

Wana sell your grill?

Man, I have a R30 Passage grille like that sitting downstairs doing 8/10 of fuck all (gathering dust and cobwebs makes up the remaining 2/10)

And I got no use for it because both my R30s are tekamen.

What's it worth to you?

haha, shit yeah. My mates and I sometimes have epic Kei car races in Gran Turismo 4, fully modded out etc. One of them built up a rotten little Daihatsu Hijet ute thing and racks up consistent wins because it's so bloody light (and MR as well!)

Kei car + Autumn Ring mini gogogo

Nah man - just gotta hope all the cabbages skip over the boso article because they're too dumb to pronounce it, and go straight for the kei style one

Although done up kei cars can be pretty mean in their own right. Tricked up Daihatsu Mira TR-XX anyone?

oh, fucking awesome... I ain't never going to Mt. Wellington VINZ again then. They flat out refused to change my rego over to EA until I got a WOF.

Mind you the lady behind the counter was a sour bitch anyway, didn't like dealing with her at all. I got the impression she made everyone's life a misery

vehicles on class EA exemption still need a current WOF.

There is no hard "limit" on the distance you can drive to/from places of repair (not that it's defined very clearly in the rules anyway) and it's really up to the discretion of the police officer if you're pulled over while driving on an EA rego.

e.g. getting pulled over at 11pm on Saturday night in town as opposed to getting pulled over at 11am on the way to your mechanic.

^^ Those look like SSR EX-Cs

$1500 is about right, seen as availability of Watanabes in NZ is pretty much zero.

you could probably go one better and get 2nd hand ones shipped from Japan for under half of that amount - I'm currently working through the details regarding this venture, so watch this space...

p..s you can get Wats in Honda (FWD, +35 and above) offset. They're worth nothing in Japan either, just so you know

So this 'mild boso' thing (or more accurately, garuchan) would apply to which of the two following vehicles?

It's pretty hard to draw the line. You could say both are garuchan, but only because certain elements are missing from the second one like the outrageous tailpipes, oil cooler, and funny headlights.

Or you could say one's just 'oldschool JDM style' (another ambiguously defined term that's starting to make the rounds) and the other is garuchan.

/me shrugs

seems to be a small explosion of bosozoku-related posts on various forums lately. Could this be the beginning of something big?

Quick, snap up all the cheap GX71s!

^^ Gimme a couple of weeks to sort out exactly what my plan is and I'll get back to you

fwiw the matching fronts are 15x7.5JJ off+11 (est). Will probably repair them once they are off the car, they arrived a bit scuffed up and with a couple minor dents here and there.

kyteler: I had a look at flipping the centres, but my mate calculated that the rims would end up fouling on the struts so no go there.

When the car arrived in the country it was sacked on blimmin' cutties so the wheels were of course cambered in nicely, but now with it sitting at standard R30 height they look ridiculous. Even at the lower height I'm aiming for they'll still stick out like a sore thumb. So it looks like a thinner rim is required, or else they go bye bye.

(I'm not gonna flarekit the car either so no one mention it! )

p.s. If you want Watanabes, I know a guy who would possibly ship some from Japan for a small finders fee if I asked him nicely... two things to consider though: a) shipping is rape, rims will be second hand

nice thread

Note: PCD and offsets are based on what I've seen while browsing the auctions, and can vary.

Wheel Name: RS-Watanabe Eight Spoke (Type F8 Magnesium)

Size: 14", 15", 16"

Width: 6.0 - 9.0JJ

Offset: -6 to +35

Weight: approx. 6kg each, dependent on width

PCD: 4x98, 4x100, 4x108, 4x114.3, 5x100, 5x114.3, 5x120, 5x130

Wheel Name: Work Ewing III

Size: 15"

Width: 6.0 - 8.0JJ

Offset: -3 to +11

Weight: approx 8kg each, dependent on width

PCD: 4x114.3

Wheel Name: Work Equip-03

Size: 15"

Width: 5.0 - 8.5JJ

Offset: +11 to +30

Weight: unknown

PCD: 4x100, 4x114.3

Wheel Name: Hoshino Racing IMPUL

Size: 15"

Width: 6.5JJ

Offset: +18

Weight: unknown

PCD: 4x114.3

Wheel Name: SSR Longchamp XR-4 (TypeA/TypeB/TypeC)

Size: 14", 15"

Width: 5.0 - 12.0JJ

Offset: -30 to +40

Weight: unknown

PCD: 4x100, 4x110, 4x114.3

Wheel Name: SSR Formula Mesh/Reverse Mesh (TypeA/TypeB/TypeC)

Size: 14", 15", 16", 17"

Width: 5.0 - 12JJ

Offset: -20 to +45

Weight: unknown

PCD: 4x100, 4x114.3, 5x100, 5x114.3, 5x120

Wheel Name: SSR Mark III

Size: 14", 15", 16"

Width: 5.0 - 12JJ

Offset: -lots to +20

Weight: unknown

PCD: 4x100, 4x114.3

More after dinner...

Sorry to dredge this topic up from the dead, but I have a similar problem to Mark except in reverse...

Got some 2-piece deep dish Work Ewing rims here, 15x8.0JJ which stick out wa-a-a-y too much on my DR30 sedan. Was wondering if there was any easy way to convert them to 15x7.0" (e.g. by getting some custom rim centres made up), or if I should just cut my losses instead and sell the buggers