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nice job, would've looked pretty mack-daddy in the two tone blue/silver tho. Those old Laurels only weigh like 1300kg or something, which is 3/10 of fuckall in the grand scheme of things. 028, love the lounge suite rear

arhahrhar - now that gearstick is "off the chain"

nah every package gets sent from the same address/depot in Japan, easier consolidation of resources etc especially since his purchases arrive from all over the country. They must just keep an eye on whatever comes through addressed to him - in this shipment he had a whole shitload of Cusco Evo parts, swaybars, hubs, bearings, and another set of rims beside my own. Customs were pwned though, he went down there today with a manifest listing the actual item values etc (in the case of my SSRs, the auction printout) and they basically released everything to him with few/no charges. Turns out they CAN'T charge a tariff on the shipped+purchase price combined, only the latter, and since the purchase prices on most of the items were piddly small, they didn't bother (legit too, not faked) so my rims are now safely here Need a scrub up, the centres are a bit corroded, and one lip has a small gari scar, but overall they're totally awes. Fucking forgot they only came with two centre caps though so I need to go on the prowl for another two.

yer, pretty much now the kids won't get their black market ritalin Nah, Customs finally wised up to the fact my mate is shipping a lot of stuff direct from Japan on behalf, so they decided he had to start paying tariffs for the privilege sux = he won't be able to start up his middleman service now, so no cheap Watanabes for oldschoolers

FOCK, got a text "your new SSR wheels are at customs, impounded stz" Looks like I'm gonna have to go down and pay a hefty tariff on them

RBF600 = win Just a thought, I've been recommended to use Mintex 1144s over the 1166s as my car sees a lot of daily and weekend street use. The 1144s are a lot less destructive to the rotors, more forgiving for normal everyday braking etc. Might be worth considering if you use the car as your primary mode of transport and only go to trackdays twice or three times a year. the track hack TX3 that I'm building will def have 1166s equipped tho.

Might need to get them to recalibrate the sedan's speedo, it reads 20km/h faster than the actual speed and I don't think it's anything to do with my tyres. ended up ripping the little 105km/h dinger out of the centre console in the end, it was just too painful to bear >_<

Pretty much dude. 'Cept for the fickle shit like the ride heights/spring rates, and the minor repairs needed to the interiors I can't really find any other faults with them. Bodies are virtually rust free, good paint etc, electrics all work and the engines/drivetrains are in good condition. Also helps that I have a good agent in Japanland that knows what to look for when scoping out potential buys. Just need to find the time to fix up all the small niggly things then I promise I'll stop whinging Only 'major' fault so far has been the CAS on the sedan, but from talking to various hamburger enthusiasts on other forums it's a common fault on just about every EGI nissan from the mid 70s onwards

loal was waiting for someone to say that srsly? 25 grand.

yeah ignore me, I'm tripping out

Yah RB are good, even though they took like 20 years to work out the right brake package for my TX3 and I ended up going thru another supplier in the end. Fully going there to get my Mintex M1144s sussed once I've caned the fuck out of my existing Lucas pads. and yeah, they cut them to size from a massive sheet, seems to be the norm for most of their packages. one thing Davy - how you gonna do the zorst tomorrow if you're leaving for Taupo this afternoon?

Too much eh. Let's just say I could have put a sizable deposit down on a nice 3 bedroom house in a good area of Hamilton...

damn, missed out on picking up a set of those SSR EX-C rims off Yahoo Auctions Japan, then next thing they start popping up on various cars around the place

Mate for every awes photo I take, at least 20 shithouse ones get deleted. Can imagine what it was like back in the days of film... get a whole roll of 24 developed and only two photos are worth keeping, bin the rest

^^ 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. 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. 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!

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 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

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. 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.

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

Watanabe spokes tend to be longer, while Minilite/Superlite spokes appear to have a more squat and compact looking design due to a larger centre area around the hub. I just brought in a staggered set of Watanabe RS8s from Japan, cost a mini fortune for shipping though As to which existed first, I was always under the impression that the Japanese copied the design from the British, and then it eventually spun off into its own sort of niche...