R33 Strut Brace

Not exactly a challenge, but managed to get around to fitting the new Cusco Strut Brace to Ms Skyline today.

After removing the old one I spent a good half hour with the paint renovator and polish cleaning up the towers. Fitting is just four bolts (which I can just about cope with!).

The end result was not startling actually and I would go so far as to say it's a bit samey. What with removing like for like. However it is slightly more glamorous and she is a very stylish girl.

Previous Strut Brace

New and Improved!

Return to the fold

I had a mid life crisis (LOL) and have not done a great deal with the car lately.. Apart from drive it of course! Although the UK seems to be particularly wet at this time of year and is enough to dampen any ones enthusiasm!

I have yet to fit my lovely old/new strut brace and hopefully will bash that out this weekend! Bet you all can't wait to see that.

More interestingly and scheduled for the end of the summer (so I can't enjoy it) I have laid hands on (and paid for) a nice HKS turbo kit. Plus some rather sexy camshafts. I find this exciting, as this is where I will stop the major modifications/improvements. Anything more would be silly and ruin what is in effect a lovely 'road car'.

I also managed to get a vented bonnet, but after some thought I ditched this idea as the car was moving away from where I wanted it to be. I will also resist the urge for a black complete respray as I quite like her faults just the way they are. However I will promise myself to have yet another go at the front splitter, which again for a short while I was tempted to abandon in favour of the Nissan style 'overiders'. I call them overiders, you can call them what you like!

How not to pass safely - Nissan GT-R crash

Not to glorify mental driving habits but here is a little gem I picked up on the web, showing just how crazy mad some folk can be.

I don't think that the camera angles tell all. If you look carefully the GT-R passes the slower car on the inside, clips a parked car and loses a wheel. After that it's carnage.

My two personal favourite parts are of the wheel hitting the forward facing car, knocking off it's number plate and of course... The woman in the white trousers... Well, I am only but flesh and blood...

Enjoy.

Upcoming Events for July

Skyline Owners Club - Berkshire

Where: Bird in Hand, Bath Road, Knowl Hill, Berkshire
When: 14th July 2011

Reading Monthly Jap meet

Where:  Reading Retail Park, Madjeski Stadium (off Junction 11 M4)
When: 19th (Every third Tuesday of month) July.

GTST Spec 2 Front Grill

Even when I feel worn out and low I still seem to find time to chip away at the car (sometimes literally). So it was a surprise when I stumbled across a genuine Nissan Spec 2 front grill on ebay.

It was listed as a GTST front grill and nothing more than that. Looking at it I had my suspicion that it may be the mystical often wanted, never found 'traditional' grill of the Skyline. Surely it would not be advertised in such a way, as the casual observer would never guess that it was for anything other than a Spec 1 and even then it looked way to tatty for the opening bid.

Anyway I decided to have a go and armed my bid sniper software with a reasonable amount (always scares me using it when I 'really' want something!)  and I managed to grab it for the sum of £29.

So what exactly had I got? Yes it was a spec two grill and most of it was still present. Two of the lower lugs had rather crudely been cut away. The plastic poorly painted in gun metal grey and the mesh painted badly with thick glop. The all important 'S' logo was just in a terrible state having a thick coat of black paint on it and damaged in areas where glue had been sloppily applied to affix it the the grill itself.
Still, like a challenge me...

Started out with the 'S' logo. I knew I was going to lose definition of the 'outline' around the 'S' itself, although I accepted that I would have to live with this. As standard these would have come in the colour red. I set to work with scalpel and sand paper cutting away the thick bad parts and finally sanding back the good. I counted in total three layers of paint going back to what was left of the original red. The plastic had been damaged in places with the glue burning into it. I can only assume this was like a modellers plastic adhesive and whoever did it was a bit daft. I filled the damaged areas as best I could and then sanded the 'S' back to an acceptable shape.

I actually went with a bronze enamel on the paint finish with a couple of layers of lacquer and although tempted to just give it a little more effort. I decided that it may cross over from job well done to load of old crap.

The plastic surround was a little more mundane and consisted of hours of patient sanding. There are many annoying corners to work around. this was then painted on the outside with KH3 Nissan black and given a couple of coats of lacquer. Internally I used Wayside adhesives plastic 'effect' paint. This looks like a plastic finish and dries a Matt black. Additionally I sprayed all the brackets in their plastic paint to 'refresh' them.

The wire grill/metal surround I sent to Thatcham Powder (see posts) coat to struggle with. They chickened out on grit blasting and hand prepped the front faces, it was then given a powder coat of satin black.

Assembly of the grill was still a bit of a balls ache. I had to use some  strong double sided tape to hold the front of the mesh in position on the grill. I then ran a bead of glue from a hot glue gun to keep it there! I know, I'm as bad as the last idiot that owned it!

I had never fitted a grill to a spec two before. I could see that there were push clips which lock into place with a curious square lug on the back. As the grill had some missing I got hold of a old spec 1 grill and removed them from there. Basically gripping the front of the grip, pushing and twisting!

A pair of long nose pliers removed my existing spec 2 grill quite easily. Many people had said how hard this would be.. It's not hard at all and I can only assume that they use brute force and ignorance.

Fitting the new grill was just... too easy and an anti climax. It simply pushed into place.

The result I find pleasing to the eye, delightful in fact and add's a little beauty to the world.

No More 'hole!'

Custom S badge.. made of filler and good hopes

40th anniversary Skyline four door

I saw this on Ebay and grabbed the pictures. It is interesting to me as you don't see many Skylines unmolested, certainly not to this degree!
I know some of you will have seen these but it was new to me!

This is a S reg making it a 98/99 vintage. The look of the car is very sedate in my opinion, with the boot spoiler having vanished and different rear end configuration.

Looking at the front sides you can see it has the blue and white GT badges showing it is a 2 litre non turbo.

It also has the uber cool indicator/fog light and grill configuration in the front bumper (as a four door). For interested parties, these do fit a spec two bumper perfectly. Makes me wonder if the front grill would also be an option on a two door spec 2. 

One other point of note is obviously the interior is very different from a spec 2, although I don't know if this was as a 40th edition or because it is a four door. If you look you can see the 40th badging on the seats and C pillar (first picture).

Currently it is fetching little money on line and although a rather lovely example of a Skyline would we really want to own it? LOL although would certainly be interesting to see it in the flesh.
Note I'm not advertising it or recommending it for sale. It's just a curiosity that some may not have seen.

Modified Live! Brands Hatch 2011

Modified Live shows are held at regional race circuit venues taking place around the UK which are run to gather and celebrate all things Modified. Designed entirely to breath new life into the aftermarket modifying scenes and to give a welcome home to the guys and girls that share the same underlying passion to stand out and be different.

My Day started early (especially for a Sunday) at 5:30 AM. Happily I had gone to the effort of preparing all the usual crap to take with me (food, map and camera) the night before. So it was alarm, smoke, wash, shave and out the door and I was on the road by 6. Brands Hatch race circuit is a reasonably short jaunt around the M25 about 75 miles each way, I wasn't expecting to see a lot of traffic at that time on a Sunday and I was the third in our group to turn up.

It is quite a big show, although in some respects not all that impressive by the volume of people there, although perhaps I am being influenced by shows like 'Japbash' which are huge. Additionally although there was a very good mix of cars there, a lot of them were nothing to write home about. I did get to find out more about the wider car modding community though and wasn't aware of how many non make specific groups existed. Some of these groups are the strangest of tribes, young, tough men with shirts off and girl 'groupies'. Hair bleached to within an inch of it's life and fat wobbly thighs fighting to escape too tight hot pants.  Judging by some of the tattoo's I can't help but wonder what they will be like when they are older.

The Skyline Owners Club Stand did some swift business with the general public and the cars received a lot of attention, although we did have a very good area to display in and were not (as in most cases) shoved into a corner. We were parked up opposite a bank of trees (alas not offering us shade) these were shedding fluff like snow, which was catching on the breeze and generally blowing about. Of course the high polish of the cars attracted this stuff and we soon had a display of ever so slightly furry Skylines.

The weather remained sweltering hot and it was difficult in the afternoon to go for a walk without feeling like you were crossing the desert. Although a few emergency ice creams helped keep me going (the ones with a bit of chocolate flake in!). I drank plenty of pop and found that surprisingly things do stay lovely and cool in the boot of the car!

I did watch a bit of drifting, although the track action isn't all that exciting as no one actually races each other and it is all based 'on the clock'. Drifting although fun to watch can also become tiresome after you have seen ten minutes of it.

I did make a short film of the stand which you can find here.

And took a fair few photos and if you can stand it, these can be viewed here