Slam Panel Part 3 - The Revenge!

Well no, it did not have a revenge on me, I think I have possibly seen too many Jaws films. Although saying that Ms Skyline can sink her teeth into my knuckles now and again!

Continued work on the slam panel today. Flatted back the nice new shiney paint with 1200 grit, even though it wasn't the recommended 24 hours since spraying it, I decided that this was more of a guideline rather than a hard and fast rule... I can be patient... Okay no I wasn't!

It did make me slightly nervous to flatten all of my beautiful black gloss, but hey ho, in for a penny and all that. So after the regulation two minutes shaking I applied two coats of clear laquer leaving 15 minutes between coats.

The finish (for me) is lovely... Although it's very black compared to it's surroundings, this will be fine when all the bright work is replaced.

Finished Slam Panel

I also worked on a couple of the nasty galvanised brackets and sprayed them with a special plastic finish paint. This is textured and dries a matt black. I used this as to get a good gloss finish is a pain, I also thought it would be a good contrast with the (now) high gloss finish.

Plastic Effect Bracket

Whilst on the subject of bright work, I have been experimenting with some 1mm thick rubber and plan to mount this under the fittings of non important parts to save my nice new finish from excessive marking.

Slam Panel Part two..

Painting... It drives me nuts! Really!

Okay rant over.. Mini rant that it was. Smoothed off the prime coat this evening and gave a generous blast of black KH1 Kuro Black. Reasonably pleased with the results there are a few 'pin holes' where there is probably contaminants on the surface, but not enough to make me want to sand it all off!

Tomorrow will be the brown trousers. I will give the paint a light sand with 1200 grit to Matt it up and then apply some clear lacquer. This is the bit that is easiest for me to mess up as it's hard to know where to stop with the lacquer!

Here's the work so far... Just looks like a lot of black to me! It's there, honest!

What else did I achieve tonight? Well I have had delivery of a couple of black silicone coupler pipes. I must say, I like, I like a lot! I was thinking perhaps to replace a few more whilst everything is out of the car. However it is a pain to order sizes or for that matter measure sizes, especially as all the pipes are off the car. The only other thing to foil my plan for all couplers to be replaced is the fact that one coupler is buried under all the brown paper shown in the picture...

One other thing I may conduct an experiment with is braided hose. Well, self braided hose to be exact. You can buy braiding to cover existing hoses, it looks a bit of a Devil to do though, in fact the more I think about it the less I want to do it. Will put on my investigating hat!

Painting Heat Shield and Slam Panel

So I have dived straight into work on the final touches for Ms Skyline. After detaching all the pipework I removed the heat sheild from the exhaust manifold as this was letting the side down with it's unattractive looks. I have been warned about painting this as the paint can 'crack off' and would leave it in a worse state than it started. Although I beleive that this would have been if the part was painted in 'normal' acrylics, besides the heat sheild is already painted in silver, so what the hell. I naturally went for a rather fetching shade of black (what else!) High Temperature paint. I can't see me having problems with this although time will tell! I also replaced the three bolts along the visible edge on the top of the sheild with Stainless items. 

If you look to the back of the picture by the turbo, you can see the lovely stainless HKS heatshield plate of the 2835 Pro. The temptation is to infill the backing to the logo in black, although I must resist! 

I have also started work on the 'slam panel' at the front of the car. I know to do it 100% proper I could have removed the fan and headlights. Naturally I have gone for the easy option here! Sorry to all purists out in the world!

No, I'm not going for a fetching shade of grey! This is just the prime coat, the finish will be just plain boring black, the same as the car. Naturally I want to get this out of the way as quickly as possible, with as little mess and fuss as I can get away with.

A Win of sorts..

Well Ms Skyline is back, alas not without a healthy dose of drama! What should have been a straight forward job soon developed into a pain in the butt. I dropped the car into the garage on Saturday morning, the plan being that the work would be done and the car on the dyno by Friday. Wednesday and the first problem reared its ugly head in the shape of a cracked exhaust manifold, this was a real problem as where the hell could a new one be sourced. As luck would have it the garage knew of a used item that could be purchased for £50 locally. Result then and drama avoided. Oh that it were, the replacement manifold was warped and would not fit. Giving the garage it's dues they managed to source another from JDM garage, these are probably the most expensive and unreliable source of parts in the UK. True to form they wanted £86 for the part, although I was desperate so would have probably said yes to anything at that point. Giving JDM Garage their due's they did come through and had the part at the garage next day. Although I would still suspect being 'the man in the street' and not 'the garage'. I would have had a slightly different experience.

So with new 'old' manifold, turbo and camshafts fitted the car went to the tuner...

Naturally this didn't go well either and a decent tick over could not be achieved. To cut the story short, the garage had fitted a R34 camshaft to my R33 (approx 1.5mm extra lift).

Now I can accept a mistake, although everyone seemed to point at everyone else. The garage were not happy and I got a distinct vibe that they were upset at having to do the job again. Personally I can't see how I would have been at fault here, as for once, all I did was pay the money, leaving sourcing of parts to them! The garage said that the wrong camshaft was in the right box. Well it could happen...

The correct camshaft was promised for the start of the week. I heard nothing, nothing and nothing. I asked when the car would be going in and was told maybe Thursday. happily this happened and the car did its thing. I took Friday off work to collect her.

I will come back to the tune etc. in a different post.

The car was unhappy cosmetically under the hood. For some bizarre reason I had beautiful bright blue pipework! What the worlds obsession with blue silicone is I dunno, but it has to go! Where the heat shield fits there are two new bolts and the slam panel had been drilled badly to fit these (can only assume the original bolts were lost). There were plenty of scratches on the slam panel too, the bracket to hold the air filter in place was loose, the Strut brace had been tightened by the bionic man, cracking the powder coating both sides and the new pipework for the turbo was looking a bit tired.

So it's all action again in another lurch towards the finish line. I have prepped the slam panel for painting, removed, polished the pipework, removed the strut brace pending painting and have some silicone black pipes and clamps on order.

Have yet to decide anything, I may send the pipework to chrome, if I do that then I may as well do the strut brace at the same time and get the end's re-powder coated. The silicone is on it's way, although I really need to finished the slam panel. The car's tax is due although possibly I will put this off a month and just forget I own the car a bit!

Think of this as an interim post.. whilst I work out what to do next!

Once more unto the breach, dear friends...

'Once more unto the breach' - is from the 'Cry God for Harry, England, and Saint George!' speech of Shakespeare's Henry V, Act III

Why? You may ask is yours truly quoting from a battle where

the breach in question is the gap in the wall of the city of Harfleur, which the English army held under siege. Henry was encouraging his troops to attack the city again, even if they have to 'close the wall with English dead'.

Well it has been a long old expensive road that me and Ms Skyline have battled along. She is after all a lump of metal, not capable of independent thought, just a concept perhaps in my own minds eye. Now we reach the end game, final modifications to her engine. After this there can be no more internal jiggery pokery and she will be all she can be.

Lets look at the bits that are going to be fitted.

Tomei Pon Camshafts

Originally I would have gone for HKS, although for some strange reason HKS UK don't seem to sell parts as such. Just key rings and basically dumb parts. Pointless in my opinion and am not sure why they have a presence in the UK at all.

Changing camshafts help to modify the torque characteristics of an engine by changing cam duration timing and height of the cam lift, there by gaining maximum torque and horse power.

However, when tuning the engine strictly, it should be carried out with the idea of securing effective area of the valve not only by duration timing and height of the cam lift, but also by through improvement of its intake efficiency.

High valve lift will allow huge amounts of air to flow in, yet it can mechanically damage the system and will gain friction loss. Also, wide cam duration will deliver great power at high RPM, but it gives rough engine character at low RPM too.

Tomei have worked to get an ideal well-balanced profile of camshaft and succeeded to give it 1.3 to 1.5 times more effective area than regular camshafts.

Nissan - Skyline - ECR33 - 8/1993-9/1997 - Duration: IN,EX 256 Lift: IN,EX 8.5mm

Reading a few sites I wonder if this modification is really going to make a hell of a difference. Although the user forums usually all conflict with each other on just about every subject, so it has been rare for me to ever take the advice given and usually go my own way (as in this case).

Nettie @ Serious Performance Autos
tel 01323 760076
This is the only car modelling that interests me, a lovely lady holding an interesting lump of metal!

HKS Turbine - GT2835 Pro S

The HKS GT Series Turbos are based on ball-bearing Garrett units and have re-engineered compressor and turbine wheels along with specific A/R and trim levels.

All GT Series Turbos are designed to be a perfect blend of power and response. HKS achieved this balance by first choosing to use a ball-bearing center cartridge to reduce friction along with an off-center turbo design for improved efficiency and flow.

HKS carefully tested Trim and A/R levels along with different inlet and outlet diameters to achieve optimal power. The results of this combination are turbos that not only deliver amazing power, but also spool incredibly fast.

HKS GT Series Turbos are offered with a GT25 (T25) and/or T3 footprint and the turbine wheel is constructed of inconel. Inconel is a very expensive material that can withstand extremely high temperatures and is typically only used in the aero-space industry and on race cars.

HEL Performance Automotive Brake Lines & Hoses

HEL Performance specialise in the manufacture of all stainless steel  brake lines and hoses in over 65 countries around the world.

With over 5,400 stainless steel automotive brake line kits and a large range of oil cooler and stainless steel oil line kits we are sure there will be something in our range for your car.

The most powerful part of your motorcycle is not the engine - it's the brakes. That's a fact! By fitting HEL Performance Stainless Steel Brake Lines you can make them even more powerful!

Can't beat a 'real' photo!

So, there you have it. Camshafts and Turbo. And brake lines thrown in just for the hell of it (or hel of it! lol...).

The car will be in the garage from the 30th September. Not long now...

Nismo Oil and Radiator Caps

Well not a lot to report on these... Will call them screw on mods!

The oil cap came with a nice protective plastic cover over the NISMO badge, which also had a sticky back so it could be placed correctly.

I don't quite know why, but I hesitated before going down the Nismo route for an oil cap. Now it's fitted I don't quite know why I was bothered! I think it may have had to do with seeing such ugly (yes I earned the right to say it) engine bays with this random bit of bling attached.. And judging by the quality of this to those that I have seen I have to say it, I have seen a lot of fakes!

Anyway, working arse about face. I first took the car out for a spirited drive.. So I could get the Oil cap nice and hot. Plus the water well up to boiling... Am sure sensation will return to my fingers any day now :)

Check out the photo's, I think fitting directions are not needed.

It's dark and I'm wearing sunglasses

Well today it started out with me thinking I would clean my wheels and then get on with housework.. This great plan soon got forgotten as I washed the whole car and pampered it with cloths soft and gentle!

I compounded this flaw in my character by then taking the car out for a drive with no direction in mind. I ended up in town and tried a couple of photographs by candle light. It is very difficult to get a decent result with a crappy small digital camera as the flash bounces off everything!

Here are my results...

Nice British Lamp Post

Well it kind of works!

Flash is hopeless.. Will stick to my day job

Anyway, as a result of cleaning up my kitchen I managed to liberate a 'trolly' or interesting set of shelves on wheels. This was left by a previous Mrs Ratt and was home for all the things you use to wash clothes...

Now it is much better used and I keep my few meagre cleaning products on it.

Not as much as most people think!

As you can see I like a bit of Auto Gylm for polishing and waxing. Although like most people I use combinations and won't even begin to bore you with details. Having a black car I naturally have further travel to get what I call a decent shine. Again, car cleaning is personal, it's what works for you.