Ever get the feeling you that instead of cars, it’d be better luck to buy a log cabin in the woods, find a random book made of human skin and read from it? (Evil Dead reference in case you’re not into cheesy horror). Whatever happens can’t be any worse than owning an old Nissan.
RB box conversion all buttoned up. Attempted a test drive and couldn’t find any gear when moving at all. Just a big box of crunches and painful noises. Did some head scratching and looking inside the bellhousing with a mirror on a stick to see the clutch release carrier was too long and not letting me disengage the clutch.
Box out.
Thinner clutch release carrier fitted.
Box in.
Test drive. Now clutch not engaging enough.
Box out.
Spacer behind release bearing.
Box in.
Better but not enough.
Box out. (shake it all about)
Bigger spacer behind release bearing.
Box in.
Solved.
Went on the first long test drive and holy mother of god it vibrated like hell. Could feel it at any speed and the entire car shook so bad. Definitely something wrong here.
Sent the prop back for rebalancing. All good but they did it again anyway.
No change.
Changed the pinion angle by spacing the box up.
No change.
Spaced the box down.
No change.
Sent the prop back to be checked again. All fine. D&F suggested trying a 2 piece just in case it didn’t like a 1 piece.
No more vibration.
To be fair to D&F, they only charged me for the one prop even though they did have it back 3 times, made two props and there was 3 lots of courier charges they paid for. Can’t fault them with their help and advice at all. They were very good at responding to my issue and fixing it quickly. Each time I had the prop back in under a week all freshly painted in a massive shipping box. I will definitely use them again in future.
Finally the RB box conversion saga was over but all that hassle meant I’d missed the Teesside test day in May and now the car had other plans on how to bleed my wallet dry.
On the first successful drive I remembered an issue that started on the way home from Teesside last September. I started with an intermittent steering vibration. It would come and go at a constant speed for no reason and the ferocity it shook varied too. I checked the wheels, checked the tracking, checked the tie rods and ends. All good but it was really un-nerving so that threw the June Teesside day out the window before I’d even booked it. Google eventually suggested it may be the self-centring spring that’s gone weak so I nabbed one from an old R32 GTR rack I had and fitted that which made a difference but not much as there was no guarantee that spring wasn’t weakened or the wrong strength either. Whilst doing the spring change I also noticed one of the rack seals had gone.
Quickly discovered that trying to find an S body rack that’s not shafted or £1m is very hard. Managed to find an S14 one from a breakers yard for a good price with a month’s warranty on it. Turns out that C33’s use near as damn it a S13 rack. The S14 rack bolted up OK but I needed the S14 bushes so had to buy those. Conceptua Tuning to the rescue.
Camera trickery below. They are the same length.
Is that the end? Of course not.
On the test drive for the rack I heard the distinct sound of metal on metal from the rear when braking. Time for some new pads I guess. Whipped the old pads out and found they were Project Mu ones that were absolutely trashed and my discs had a huge lip on them.
OK I’ll bang some discs and pads in. Pads were stock S13 ones but discs……yeah that was a hard one. With the car being converted to 5 stud in Japan I had no idea what brakes were on it. After some measuring and lots of googling in Japanese I eventually found out my discs were off a small oddball of cars like a bottom spec R34, Non-turbo Stagea, Gloria, Cedric and bottom spec C35 Laurel. Couldn’t find anything in the UK for sale so I phoned EBC and they said they don’t do anything in that size….and EBC do everything for everything. My only real option was to buy discs from Dixcel Japan who were the only supplier listing that size of disc or change my rear brake setup to something I could get pads for.
With Teesside Drift Weekender coming up the plan was to bang some new EBC pads in for now, grind the lip off the discs and deal with it at the end of the summer season. Got the first side done OK but the 2nd side was a right chew to get apart due to a seized slider, then I found the piston of the caliper was all wet. Blown seal. Fantastic……absolutely bloody fantastic.
No point rebuilding calipers I can’t get discs for so panic buying mode engaged and by the end of the night I’d bought a pair of R33 rear calipers, discs and pads to replace the lot.
Calipers came from Nippon Auto Spares and the service was brilliant. Ordered Tuesday evening at 9pm, arrived Thursday lunchtime. They even threw in all the bolts to mount them, Run-Max braided lines and they came with a nearly new set of Dixcel pads which it would seem rude to waste so the lot went on and Ill save the pads I bought for the future.
All bolted up with no issues. I cut the lip off the brake guards for disc clearance.
Also I made a crappy sump guard. It looks rubbish but it only took 5 minutes to make, has one job to do and it only has to do it once so I don't care. When it gets ruined I'll make a wider version that bolts up better. Improvise, adapt, overcome etc
Oh and in case you missed it on a picture above. I bought a private plate for it so I had to remake the light up lettering again.
Next up….Teesside Drift Weekender. See you there.....