New Zealand comp spec street driven RB25 C34 Laurel (pic heavy)
- Thread starter Tertil
- Start date
Chunky Nugget
honkeytits!!
Nice one man, that breakage was a bit fucking flukey, I think matey tempted fate a bit there. Keep the updates coming dude, Ill try update my build thread after the weekend show you what my ones been up to ha ha.
BenRice
Well-Known Member
Cool writeup. Guessing you're going along to Drift South Rnd 1 this weekend?
A couple of mates and I are trying to sort a way of getting down to get down to do a Street Meat day and enter the Street class in a Drift South Round next season. Looking like containering two of the cars and towing the other at this stage.
Clutch pedals and C34's seem to be an issue. To get mine in the previous owner cut it and bent it. It then rusted and snapped.
A couple of mates and I are trying to sort a way of getting down to get down to do a Street Meat day and enter the Street class in a Drift South Round next season. Looking like containering two of the cars and towing the other at this stage.
Clutch pedals and C34's seem to be an issue. To get mine in the previous owner cut it and bent it. It then rusted and snapped.
Ah wow, offers of help and expressions of interest pouring in already; this is exactly why I had no doubt about what forum to start this thread on
That's a shame man, although I suppose that makes them all the more special when you do own oneThey are everywhere in New Zealand but as you said, never done quite right or had enough money spent on them. I've never seen a nice one in my life, and only seeing Takuya's LOWBRAIN C34 and then finding a couple of decent build threads such as yours and one or two others opened my eyes. The second I saw mine for sale, I knew I had to make it happen
Location and cellphone number noted, thanks a lot, much appreciated! Crossing my fingers the worst that may happen will be the need to put more gas in the tank.
Just read your thread, and man no kidding I have ALWAYS wanted to do a VH build, and much for the same reasons you're doing yours. I approve! I've never converted a car from diesel, it looks like you have plenty of mates to help you, and I don't *yet* have any particularly super useful skills such as welding, but regardless, perhaps we should meet up sometime over a beer and discuss builds mmm?
I eat shit and sleep Nissans, and cars in general, so am looking for plenty of new car nut mates to make after being out of the scene for a long time. Just trying not to run into circles of thieves, I know there are plenty of dodgy bogans around that would be cracking me open a beer inside while texting a mate or two to steal my car out of their driveway...
As for street drifting, I know, I know. I use to be just another dickhead boy racer with my dirty old R32 skidder myself, doing stuff anywhere at any time, but in my latter street days I learnt that it really is not difficult to take the street fun out and away from the public, keeping them safe and relatively undisturbed. Lets face it, our city is peeeerfect for it, on one side having the port hills and on two other sides having extensive country back roads no one goes down past midnight.
Next post will be a quick rundown on my previous cars from years past, for anyone interested. One dirty R32 sedan, one not-quite-so-dirty full roll caged R32 sedan, and one too-incomplete FC RX7 I sold JUST after I finished wiring in a Megasquirt by myself and got it running after months of ownership, lol.
It goes without saying, I am super amped for next week. Roll on Monday
Awesome man. Id be so keen on a beer, hit me up with a text on 0279351536 if you ever need help mate. Come check out my flatlined laurel build haha...
Chunky Nugget
honkeytits!!
I fitted an modified S13 clutch pedal in mine, not had any issues so far.
Tertil
Member
Boo!
Have a temporary job with a friends dad as my boss. On the way to work in the middle of no where, we found what I had been keeping an eye out for.
Negotiating on the price as I type this, but the car is a DEAD straight RD28 (diesel) manual, non facelift car, so absolutely precisely fits what I want - a cheap to run daily driver that, when the time comes, will donate all of its removable panels, trim and much of its interior to the weapon. Till the time comes when I can afford nice paint, and can be bothered prepping the weapon for a makeover, this car will serve as my daily driver.
Putting the money forward to buy the thing will mean missing out on a lot of track days for a wee while I think, but I don't wanna let the opportunity pass. Being a diesel, it will probably be a half, even a third of the price to run as the RB, and will probably pay for itself in fuel savings in no time.
Anyway... here in the south island of NZ, we have a small five round drifting event called Drift South. It use to be more spread out over the south, but now four of five events are held here in Christchurch, with one a two hour drive south. Me and a mate watched round one a couple of weeks ago.
This sick KE wagon was my favourite of the bunch, one of its two drivers absolutely nailing his entries, in practice at least.
Well, onto the car.
The clutch release bearing failed again. I have assumed that the reason was the cracked fork putting more load onto one side of the bearing, causing it to only last a few weeks. The thing that worries me is that the bearing holder has also failed somehow, as despite the state of the fork, the bearing holder should have still sat straight on it's shaft. That may be easy to replace, but I'm afraid that all of this may perhaps have damaged the input shaft on the gearbox in some way. I'll find out within 24 hours, when I pull the box out again. We'll see.
Another issue is one that I'm not sure whether I've mentioned here or not. Whenever I am at speed, and the car goes over any form of semi-decent bump, the car gets all squiggly. After inspecting ever inch I could from under the car, finding nothing strange, I was slapped in the face with this.
WELL! That explains everything. As the car sits still, there looks to be plenty of space between the wheel and strut, but as soon as the wheel is raised up in its well, the naturally occurring camber brings the top of the wheel right in. The left looks to be fouling more than the right, adding enough resistance to the wheel to throw the car slightly off balance and make it wriggle around bloody weird. I'm slightly embarrassed that I never realized the car's strange handling quirk was being caused by such a major issue, but there it is. Lucky I found the problem before the strut failed, potentially throwing me right off of the road at 200 clicks
That is the left, and here is the right.
A freaking pain that I'll have to find some new rear struts, as it isn't a good idea attempting to weld these and clean them up, 'cause the heat from that would fuck the shocks themselves anyway. For now I'll either throw the spare wheels on with new tires, or space out the 10's, assuming I can makes room out front of the wheel without pulling my guards, as I think that typically looks terrible, especially on a more-door.
Wish me luck guys! As usual, everything comes down to money, and not having a lot of money means these things take time.
Have a temporary job with a friends dad as my boss. On the way to work in the middle of no where, we found what I had been keeping an eye out for.
Negotiating on the price as I type this, but the car is a DEAD straight RD28 (diesel) manual, non facelift car, so absolutely precisely fits what I want - a cheap to run daily driver that, when the time comes, will donate all of its removable panels, trim and much of its interior to the weapon. Till the time comes when I can afford nice paint, and can be bothered prepping the weapon for a makeover, this car will serve as my daily driver.
Putting the money forward to buy the thing will mean missing out on a lot of track days for a wee while I think, but I don't wanna let the opportunity pass. Being a diesel, it will probably be a half, even a third of the price to run as the RB, and will probably pay for itself in fuel savings in no time.
Anyway... here in the south island of NZ, we have a small five round drifting event called Drift South. It use to be more spread out over the south, but now four of five events are held here in Christchurch, with one a two hour drive south. Me and a mate watched round one a couple of weeks ago.
This sick KE wagon was my favourite of the bunch, one of its two drivers absolutely nailing his entries, in practice at least.
Well, onto the car.
The clutch release bearing failed again. I have assumed that the reason was the cracked fork putting more load onto one side of the bearing, causing it to only last a few weeks. The thing that worries me is that the bearing holder has also failed somehow, as despite the state of the fork, the bearing holder should have still sat straight on it's shaft. That may be easy to replace, but I'm afraid that all of this may perhaps have damaged the input shaft on the gearbox in some way. I'll find out within 24 hours, when I pull the box out again. We'll see.
Another issue is one that I'm not sure whether I've mentioned here or not. Whenever I am at speed, and the car goes over any form of semi-decent bump, the car gets all squiggly. After inspecting ever inch I could from under the car, finding nothing strange, I was slapped in the face with this.
WELL! That explains everything. As the car sits still, there looks to be plenty of space between the wheel and strut, but as soon as the wheel is raised up in its well, the naturally occurring camber brings the top of the wheel right in. The left looks to be fouling more than the right, adding enough resistance to the wheel to throw the car slightly off balance and make it wriggle around bloody weird. I'm slightly embarrassed that I never realized the car's strange handling quirk was being caused by such a major issue, but there it is. Lucky I found the problem before the strut failed, potentially throwing me right off of the road at 200 clicks
That is the left, and here is the right.
A freaking pain that I'll have to find some new rear struts, as it isn't a good idea attempting to weld these and clean them up, 'cause the heat from that would fuck the shocks themselves anyway. For now I'll either throw the spare wheels on with new tires, or space out the 10's, assuming I can makes room out front of the wheel without pulling my guards, as I think that typically looks terrible, especially on a more-door.
Wish me luck guys! As usual, everything comes down to money, and not having a lot of money means these things take time.
Tertil
Member
I'll start with the gearbox, I guess. I'll keep it short and sweet for this one, and let the pictures do the talking.
Something definitely ain't right here.
That'll do it.
Check the colour difference, one being new and the other being less than a month old. Also, note how the back of the bearing has been completely ground away.
These should look the same! Lol!
I have no idea how the car seemed to drive normally, till it got noisy.
Getting another fork off of a mate-of-a-mate, will hopefully solve the issue, full stop.
During the meantime, knowing the new fork wouldn't be available for a few days, I decided to wire tuck every inch of the engine bay that I could, so I bought some nice wire strippers, a soldering iron, 30m of wire and some clear heat shrink.
Engine bay fuse box dismantled, squeezed through the firewall and is getting cleaned up, simplified (to a degree) and re-wrapped.
Next up is putting the gearbox back in and bloody driving the thing
Something definitely ain't right here.
That'll do it.
Check the colour difference, one being new and the other being less than a month old. Also, note how the back of the bearing has been completely ground away.
These should look the same! Lol!
I have no idea how the car seemed to drive normally, till it got noisy.
Getting another fork off of a mate-of-a-mate, will hopefully solve the issue, full stop.
During the meantime, knowing the new fork wouldn't be available for a few days, I decided to wire tuck every inch of the engine bay that I could, so I bought some nice wire strippers, a soldering iron, 30m of wire and some clear heat shrink.
Engine bay fuse box dismantled, squeezed through the firewall and is getting cleaned up, simplified (to a degree) and re-wrapped.
Next up is putting the gearbox back in and bloody driving the thing
nissanr34cal
Well-Known Member
good effort man. enjoyed reading this.
Tertil
Member
Where the hell to even begin! Time for a massive bloody update. I won't bother ordering all of this exactly; I'm sure you guys will get the idea.
I have finished 90% of the engine bay de-loom. All wires ahead of the firewall are as tucked and hidden as is reasonable, with the massive relay/fuse box now situated under the dash. All wires have been wrapped nicely in new, shiny black tape, so it all looks relatively fantastic.
Slaying tires up in the hills is waaay too fun
This happened a month or so ago. After the first pair of tires were slain right to the point of popped-ness, I swapped to a fresh set to have a little more fun with, before driving home. I took the second set too far, and one of the tires was so bloated that the entire car crabbed crazily, needing me to hold the wheel 45 degrees left in order for the car to drive straight (Note: was driving home bloody slow at 3am with no traffic 
)
Story here is, the previous owner/s were lazy bastard/s, and had a plastic t-piece between boost controller and wastegate, with a far too small pipe shoved onto the larger wastegate nipple. This led the pipe to split; problem with that was, the car began completely free boosting, right during a point in time where my boost gauge was dangling around the cabin, unmounted. For what was probably days and days, perhaps near two weeks, I was thrashing the living shit out of the car running damn near 1.8bar!
Further investigation showed that not only were the boost pipe sizes all up to whack, the plastic t-piece was half melted (can't find a pic, sorry
). After buying new pipe and a decent brass t-piece, the car now runs around about 14/19psi, instead of the 26 pounds of free boosting goodness, and 10/14psi from when I bought the car. Good to have it sorted, and not having the restriction of a half melted t-piece effecting the boost levels.
I have to say, the fact that the car seemed to drive completely fine while free boosting helps back up the previous owners claims that my injectors are 800cc ones - seems they weren't running out of juice enough for me to notice. I don't know how I didn't notice the difference in power when the pipe first popped off, but the car bloody PULLS when hitting 26 pound, haha! Having a lot of weight in the car, while hussing uphill, didn't slow her down at all it seemed, and she loved getting all squiggly when trying to accelerate hard in a straight line. Who knows how she didn't explode over those days/weeks.
Had a big power loss along with a strange wooshy noise, found that the bung on my probably-Chinese 'HKS' BOV had come free. A bit of glue sorted it
Here I grew bored one night, and decided to wrap my wastegate pipe in a little bit of heat wrap I had lying about - I was too poor at the time to buy enough to do the whole manifold. I did this in order to protect my wastegate boost pipes and turbo oil feed and return from the wastegate pipe, as they are all rather close to each other. As you can see, my DSR manifold has been further confirmed to be a complete POS. The build quality is absolutely shocking, and it has welds all over it from previous crack repairs, along with a new crack that I will fix at some point as soon as it suits me. Anyone care to donate a bulletproof steam pipe mani?
The pictures tell most of this story. By the time I got money together for a new clutch, the old one wouldn't hold together unless I drove under quarter throttle! I managed to finally kill it utilizing multiple second gear limiter clutch drops, attempting hill top tire slayage Luckily for me, the chromoly flywheel machined fine, if not a little on the slim side, so probably won't be skimmed again in fear of leg-shattering catastrophic failure.
The new clutch is an Xtreme 6 puck ceramic, which I chose purely because a mate could get it quite cheap for me. It seems to bite fine, has a pedal weight that feels completely stock, and, to me, is perfectly driveable considering it is a puck clutch. Win win win with that so far
I have finished 90% of the engine bay de-loom. All wires ahead of the firewall are as tucked and hidden as is reasonable, with the massive relay/fuse box now situated under the dash. All wires have been wrapped nicely in new, shiny black tape, so it all looks relatively fantastic.
Slaying tires up in the hills is waaay too fun
This happened a month or so ago. After the first pair of tires were slain right to the point of popped-ness, I swapped to a fresh set to have a little more fun with, before driving home. I took the second set too far, and one of the tires was so bloated that the entire car crabbed crazily, needing me to hold the wheel 45 degrees left in order for the car to drive straight (Note: was driving home bloody slow at 3am with no traffic )
Story here is, the previous owner/s were lazy bastard/s, and had a plastic t-piece between boost controller and wastegate, with a far too small pipe shoved onto the larger wastegate nipple. This led the pipe to split; problem with that was, the car began completely free boosting, right during a point in time where my boost gauge was dangling around the cabin, unmounted. For what was probably days and days, perhaps near two weeks, I was thrashing the living shit out of the car running damn near 1.8bar!
Further investigation showed that not only were the boost pipe sizes all up to whack, the plastic t-piece was half melted (can't find a pic, sorry
). After buying new pipe and a decent brass t-piece, the car now runs around about 14/19psi, instead of the 26 pounds of free boosting goodness, and 10/14psi from when I bought the car. Good to have it sorted, and not having the restriction of a half melted t-piece effecting the boost levels.I have to say, the fact that the car seemed to drive completely fine while free boosting helps back up the previous owners claims that my injectors are 800cc ones - seems they weren't running out of juice enough for me to notice. I don't know how I didn't notice the difference in power when the pipe first popped off, but the car bloody PULLS when hitting 26 pound, haha! Having a lot of weight in the car, while hussing uphill, didn't slow her down at all it seemed, and she loved getting all squiggly when trying to accelerate hard in a straight line. Who knows how she didn't explode over those days/weeks.
Had a big power loss along with a strange wooshy noise, found that the bung on my probably-Chinese 'HKS' BOV had come free. A bit of glue sorted it
Here I grew bored one night, and decided to wrap my wastegate pipe in a little bit of heat wrap I had lying about - I was too poor at the time to buy enough to do the whole manifold. I did this in order to protect my wastegate boost pipes and turbo oil feed and return from the wastegate pipe, as they are all rather close to each other. As you can see, my DSR manifold has been further confirmed to be a complete POS. The build quality is absolutely shocking, and it has welds all over it from previous crack repairs, along with a new crack that I will fix at some point as soon as it suits me. Anyone care to donate a bulletproof steam pipe mani?
The pictures tell most of this story. By the time I got money together for a new clutch, the old one wouldn't hold together unless I drove under quarter throttle! I managed to finally kill it utilizing multiple second gear limiter clutch drops, attempting hill top tire slayage
Luckily for me, the chromoly flywheel machined fine, if not a little on the slim side, so probably won't be skimmed again in fear of leg-shattering catastrophic failure.The new clutch is an Xtreme 6 puck ceramic, which I chose purely because a mate could get it quite cheap for me. It seems to bite fine, has a pedal weight that feels completely stock, and, to me, is perfectly driveable considering it is a puck clutch. Win win win with that so far
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Tertil
Member
AH F U C K!
Met with some friends for some fun a couple of weeks ago. Show worthy Corolla wagon running a worked 3T, a Holden Commodore running its factory 6 speed LS-something V8, and an RB25DET S13. Later a friend showed up in her RB25DET R32 coupe, too ^_^
We headed up, with my mates 3T wagon leading the way. His car is so damn low that the exhaust scrapes every 5 seconds whilst moving. Someone saw this and called the cops, telling them that a string of boy racers were heading up into the hills, with one sparking so much from underneath that it looked like it was just about on fire.
We parked up, chatted a bit, and then had just a little bit of fun. I then managed to smash an exhaust mount, just as our friend farther down the hill called us all, telling us that there were multiple pigs flying up the mountain towards us, lights and sirens blaring. I pulled over, used a strop to hold up my exhaust, and drove to our nearest exit point in a vain attempt at leaving before the piglets got to us.
I can't remember precisely, but there were something like 4-5 cop cars and over half a dozen cops waiting for us all at a parking lot. After all of us were processed, I got a small fine for failing to produce my licence (lost it ages ago, haven't replaced it yet), and a fine for driving an 'unroadworthy vehicle', due to my exhaust being held up by a bloody strop, lol. Luckily, my tires were still mint.
Funny part is, after asking us what car was causing all the sparks, I pointed towards my freshly broken exhaust and told them it must have been sparking like a bitch before I tied it up - not at all a lie, haha. My mates wagon was left alone, as it was all technically legal.
On a side note, my mate with the S13 got absolutely slammed, as although his car was certified for its modifications, the actual certification plate was still a few measly days away from arriving from the one place in the country they are manufactured. Despite the fact that my friend had spent hundreds towards legalizing his car, and had completed the process before that night, also having all of the paperwork with him, the cops still threw him near £1000 of fines, over a small technicality. Frikken sad guys!
Guess what happened next?
Pulled over again, two hours later. The problem this time was that I managed to get pulled over by a naaaasty cop - unlike the cops from two hours before, who were actually a quite nice bunch of blokes, this one was out for blood.
He called in his 'specialist' mate, who boasted all high and mighty about being a 12 year vehicle WOF (MOT) inspector veteran before becoming a cop. After walking around the car for a solid 5-10 minutes, the last thing he checked was my tires - boom, green stickered, aka defected off of the road. On the sticker, it states bad tires, no bumpers (which the previous cops had discussed with me at length, and decided that it was okay in my particular cars case), and "uncertified ride height (too low)", which is complete and utter bullshit. It IS certified for its current, lowered ride height.
Aaaaaanyway, it was fair enough of them to sticker the car regardless, as I was very much driving around on shredded and bald tires. I got caught, shit happens.
What the sticker means is that I have to go through an extra strict MOT inspection to get the sticker off. More on that another time.
Check this out! Incredibly cheap 40mm roll center and bump steer correcting billet aluminum knuckle adapters! They boast a little over 60 degrees of lock with the right setup, and cost £135 for a pair! (before shipping)
Also scored handbrake extender brackets, offset rack spacers (temporary until I have the skill to relocate my steering rack), and a rear eccentric lockout kit, to stop any potential slippage of the factory eccentric wheel alignment nuts under heavy driving.
My adapters are designed to bolt straight onto S14s and S15s, but also fit my car just fine with a simple removal of the factory lock stops. Can't wait to see how much faster my steering gets, and how much better the car handles!
Next up is getting the car legal again, setting the car up with its new knuckle bits installed, maybe a sliiiight lowering with a slighly raised spring preload, and more driving. Yay, sleep time
BenRice
Well-Known Member
Good to hear the motor stood up to that kind of boost level. I've used one of those clutches before too and they are pretty good value for money.
Am guessing you're going to have to pull the gktech gear out for the green sticker recheck?
Surely it would have been about the same price to get Tomlin Knuckles seeing as though you're in Chch? Even WOF inspectors can't tell the difference between factory and modded knuckles when painted black. Same goes for the offset rack spacers vs rack relocation. The rack spacers bend racks when combined with modded knuckles / that gktech spacer, have seen a couple happen in person and heard of many more. I'm sure Paul would have done a deal for the knuckles and crossmember too.
And is it not worth going along to something like a Streetmeat day? If i had Ruapuna on my doorstep you couldn't get me to leave.
Am guessing you're going to have to pull the gktech gear out for the green sticker recheck?
Surely it would have been about the same price to get Tomlin Knuckles seeing as though you're in Chch? Even WOF inspectors can't tell the difference between factory and modded knuckles when painted black. Same goes for the offset rack spacers vs rack relocation. The rack spacers bend racks when combined with modded knuckles / that gktech spacer, have seen a couple happen in person and heard of many more. I'm sure Paul would have done a deal for the knuckles and crossmember too.
And is it not worth going along to something like a Streetmeat day? If i had Ruapuna on my doorstep you couldn't get me to leave.
Tertil
Member
Yeah mate, been playing the street game since 18 years old, and watching mates play it since I was 16, so pretty use to it all
It's all a part of the Christchurch lifestyle. It is a lot of fun, but I will be trying to cut as much of it out as possible once I can manage to make it to more track days, in order to save my licence and wallet!Product List
They only sell quality gear mate, and for bloody reasonable prices IMO, but shipping may sting a bit too, so make sure you chose as much goodies as you can afford before buying! Their complete billet aluminum CNC'd knuckles look like sex, for damn near the same price as DW knuckles, too
I'm going to ring the two local cert guys and see what they will charge to recert the car, as I've been asked to cert the seats and harnesses anyway by the nasty WOF testing station I ended up stupidly going to. Either I swap the seats out for factory ones from somewhere, fit factory seatbelts, and pull the knuckle gear out every time I want a WOF, or I spend a few extra hundred bucks recerting and keep the car proper legal.
Unfortunately I have no idea what knuckles you are talking about, as I've never heard of 'em before. I'll have to look into that for future reference, although I'm guessing he just cuts and shuts them for more lock? I wouldn't have minded having someone do that properly, but these adapters also push the LCAs back down to level, with the added bonus of pushing the wheel out 25mm, saving me from cutting and extending my LCAs like lots of people do. I'm aware that the geometry will be a bit different, seeing as the pivot point of the knuckle remains in the same place yet the wheel is 25mm farther away, but so far all I have heard about the performance of the knuckle 'adapters' is that they are fantastic value for money.
I am aware that the offset spacers bend racks easily too. I figured I would throw them in until such a time I can get a hold of another rack to relocate, or have the time to pull mine out and have it done. I'm glad I now know of this Paul Tomlin fella, as I'm sure he has done a lot of 'em.
As for the streets vs Ruapuna, it is very much worth it, and I'm sure I'll manage to lose a lot of interest in the streets as soon as I manage to finally get to my first damned track day, lol. So far I have been hitting the hills because until the Christmas break, I had been doing 5-6 days a week, with up to 65 hours each week. I had no time free on any track days at Ruapuna, yet knowing a half dozen cars were heading out for two or three hours in the middle of the night was an easy choice.
When, and how often, are the Streetmeat days, do you know? I was hoping to get the the Drift School day on the 10th, but I don't wanna spend the money booking a slot if the car isn't ready to go by then, as it is three days away as I type this. I want to get a Drift School day in as it is required to have one under your belt to compete in the likes of DriftSouth. Once I am at Polytech doing light fab, I hope to have a LOT more free time on hand, getting myself to more track days, keeping my pockets empty, and keeping me off of the streets as much as possible, to maintain my licence. We'll see how that goes over the coming month
BenRice
Well-Known Member
Paul Tomlin used to compete in Drift South and D1 in his mustard coloured S13, and is rebuilding his car to compete again. Search for Paul Tomlin Drift on FB and you'll be able to get in touch, he has a few photos of his rack relocation too.
He was one of the first to start selling cut and welded knuckles ages ago (even before C's Garage), and two of my mates run them in their cars and love them.
As for DIY pulling the crossmember, this only cost me a decent chunk of wood, some chain and a few D-shackles:
Again, search for Streatmeat Drift on FB to find their page, i think they have a day later on this month / early next month. Jonny Martin runs them, he's a good dude. I think they even run a tyre changer at their events.
Will be interesting to see if the knuckle spacer can be certed. I don't think gktech have gone as far as doing all the required engineering tests or xrays to show no welds / cracks etc which may be a stumbling block. Will be worth asking them if the engineers do ask though.
He was one of the first to start selling cut and welded knuckles ages ago (even before C's Garage), and two of my mates run them in their cars and love them.
As for DIY pulling the crossmember, this only cost me a decent chunk of wood, some chain and a few D-shackles:
Again, search for Streatmeat Drift on FB to find their page, i think they have a day later on this month / early next month. Jonny Martin runs them, he's a good dude. I think they even run a tyre changer at their events.
Will be interesting to see if the knuckle spacer can be certed. I don't think gktech have gone as far as doing all the required engineering tests or xrays to show no welds / cracks etc which may be a stumbling block. Will be worth asking them if the engineers do ask though.