Finally! The Ottawa R35 crew assembles!

After an eternity of talking about it the local owners finally got together for a cruise.  I'm also proud to say that for a change it is not me organizing this but a young man by the name of Adrian who took the initiative to set it up and get people to show.  So nice to just be a participant for a change.  

We met at 8am at the Ottawa Trainyards Starbucks, warmed up on coffee (it was 10 degrees Celsius) and chatted while everyone showed up, then went for a nice rip through downtown Ottawa along Rideau St. to Gatineau Park.  6 cars participated: Travis Hill from Switzer/OB Prestiege showed up with 2 cars (Switzer ClubSport and AMS Alpha 9 time attack car), Bao and his P600, my car, Peter from Hunt Club Nissan in one of their used GTRs, and Adrian with his stunning GMG 2014 Premium wi cinnamon interior.  Weather was chilly and overcast but sitting in my car and following a parade of loud, stinking, belching badass R35s made me all giddy inside.  Yes, this was not an NSX meet, not a S2000 meet, not even a Skyline meet. It was a R35 meet. So much win.

May is OMGZILLA month :)

Back in January of 2004 I started a little forum devoted to the Skyline GTR scene in Canada.  By scene i mean myself and about 12 friends who were interested in exploiting Transport Canada's 15 year automobile import exemption law.  What this law mean is that any 15 years old car that was built for foreign markets are allowed to be imported into Canada as long as it passes provincial safety and emissions tests.  It was a law aimed at car collectors and enthusiasts who brought over the odd Morgan, MG or split window Beetle.  What the Feds didn't realize is that starting in the late 80's, Japan started a domestic arms race of sorts for force-induced high performance cars.  This arguably started with the Nissan 300ZX, through the MR2, Supra, NSX, included oddities like the Subaru SVX and Mitsubishi GTO and culminated in the big daddy of them all, the R32 Skyline GTR.  By 2004 these cars have become legal on our streets and this little forum I started on the back of NEO240SX.CA grew into the 40,000+ members it has today.  

I've long sold the forum to my good friend Daryl Henwood of RightDrive Parts, and nowaday enjoy the freedom of just being a moderator. One thing Daryl does annually (aside from Annual Skymeet) is the GTRCANADA CALENDAR.  As luck would have it, I was honoured his year by having my car sected as the May feature GTR. 

What a difference 1.5 years make

Took the GTR to work today for the first time this year and parked in my spot.  I always enjoy taking pics of my vehicles in front of that plain red brick wall.  

Snapped a pic and enjoyed how she looked.  I thought it would be cool to do a direct comparison of how the car looked in Oct. 2012 compared to how it looks today.  I'm loving the subtle differences visible (front lip, skirt, rear wing, wheels, stance).  Too bad the iPhone 5 didn't capture the exhaust and CF diffuser fin very well.

Godspeed rear wing install

 

Last fall on a whim I decided to purchase the Godspeed carbon fibre rear wing from a fellow member on the Facebook R35 GTR OWNERS CLUB.  Matt just upgraded to a duckbill rear trunk lid --also something I really liked and was also debating about purchasing, but he had the wing up for sale at a price I couldn't refuse.

It arrived in December last year and sat in the basement for the winter.  During that time more group buys came and went for the duckbill and I was really getting buyers remorse and thinking of selling.  I posted  in a couple of forums to see if I could find any buyers but there weren't any takers (probably because I wasn't making much of an effort and didn't even bother posting pics) so today I decided to just go ahead and just install it.

I followed this thread for instructions: http://www.gtr.co.uk/forum/121137-step-step-fitting-rear-wing.html

I opened the trunk and used a heat gun to soften the glue and remove the gray stickers (yes stickers) covering the screws holding the trim cover in place at each wing end.

After removing the 6 Philips screws, the trim was removed to expose 6 more #10 nuts.  Those came off quickly and now I'm faced with removing that @&$#%^[!! centre pillar.  What a pita.  Took almost an hour, a heat gun, a long x-acto blade and some intestinal fortitude to pry that thing loose. After that you unplug the brake light wire on the right stand and voila the wing comes right off.  

I brought it indoors where more heat gunning was needed to remove more gray stickers to expose the Philips screws holding the trim piece that hides more screws that secures the brake light.  Some wriggling and it comes off easily enough.  Everything was reused on the CF wing and then it was reinstalled back on the car.

When I first tested fitted the wing, it seemed really warped and didn't want to go on the oem stands.  Slowly I cinched everything down and it ended up looking great. --like oem but CF with a pronounced duckbill upsweep at the trailing edge.  I really like it.

 

Spring is here!

Last Friday I decided it was warm and dry enough to finally pull the cover off the GTR and fire her up for the first time in 2014.  I have to admit that it's like Christmas morning for me when I roll the car cover off the car. For some reason, just having the GTR hidden under cloth makes me almost forget that I'm the lucky owner of such a great toy.

After a quick victory lap around the neighbourhood, it was time to get down to business.  First thing on my to do list: fluid change.

Oil, filter, front and rear diffs, tranny flush and fill.  Thanks to my buddy at Pentosin, I was set up with FFL-4, a huge improvement over the standard (and pricey) Nissan fluid.  

On my wife's urging, the powerful but noisy Endless MX72 pads were swapped out for oem Nissan ones.  I don't plan to run many hot laps on the track so these will be much more livable and keep my wheels less dusty.  I also swapped out the oem exhaust for a 90mm T1R stainless unit with Ti tips.  There is not much performance gain in an aftermarket exhaust, so I thought I'd be happy with oem (plus keep the car quiet and more in line with the GTR's "gentleman's race car" mission statement) but a great deal came up that I just could not pass up.  I love the sound, the workmanship and of course  the looks!  The bigger tips really fill out the rear openings aggressively.  I'll have Ben Linney at GTC do a retune as soon as it warms up enough for me perform a few 3rd gear pulls.

Next on the agenda was a quick visit to Derek at Autovation to install a new set of shoes: Advan GT.  I picked these up used from Peter Pang of NextMod in Markham.  These wheels were on his show car but became useless once he went with the LibertyWalk widebody.  These babies are finished in what they call "hyper black" but is really a polished metallic gray finish on the spokes with a polished stepped lip.  They measure at 20x11 and 20x12.  I had my Michelin Pilot Super Sports and TPMS sensors transferred over from my old ADV7 deep concave wheels.  I admit I'm such a ADV fan that I had serious second thoughts about doing the swap, but afterwards I was completely sold.  Love the new look, and love the extra JDM tyte points.  The fact they weigh almost 1/2 that of the ADV1 is not too shabby either. :)

More footwork

Ride height.

This is something that seem to obsess car guys for some reason.  IMHO all cars that roll out of the factory is too high.  The ride height is set at the factory to accommodate a variety of market demands (road conditions, the need for the car to work well year round and not to allow the tires to rub the bodywork in extreme conditions causing damage to the bodywork).  Very rarely are they set up to allow maximum performance or appearance.  Japanese manufacturers seem the worse, Germans the best and the rest somewhere in between.

The GTR comes from the factory with incredible performance credentials. The CBA lapped the Nurburgring in 7:38 at its debut and has continually dropped lower and lower in subsequent updates to the current insane 7:08 (with the Nismo Edition with the N-attack package).  I can't help but think the times have dropped due to suspension black magic and ride height adjustments.  Ride height drops the centre of gravity, allows the car to hook up better, improves aerodynamic efficiency by controlling undercar turbulence and makes the car look sweet.  

When I bought this car the first major purchase for it was an HKS GT570 kit.  This was from a guy in the maritimes who was a distributor with extra inventory he had picked up when HKS stopped its North American operations.  It was a smoking hot deal, made better by the fact he threw in H&R springs for free.  These springs dropped the car an inch all around for an aggressive slammed look.

Before:

After:

Springs are nice if you just want a drop you can live with and not lose the car's cockpit suspension controls.  I liked the looks but with my aggressive ADV1 wheels which pushed the front tires to the extreme outer edge of the wheel well, I was having a lot of rubbing issues when I went over ANY BUMPS on the road.  It was so bad I started looking into new wheels that had more negative offset to bring the wheels deeper into the well.  I eventually removed a couple of wheel well liner screws in the 10 and 2 o'clock position to stop the rubbing but big dips still sucked.

After 4 months I had enough, bit the bullet an ordered the KW sleeve kit.

It's amazing what the change in spring rate and careful ride height adjustment will do. The car rides comfortably and feel noticeably tighter on turn in than stock and eons better than the H&Rs.  Never looked back and highly recommend this for anyone.  The best part was I am able to get the car corner balanced and dialled in a very useable (and mature) look to the car.

Final results:

Performance done, now to address how she looks!

I love the stock looks of the GTR. it's functional, purposeful, mean.  It's not a pretty car, but weapons are not pretty.

I rarely feel that anything aftermarket could improve upon what designers and engineers have perfected in wind tunnel hours, but when you see what's been done to race cars to improve on the original design, you get ideas.  

After seeing some GT1 and GT3 cars in action, I decided I wanted side skirts with the stepped lip.  I also wanted a conservative front chin spoiler. In comes Stillen.  I'm not a fan of their parts in general but their one big advantage is the fact they do a lot of parts in glorious, flexible, give 'em hell urethane. A couple of calls later and the skirts and lip arrives at my door.

I dropped the parts off at Fiore at S&G Autobody and $300 later they return in perfect oem gray to match the rear valence.

Before:

After:

Interior:  

The worst thing about CBA (early generation cars) is the ugly rubber trim around the switchgear and center hvac controls.  My good friend Daryl at RightDrive parts is also the exclusive Canadian dealer for RSW carbon parts from Japan (www.carbonart.ca).  He set me up with the perfectly form fitting pieces that fit like oem.  I like these over what's offered on EBay due to the fact the cut outs for the buttons on the centre console are so precisely done you have holes for each individual rectangular button.  To me, that's a sign of craftsmanship.