My 1999 White Spec R

[PIIPete]

I had this thread in 'introduce yourself' back in 2011 when I brought my S15.

http://forum.s15oc.com/threads/8337-Wannabe-S15-owner

I am starting this thread to update about the car.

I have done a few more trackdays, solved a few minor issues, and this year I have started making more mods.

As in the other thread, I purchased the car from TorqueGT in March 2011, it had been imported and sold at the beginning of 2010 and was part-exed back by that owner. As of Feb 2012 I had done the following:

Removed rear seats and belts.
Renewed standard paper air filter.
Raised the Cusco shocks it came with, improved (fixed) the alignment.
Corrected the alarm wiring.
Replaced blown turbo gasket and replaced turbo oil and coolant hard pipes with braided hoses from Horsham developments.

 

[PIIPete]

2012

Rub down and treat (with Bilt Hamber hydrate 80) some minor strut tower seam rust on the nearside, painted but did not get an exact color match to the white engine bay despite trying several nissan white colours. Its a pearl white car bit the engine bay is a flat white.

Resprayed flaking paint cusco front strut brace blue strut tower mounts, found that Vauxhall Arden blue was a very very close match.

I fitted some completely unused standard shocks from an S15oc member, which had come with his car as spares, his car had Nismo shocks fitted. They were so clean with just bolt marks, it was clear they had been removed from the car at the showroom by whoever originally brought the car in Japan, or maybe did a few very dry not dusty miles, and were sent with the car when exported. I found the car much more easy to handle and much better balanced with the unused standard shocks.

The cuscos were worse than they should be because one of the fronts had siezed threads and so the shock stroke could not be adjusted, they were set just a few mm off the bump stops which were hit with any medium bump. Even without this, the 8k/6k spring rates seem much too high. They were non-adjustable zero 1 shocks and a sticker on the damper units dated them to 2002.

With the standard shocks fitted, carried out another full wheel alignment.

Replaced rear disks and one rear piston and seals with parts from DB power, due to sticking piston and damaged seal.

Checked diff oil level and appearance for piece of mind. Was good.

Obtained some Nissan pearl white touch up paint from perfectrun, at great expense to import. Touched up a few tiny stone chip rust spots on bonnet after careful rub with an abrasive point and application of hydrate 80.

On import, a bulb had been fitted in one of the clear reversing light bulb locations and the bulb had been painted red, this paint had degraded, the MOT tester therefore stuck red plastic over the clear lens to enable him to pass it. This was not that noticable but eventually I researched and found a bright red LED that would fit the bulb holder, and removed the red plasic to get the clear lens back. The bright red LED worked well and passed the next MOT.

 

[PIIPete]

2013

Blueprint brake pads all round.

Was pointed out to me that the wheels that came with the car had a larger centre bore than the hub, so the car weight is entirely supported by the studs and the wheels were only located centrally by the wheel nut tapers. I ordered spigot rings that had to be made to order due to unusual sizes required for the Sparco Viper R wheels.

Replaced all four tyres which were new when I brought the car from Torque GT. Had done 12k miles and all work quite evenly and almost the same front and rear. The first set were Falkens FK452 front ZEIX 912 rears, replacements were Falken FK453 all round.

New battery.

A problem with the other rear caliper meant the handbrake would not work. I got a spare pair of used S15 rear calipers from japperformance parts in crawley and fitted one.

At the end of 2013 I purchased a lot of used parts from japperformance:

Fujitsubo RM-01A catback
aftermarket downpipe,
sports cat,
turbo elbow,
cusco slam panel,
R33 GTR brembo calipers+disks+pads,
Skyline rear knuckles.
R33 GTR Master Cylinder

I fitted the GTR front brakes with new pagid standard pads in November. Wow that's more like it, and the ABS seems to activate much more nicaly and naturally as well. These are the brakes that the car should have! This did require some 3mm thick wheel spacers from driftworks to stop the wheel spokes touching the calipers.

At the end of the year I ordered a new Blitz SE intercooler kit through CTC performance. The blitz importer had one kit on the way so I reserved it with a deposit.

Also replaced spark plugs with NGK iridium 8.

 

[PIIPete]

 

[PIIPete]

January 2014 did a power run Surrey rolling road, only put out 205bhp and was only reaching 0.5 bar of boost, or just over. A boost leak or ECU issue was suggested.
First I replaced the stock recirc valve with the Horsham Developments unit.
Then I fitted the blitz intercooler (replacing the stock side mount) to see if that removed any undetected leak.
At the same time I fitted a Gruppe M induction kit that I had asked Mike at Torque GT to import
The car also came with a turbo timer which was taking boost pressure from the short little hose from the plenum to the FPR. I had read that if this leaked it would be bad for the engine due to possibility of leaning out, so put the fpr pipe back to a single un-interupted hose and Teed the turbo timer off the pipe to the stock boost gauge sender.

None of this fixed the low boost issue. Eventually I got hold of a spare knock sensor, tested the resistance across the terminals on this (as per factory service manual) and between the wire to the one on my engine and chassis ground, it looked like my sensor was dud. I managed to swap them (v inaccessable) and at last the car was herself again So the ECU was detecting the faulty knock sensor and going into an ultra-safe mode. I had found it flashed out the knock sensor fault code using the short between two consult connetor method, but at the time I did not realise that this meant the sensor was faulty, I thought it meant knock was detected.

 

[PIIPete]

I sprayed the cooler black with Eastwood radiator paint from Frosts. It looks good at the moment, I did not do anything to the cooler to help the paint key to the surface so it remains to be seen how long the black lasts.









Blitz kit comes with battery mount parts for 054 size battery, and little extension cables for the extra cables that plug into the positive battery clamp.


Also comes with brackets to hold the washer bottle at an angle rotated out 45 degrees around the washer spout, and the brackets clamp to existing unused holes so you don't have to drill anything:





You do have to trim back the undertray:


And the front bumper:


And the back edge of the front bar:

 

[PIIPete]

Gruppe M induction kit in place.

When I test drove the car before buying it had a mushroom filter and the hum was too much. I asked for a standard intake to be fitted, which was on the car until I fitted this kit. This kit is a cowled cone filter and doesn't hum at all. You do now hear the recirc or turbo backpressure pigeon noise on lift off.

 

[PIIPete]

I was pleased that the blitz kit allowed the h-dev recirc valve to be located in a place where the standard re-circ piping could be used. I was not keen on the clear hose that came with the horsham recirc kit, which i had to use when the re-circ valve was connected to the standard hard pipe to the throttle body.

 

[PIIPete]

What's next? I need to fit the exhaust bits I have had sitting around since November, replacing my standard exhaust. Then Nistune.

This photo makes me think its now running quite rich:

 

[PIIPete]

I have just ordered some nismo s-tune shocks from rhdjapan, I would like her to sit a little lower and roll a bit less, but don't want to be it a lot firmer and like the idea of sticking with something non-adjustable and set up by nissan engineers.

She looks like this currently, post washing.

 

[PIIPete]

I also have the R33 GTR rear brakes and hub handbrake mechanism waiting to be fitted.

 

[Mike]

Very nice pal, tidy job with the front mount. I do love those Gruppe M induction kits to!

 

[Jaydej]

Love it! Are they 17 you are running with the brembo's? How much did you pay for them?

 

[PIIPete]

Love it! Are they 17 you are running with the brembo's? How much did you pay for them?

The wheels are 17", they came on the car from Torque GT. Turns out they are one of the lightest made!
They did have red rings covering the wheel nuts but the previous owner lost one so ditched the rest.
I do want to get them reconditioned at some point.

 

[PIIPete]

Have just fitted a new HPI turbo elbow and used downpipe, sports cat and Fujistubo RM-01A cat-back from Japperformance in Crawley.
Wow the exhaust sounds good, somehow its barely louder than stock if driving gently and has a very smooth silky DET sound when giving it some.
At the same time I fitted a HKS adjustable actuator set with minimal pre-load.

Without the bleed pipe restrictor (I am still using stock solonoid) it was making 1 bar above 6k rpm and seemed massively faster lower down. With the bleed restrictor in place the edge is taken off slightly but still hit 0.95 bar.

Now getting ready for Nistune and fitting the R33 GTR rear brakes.

 

[PIIPete]

 

[PIIPete]

I fitted the new S-tune shocks and suspension arms, got her aligned and four days later back in August hit something very slippery in the wet whilst very gently accelerating off a roundabout, slower than a passing white van , rear end kicked out and I went sideways into a lamp post hitting the front of the drivers door by the foot well. I was in hospital for two weeks though luckily just with a badly broken leg. Really gutted about the car and all the nice bits on it but glad I was not more seriously injured or killed and nobody else was involved.

I ended up taking the insurance payout so I do wonder if the car ended up being sold to someone who would break it for bits or was just completely scrapped.

I had the car for 3.5 years and thought I had got used to its handling, however I am avoiding RWD for now...

Be careful out there, you never know where you might hit spilt diesel, paint or whatever.

 

[phillll]

Real shame about the car, looks a lot like mine!
Glad it wasn't any worse though, at the end of the day it's just metal dude

Onwards and upwards!

 

[PIIPete]

Thanks. Not really gone upwards, purchased a 2014 Golf GT spec Diesel DSG very comfortable but somewhat boring - for daily driving.
Still got my old Primera GT for playing around with though.