R33 GT-R news and a run oop North

It has finally happened! Managed to get a dry weekend and meet up with a fellow petrol head and hit Ullapool and Applecross for a wee drive. It was brilliant. Such fun driving about up there, weather was perfect bar a small cloud / mist type thing for about 10miles but damn it felt just right flowing the cars through the corners up there. I'm not going to lie. I did have in the back of mind that this 29yo JDM vehicle might not be the best for those roads esp sitting on coilovers that are pretty stiff but not like I had a choice at that point and these are the roads this car was made for and certainly what I bought it for.

Now I must mention the Spring Service that was done during the MOT / timing belt change. So the timing belt was due for replacement by age rather than miles. We had no idea when the last service had been carried out, when fluids were changed yada yada but we did know 5th gear didn't like being shifted into when the box was hot. Not at medium to higher rpm anyways which made joining motorways and shifting into 5th a somewhat noisy and expensive sounding process if not done really really slowly. So the decision was made, easy really that we'd get everything changed and dear lord was that some shopping list.

Alt belt, Air con belt, Power steering belt, timing belt, tensioner for said timing belt, water pump previously confirmed as not needing replaced, engine oil and filter, power steering fluid, brake fluid, front diff fluid, gearbox fluid, transfer case fluid, rear diff fluid, HICAS steering fluid, new brake pads all round. Got all that done plus the MOT plus putting in the stock airbox and getting rid of the HKS mushroom super intake kit. Horrible thing. Anyhow, here is the new airbox snorkel and the 2nd hand airbox I managed to source

Yeah I know not very exciting but it works very well to way above what I'll ever run the car at and pretty much can ignore changing the filter for a long long time!  The great news from the service was that the coolant was also changed, cause it was manky as and the gearbox fluid change also got rid of the crunch into 5th gear. Still needed testing at higher rpms and after the car had had a good run out. Road trip you say eh? Sadly the weather from April to er September was shocking. I mean terrible, lucky to get three days dry in a row and then it was all hands to the garden to either enjoy having one and or do grass cutting weeding tidying up. Not a lot of driving was done at all, total let down. Then one September weekend stood out on the weather forecast. A plan was envisaged, contacts were reached out to and a plan was hatched. ROAD TRIP! A one nighter to Ullapool and then the Applecross and home. 

So the plan was, if the weather forecast held that we'd scoot to Ullapool on the Saturday and stay overnight before doing Applecross on the Sunday and heading home our separate ways.

Previously I was debating whether or not to change tyres on the GT-R as the ones on it were and are a bit old. Like really old but because the weather had been quite frankly mostly sht I'd not bothered my butt about it and now in 5 days I was heading on a near 700 mile road trip. Aw baws. After much humming and hawing over grippy tyres versus something that's good enough for summer / dry days driving I'd chosen and ordered tyres. I not only chose badly but i also chose the wrong fitting place. They delayed the fitting by a day and then on the day they'd picked they then couldn't fit them in the allotted time slot. Leave it with us and come back, we'll them fitted for you. Aye right, that doesn't suit my lunch break and how am I supposed to get home and back again so that was canned. Cue many a frustrating call to the suppliers and the short version is, I was going on the tyres already on the car. Naturally when I woke up on the Saturday I was raining here. Grand, just grand. Forecast said the destinations where going to be dry and sunning so stuff it, we're going!

Once I was about halfway up the loch side the sun came out and the aircon was working fab. Car felt good and the gearbox and tyres were all keeping me rubber side down. Stopped for petrol halfway up and bought a bit of of a packed lunch for eating in a loch side parking area. Once back on the road north the weather was a bit so so and not exactly the brilliant sunshine I'd had til then. Met up with my mate on the road to Ullapool and he confirmed it was beautifully sunny at Ullapool. Right then, what we doing in the mist, lets go go go.

Onwards to Ullapool for an overnight camp and then the run to Applecross. Slightly nervous about the run and all the single track roads, the bumps the potholes and that damned front splitter over the crown of the roads and the many weird and wonderful undulations and of course having to move slightly off-road to allow other oncoming vehicles to pass. Well there were a few scrapes of that front lip and definitely some heavy braking moments to scrub off the speed before hitting the bumps / pot holed road but yeah the car and me made it with only a few er interesting moments. 

So, the Applecross is like, well this is the sign that greets you as approach it from the south 

Yes, that is 2053ft summit and hairpins. Oh yeah, we do all remember the GT-R's ae part time AWD yes ? So my thoughts were, please god do not fail me now and also wonder what the AWD is going to do when i try and hoof it out of the hairpins. The good news is that the AWD is quite happy for one to drop into first gear, get the car half way round the hairpin and then give some beans and lo the front drive kicks in and car hauls out of the corner and up the hill. Ah bliss. It is the simple things that amuse us.

So, can you in a Nissan even a 29yo model. Yes it turns out you can. Happy days.

Amazing, absolutely amazing. Time was a marching on at this point as we'd been delayed getting out of Ullapool so the decision was made not to head onwards down into Applecross for lunch at the pub but to head back down the way we'd come and grab lunch in Loch Carron if possible, it being a Sunday and all. It all worked out grand and then we scooted south for the run home and discovered pretty quickly that we weren't going to have the fuel to do the distance we thought we'd need to. I couldn't really understand why I seemed to have a quarter tank less fuel that I expected but I also wasn't going to argue and see if it was right so the choice was made and we changed our route to go 10miles further south than intended to where we knew we could get fuel. Yeah it turned out my gauge was lying to me but at least it wasn't going to cause me to run out fuel with a quarter full showing on the gauge. A winter time investigation I think. So we doubled back slightly, got onto a very lovely road only to be stuck behind some traffic that was stuck behind a bus that would not pull over into the passing passes. I mean really, that's just no on sir! Anyhow, we did the required turn and got some clean fresh roads and off we went and when the time came we waved our goodbyes and a flash of the lights and we parted towards our respective homes.

So, some 650miles later over two days of driving and I felt grand, no back pains no legs pains but i did have some ankle pain but that's to be expected with using the three pedals in the car. The GT-R seats are the best I've ever had in a car. I there are not the easiest to get in and out of but for the job of keeping you in place while driving and being comfy? Oh yes, beautiful to be sat in. Bliss indeed. 

Mustang P0024 VCT Bank 2 finally fixed.

So yeah, pretty 14 months after noticing the problem and getting it fixed which is pathetic really but sadly I didn't want the engine opened up unless it absolutely needed to be. Now this is on me and also Ford UK cause I did put into them for diagnostic and a fix but instead they took the easy option and just swapped parts about and didn't really bother doing any investigative work. That then lead to merry dance around what they had actually done since the problem was still there despite Ford saying no it's not. Cue one return trip to their workshop and they confirmed the error code was back.

So another garage another trip(s) and the end up we decided change the whole damned lot in the timing gear as we didn't know what was wrong and once you start taking off the valve covers and timing casing, you are not going to change just one component at a time. So, new timing gear the works ordered from US of A, cause it was so much cheaper and then car booked in. During strip down it was discovered that the secondary chain tensioner was not holding pressure and could be compressed by hand whereas the other three tensioners were pretty much minimal deflection. Now I have to say at this point there is some conjection as to whether this was a fault since the engine wasn't running and therefore no oil pressure being fed to the tensioner but the other three were fine and no other component was found to have any obvious fault with them. Once the engine was buttoned all back up it ran fine, just like stock. No stumbling on acceleration after gear change at lowish revs, much more responsive at lower rpm, nicer to drive in motorway traffic, much easier to pull out of junctions as the engine wasn't dying when the clutch was being engaged. 

So what had been happening before with the cam timing not working as it should be I had much lower torque (seat of the pants feeling) requiring more rpm to pull out of junctions, accelerate from speed (under 4krpm anyways) and it sounded like a misfire when applying the throttle. The code flung was a P0024 which indicates the VCT wasn't working on Exhaust Cam Bank 2, this is the left hand bank of the V as you sit in the drivers seat facing forward. 

So lesson to be learned, don't assume the error code is the fault, it is an indication of what is happening not what caused it. As a side note on this, Ford USA had an issue with the secondary tensioners er not tensioning and they released a updated part which is shorter than the original fitted to the 15-17 V8's. This caused much panic when the original ones in my engine came out and the new ones were lined up but indeed it was all good. 

Side note number 2. Ford USA had a recall on a batch of GT350 motors because secondary chain tensioners er weren't and they were compressible by hand while in the engine, in fact some actually failed completed and collapsed into their housing and took the entire engine with them. Lucky I didn't pound my engine while VCT fault code was around.... oops.

It's been a while.

 Indeed I have been remiss with my updates on the Blog updates which I will rectify before year end.. should manage that yes.

So, bullet point updates

Mustang got entire timing gear replaced and this has resolved the error codes and it drives so much better

GT-R got a run to the great North and Applecross, yippeee!

The summer was terrible weather wise so not a lot was planned and even less achieved so here's hoping for a drier Spring and Summer 2025. 

Fixing the GTR spare / blank / coin cover

 so at some point in the GTR's life it got an alarm fitted with requisite LED and rather than use the coin holder on the dash or even drilling a hole in the dash / steering cover the fitter decided to take out the coin mask from the centre console arm rest and drill a hole in that... Not even swap it with a blank but actually drill a hole right through it. I suppose either way it's unlikely I'd have got the original included but damn what place to put completely out of eye line as well.

So, started off by having the LED moved, it was but left with this

luckily I had this already sitting waiting for the moment

side by side for comparison

and finally in the car. Easiest fix done yet ha.

It's a funny old world

 So I've been fighting with a stumbling mis-fire on the old Mustang and this has been going on for about a year now :(  First off I thought it dodgy petrol but two tanks of V-Power soon disproved that. I did run a code checker with the trusty Torque Pro Android app and no stored codes. Did the MAF clean, did sparkplug change as it was original ones in there from beginning. Spark plug intervals are 100k but really 5yrs in and you think yeah time for a change. Non of this fixed this issue...

So finally i had a look round and realised I could use Forscan for free if all i wanted to do was read stuff from the car and reset error codes. Got myself a cable and downloaded the windows progam and boom there was the fault P0024. Cam timing issue, bank 2 exhaust cam over advanced. Cue much messed around with Ford who did zero diagnostics but instead swapped the VCT solenoids about and said yeah that's it. Um no, it wasn't as the code was still there and i could hear and feel the same issue as before. So knowing how they'd basically done hee haw digging and allegedly swapped the solenoids but how could we know... went back to another trusted and very busy garage and I bought a replacement VCT solenoid (Ford OEM no less) and actually got it swapped out. Sadly this did not fix the issue. The next stage is terrifying.

This is changing the Cam phaser / sprocket but thats inside the head. To get to one phaser you have to 

• remove both valve covers
• loosen the sump
• remove the single piece timing cover
• remove the primary chain if not both primary chains
• remove the secondary chain for the bank you need
• remove the VCT solenoid for the cam you want
• remove the cam with the issue
• replace the phaser / sprocket
• re-assemble in reverse order

Now you can see straight away there is an issue. If you have to take the timing cover off and a primary chain possibly two depending how they are setup, you have all four phasers and all four VCT solenoids siting there looking at you. You have both Primary and Secondary timing chains sitting there looking at you. You have many chain guides sitting there on the floor after you removed them to get to the above. So yeah, as much as it hurts you do it right you do it once. All the timing gear is getting swapped out and new seals for timing and valve covers plus it'll require the coolant radiator being removed to get the extra space to work on this. Kerching... Oil change as well then eh since the sump has to get dropped.

GT-R news. Well it got all new belts, all new fluids, all new brake pads (disks were fine), wheel alignment done, couple of electrical things tidied up, OEM airbox fitted and then it's rained pretty much every day since! Oh, it got MOT'd as well. No issues.

Happy days.

That old OEM oil cooler issue..Part 2

 So yeah what seems like an eon ago i had had the stock oil interwarmer removed and was quite happy about it and then someone hooked up an oil temperature gauge to their GT and measured the results of their oil cooler delete. Yeah, eye opening but there was some concern over the quality of their gauge so we needed a second set of results. I got a fairly basic analogue Stack Oil Temperature gauge and got it hooked up, I should have posted this stuff Dec 2022 then July 2023 but i never so here we go.

Dec 2022 - about 3degC outside air temperature and it's fresh but dry, Exec summary - 90-92degC oil temperature (basically just far enough past the 90degC marker to see the marker, gauge back face then needle) in all steady state driving. Actual driving speed did not seem to make a difference to the oil temperature with the only difference being how fast the oil gets to said temperature and it can take a surprising distance to get up to that temperature. So, 50mph, 70mph for 30 miles give or take the occasional lift and coast for traffic it is the same temperature for the oil at 90-92degC so it's very steady Was also in stop start traffic for 25 minutes and oil temperature stayed the same 90-92degC. CHT on the dash would vary from 95-100degC throughout all the above

Come March ish 2023 the ambient temperature was a bit nicer at 12degC and oil temperature under same conditions as above was 100degC, outside air hotter makes the engine oil work a bit more which is fair enough.

June/July 2023 and boy was it hot here, 23-30degC some days. Brilliant stuff. Well sadly never got the chance to hoof it last summer but 23-30degC ambient temperatures outside and in fairly enthusiastic driving without pushing the revs to the red, the oil temperature never got above 103ishdegC temperature, could see the dial face between the 100 and the needle position. The only time it rose above this was climbing the Applecross (Bealach na Ba) road. Climbing to 2050odd feet above sea level, 25degC weather, air con on (obv!), 20percent gradients, high loads on the engine pulling out of alpine style hairpins (three of them) and constant stop / start / on the power between passing places and blind corners on a single track road. Oil temperature hit 110degC which actually matched the CHT readout as well. TBH most of the time they are pretty close to each other with steady state driving, when hoofing it the oil temperature can be higher than CHT but usually not by much. 

So in conclusion, i think for the road in this climate, I'm fine without the cooler. Hoo raa

er so I bought one lol

in its natural habit no ?

 yup I have gone and bought an R33 GTR, after the prices have already gone stupid and before they go really stupid (hopefully still upwards to get some cash back to me in the future). Car I'd always wanted after the MR2 but kept the MR2 for so long until it was rusted beyond repair (boot floor was rotten from wheel arches to the bumper) that I thought no more old 90's JDM for me and then full circle here I am. 

So why now? Well after my trip to Japan in 2020 for the Tokyo Auto Salon and going to the Daikoku Tokyo car meets, seeing all the JDM cars and tonnes of British / European and American cars as well, the R33 passion was relit and then the pandemic hit. But it has itched away at me since then and while I've nagged various mates about it I didn't really do anything about it til just before Christmas 2022 when i really started seriously looking at options. A few ups and downs later and here we are and I've only gone and done it. Did I need to do it, nope and certainly shouldn't have done it for many many reasons but you do only live once so er yeah why not!

So it's a Series 1, silver (obv) very basic mods of coilovers (too low and too stiff as the car skips over a series of bumps rather than ride them out) lovely Kakimoto exhaust that is not too loud and neighbour friendly ish and some daft HKS mushroom filters. Other than that, stock which is how it mostly will remain. Might update the mp3 CD head unit to a Sat Nav unit but that's a bit more awkward with the single DIN layout. Might just get a plug in Sat Nav display that does the Bluetooth for the phone / music as well. Choice choices. 

Something wicked this way comes..

 well actually it's already here....