PTP: that's me

[Nobody]

Hi guys

 

My name's Peter, and I'm in Melbourne North saiiiiid.

 

I currently have an R31 Skyline. It's road reg, and I use it primarily for club sprints.

 

Mods include:

• Bonds roll cage
  
• stripped interior
  
• Front suspension: new bushes, King springs (not sure how much longer), Koni yellow adjustable shocks, Whiteline sway bar, s13 LCAs
  
• Rear end: new bushes, Kings, Koni reds, Eaton/Harrop TrueTrac centre, 4.11 gears
  
• Brakes: Falcon AUII calipers and Infiniti 280mm floating disks, rebuilt stock rears
  
• Wheels: 3 sets, but the ones pictured are 17x8 +32 Sparcos with good road spec tyres (soon to be semi slicks)
  
• Engine mods: full length TIGd 2 1/4" stainless with 2x Magnaflow straight through mufflers, U12 Pintara TB & ported plenum, soon to be fitted SC14 supercharger with Microtech ECU
  
• A million other bits and pieces - Momo wheel, custom adjusted pedals for heel toe, ARP wheel studs, that sort of thing.
  

 

I am starting to look around for other options once the R31 reaches a level of development I am happy with (quite soon, I expect, once I have settled on springs and installed the blower, and played around with removing the brake booster and power steering), and the Z31s are looking interesting to me, particularly the 200ZR. Looks like I'll struggle to find one though, but I'm not in a rush, as the Skyline is still evolving. 

[dat2kman]

Dont mind him, there are lots of genle folk on here!

These Skylines, they have the wonderful L seties engine?

We love our L series engine here!

 

Have you seen a forum calked Performance Forums? They are much more gentlemanly there, just ask Wayne Besanko, of Powerchip fame.

 

Will you be entering the Nissan Datsun Nationals at Phillip Island next march, these nationals are much more funner than the woosy Skyline nationals.

[reverendzed]

Hey Peter,

Welcome, thank you for sharing your passion and some great details about your current project and your hopes for enlarging the fleet in the future.  I think it's valuable to have some cross pollination across the different forums and clubs, it gives us greater accessibility to a wider knowledge base.

 

Personally I am very thankful for the welcome I received from a  typically 'non Zed' club, Classic Skylines Australia who went out of their way to assist me with my Club rego and went more than the extra mile.

 

You are more than welcome here Peter.

Rev.

[lightmaster240z]

Welcome Peter 

Nicely put

Bruce  

[silverz]

Probably showing my age,  but that's my favourite model Skyline, good luck with it.

 

Regards

Peter

 

[Nobody]

Thank you for this welcome folks. I was about to delete my id, but these replies have made me feel much more welcome.

 

To those who are rude, just consider if you would say to someone's face what is so glibly typed. I doubt it. Forums need new people and different perspectives, otherwise they go around in circles and the only thing that grows are egos.

 

Rev, I too am a member of CSA (as well as HSCCV). I have found CSA to be fantastic and Caz (pres) goes out of her way to make everyone feel welcome. Agno is also a member.

 

Dat2kman, these Skylines have the RB motors - direct descendants of the marvellous L, but with alloy cross flow heads.

[silverz]

You are welcome Peter,

I too have been put off in the past by the rudeness of a few people on this website.  Luckily they are very much the minority and I have also met some wonderful people through here.

Anyway love your car and it sounds like you have really put in the hours to make it what it is now.

 

Regards

Peter

[Nobody]

Thanks Peter

 

I like my R31 - I wouldn't say I love it in and of itself - but, like all things Nissan (and Datsun) it's so well screwed together and is such a good blank canvas I have loved every minute of working on it, developing skills and taking my mind of various daily trials.

 

It's such a superior car to my previous project, an HT Premier, and I have achieved my goal of building a quality, safe and (reasonably) fast club car with it. It only cost me $700 initially, and there are few cars you can buy which are in good condition, needing only really minor reco work and a few subtle mods to get to the track for those kinds of dollars. Of course, I have gone much further with it over time, but the 31s are a great starting point for a track car.

 

I fancy building up a really nice Z31, not for any financial reason, and certainly not because anyone thinks they're cool. My mum's car when I was a kid was a 180B, so my Datsun/Nissan links go way back, and my rich friend's parents had a Z31, which of course I lusted after as an 8 year old. The digital dash was particularly exciting. Of course, the dash would be the first thing I would junk now.

 

When I asked my wife what she thought of them, she said, "Very '80s." "In a good way?" I ask. "When is '80s ever good?" she asks. Fair point perhaps, but no-one loves these, and soon there will be none left.

 

I think a well built Z31 will have some appeal, and under the skin they are very similar to HR31s (and near enough to identical to the earlier Zds, for all the purists who might turn up their noses at them, particularly the 200ZR, which is the last of the straight 6 Zds), so it will be an easy transition for me. A midnight blue version with an RB motor, polished turbo rims, a touch lower, should make a nice cruiser. Knowing me I will probably get carried away, but that's fine.

 

I could just buy an R32, as they are fantastic cars, but I'm not a drift kind of guy, and that link is probably too strong for me. The Z31 is different enough, but at the same time similar.

 

It doesn't really bother me that my wife will think I'm crazy. She never travels in my project cars anyway!

 

[silverz]

Peter,

I understand how one can get attracted to anything Datsun/Nissan. I got into Datsuns as I wanted a Toyota Hilux Ute but a Datsun 720 Dual Cab came up at a more attractive price, I loved that ute and had it for nearly eight years, it was as tough as nails, though at the time a Datsun- especially a crappy old 720  was definitely uncool. It towed boats, took tons of stuff to the tip etc and never missed a beat, I only sold it after I bought the 240Z. If it wasn't for that ute I would never had got into Datsuns.

It is funny how people stereotype you based on what car you say you drive. When I tell people I drive a Datsun most ask straight away, what is it a 120Y or 180B? and they have this impression I am either broke and that's all I can afford or just oddly eccentric . Generally when they see my car they are knocked out because it is not at all what they are expecting.

I guess the same thing happens to you, when you tell people you drive a Skyline they are expecting some rice rocket drift car, lowered to the max with stickers all over it etc.

Is the RB30 motor in the Skyline the same as the one fitted to VL Commodores?

Regards

Peter

[Nobody]

rice rocket drift car, lowered to the max with stickers all over it

 

Haha! There are MANY of them. Some are really cool, but the number of conversations on the R31 forum about defects and dodgy activities like cutting springs is a bit of a worry.

 

The things about my car which are possibly questionable are the increased front track of about 5cm in total to get @ 2 degrees camber (about 1" each side from S13 control arms) and the front brakes (the steel adaptor plate for the calipers is 16mm thick, and I had the hubs professionally modified with an extended centre locator ring to take the car's weight). The Sparco wheels take some of that track back out, though - R31 wheels are @ +26 offset, whereas the Sparcos are +32. Everything else is above board, AFAIK. Let's face it, at 170kph it's my life I'm risking, so I want the engineering to be sound.

 

Some of the R31 boys seem genuinely surprised that they get police attention when they have no ground clearance and rims extending inches beyond the wheel arches. Some of the cars are very cool, but some others are very dodgy. 

 

I was chatting to a nice bloke at Sandown whose old Corolla was WAY more modded than mine and on club plates, but I can guarantee my R31 would get more police attention because of the drift factor.

 

Not that I'm really complaining - lots of those drift boys really know their stuff and find ingenious ways to mix-and-match parts from other Nissans. It's a really vibrant forum.

 

The RB30 is the same in the VL Commodore, except the oil pump and camshaft are different (more torque, less power in Commy). The ECU is also slightly different, because the R31 ECU runs the fuel pump, whereas the VL runs two pumps via a relay. There might be other tiny differences, but they're pretty much the same.