To start off, I will keep it pretty tame. This R33 is one of the first notable models I came across tucked in a row of cars on a side street in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The wheels are weak, the hood and trunk are not carbon fiber, and it appears to be a GTS model. Quite strangely, it appears to be widebody in the rear. They are molded quite nicely, and there is a decent amount of flair. I noticed this as I passed the car later without my camera so I do not have any profile pics. Sure, it has a few misguided modifications, but it is the only R33 I saw while in Russia.

Feels good to be posting again. More to come.

Steve

Damn, where did a month go? I didn’t intend for it to take a month to finish this post. Let’s see…I don’t think there was a whole lot left. Just a few things to wrap it up. About the worst pics ever, but I never stopped to take some good ones so we’ll just go with it. Above, an glimpse of the cockpit.

An overview of the gauges and meters.

I managed to tuck everything in the center console area. I didn’t want to have a bunch of gauges hanging all over the dash and A pillar. Just a clean simple look and a nice reference for the engine’s vital signs – water temp, knocklite, wideband, and auto timer. They are awesome! I cannot adequately express the greatness of the Yashio water temp gauge. It has big bold easy on the eyes digital numbers so you can see the temp in a split second glance. No trying to read a small gauge arm. Also, it adds a sweet JDM bling factor.

To finish it off, I put the two most important gauges on the column – boost and oil pressure. The wideband and knocklite would be nice to have up there, but it serves more as a reference after the initial tuning.

To hold me in place and add some color, I bought this amazingly purple Crow five point harness. Also, I installed a harness bar to make it work. The seat and rail are the same as before – Bride Low Max rail and Bride coughknockoffcough Vios Low Max seat. (The faded washed out color is due to the sun light.)

That’s that. More exciting stuff to come.

I have done a few things since the last time I had a major post. I decided to sell my red 240 that I built back in college. It was a tough decision but I had my son on the way and decided the room it was taking up in the house and the money I could get from it would all be put to better use.

I was going to install the red 240′s engine into Minty Fresh, but with Red’s selling it put an end to that. I have done what I can to run down issue in Minty Fresh that would cause it’s odd running behavior. It was told to me that the coolant temperature sensor that feeds the ECU can go bad and cause running behavior like my car was experiencing. I did so and it ran better, but still messed up.

At this point I was like f-it, I bought every sort of engine cleaner I could and ran it through the engine. Most said don’t use on turbo engines but a couple made no listing of it. Gunk and Lucas both had “safe” products. My brother worked at a quick lube in college and he said they would run BG cleaners through turbo Jetta’s all the time for 15 min with no ill affects. My engine is much cleaner under the valve cover and most of the thicker sludge is now loose and moving towards the oil pan. Got to love old ass Jap engines. Engine ran better but still messed up.

Over the passed few months I was working at Speedway Motors for extra cash to pay stuff off before Grant got here. Well once I got everything paid off, I decided I could get a few things with my Speedway discount. So I purchase AN fittings, line, and an oil cooler. I got Black Simpson harnesses for both front occupants. I purchased a flat-black RCI Helmet which made the May 8th event, and promptly got dropped by my Step-dad. I heard it wanted to get broke in…lol.

We then said maybe the wastegate is jacked up, so we pulled that and replaced it with an HKS unit. The wastegate was also needed for Mine’s Up-boost ECU we traded some work for. I found the HKS unit to work fine but install was a pain. The end that hooks to the wastegate was tweaked and needed flattened or else it would bind.

I have never been a huge fan of the stock intake and due to my BOV placement I used a corrugated radiator hose to make it fit back to the intake. So I made a hard intake and everything fit tighter and better. Turned out pretty good if I may say so.

It is a dark picture but you can see the corrugated BOV hose, back of the MAF sensor, “T” Hose, and the legit crinkle black finish.

I purchased a new steering wheel and hub about this time. I felt like I needed to do something I couldn’t mess up and would be an easy upgrade. hahahahahahhahaha, Why must I always be so naive. I will have more on that next time as it may save some of you a headache.

My most recent thought is maybe the TPS is jacked. I find that I can drive it at about 10 percent throttle basically before boost starts, essentially it works ok as a naturally aspirated engine. The second boost starts it bogs horribly. I can fully depress the throttle and it will do no better than 45mph at 4 grand in 4th gear. If anyone has any thoughts please submit a comment.

WELCOME TO THE DRIFT COMMUNITY LITTLE MAN!

Just broke it out and realized it was still running like poo. Then hid it back in my garage.

So here it is in all its unaligned dirty goodness. It felt so good to drive this thing even though I wasn’t getting on it at all and it was pulling all over the place. Getting tuned and an alignment now! Can’t wait to really drive it!

It seems backwards to show the teaser pic and then write the update, but oh well. Shortly after receiving my S14 kouki skirts and wheels, I did a little mock-up. I love it! Sure it is absolutely nothing new, but, man, I can’t get enough of it. It looks so tough. But, that is really just the beginning of what Hulky-baby has been getting done to him.

I removed the sound deadening.

Then after my Setrab oil cooler arrived, I made up some brackets and powdercoated the black. (Nevermind the jagged cut at the top of the big one. You can’t see it when mounted)

Got it mounted, then ran all the lines. It was much easier and quicker than I expected. I spent more time thinking about how I wanted to run them than actually assembling the lines.

Absolute crap picture, but you can kind of see the trimming that was necessary on the -10AN o-ring fittings that go into the Skullworks oil block (shining silver part). I used a file to grind them down and tried to keep them flat enough to be able to get a wrench on them. Mission accomplished. A small job that took a lot of time. You’ll also notice the 45 degree elbow coming out of the block. You’ll need one of these for the side ports so it doesn’t come in contact with the mounting bolts. The center port fits a-okay.

Having that all done allowed me reassemble my engine bay. New notable items include: PSM water temp hose adapter, black silicone radiator hoses (damn OBX for stamping them with their brand), aluminum S13 radiator, and powder coated intake manifold. I had to make some mounting brackets for the radiator since S13 and S14 are different. I powder coated them black to match. The intake manifold is just sandblasted and clear coated. It looks awesome and is incredibly shiny.

Another pic of the intake before assembling it. I coated all the hardlines in black after removing the unnecessary ones.

With the engine back together, I coerced Greg into welding me up a power brace (actually, he is just a great big brother and did it without any griping). We had some pristine tension rod brackets off the parts car, some pipe, and some flat metal. So, put it all together, and what do you get?

A Brickhouse Powerbrace. Totally awesome. Gusseted and boxed. To complete the front suspension upgrade, I bought a set of Peak Performance tension rods from Greg and picked up Energy Suspension front sway bar bushings. Peak parts are incredibly beefy! Great, quality parts.

The sway bar isn’t installed in the pics since the bushings had not arrived yet. They are in there now.

I then proceeded to lower the fronts to the point of no threads showing between the collars. I also go the front Z brakes on. Damn surface rust! It has been lowered about 2.75 inches in the front since I started this build.

And without forgetting about the rear, I installed some Intense Power toe and traction rods (basically eBay links) and lowered it about 2.5 inches from where is sat before.

Finally for Part 1, the wheel pics. I had to snap a nice factory finish picture.

Again, Greg came through HUGE and sprayed these for me! The color is House of Kolors Kandy (Candy?) Purple. It has a lot of reddish pink tinge to it, but it is just spectacular in the light! No flash:

Flash!:

End Part 1 of 2.

Greg painted the my wheels this past weekend. Holy cow! I love it. Too excited to wait for the full update.