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.

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.

In other real happenings, Greg has some pretty cool stuff going on that he needs to post. Maybe this will make him…or push him along…or just nudge him. Either way, Minty Fresh should have a nice update soon.

The title is two fold: 1) I hooked up my electronics and gave them a test run; and 2) I figured out how to embed Vimeo. Both a great success!

Just a quick teaser. Everything is getting put back together now and a full length update is in the works.

Stoked about having video!

I had a real “Frank” in Old School weekend. I got so much done. I don’t know how it happened. Here’s a recap starting with the pic above. The weather was finally nice, so I rolled the car out of the garage to have more room to work. My goals were passenger air bag removal, wiring harness relocation, wiring my gauges, and anything else that came up. (To defend my honor, there is a jack under the car in this pic hence the height.)

My first project was mounting my Earl’s oil filter relocation bracket. I am paranoid about having my filter (or cooler that matter) down low in an area that could get hit by random road debris or a good tap of a tire. What I ended up with was this. The hole below it was from cutting out the old battery tray a few years ago.

Next up was removing the dash to get at the air bag. No pics of that fun because my camera battery was dead. So, I put it on the charger and worked on the dash. It was much easier than I expected.

You can see I managed to get the airbag out before my camera finished charging. I also removed all the associated wiring and its control unit that is under the rear seat.

I then got diverted on a side mission: removing the interior A/C core. I had taken out the A/C components in the engine bay long ago and have no plans of putting any of it back. It was time to finish the job. This is in mini-write-up format for those looking to do the same thing. You need to keep the housing that the A/C heat exchanger(?) sits in since it connects your blower motor to your duct work.

Undo like three bolts and an electrical plug, then the housing comes right out of the dash area.

There are a few phillips head screws that hold the two halves together. There are also some stick on foam sealant strips that seal between the housings. As you separate the housings, cut this stuff nicely so it will go back together and still make a seal. With the halves separated, you are looking at the exchanger thing…covered in 15 years of junk.

It slides right out. Below it, there is a white foam piece that it sat in. I used a flat bladed screwdriver and scrapped it out. This is the finished product.

On the right half above, you can see the a little black wire with a probe on the end of it. This was mounted on the condenser before. I was unsure of its function in the grand scheme of the heating/cooling system, so I kept it. To do this, I RTV’d it to the side of the opening so the probe end was still in the path of the air flow.

Moving on, it was time to tackle the wiring harness relocation. Doing a full wiring tuck would be my preference, but I don’t have the time to dedicate to something of that magnitude right now. Need to keep moving forward. I opted to run the harness over the strut tower in the engine bay then back through the firewall.

Again, mini-write-up style. I undid the pertinent connectors and managed to pull the harness through the firewall. In the pic below, the connectors at the right are from the steering column; on the left are connectors from the drivers kick panel area behind the fusebox; and the long skinny black wire runs in the engine bay down to the power steering pressure sensor. It all needs to come out.

Photo break.

Back to work, I pulled the harness into the engine bay from the hole it passes through at the front of the car (can be seen in pic above), and then ran it over the strut tower like so:

In the driver side firewall corner, there is a triangle shaped hole. This has to be slightly enlarged to fit the massive square connector and the wiring harness. This is my winning shape after a little trimming with the cutting wheel.

I doctored up the hole with some black spray paint to seal the exposed metal, and then lined the “sharp” edge with some random hose I had. Finished product.

Before and after comparison: The before was from when I originally put the engine in almost three years ago. I thought I was so slick in the way I had it routed. Sigh.

If you are low, running big tires, or both; you really need to do this. Don’t let a chopped wiring harness ruin your track day or leave you stranded on a cruise.

Closing shot.

For anyone at a loss on how to disassemble their throttle body, I put together a “how to” when took mine apart. This was for a stock S14 DOHC KA throttle body, but the steps should more or less apply to any throttle body of similar design – Q45, Z32, SR, SOHC KA, RB, etc.

I was surprised as the process turned out to be much easier than expected. It just required a little organization and attention. You can see the finished product above. The throttle body was disassembled, then the housing was bead blasted and powder coated with high gloss clear. The pulleys were covered in wet black.

The full write-ups can be found on ziliva.net and ka-t.org (click on either site for hyperlinks to the write ups). If you are not a member of either, then now would be a good time to join.