KGC10 Skyline 2000GT Build

[Draker]

Damn.. that's pretty rad!! congrats

[kneesamo]

That's way better than any oil commercial i've seen stateside!

[Babalouie]

With the big roadtrip to Melbourne for the Classic Japan car show just a week away, I figured it wouldn't hurt to give the Hako a little maintenance and to sort out a few things on the to-do list.

 

First up was to fix the fuel tank, which looks like it was sliding back and forth against its straps at the last trackday.  

 

The tank is held down by a pair of steel straps, and in between the tank and the straps was this layer of adhesive felt.  But after 45yrs, most of the hair on the felt had fallen off, and that left a gap between the straps and the surface of the tank.  The stuff was so old and crusty that the adhesive was pretty dry and it all came off with a plastic scraper.

 

I obtained some fuel tank strap from a shop called Grippy Rubber, and it's the right sort of rubber for the application.  Except that it was too wide.

 

The lady behind the counter suggested cutting a section out of the middle, which is what her customers generally did to make it fit, and it worked just fine.

 

And yes, with the new rubber in place, the straps seem to have much more purchase on the tank, so fingers crossed it stays put from now on.

 

Then for some routine maintenance...

 

Nulon make a range of oils that have a Moly DTC additive in it, which is said to replace the zinc that is slowly being phased out of motor oils.  Zinc acted as a sacrificial anti-wear layer, which old engines with lots of sliding surfaces need.  But it's supposedly bad for the environment, and new oils have hardly any of the stuff.  The synthetic Nulon oil I'm using has the Moly DTC additive, but you can add even more, which is what the Nulon rep recommended for the Hako.

 

The other thing I like to do every few oil changes, is to squirt in a can of Threebond Engine Conditioner.  It's basically a Japanese version of seafoam, and decarbons the combustion chambers.  I take off the air filters, wedge something in the throttle linkage to hold 3000rpm, then start squirting.  A can is enough to give each inlet a 15 second snort of the stuff.  It seems to idle cleaner and smoother afterwards.

 

I also remembered that the dizzy cap and rotor dated back to 9yrs ago.  And it seems that the MSD ignition is a bit hard on these components, as there was rather a lot of black gunk on the terminals of the old cap.  Replacing them with new ones made it  noticeably crisper, so I think that an ignition system that gives 10x the zap, will wear out the cap and rotor 10x more quickly.  I'll swap them out every other oil change from now on.

 

One last little item was to address an oil leak that the Hako has had since day one.  The car ran pretty low in Japan, and so the sump showed some evidence of having been a little too intimate with the ground from time to time.  There was a dent, and where the metal was buckled, a little crack or pinhole.  So everywhere the Hako's gone in the past 9yrs, it's left a little black puddle behind.

 

Taking off the sump is a royal pain, so I thought I'd give this stuff a go.  It's meant to be sprayed onto the area, it wicks into the crack or hole, and then dries solid to plug it.  

 

You warm up the engine, then clean the sump with a brush and brake cleaner, and apply 5 coats of the stuff.  It seems to work, even if it hasn't totally killed the leak.  Instead of a little puddle, it's more like a single drip a day.  So at least it's an upgrade :)

 

And then I get to use my new greasegun on the suspension balljoints...the Hako has 30,000km greasing intervals, and it's probably about that long ago that I did it last.

[Babalouie]

And then we get to some fun stuff.  A mate was kind enough to pick these up for me when he was in Japan.

 

I've been resisting the temptation to put GT-R badges on my car for years, as well...it isn't a GT-R.  But the tail of the car just looks a bit naked without the GT-R badge.  My car is a GT, and when it was stock, would have had a honeycomb plastic panel that went between the tail lights.  I've got the GT-R tail light conversion, so that honeycomb panel is long gone, but the big empty expanse in between the tail lights always bugged me.

 

So here we go.  Measure once...

 

...drill thrice!

 

As for the position, I went off these period pics of the 2000GT-R.

 

It's actually quite important to get the position right, as the badge has to match the contour of the tail panel just so.

 

To secure the badge, Porsche has these great speednuts for their badges.  The nuts have a gummy rubber inside, and as you do them up, it squishes against the body, and seals it off so you don't get water leaks through the hole.  You can see in this pic that at some point, my car did have a GT-R badge, but it was positioned miles too far to the centre of the car.

 

I should have done this years ago, it just looks right.

 

The other job was to fit this C-pillar emblem, which my mate fished out of the used parts bin at Rubber-Soul in Osaka. Sadly there was only one, but one is better than none...

 

it's easy enough to change, but you do have to remove the trim on the inside to get at the nuts.

 

And there's this big rubber boot that also forms the seal between the emblem and the body.

 

Such a shame they didn't have a pair...

 

...it certainly looks better than the one on the other side of the car :)

 

She's driving as well as she ever has, so Melbourne here we come :)  Seeya at the Classic Japan Show next Sunday, it's well worth it: http://www.classicjapan.org.au/

[q-tip]

Looking good!

[Babalouie]

One of the little things I enjoyed from the "big" part of the restoration years ago, was just the gentle ritual of taking things off the car, sanding them back to health, and then polishing or painting them before putting them back on the car.  I guess now that the car can be driven and enjoyed, that sort of thing takes a back seat to just getting out and about in the car.  But there is something relaxing about watching paint dry :)

 

But one little thing that has bugged me every single time I've slid behind the wheel for the past 8yrs, is the corrosion on the steering column stalks.  The one with the hexagonal end is headlights/hi-beam, the other one is indicator.

 

The stalk assemblies come off the car easily enough, once the steering wheel and column shroud are out of the way.

 

Now we start sanding it all back, and at one point I was a little excited, because it looked like it might be possible to get a polished stainless appearance, which would have been classy.  But it's actually plated metal, and the pitting went as deep as the copper layer, so it was never going to work.

 

So they're going to get painted, and the closest match I could find to the original textured silver paint was a Ford colour called Mercury Silver.

 

And it is an improvement...although I am still pining over that polished stainless finish that almost happened :)

 

Oh yes, so glad I fitted that GT-R badge.

[Babalouie]

Last week saw us saddling up for an epic drive down to Melbourne and back for the Classic Japan car show.

 

...which was awesome, and you can catch my event report here:

http://japanesenostalgiccar.com/aussie-grand-touring-and-classic-japan-show-report/

 

But on returning, there were a few trinkets in the mailbox that I'd been waiting for :)  One of the things that had always bugged me, was the very pitted outer doorhandles.  The passenger side isn't too bad, but the driver's side was well past saving.

 

A run of repro doorhandles was done in Japan a couple of years ago.  I put off buying a pair, and now they're getting quite rare and are out of stock at my usual supplier, http://www.rubber-soul.net.  And only one Yahoo Auctions seller was advertising them, so I decided to bite the bullet and get a pair before it was too late.

 

 

The first step is to unscrew the door lock plungers, which requires the bezel at its base to be popped out.  They're quite brittle, and I broke one of them but thankfully I did have one spare.

 

The rest of the doorcard furniture just unscrews...

 

..but the window winders are always a bit tricky.  I use this handy-dandy tool to pop out the spring clip that holds them in...

 

..and even then it's a little finicky to snag the clip enough to release the winder from its shaft.

 

With the door card off, you can see my car's original colour.  Petrol blue.

 

Removing the old handles is a little fiddly, as the door frame blocks it, and you have to reach up to it from below.

 

Interestingly, the doorhandle bristles with brackets and attachment points, but the only bit that attaches to the door mechanism is that fork shapes golden bit

 

The holes in the door are a little small, so you have to wiggle the handles just so, to get the right angle of the dangle, before they'll come out.

 

But the new one goes in easily...

 

 

...and it's a huge improvement :)

 

And looking at the interior of the door, thankfully there isn't any rust to worry about, although you can see that the rearmost corner of the doorskin was replaced at some point.  Like all of the other bodywork that was done in Japan; none of it is in any danger of being mistaken for Pebble Beach standard restoration, but at least it was done with proper metal instead of the alternative.

 

Just the same, I'll give the inside of the doors a good going over with this stuff.

 

It seeps down into the seams and makes it a bit more water resistant.  I bought a case of this Wurth spray when I first started restoring the Hako, and every time I expose a new area of the car, it goes in everywhere like anti-rust holy water :)

 

And a hidden bonus was this rubber bailey channel that I found lying inside the door. 

 

It looked like it used to sit in the window channel, but had snagged on the glass and got pushed out of its groove.  So I cleaned all the crud off it and gave it a little lick of grease, before refitting it.

 

Now, the car has always had a rattle when you close the door...which I always assumed was just wear in the window mechanism that allowed the glass to rattle around.  But it was actually due to this missing channel, and with it in place...no more rattle :)

 

Ahhh...much better.  I think the appearance of the car has really improved this year, with the new badgework, light lenses, restored spoiler and other little things.

 

I'll have a few other little trinkets on the way from Japan soon.

[tr8er]

 

 

[Babalouie]

Recently I noticed that the battery had been leaking, and I suspect that the reason is that from time to time, I don't drive the Hako for a little while, and the battery runs a little low.  And then when we ask it to crank over the high compression big six, the poor old battery gets too stressed and pukes out a little fluid. It hasn't been bad enough to cause any rust, and the car always starts, but I figured a new, more powerful battery wouldn't hurt.  The problem was that my old battery used the small-diameter style of terminals, and it was already the most powerful one in that size.  To get a more powerful battery, I'd have to upgrade to the bigger terminals.

 

Now, this means that I'll have to swap over the old terminals to new ones to suit the much fatter battery lugs.  So I picked out a pair of nice looking universal ones, and fitted them up.

 

They work by clamping the cables in place, but as I have more than one cable per side, it didn't look very nice.  

 

I had to find a new solution, and...if you were to think that this is an opportunity for me to totally overkill the problem and buy some obscure piece of workshop equipment that I'll only use once...then you'd be absolutely right :)

 

Ta-da!  Meet my new battery cable hydraulic terminal crimper.

 

It's basically a hydraulic ram, like a press or a trolley jack.  Pumping the handle makes the piston come out, and squishes these two dies together (the kit comes with dies of different sizes)

 

So you cut and strip some heavy cable...

 

...and stick it in the machine to crimp the terminal down.

 

The first attempt was wrong, I'd used the wrong sized die for the cable lug, and as a result it squished it into an exaggerated lemon shape.

 

But when you get it right, it really chomps down on the cable and is ridiculously solid and tight.  Much better than the usual cheapo crimping tool I use (where sometimes the cable just slides right out of its own accord after crimping...)

 

I was to neaten up the cable runs a bit, so I tap the lugs into a right angle with a hammer...

 

And then put on some heat shrink tube to err...hide the hammer marks, and then bolt them to the new terminals.

 

The cables hang much more elegantly now :)  From left to right; there's the earth to body, the earth to block, the power cable to starter, and the rightmost one is actually 4 wires crimped into one lug (the main power cable to fusebox, power to ignition relay, power to fan relay, and the power feed to the MSD6A).

 

All new cables, and I rerouted the starter power wire, so that it doesn't rub off the paint on the oil filter anymore :)

 

OCD with battery cables for fun and profit :)

[Big_E-Dog]

hold up....your gonna have to eaxplain where you got that window crank removal tool! pure gold over here lol!

[Lockleaf]

Uhhh dude they sell those at oreilly auto

[mrbigtanker]

hold up....your gonna have to eaxplain where you got that window crank removal tool! pure gold over here lol!

snap on ,mac 

[Big_E-Dog]

well im gonna check tomorrow!

[Trophy24]

Love the detail on the battery cables

[Babalouie]

In the middle of last year, I had the pleasure of going to Sydney Motorsports Park with Nulon, to film their commercial for their terrific "Born This Way" advertising campaign.  

 

It was a lot of fun, and it was great to see the Hako play a bit part in the final big production, and you can find the story here:

 

http://japanesenostalgiccar.com/jnc-project-hakosuka-look-ma-im-on-tv/

 

But after the commercial aired, Nulon went onto continue their "Born This Way" campaign, with a series of car/owner showcase videos on Youtube.  They're really beautifully made by Motive DVD creators JetMedia and the Edge Agency:  https://www.youtube.com/user/NulonProducts/videos

 

So when they asked if I'd like the Hako to be the subject of Episode 13, I eagerly accepted.

 

Hence my Hako-owning friends Max and Dan and myself spent a day hooning around Sydney trying to look cool :)

 

It was a great experience, everyone I've ever met at Nulon is a true car guy and I think it really shows.

 

It was great fun to make, and the final video looks awesome :)

[five1oh]

Thank you for sharing!!!!!!

 

Hakosuka = BEST. CAR. EVER.

[Babalouie]

A few months ago, the Hako was idling in the queue, waiting for its turn on the Eastern Creek skidpan, when my good friend Mark Avramovic noticed a rattling noise from the front of the car. My initial comment was that it was probably just the noisy clutch usual gearbox rattle, but when I dipped the clutch, the noise didn't go away..

 

Mark's immediate diagnosis was that the crank damper had delaminated, and when I got home, I removed the drive belt and...so it was!

 

Fixing it isn't the work of a moment, as it's not the easiest thing to remove and replace.  But...it's not like we have any choice.  So out comes the radiator, to make room at the front of the engine, and you can see the errant crank damper at the bottom of the block.

 

It's fixed in place by a huge bolt done up very, very tight.

 

So to remove it, I get my trusty 4ft long cheater bar, and slip it over my 28mm socket and breaker.

 

Chock the rear wheels (in a rearward direction), put it in 5th gear and yank on the handbrake as hard as possible to lock the engine, enough for you to heave at the cheater bar and undo the crank bolt without the engine turning backwards.  Even so, it took quite an indecent amount of effort to budge it, but off it came.

 

Next step is to use a crank damper puller.  The two main parts are a pigeon-foot shaped plate, and the long threaded rod.  The rod is small enough in diameter to go down into the threaded hole in the crank snout, without touching the threads.  At the bottom is a hardened point with a ballbearing in it.

 

The puller is bolted to the crank damper by two really long M6 bolts (there are 2 threaded holes in the crank damper for just this reason), and as you turn the threaded rod, it pulls the pigeonfoot plate away from the block...

 

...pulling off the crank damper in the process.  Actually it wasn't quite as simple as it sounds, and the old damper took a lot of effort to pull off (you can see the washers under the bolts bending in the puller).  You'd crank the puller a quarter turn, and it would seem to really strain, before the damper moved an imperceptible amount....for reasons which will be evident pretty soon.

 

Now that it's off, we can see that it is indeed...very slightly broken.  The outer inertia ring (which also acts as the alternator/water pump belt pulley) is usually bonded to the hub via a layer of rubber, but it had totally failed.

 

Worse yet...without the inertia ring attached, the hub hjd began to wobble, and had developed a crack.

 

And the subsequent wobbling had worn gouges in the hub, but as there was nowhere for the metal particles to go, they ended up being welded to the crank snout in little blobs.  Also here you can see the key that located the crank damper in place.

 

The key is the softest part of the equation, and had taken one for the team, with a visible gouge taken out of one side.

 

It's keyway in the crank doesn't look too bad...it's slightly enlarged, but a new key didn't wobble, so I think it's not too bad, and we caught it reasonably early.

 

Apparently you can't get new oem crank dampers anymore, and any second hand one will be just as old (and prone to failure) as the one we just removed...so our options were limited to the rather expensive motorsport ones.

 

Stewart Wilkins recommended an ATI crank damper, but out of the box, it comes with a downside. Being a motorsport item, it underdrives the alternator quite a bit, and at idle the alternator light will be on, and it won't go out until 1500rpm.  Great if you're on the track and at high revs all the time, but not so much if you're going to be stuck in traffic.

 

Stewart's solution was that he replaces the ATI hub with one of his own manufacture, that restores at least some of the stock pulley ratio.  You can see here that it still does underdrive the alternator (and in fact the old pulley fits OVER the new one!) but Stewie assured me that it was perfectly streetable.  Quality doesn't come cheap though...this was over $900, fully assembled and ready to go. Quite pricey for something that doesn't seem to have any moving parts :)

 

So what does a crank damper actually do?  Well, it's not hard to mentally picture that a crankshaft might have a degree of twist as it rails against the weight of the car.  However, it's rather more complicated than that.  If you picture yourself pedalling a bike...yes your feet are going around in a circle, but the power is delivered very lumpily.  There is a power stroke as one leg pedals straight down, and then a bit of a lull until the other leg is at the top of its stroke.

 

Picture a crankshaft, with multiple cylinders and a certain firing order, and you can see that the crank doesn't just get a constant degree of twist, but rather is twisted this way and that, in a staccato fashion.  At certain rpm points, the crank will develop a resonance, and the twisting will be amplified.  In an L6, there are a few resonant moments between idle and redline, with the big one being the crank-killing resonance point at 8300rpm.

 

So what the crank damper does (both the ATI and the stock one), is have a weighty outer inertia ring, that at speed, develops a lot of momentum.  It's attached to the hub by a rubber element, which means that the crank can twist against the inertia ring...but the inertia ring will dampen and limit the amount of twist, and hence keep the crank from snapping and happily aligned with its bearings.  Geddit? :)

 

Back to business.

 

Getting the ATI on, took a bit of head scratching, as you'll see.  To make installation a bit easier, I remove the bumper and grille.

 

This allows me to reach through the grille opening to install the new damper, but crucially, I can also look through the ventilation holes behind the bumper to line things up.

 

First things first...prise out the old oil seal.

 

Then I wedge a clean rag under the crank...

 

...because I'll be filing and sanding off the blobs of old hub metal off the crank snout, and I don't want the shavings to end up in the sump.

[Babalouie]

The blobs of metal were quite work-hardened, so it took a bit of elbow grease to get the snout smooth again, and I ran a straight edge across the crank snout, to make sure it was perfectly smooth again.  Stewie said that I was quite lucky, in that sometimes it gets so bad that a whole ring of metal builds up around the crank snout, making it almost impossible to remove the old damper.  The blobs of metal were why the old damper took so much effort to come off; the blobs of metal on the crank were gouging the hub as it came off.

 

Now the next part, is why installing it is harder than removing it.  The key is a very, very tight fit in the groove of the new hub.  There is no wriggle room at all.

 

It would actually be a lot easier to line things up, if the key was at the edge of the crank snout, and not quite a long way back.  It means you can't just offer up the new hub and line it up with the key straight away.

 

In fact, it's such a tight fit that you can only get the new hub onto the crank a couple of mm, before it will go no further.  So to help me align it, I mask up some straight lines from the keyway to the crank edge, and then colour it in with black marker.

 

Then, fit up the new oil seal...

 

And to help me get the new damper further onto the crank snout (and closer to the key), I resort to boiling the ATI damper for 20mins on the stove...

 

Then, with oven mitts on :) ...quickly grab the red hot damper, and...while looking through the holes behind the bumper...quickly jam it on, using the black mark to align it with the groove.

 

Boiling the damper got it further onto the crank snout, but not far enough to actually contact the key, as you can see.  And there is no way of visually seeing if the key is lined up with the groove.

 

To get the damper on the rest of the way, I cut up some M16x1.5 threaded rod, and team it up with a 3/4 drive socket and some nuts.

 

Unlike the threaded rod in the puller, this one actually does screw into the crank.  Stripping the threads in the crank would be a disaster, so rather than try to pull on the ATI by tightening the bolt (btw it was too short to reach anyway)...this way the threaded rod screws into the crank threads instead.  As you tighten the nut closest to that big washer, the socket pushes the ATI onto the crank.  If there are any threads being stressed, it's the threads on the rod...not the threads in the crank.  I figured it's safer this way.

 

And as you tighten the nut, it'll force the ATI onto the crank.  The ATI is meant to be an interference fit (better for transmitting crank vibrations to the damper) so it takes quite a lot of effort to get it on, a quarter turn at a time.

 

But eventually you feel it bottom out, and there is a crisp point where it won't tighten any more.  I measure the gap between the lip of the hub to the crank snout; the crank sticks out 26mm and the hub is 44mm deep, so the resulting 18mm gap meant that it was perfectly seated. It's important to measure this, as if the key was not aligned and it's actually all jammed up halfway, then you have to start again.

 

With all that done...take a short break by rocking back and forth in the foetal position and quietly sobbing, before chocking the rear wheels in a forward direction, putting the gearbox in 5th, handbrake up and tightening the newly supplied longer bolt to Stewie's recommended 140ft/lbs.

 

Stewie supplied a new pointer, and I used a straight edge to mark TDC on it, relative to the stock timing marker, and the cut and filed it to a point.

 

The last step, is to refit the belt, but as the crank pulley is smaller, the belt has to be somewhat shorter.  The stock belt was 890mm, this one is 860mm.

 

And then button it up!

 

The ATI is huge, and comes close enough to the thermofan that I had to reroute the wiring, lest it snag on those protruding boltheads on the ATI.

 

And fingers crossed the ATI doesn't detach itself and kill someone...but it seems to be fine.

 

The markings on the circumference mean that it can act as a degree wheel of sorts, but as I'm not 100% certain of my TDC marker accuracy, I don't think that I'll be using it for cam timing or anything like that.  Just the same, the ignition timing seems to register the same 12BTDC as it did before, so maybe it's close enough.

 

So far, so good (touch wood).  I've put about 5hrs of running on the engine, and the ATI still runs visibly straight, and the bolt is still tight, so fingers crossed this will be fine.  And Stewie's hub is well judged.  At 550rpm the alternator light is on, but at the usual 800rpm idle, the battery is charging at 12.5V, so it should be fine.  And in terms of driving, it does seem smoother, but then so it should, given that the old crank damper wasn't doing anything.  It is slightly zingier too, like a lighter flywheel, I guess that's probably from fewer losses from underdriving the alternator and water pump.

 

Phew.

[Stoney]

Always love you detailed posts!

It's just a shame they only happen now a days when something breaks.

[Babalouie]

It's been a while since the last update, but it's been a busy few months with the car. (pic by my mate Jo at https://www.flickr.com/photos/J_Hui/)

 

When I bought the car in 2007, the Tokyo dealer said that it was painted in 2004, which was also when it was last registered in Japan.  However, judging by the heavy swirling and light scratches on the paint, this seemed pretty unlikely and I think it's fairer to say that the paint dated back to the late 90s at least.  But it occurred to me that I'd never done a proper paint correction on the Hako, so it was as good a time as any to break out my newly minted machine polisher.  The process starts with Iron-X, which I spritz all over the car, and it removes baked-on iron deposits which make the pain feel sandy to the touch.

 

After that, the car is rinsed and them covered all over with the foam lance and my pressure washer.

 

After a few minutes for the foam to do its thing, the suds are sponged off with the 2-bucket method.

 

...first you rinse off the suds in one bucket, and then you dip it in the clean-water bucket, before going back to the car to wash off more suds.  This way, any grit picked up on the wash mitt isn't redistributed around the car, and you cut down on fine swirls.

 

That done, and the car dried, the next step is to clay.

 

Spritz on the detailer fluid, and glide he claybar back and forth on the paint.  

 

And any baked on bits of dirt are picked up by the clay.  I find that the Iron-X does half the work of the clay, which stays reasonably clean. 

 

Now the paint is squeaky clean to the touch and the car is ready for paint correction.

 

The Hako is actually covered in fine swirls, and here and there, there are some heavier scratches.

 

So the first polishing step is to hit the whole car with Menzerna Heavy Cut, and a cutting pad for the polisher.

 

The heavier scratches need a few applications, but it really does make them less visible.

 

Then we swap to a Medium Cut polish, and a finer polishing pad.

 

Just a few dabs of polish will do a whole panel.

 

Dab the pad all over the panel to distribute the polish...

 

And then whizz the polisher all over the panel on the very lowest speed, to distribute the polish evenly (it should look like an even haze).  Once you've done that, speed up the polisher to max speed, and work it back and forth slowly all over the panel.  You should only apply very light downward pressure (only so much that you hear a very slight drop in polisher speed) and each spot of the panel should be worked about 3-5 times.

[Babalouie]

Then buff with a polishing cloth

 

And you get a really nice, mellow, (largely) swirl free finish.

 

Last step is to add some gloss with the fine polish...

 

And the paint correction is done.

 

Final step is to seal the polish in with a wax.

 

Which goes on like a greasy film, and is wiped off a panel at a time.

 

And we're ready to cruise!  It's not a Pebble Beach paint job, and no amount of polishing will make it one...but it's shiny and reasonably presentable.

 

First event was the Nissan/Datsun Nationals, which were held over the Easter long weekend.  Sunday was the car show

 

Which was a great show, but it was also a good opportunity for all the vintage Skyline guys to get together.  This is the first event for my friend Peter's lovely Kenmeri, fresh from a very thorough restoration.

 

 

Monday was at Sydney Motorsport Park, where a gymkhana was held on the skidpan. 

 

This was heaps of fun (pics by my friend Jaz at http://www.stillmotionmedia.net.au/)

 

We didn't do that great as far as times were concerned...I think maybe there was a little too much sideways.  There were also event on the racetrack, but I didn't enter those.

 

The next event was Cars and Coffee On the Wharf, which I think is summed up very well like so :)

 

Set up on a pier on Sydney Harbour, it was a really long line up of supercars...

 

Including not one...but FIVE 911 GTS RS's :)  (and I thought these things were rare)

 

...and about six Mclarens

 

458 Speciale...and yes, another 911 GT3 RS

 

[Babalouie]

My favourite was the Lexus LFA, the holiest of the holies as far as my wish list is concerned :)

 

I think there were two Avendators, five Huracans...three AMG Black Series CLKs parked in a row...

 

AM Vantage was one of my faves...sounded wicked driving off too.

 

As a Lexus-sponsored event, the new LC500 was on display, and what a gorgeous creature it is.

 

Being Cars & Coffee, naturally there is a huge crowd at the exit brandishing camera phones, and yes, everyone can't resist giving it a hit on leaving the event. And oh yes...the most squirelly looking car was...a Mustang.

 

...supercars, great weather, lovely harbour view, a leisurely buffet breakfast and I think a certain aspect of Sydney's car culture is captured in a very neat nutshell :)

 

The most recent event was the GTR Festival, at Sydney Motorsport Park...a celebration of everything Skyline :)

 

The Hako was in the Heritage display, parked right opposite event sponsors Nismo.

 

Who had a couple of GT3 cars on display...one of which even had a go at the gymkhana!

 

 

There were driving events in the offing, and it was a great opportunity to let the hako stretch its legs.  The first event was the gymkhana, which was held on some access roads at the bottom of the dragstrip car park.

 

It was a short and tight course which suited the grunty Hako really well!

 

 

Next, we lined up at the dragstrip.  Sydney GTR culture really has a strong drag racing element, so there was a packed field, with some contenders packing 2000hp.

[Babalouie]

Hmm...maybe I can take him

 

In the end, the Hako managed a best of 14.6 at 100mph, with a 60ft of 2.4.  I found it really hard to get a neat launch; too many revs and it would break out in axle tramp, and too few and it would bog off the line. 

 

The least-worst method seemed to be to baby it off the line and then floor it once it got moving.

 

I think the problem is that, at its very low ride height, the Hako's rear suspension arms are above horizontal, so on launching it gets a ton of rear end squat.  I'm thinking a taller rear ride height would get the suspension sitting at better angles, and I might be able to get a better launch.  We'll be back...with a more 70s look with a low nose and jacked up tail :) (pic by my mate Jo at https://www.flickr.com/photos/J_Hui/)

 

The driving events done and dusted, the rest of the show was about drinking in the huge numbers of GT-Rs on display, separated into generational order.

 

 

All the vintage guys came out in force, and I'm glad to say that we had eight Hakos and Kenmeris on the day.  (pic by my mate Jo at https://www.flickr.com/photos/J_Hui/)

 

GTR Festival is one of my favourite events, and we'll certainly be back next year!

[Babalouie]

There's been a great article on Speedhunters by my mate Matthew Everingham on the GTR Festival: http://www.speedhunters.com/2017/06/hail-to-the-king-australias-gtr-festival/

 

And the event will be featured by sponsors Motive DVD, and here's the trailer (Hako makes a small cameo):

 

One of the highlights of GTR Festival was the JUNII R32 GT-R making a world record 7.66 quarter mile pass, and you can see the video here:

[hang_510]

Apparently you can't get new oem crank dampers anymore, and any second hand one will be just as old (and prone to failure) as the one we just removed...

When I replaced mine in 2015, the dealer in Canada found it in a dusty box.

Said it was the last one in the world.