I bought this car at Japanese auction in 2019 and have been refreshing it over time. I wish I would have documented it from the beginning but I guess it's better late than never or I can at least give a rundown of what I did. I don't have very many images of the process and I have to really dig to find those I do have.
I planned this as a show car and a car I wanted to do an occasional track day with. Just happened upon it randomly, and the Tommy Kaira build was basically meeting my my end goals for what would have been a stock GTR. I would have used a modern modern turbo setup but this is fine. I didn't have much to do in terms of the "build" but more or less updating a 15 year old build and refreshing an old car.
For our track days I was sharing expenses with a friend who would help me with the build.
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The Start
This car was sent to Tommy Kaira in, I believe, 2006. Inspection sheet suggests TK touched it in both 1996 and 2006.
Here is what I started with:
^Video the importer gave me when he received the car.
I went through the car thoroughly and this is what it had:
Nismo N1 engine block.
Nismo N1 aka R1 R34 turbos (updated ball bearing versions)
Aftermarket pistons and cams, possibly Tommy Kaira's own, inspection sheet says they did the engine build.
Tein coilovers (need rebuilt)
HKS engine management (needed replaced)
Tommy Kaira adjustable sways and strut tower bars
TK Radiator (stock fan shroud was missing)
TK intercooler
TK Oil Cooler
TK & Nismo intake
Nismo exhaust manifold with TK exhaust and a test pipe
Brakes are stock Brembo aside braided brake lines
HKS awd controller
Nismo headlights which are selling now for $5000 per side!
All the bushings and rubber, aside belts, is very rotted. I think the car sat for a long time.
Cosmetic and other issues:
Orange peel respray passenger rear fender
TK logo is flaking off
Body kit is cracked in a few places
Interior dash is a mess, headliner panel is falling off
Rear trunk was obviously replaced. Car must have been in a mild accident, I think likely BEFORE the TK mods. The key didn't open it, had one made.
I got all this for the price of any other R33 GTR at the time. I was shocked. It was the perfect starting point for my goals if it was mechanically sound.
All the belts were changed shortly before the car was put up on auction, they had a sticker stating this.
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Inspection
Me and a mechanic friend thoroughly looked over the car, especially considering the accident repairs. We found no issues I didn't mention already. One of the tein shocks seemed like it needed a rebuild so we removed them all and had a local Tein dealer take care of that.
By the time I got this car (stored in japan for almost a year, only cost $45 a month) the value of these things skyrocketed to insane levels. At this point I decided I wanted to do a fully paint refresh as well since the body kit needed repaired/painted anyways. Carbon fiber parts also needed to be attended to.
The Tommy Kaira logo also deteriorated far worse during shipping. We took detailed pictures of it so we can get it remade, the only problem is this logo is unique in that it fades into clear and the logo is almost seamless as well. It isn't like some cheap vinyl decal. At this point I weighed whether to make a new one or just remove it.
When I got the car it ran fine but was near empty, then I put some of our 91 premium in and the car ran like garbage, threw a CEL, and it was hard to start. We drained the fuel and went to rebel and got 100 octane and this problem went away. With no HKS dealer and no equipment to read this brand ECU I just had to assume what the CEL was.
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Build Year 1
One thing is most OEM parts in 2020 are now are readily available in the US. Some aftermarket things though the best places to source them are still in the UK and Australia. Literally US vendors just order everything from them themselves.
First we replaced all fluids. FYI RB engines like 10w60 oil if you were curious and on this one Tommy Kaira even put a sticker on stating to use that.
We ordered the following:
Full suspension bushing refresh kit from Japspeed in UK
Radiator support bushings
OEM rubber hoses and gaskets. Nismo/Nissan OEM (mix of ordering from JustJap in Australia and Terra Firma Automotive in Georgia)
New dash from TFA + interior leather bits
Link G4+ for GTR + improved IAT & MAP conversion kit (our previous R32 the tuner also wanted Link. It's a good ECU.) + Wideband O2
Do-Luck "Tarzan" AWD controller (Digital G sensor, tunable)
OEM fan shroud to see if we could get it to fit (spoiler, we couldn't)
Oil temp sensor (gauge wasn't reading temperature)
Heater box actuator (was clicking at start) from Justjap in Australia, couldn't find one in US at the time
Pioneer Android Auto flip out type head unit + speakers.
We checked if it had upgraded oil/water pump at this point and it had the Nismo version of both.
All of this stuff was very delayed due to covid.
I ordered this device that would allow me to pipe in the Link CAN data into that head unit's A/V inputs. It never arrived and was canceled citing Covid.
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Year 2
Since all this stuff was being delayed I did something I DIDNT want to do first. I sent the car to Pitstop Performance in Arizona for a full respray and cosmetic refresh. They overall did a good job. The carbon fiber parts they sent to the McLaren dealership to have redone and they were like new when finished.
I had ordered new front and rear window moldings from Nissan, also delayed due to covid. Very annoying. But went forward anyways. I wasn't going to have this car sit forever waiting on E36 M3. They ended up using generic moldings.
This took an extremely long time, almost an entire year. During this time we got all our parts though.
Once the car was done we had it tuned in Arizona at UMS, the injectors were not enough so we bought what they suggested.
We were planning on doing this all in Las Vegas and this tuner was unknown to us, they seemed to do a good job though but they wanted the upgraded IAT sensor (still delayed for over a year at this point!). This was the finished car.
At this point I was finally glad to have the car back so I left it alone for the remainder of 2021 and beginning of 2022. I just used it as a show car during this time.
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Year 3 - Mid 2022 project continues
New injectors arrived so I had the car re-tuned.
At the beginning of 2022 I ordered TE37V anniversary wheels and by this point I got all my remaining parts in.
I replaced the rear window moldings with the ones I got from Nissan. The hack job we did wasn't stayin together in the rear, the front was fine so I didn't want to risk potentially cracking it by mistake for no reason.
The headliner cloth was staying on the actually part that sticks to the car but that was coming off. I ended up using 3M double sided tape to stick it to the roof of the car and it's sticks well.
The trunk got damaged by a gust of wind. I had to take it off and send it to a body shop to get unbent, however it wasn't staying together. I had them reinforce it rather than ordering a new one and so far so good there.
Spent a day redoing the bolsters in the Recaros and repaired the driver side's adjustments from a donor seat.
Added wideband O2 and IAT, adjusted tune for both. Also changed the tune adding 2 step and started to learn the software and options in there in general.
Added Do-Luck G sensor and removed the HKS awd controller. Pretty much with v-spec and this sensor the car's AWD system is now fairly modernized and better than what the R34 was stock. Sensor fits both cars.
Replaced clutch master cylinder. Plastic POS.
At this point I started to more seriously drive the car and the clutch was slipping so I replaced what was in the car (Nismo clutch) with their twin plate clutch. It's very streetable and does it's job.
At the end of the year I finally got my TE37s in.
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Verdict at this point
This car is one of the best cars I've ever driven. With these mods at least it totally lives up to the hype and then some, i'm very impressed overall. The interior also isn't a bad place to be, it's not modern by any means and is sports focused but it's way better than anything I've sat in from the 90s in a similar type of car.
I used to own a 350Z and it's crazy the difference between this car and that. This car feels totally analog, excellent feedback, excellent noise, some people criticize the Z as being fairly numb I wouldn't go that far but this could convince me of that talking point. I definitely haven't driven anything modern that I could feel the road as well as I can in this car.
I used to own a R32 GTS-T, that had many of these same traits for much less price but the R33 feels much more of a solid car. The RB20 was also very severely bad on turbo lag where this car is not like that at all. The weight difference between the 2800lb R32 GTS-T and the 3300lb R33 GTR isn't as noticiable as when I'm in my Audi S3 that weighs around the same as this GTR. I have done only one track day so far on the R33, in Arizona, but I had multiple on the GTS-T and S3 at Willow. The GTR is between the two in how easy it is to drive but feels WAY more enjoyable and had the characteristics of the lighter RWD car generally. I did not drive it before the AWD controller upgrade.
I got to give 90s Nissan credit. I had 0 rattles or noises in EITHER of my Skylines unlike cars I used to own of similar age like a Mustang. These were well built vehicles, even the cheap GTS-T.
Since I bought this car for the mid $25k range it's easily over $50k now or more in value so it's never going to be something I dedicate for track at this point.
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I probably mixed up some of the order in which things were done, but it's been over the course of 3 years.
I'm moving to Chicago soon to a house with more garage space. When I do that i'm going to put in an electric fan, car gets warm when it's not moving after hard driving. I also need to replace the steering wheel and probably quick detach as it's off center and I cannot get the hub off, it's almost like it's glued on.
Here's some more pics
