My'R (From UK)

Hi ... Just as an introduction, i'm Tim from the UK and "gti-rrrr" asked me to sign up. So here goes:

Wanted one of these cars since i was about 17, i had talked myself out of it each time i looked at buying a car until about March this year when i threw caution to the wind.

The car is a late spec pulsar so unfortunatley no umbrella, but it has only been in the country for about 10 months, had bags and bags of history from a very well known Nissan dealer in Japan and was completely standard.

On the drive home i noticed that the clutch pedal felt very soft and every now and again it would stick to the floor. I guessed there was air in the system so spent a short time bleeding the system and replacing the fluid which made no difference at all. After removing the clutch hydraulic system a faulty master cylinder was diagnosed as the problem so i set about replacing that.

Scoaring on the cylinder and a lot of gunk. Oddly it hadn't failed completely, in that it wasn't leaking fluid .. but i guess it was letting air in.

Space in the engine bay of these cars is to say the least, lacking. So after having to remove the plenum cover and getting a number of grazed knuckles, i had the cylinder replaced and clutch all working again.

Once i was happy i had a working clutch i started removing bits of the interior..

I started by stripping out the rear of the interior .. at this point the car was only going to be receiving half a roll cage so my intentions where to keep the front half of the cars interior very much intact.

Apart from replacing the standard seats with a pair of site mounted bucket seats.. things soon changed.

I decided that if i was going to do it, i was going to do it properly and set about ripping the rest of the cars interior out. A full safety devices roll cage was/is on order .. hoping to get that by the end of July!

In the mean time i picked up some parts, a set of TEIN Superstreets and wheels shod with R rated rubber. I also picked up a set of 310mm wilwood brakes which have proved more trouble than they have been worth up to now! Finally i collected a 16 row mocal oil cooler and thermostatic sandwich plate in an attempt to keep oil temps down.

Had a bit of a mare with the brakes so far... Firstly, i managed to round off the offside nipple which connects the brake line to the brake pipe, so had to cut that off to get the standard rubber brake line off the car. Thinking it would be an easy fix to replace the brake pipe.

The brake pipe however sits behind the engine, below the throttle bodies meaning access is almost impossible, so i'm waiting on delivery of a brake line flare tool in an attempt to repair the brake line. How successful i'll be with this i've no idea but it's worth a shot.

Wilwood brakes have a wierd thread, and in order to get my braided lines to fit i had to add an adpator, all was well until i gave the thing one last nip up and *SNAP*..

Fortunatley, my step dad runs a workshop for a civil engineering firm so he had one of his lads removing what was left of the adaptor. I now have a replacement which i will be very careful with when screwing it into the caliper.

I also removed the cars air-conditioning system which was going well until the very last bolt. This bolt was up behind the turbo leaving me very little room to manouver a spanner. I bought a ratchet spanner for the job, but this was wasn't quite cutting it. After a day of struggling i had it shortened..

Once modified, i had the bolt off in under 10 minutes!

Next job was to get the oil cooler mounted on the cross member of the car, i decided to add a couple of rubber feet to lower vibrations and chances of it cracking.

I now need to get some longer hose for the oil cooler to finish the installation off.

Once i had done that i moved onto removing what the sound deadening.

Before:

After:

The brown stuff is sealent, which i left on.

I've actually done some work on the car this week..

I started by getting the interior in a state where i can drive the car and take it for it's MOT prior to fitting the roll cage and seats.

I replacied all the dash parts i wanted to keep and i also fitted my RALDES steering wheel and Quaife gear knob.

I then took about relocating the battery to the rear of the car, i tidied the power cable with some stick on cable ties. Only realise that these will have to be removed once i've had the cage fitted so either me or Stan can spray the inside of the car.

I gave the inner arch a lick of paint after removing the battery, you can also see the cabling i had to do to get 3 different power leads into one large one.

I fitted a couple of stickers to the car..

I also fitted the offside caliper and brake line in anticipation of the brake pipe repair. I should have the tool to do this early next week. I also replaced the crappy standard wheel nuts with some larger ones i picked up from Ebay.

It's actually now starting to look like a car, and i'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, can't wait to drive it. Jobs left to do before i can take it for MOT are as follows:

- Fill and bleed radiator/coolant
- Repair brake pipe

My Safety Devices cage is due for delivery early this week, so once the car has been MOT'd i'll be taking the car to have that fitted. Once the cage is in i need to have the seats fitted and spray the floor, then we will be ready for a spring event at Curborough and a trip to the EVO triangle, along with some of Britains other great driving roads!

Ok ..

I took a few photos tonight but not of any of the intricates, i'm concious of photos circulating of the car un-finished so once the floor is painted and the brackets are all boxed and tidied up i'll take photos of them.

On Friday i finished fitting the 16 row mocal oil cooler i'd had since about May and filled the car up with some of Silkolenes finest.

You can just about see it behind the bumper and power steering heat exchanger

I ran pipes over the top of the engine, these seem to get quite hot and run right next to the brake master cylinder, so i'm not sure if this will cause premature fading. We'll see at curborough on the 1st of September.

When i removed the door cards this little piece of JDM tytness dropped out! I've decided to keep it in the car for good luck :rolleyes:

Earlier in the week i picked up a cheap piece of carbon to fill the hole where the stere once lived, after Christmas i'll look at getting a gauge and cut-off switch in there, but for now i'm done with spending money on it.

Here is the seat and harness angle which isn't as bad as i was expecting, i think i need to cross these?

The seat is a touch high, i've ordered drift-works snap off boss and i'm going to make a quick modification to the seat rail which will enable me to drop the seat that little bit too.

The car is absolutley filfthy so i'll give it a bit of a wash when i get back in England on Monday ready for the sprint on Tuesday.

More photos when i've got the floor painted, pax seat in and the cage feet boxed off!

Fitted my snap off boss tonight and also had a play in the dark with my camera .. i need some remote flashes and my car needs washing!!