Not a Skyline... honest! Sleeper R33 saloon

[driftimports]

Welcome to the progress thread for my current project. It probably won't see much track action and is being prepared as a comfortable street car that I can use for daily driving.

The car is a 1997 GTST R33 saloon in QM1 white. I imported it from Japan in February 2010 and apart from a Kakimoto Racing cat back exhaust it was completely standard. It's super clean apart from a scuff on the front bumper and I intend to keep it that way so rust prevention and paint protection are going to be top of the list. Apart from that my aim is to keep everything subtle and lose some of the obvious Skyline features.

Here are some pictures of the car as I first got it:

















I have a donor car which is amongst other things offering these:


The engine bay was given a thorough cleaning:



I picked up a cheap set of alloys with tyres. They're 18" Team Dynamics Drifz, 8.5" wide et35 fronts and 9.5" wide et35 rears. Not much JDM kudos, but they fill the arches pretty well and have a nice broad lip. You may also notice that the rear spoiler is gone, I prefer clean lines and think it will stay off. The front badge is off too, but it may reappear in a different guise at a later date.













I have 5mm slip on spacers to help the front out and the rear if I can get away without rubbing.

I'm currently fitting Juran lowering springs, new shock boots and giving the arches some rust protection. The springs should give a 35-40mm drop and firm but comfortable ride. After a good scrub the arch looked like this:



First stage is a coat of white Hammerite which will later be topped off with a Schutz gun underseal:



The shock unit is out and awaiting Juran spring and new shock boot:



You can see the difference in the springs and boots here:



The new boot is a universal polyurethane job from a 4x4 supplier and with a little modification slips over the original bump stop. It is secured with a cable tie at the bottom.



The unit is now built up with the new parts:



That's it for now and I hope you enjoy the thread as it develops.