Hachi's Long Overdue R32 GTST Build Thread

[Hachi]

So with the car under shelter, this post will mostly be pictures of what followed starting with the mini pallet of stupidly expensive new parts




First thing to do was to get the wheels off the ground, unfortunately without a lift blocks of wood had to do




Now I took some time to look properly at what was being changed like these crusty old brake hoses....




This rough looking droplink......


And this Upper Control Arm with fucked bushings (I hadn't known that I was going to be changing these yet though!)




Not really much else to see, so fast forward a while (Read Two weeks, Lots of WD40, and cursing) and we now have this;






This is where I now introduce a sideline project that my dad (absolute lifesaver while working on this car) had been working on for a few weeks prior in preparation for the removal and installation of bearings...... A homemade 12 tonne hydraulic press. It's not much to look at but does the job and cost absolutely nothing. It's still in the development stage hence the lack of a paint job.



Once I was at armless floaty car stage and all the bushings had been removed, I brought all the arms back to wash them down with spirits and remove all the old shitty paint on them, and then repaint them with lots of hammerite......about €50 worth of hammerite :'(

Photobucket is acting the mick now, so you'll have to wait a bit for more pictures and progress.

[Darren]

looking good dude lookin foward to more updates

[subzero]

jaysus is it that long already .... cheap car if u factor what vrt is now on these . your doing a fine job of the car fair play dude.

[Hachi]

Okay so finally an update, last post I left you all with a picture of the homemade hydraulic press. First job for it was pressing out the old bushings. It took a bit of practice, but we got most of them out without too much hassle, though we had to break the hacksaw a couple times.




With bushings all out, I couldn't put all new bushings in and just leave the arms looking rusty and skanky




A good clean up with a wirewheel and sandpaper, before a few coats of black hammerite spray. Came out pretty sweet I think. Repeated the same process for the other arms.




Once all the arms were painted I got to pressing in all of the bushings, I had decided to try and stay with rubber bushes as this was a road car build and the roads in Ireland are complete fuckin shite so I wasn't going to try and kid myself with polybushes. Also the price of polybushes is stupid this side of the world. While looking for replacements I came across Hard Race hardened rubber bushes. I've always been a bit hesitant with Hard Race as a brand so I decided to find some reviews of them, all of them read positively and after doing a price comparison to standard replacements they were a damn sight cheaper. In the end I got all the relevant bushes need from Australia, in the end totalled about €500. Anywho pressing the bushings in was a pretty quick operation (so quick that I didn't think to take any pictures), I had put the bushings in the freezer in the morning to contract them and help with the pressing. At the same time I also replaced the front and rear Lower Outer Balljoints, it would be stupid not to have with everything else being done at the same time.

After all the bushings were pressed I was left with thise wonderful-ish sight of progress




One thing I could never figure out fully was the cars constant desire to pull to the right, While taking apart the suspension I finally got an answer as to why, one absolutely fucked lower kingpin bearing, and by fucked, I mean FUCKED!

When you take apart the Upright assembly and look in at the lower bearing you should expect the see the bearing as it is on the right, not like I found in the arm to the left.




How it should be........




How it shouldn't be. Minus a few bearings and a Lower/Inner Race, accompanied by a destroyed lower seal!!!




Going further into my autopsy of the fucked kingpin bearing, we have one chewed up seal which had taken up the role of the lower/inner race surface. The upper part of the bearing can also still be seen stuck in the the upright (A hammer and punch took care of that).




After all was said and done he is a comparison of what came out of the left upright compared to the right upright. (BB's are missing because the lower bearing cant be removed easily without destroying it)




So my feeling is that some muppet took apart the upright on one side for some reason destroyed the lower bearing when taking the upright apart, couldn't figure out to get everything out. Didn't want to have to pay the insane price for the new bearing from Nissan and just put back in all the BB's he could manage, put it back together and hoped nobody would notice. Who knows, either way there was an idiot involved.

Before I started I did shit loads of research trying to track down the exact part numbers and bearing required to put back together the upright assemblies. Not as easy a task as I thought at first. In the end, all I can say is thank god for the cross-compatibility of some nissan models, In this case all the kingpin hardware from a 300ZX was the same. Another challenge was tracking down the parts, in the end I manage to get them all from Concept Z Performance in the US, Though this didn't make the parts cheap as they were OEM Nissan parts and ended up running me about €300, still needs must and it's always nice to know you're putting in nice new parts.

During disassembly of the front suspension, I discovered the bushings in one of the UCAs was fucked, probably also adding to that turning to the right issue. Wanting to get everything put back together quickly I tracked down a set of JIC Magic camber arms which Scottr89 was selling (Big up to Scott, never have I received something so quickly before, I paypal'd him around 3PM, Camber Arms arrived in the post 10AM the next morning!!!).




I didn't realise how much of a difference in length there was until I sat both arms beside each other!




Anyway, it meant that progress could go on and I could start putting the car back together.




Clean parts look nice







The brakes were absolute wank, So I completely cleaned all of the calipers, then on with GKTech Braided Lines, New discs, and some new Mintex Pads up front. Nothing special but it should do the job much better now. You can also spot the Cusco Front Traction Rods as well.










At the back there's nothing that fancy to see....... Mainly because I got caught up in putting everything back on and forgot to take pictures. Eventually it got to the final stage of putting the wheels back on and getting it off the blocks it had sat on for about 5-6 weeks.




Back on the ground I realised there was now just a smidgens more front camber than I anticipated with the JIC arms in place.



More to come soon......

[scottr89]

Looking good man and great job on all of the arms! Glad you were happy with JIC arms, they do give the car a very aggressive stance, I liked it but my wheels were just too big!

[LarZ]

I LOVE A DETAILED BUILD THREAD! Keep us up to date man, this is going to be one to watch!

[Dave]

This is turning out very nicely indeed!

[derek89]

Good progress dude. Ah happy I don't have to touch any of my bushes yet.

[Hachi]

Looking good man and great job on all of the arms! Glad you were happy with JIC arms, they do give the car a very aggressive stance, I liked it but my wheels were just too big!

Cheers Scott, Yeah aggressive stance is one way to put it. I was getting the car tracked the other day and it turns out the arms give a total camber of -5 Degrees, right on the NCT-able limit haha. Not sure about their long term prospects but they'll do for the moment.

I LOVE A DETAILED BUILD THREAD! Keep us up to date man, this is going to be one to watch!

Thanks dude, That makes two of us. I could put in more pics but there are only so many pictures of some things you can see haha. There is still lots more to come.

This is turning out very nicely indeed!

Thanks, it's getting there slowly, I'm trying to get things done as good as I can within what I can afford.

Good progress dude. Ah happy I don't have to touch any of my bushes yet.

Thanks man, to be honest it isn't too bad of a job. If you ever have to do them though I recommend using a lift and air tools. And definitely a press.


If anyone wants any of the part numbers or info about where I sourced parts, just ask and I will spread the knowledge.

[D1SL]

good job so far will be watching this for sure