MR GODZILLA
ALEX SPENT ALMOST A YEAR SEARCHING FOR THE RIGHT CAR; BUT IT HASN’T ALWAYS BEEN ‘SIMPLE’ MAINTENANCE SINCE
IT’S BEEN A while since I’ve penned an update on my Nissan Sk yline. That’s part ly my fault; it rea l ly only just struck me t hat I’ve owned the car for t wo years a lready!
That’s not to say I’ve been neglecting it. It’s mostly been simple maintenance since purchase.
I t ried to drive it ever y weekend, weather permitting of course (I tr y to keep it out of t he ra in if I can help it), washed it religiously, and changed t he oil, f i lter and plugs ever y 5000kms.
There were other non-essentia l areas of improvement. I guess, most obv iously from some of the photos, is t hat I changed the rare Nismo wheels that came with the car to these Japanese Volk Racing TE37 bronze si x-spokes. I had received a few of fers for t he three-piece Nissan wheels but they remain safe in storage for now and I will likely keep t hem.
I also changed window rubbers on both sides as I found out af ter t he f irst wash that the car wasn’t exact ly watertight. It’s st i l l not 100 per cent, but is near as close enough. As much as any 90s Nissan frameless coupe has any right to be.
There were other small issues: t he car suf fered a terrible misf ire for a while, which was v irtually eliminated with a new set of ignition coilpacks; and I had noticed that the ATTESSA dynamic a ll-wheel drive mode would occasiona lly k ick itself into RWD mode seemingly for no reason and at random.
Beyond that, not much else had been done. The car has been through t wo track
"I WAS DETERMINED TO BREAK INTO THE 1:30S BUT LUCK WOULD HAVE IT OTHERWISE"
days since I’ve owned it. Both grassroots time attack day events at Winton raceway, threeand-half hours up the Hume out of Melbourne.
The f irst was more of a test and benchmarking day, st i l l on t he st reetspec t y res and bra ke pads that came on the car. At t he sta r t of t his year I returned, now with more suitable bra kes, rotors and – most importantly – t y res. Insta nt ly, from t he f irst session out, t he car was transformed.
The simple switch to a brake pad compound wit h a higher operating temperature, and the aid of 265-section Hankook RS4 t y res at a ll four corners, a llowed me to scorch my prev ious PBs and achieve a 1:40.1. I was determined to break into t he 1:30s but luck would have it ot her wise.
In t he second session, a coolant hose blew somewhere in the depths of t he notoriously cramped 2.6lt t winturbo inline-si x’s engine bay. I nursed t he car
into t he pits, escorted by the track marshal under red f lag conditions.
Despite t he prev ious owner handing me a stack of invoices for a signif icant ly cost ly engine rebuild – somewhere a long the line somebody seemed to have decided to reuse the original now-26 year old rubber hoses.
A small componentr y fa ilure, but too fa r in t he depths of the engine bay to f i x at t he track. Any water we put into t he radiator simply poured out on to the ground.
Friends drove me back to Melbourne, where I picked up a Toyota Hilu x press car and rented a tra iler, and drove a ll the way back to Winton to fetch my wounded Nissan.
It’s a l l f i xed now, but it was a stark lesson on how hard t he track is on old cars. I’m increasingly t hinking of retiring t he car from track use but I k now I will miss it. But these cars are a lso now somewhat of a rarit y and worth preser v ing. What to do…?