New Zealand comp spec street driven RB25 C34 Laurel (pic heavy)

Hello all. After around 18 months spend in Europe for the sake of travel, I'm a week away from flying back to my home city of Christchurch, New Zealand, to continue with a lifestyle of what I love most in the world.

I have sent some money home and purchased a rather rough C34 Laurel, which is being shipped across the country and should be arriving home around the same time as me, one week from now. The body is rough as guts and it has a horrible, horrible body kit and 'drag style' wing on it, but every other aspect of the car is complete, and competition spec. It comes with almost all the bells and whistles I have dreamed about having on my next slider, and has twice the balls of any other slider I've owned (two R32 sedans and an FC), so I am super excited to get back and drive it.

This car will be 90% street driven, with a track day maybe every 2-4 weeks, as here in Christchurch we have hills and industrial areas where drifting can be taken to the streets without putting any innocent people in danger...

















The mod list is as follows:

RB25DET S2
R33 'Big Box'
Exedy clutch w/ lightened flywheel
Link G4
Extensive roll cage
Bride buckets on adjustable rails
Monza five point harnesses
Genuine GReddy intake
DSR430 turb on a stainless manifold
Tial 38mm wastegate
800cc injectors
'500hp' fuel pump
Genuine HKS BOV
Nolothane bushes everywhere
The usual arms
D2 coilovers
17x9 and 17x10 DTM Drift rims
De-tarred body
Momo wheel and quick release boss
Rack lock spacers
Clear cam cover w/ HKS belt
Light weight alloy fan and alternator pullies

This setup has seen 301kw @ 18psi, but currently has 240kw @ 14psi and a low boost setting of 10psi. The seller has advised me that although it runs fine, it hasn't seen a lot of use lately and could do with a re-tune. Therefore my first plans are a compression test, coil pack test, new plugs, injectors sonic cleaned and flow tested, and then go for a re-tune with at least a high boost setting of 18psi and a proper conservative low boost setting for street cruising, with proper fueling for fuel efficiency, not that it will ever particularly have that.

After enjoying that for a while I intend to convert the front to non face lift, rip the horrid kit and wing off, panel and paint the outside, inside and underneath, DW knuckles on the front, and some nicer wheels. After all is said and done, it should look quite similar to what is considered by many as the coolest C34 build on the planet, Takuya's LOWBRAIN C34. I hope ya'll enjoy the thread as the car is developed over coming months.

 

So, I found out that the car would take a casual month to arrive if I were to have it shipped to my home city, along with the cost of £500/$1000NZD. Suffice to say, NO.



Me and my 16 year old sister (I'm 24 for anyone who cares) are flying up this coming Monday, and spending somewhere between three and four days cruising down. I tried to tell her how HORRIBLY uncomfortable the trip will be overall, mainly due to the cabin noise, but she didn't give a care and begged to come. Time for some sibling bonding after 18 months of almost no contact, I suppose.

The car comes with no spare wheel so I'm trying to find and organize a set to buy and pick up on the way down, to use as spares so I don't get stranded. Auckland will be best, probably. I need something that can clear the big GTST Skyline brakes, and I need at least two with the same profile tires to put on the rear so I don't blow the lock diff.

I'm also trying to find a police radar I can borrow, and am borrowing a mates GoPro so I can record myself stacking it (crashing in NZ lingo) five minutes after picking up the car, hah.

 

Cheers Nugget, yeah I read through your thread before buying mine, you have put a lot of work into yours for sure! I was lucky to find mine with all of the hard work done, for a price I could afford. They are not as popular over here in NZ because people don't see their potential cosmetic wise, so you can typically get them a bit cheaper than their equivalents, such as Skylines, Cefiros and C33 Laurels etc.

I will deffo put effort into this thread, I have a nice camera and a good tablet so sitting down and typing away in my spare time is effortless, I'm sure many people see their threads as a chore but I really want to keep everything documented and am happy to do so. I will be posting pics of small details for all the people out there who are here on this forum to learn about cars, I myself have learnt a LOT of what I know about building cars from this forum alone over the years, so I want to finally give back to this wee community

Would you just so happen to know if swapping the front for a non-facelift is a simple bolt on affair?

 

Ah wow, offers of help and expressions of interest pouring in already; this is exactly why I had no doubt about what forum to start this thread on

That's a shame man, although I suppose that makes them all the more special when you do own one They are everywhere in New Zealand but as you said, never done quite right or had enough money spent on them. I've never seen a nice one in my life, and only seeing Takuya's LOWBRAIN C34 and then finding a couple of decent build threads such as yours and one or two others opened my eyes. The second I saw mine for sale, I knew I had to make it happen

Location and cellphone number noted, thanks a lot, much appreciated! Crossing my fingers the worst that may happen will be the need to put more gas in the tank.

Just read your thread, and man no kidding I have ALWAYS wanted to do a VH build, and much for the same reasons you're doing yours. I approve! I've never converted a car from diesel, it looks like you have plenty of mates to help you, and I don't *yet* have any particularly super useful skills such as welding, but regardless, perhaps we should meet up sometime over a beer and discuss builds mmm?

I eat shit and sleep Nissans, and cars in general, so am looking for plenty of new car nut mates to make after being out of the scene for a long time. Just trying not to run into circles of thieves, I know there are plenty of dodgy bogans around that would be cracking me open a beer inside while texting a mate or two to steal my car out of their driveway...

As for street drifting, I know, I know. I use to be just another dickhead boy racer with my dirty old R32 skidder myself, doing stuff anywhere at any time, but in my latter street days I learnt that it really is not difficult to take the street fun out and away from the public, keeping them safe and relatively undisturbed. Lets face it, our city is peeeerfect for it, on one side having the port hills and on two other sides having extensive country back roads no one goes down past midnight.

Next post will be a quick rundown on my previous cars from years past, for anyone interested. One dirty R32 sedan, one not-quite-so-dirty full roll caged R32 sedan, and one too-incomplete FC RX7 I sold JUST after I finished wiring in a Megasquirt by myself and got it running after months of ownership, lol.

It goes without saying, I am super amped for next week. Roll on Monday

 

All right, few casual beers down and am now bored, so here goes.

Literally as I type this, the seller of the car is attempting to get the car a Warrant of Fitness, or WOF. For you UK guys, that's New Zealand's name for MOT. Not long after posting this, he should email me letting me know how it went. Wish him luck, please.

For those who aren't too familiar with New Zealand, I would like to point out that us, along with Australia, in our own way, are the southern hemispheres most car enthusiastic countries, and are up the top of the list on the planet, in terms of sheer car culture enthusiasm per head of population. My home city of Christchurch, in the South Island of NZ, is particularly well known for its illegal street scene, or at least has been 'till a recent crack down many years in the making.

In a nut shell, our central city is surrounded by four avenues, known as the "Four Ave's" or just "The Ave's". For years all of the cities boy racers would head out and do "laps", filling their cars with drunk girls and going around and around the city, generally cruising and getting rowdy, with a little bit of casual skids, drifting and street racing thrown in for good measure.



I would like to point out that generally speaking, European "boy racers" and New Zealand "boy racers" are a completely different breed, only sharing the name. In New Zealand, you're more likely to have a beer bottle thrown at your front wheel drive hot hatch, than any respect, because here the most respected cars are by far are any rear wheel drive drift orientated cars, or perhaps any old school pushrod V8 muscle car cruisers.

Almost every weekend night for years, the boy racers would hold what we dubbed as "The Skids", where a text would be sent out from a particular group of mates to hundreds of people (in the later years organized by a bunch of guys calling themselves "Christchurch Underground"). The text would have a location and time for everyone to converge, and anywhere between three cars and three hundred cars would show up, depending on the time of year, what the weather was like, what day of the weekend it was, and pure chance, etc etc.

Looking back, it was really just all the dick heads of the city coming together to do burnouts, and 8/10 cars were truly complete pieces of shit, but I tell you all now, what a brilliant way it was to spend most weekends between the ages of 15 and 21! It made my love of car culture flourish like nothing else would have. I could write a short novel on the eventual downfall of that particular street scene when the community of Christchurch, the government and the police force finally made an effort to crack down on our antics, but I'll only bother if particular interest is shown. Here is a link to an NZ documentary made about the scene right smack dab in the middle of all the controversy a few years ago. Keep in mind this was created by the media to shed as strong a negative light on our car community as possible, some of the more extreme points made are truly exaggerated, or at least taken quite out of context.

ANYWHO, back to actual cars.

Here is my first piece of shit. I payed too much money for it initially, and it gave me no end of troubles, but I loved the thing dearly, and it alone taught me a lot about modding and maintaining performance orientated vehicles.









Basically had an often-overheated, almost factory RB20DET which went through four or five gearboxes and three clutches in it's lifetime. Five stud big brakes, fucked Tien coilovers, and not a lot else. Then this happened:



Had a complete mind blank whilst excited about going to "the skids", and dropped the clutch while on the redline in second gear, doing a u-turn. Slid into a pole, almost dropping it onto a house, except a tree caught it, pretty much. If said pole had been a meter more forward on the car, would have probably killed my brother who was in the left rear seat, by smashing his skull open. This was my first true eye opener about doing stupid shit on the street.

Managed to escape the with the exhaust scraping on the ground, pulled over and used the yellow rope you can see to strap the exhaust up off of the ground, and got away without any more consequence other than losing the shell, and some dignity.



To the scrap metal yard. Not long after, I picked up this shell to put my drive train into:











The story behind this car is long, but basically, it got stolen just before it would have been road legalized and then insured. I spent along, long time without a decent car as I had no insurance payout.

Then this fucking thing came along:







Came to me with a complete drivetrain, but almost nothing else. After weeks of trying to track down a complete factory loom, I gave up and wired in a Megasquirt from absolute scratch. Took me a long, long time using internet guides, but by the end of it I now understand the basics of auto-electrical wiring, and can wire in any form of basic thing without too much thinking required, hah. After finishing 75% of the cars wiring, lights etc included, I got it running and almost ready for a tune. Then my European departure date arrived, and I sold it to the brother I almost killed in the R32, after only driving it twice for a total of about two minutes (thanks to tire rubbage from the 18x10 and 18x12's I stupidly bought it before spending the much needed money elsewhere instead).

18 months later, here I am, thinking of almost nothing else except the car awaiting me in a small town in the northern tip of New Zealand. I am in a better financial situation than I have ever been in in my life by far, and have come out of Europe with such a more focused mind, that I know this build is going to be a truly thorough, and full quality one. I really hope you guys enjoy watching.

One last thing, just to make you poor readers jealous:

 

Hah no problem man, I'm sure with time I can get it tweaked to my preferences and get it sliding fine.

Waiting at the airport now, severe weather is racking the skies all over the country, so wish us luck.

Another dick point to make you UK guys jealous: for full comprehensive insurance covering the car for £6000, it will cost me £480 a year, despite going through a 'high risk' insurer with an obvious competition track spec car and being 20 years old. Not too shabby!

 

Update time! Many may find this post boring, but for those who don't, here it is.

The day after flying home from Bucharest, my sister and I flew up north to get the car. After a half an hour delay on our first flight, we missed our connection flight and the entire trip was delayed five hours. This ended up causing us to do the entire North Island during the night, which meant less cars on the road and my car sucking in some cold dense air, but also meant we missed out on some amazing Kiwi views. Regardless, the trip went well enough.

The main issue I have with the car at the moment is an unavoidable one - only one type of servo here in NZ sells 98 octane gas, while the others sell 95, and all sell 91. It means I sometimes have to spend a bit of time and gas getting to a BP, and even then half of 'em sell 95 instead of 98 anyway.

We ourselves were mostly fueled by crap fast food.



A few hours after picking up the car, I picked up four wheels, 16x7 and 16x8 Modia 'designed by Keiichi Tsuchiya' thingies that fit over my big Skyline brakes. The initial purpose for these was to use them as emergency spares in case I got a flat. The Laurel being a Laurel, three wheels easily slid into the boot, with the fourth tied in securely.

We then drove through the night, arriving in Taupo, a town against the shore of a massive lake, for some brekky and a proper look around the car in daylight.











The zip ties held on fine at 220k's an hour



The entire car has had a fair bit of nicely detailed mods, such as a reinforced rear subframe and Nolthane bushed throughout.



Not sure whether to attempt to bog this roof up before paint, or stitch a new one on from a donor car I intend to buy soon.





Sleepy sis, haha.



All over NZ there are holiday parks like this, where a clean cheap bed can be found. Slept for ten hours throughout a beautiful day, trying to get over jet lag.



Then this happened that midnight. Oh-oh! The clutch completely failed on me. After managing to push start the car in first gear using the started motor, I carefully slid it through into fourth without a clutch.

While doing so, my thoughts came back to this fella, who had randomly decided to post this after reading the start of my thread. I thought to myself, "how far am I away from Bulls?", when LITERALLY two minutes after driving along clutchless, I passed a massive sign as I entered f%cking Bulls! What were the chances? At the time I wouldn't have been surprised if Bulls had been two hours away!

After calling him at midnight and waking him on my second attempt, I told him I thought that perhaps my slave cylinder had failed. He told me he had a spare slave and a bunch of other parts lying around already, and was a two minute drive away. After jacking the car up using his jack and tools, I felt that the slave was nice and tight, and there appeared to be no leaks anywhere. He then suggested checking the clutch pedal setup under the dash - something I had overlooked, as I had just gone straight to assuming the worst.



So! Whoever converted this bloody car to manual had failed to secure the pin that connects the pedal to the clutch master cylinder. After a few years it had wriggled its way free, bent the bracket, and stranded me and sis. Thing is, what were the chanced of it failing two minutes outside of the one town where a random good c*nt had given his cell number online, and offered any help if needed, half way through a 1,300km maiden voyage road trip? Crazy stuff.

A simple bolt that I had found flying around the boot was the perfect temporary fix, and off we went.





And then this happened a few hours later! These two piglets were actually quite nice to deal with. They checked all my details (remember, insurance is in no way compulsory at all in New Zealand, although I had it anyway), cleaned my bloody engine so they could run my engine serial number through their stolen engine database, and after 20 odd minutes, sent me on my way. Quote of the trip, "We thought we were onto a golden one with you, buddy", hahaha!



Waiting for an 8:30am ferry south, my sis and I explored the hilly city of Wellington, watching the sunrise and snapping a few choice pictures too.







Then I smashed a skirt:





Got onto the ferry just fine, as the car only looks low due to the kit. Second quote of the trip, from a chick behind the ticketing counter:

Me - "What's the (age) difference between a child and adult?" (For the ferry ticket)
Her - "Jail."
Me - "That's my 16 year old sister you're referring to."
Everyone within ear shot pissed themselves laughing

 

Three hours on the ferry later, and a bit of a nap, we were just four hours from home with beautiful weather to see the sights with.















Such a shame we couldn't have been seeing the sights all throughout the North Island, plane delay be damned.

Then the car was in its new home.



The whiney whingy clutch release bearing completely failed a few days later, so off came the kit and out came the box, along with spending my last remaining dollars and cents on tools and oil.









I've seen worse gearbox magnet plugs...



The old bearing had been heated so much that the inner race stuck onto the holder, causing it to disintegrate during my friends efforts to press it off. It was well buggered.



Then I found this:





Fuuuuuuu! That has gone back in but will be replaced within a week... out comes the bloody box again



The pressure plate fingers look acceptable, despite a bit of love from the old bearing. Not perfect, but it'll last till I need a clutch upgrade.



Aaaaand back in. I must say, this was the easiest gearbox I've ever worked on, in terms of getting at the top bell housing bolts. All Nissans I've worked on before required four or five extensions and a twisty knuckle thingy fed up from underneath, yet in this C34 chassis I could get to all of them with a ring spanned from the top. I think the firewall is an inch further back in relation to a Skyline and its RB.

Also, with other Nissans, I have had to tilt the engine back, and twist the gearbox around, to get enough clearance for the bell housing to slip past the trans tunnel. In this thing, the 'box practically fell out with no tricky bullshit required. Score!

Next on the list is a complete, pre-facelift donor shell, which will lose much of its interior and all of its exterior panels, doors probably included, to get this car ready for a full on panel and paint, windows out and all. Paint is perhaps going to be something along the lines of Midnight Purple, with either a stark white or perhaps creamy coloured engine bay and cage. This all has to happen over time, as money permits, though.

And on a final note, instead of buying a new turbo and upping the boost of this motor, I think I'll be slowly building an RB30DET in the garage over coming months, and buying THAT an appropriately sized turbo, wastegate, manifold etc instead of spending cash on the old 25. We'll see.

Last quote of the trip, from my sister: "You have ruined cars for me. Any other car I ever get into again from now on will be boring as f*ck", haha, thanks sis!

 

Quick mini update.

Got the sis onto cleaning the car. Weather was shite, but it was much needed, especially with the amount of brake dust on the rims.







Looks a lot nicer afterwards, although forgot to take comparison pics.

Then this happened.



I could see from the minute I bought the car, that there was a lot left to be desired when it came to everything behind the dash. Although I have seen 100x worse, the wiring was a bit of a mess. Simply ripping the dash out and re-wrapping all of the old, dust covered electrical tape with new tape makes it all look a hell of a lot nicer, and is nicer to handle.



Cracked open what looked like a factory ECU, to confirm what I had been told - it has a G4. Although it is from '08, I have been told by my local supplier that they can easily update this unit with all of the latest firmware for the next tune, no problem. As this fairly expensive piece of kit was just flying around the glove box for anyone breaking into the car to unplug and take, I will be mounting it up under the dash where it is a lot harder to get to, which will also free up my precious glove box space.



This was unfortunate - it happened while I was separating it from the dash cluster. It was in terrible condition anyway, so hopefully the donor car has a mint one for me.



So much nicer to look at without the murky, scratched plastic anyway.



And an action shot from when I had to slap the car into working order in a hurry, so I could go in-roll myself into a polytechnic course that starts in February. Six months full time in basic fabrication, and then I'll decide whether to move on to a machining course, or, most likely, a light fabrication course the next level up, where I hope to learn the skills to fab custom parts at home. By the end of all that, I hope to be able to fab anything at all, from cages to manifolds to fuel cells to rust repairs to engine and gearbox mounts, etc, etc, etc...

And finally, mini story time. I got myself pulled over again, this time for doing 65-in-a-50. After five minutes of chat, the cop was all charmed and smiling happily, trying to stop me chatting away so he could 'do a couple of checks and stop wasting my time'. All in all, after barely five minutes on the side of the road, most of which was talking about the car, and the road trip south with it, he sent me on my way with a wave and a smile, and had seemingly forgotten all about the speed.

It is good to see some local cops are friendly, and good knowing that the ones that don't catch me driving like a dickhead will remember the car on sight and will be less likely to pull me over, knowing the car is legal, officially.

Whooo!