Darrens Nissan Skyline

In this form, the car made 260bhp at the hubs on Abbey Motorsport's Dynapack dyno. The car had a poor A/F Ratio - killing an estimated 30+ hp.

I had always planned to modify the car, but the aforementioned hp figure made me want to modify it soon - as it was not running to it's full potential !

The first modification for my car was a very kind gift from Glen Horncastle - in the shape of a front Strut Brace (Glen had ordered a rather flash Cusco one for his car).

The first performance modification I made was to change the exhaust. An "HKS Hiper Muffler" was fitted. This is the exhaust I have always felt sounded and look the best on a Skyline - so it was a must have on my own car !

It was also noted on the Dyno runs that the car was not making 1bar of boost until very late in the rev range - basically, the car was not hitting 1 bar of boost until 6900 rpm !!! With this in mind, I decided to get an electronic boost controller. Jez Quick from the GTR Forum was selling an HKS EVC IV Silver Edition at a good price ... so I snapped that up. This came with a "trigger button" - which allows a preset boost setting to be used for a 30 second burst (at this point, this is un-mapped).

The boost controller made a nice improvement to the cars power and response ... pulling much harder from lower in the rev range.

Abbey Motorsport kindly invited me to be on their stand at Trax 2003 (held in September at Silverstone). Included in this was the chance of a 20 minute track session around the full GP circuit. With this in mind I felt a brake upgrade was a must. The chosen brakes - a set of R34 GTR Brembos - taken from Abbey Motorsports "Project X" Skyline. To fit these brakes behind the standard wheels (16") Abbey fitted a set of 25mm wheel spacers - this pushes the wheels right out to the edges of the arches - improving the looks of the car.

The performance of the car on-track was not too great. Once it was hot, the car would not pull beyond 120mph down hanger straight - this was attributed to the massive over-fuelling problem (as spotted on the dyno). So, the next modification was going to be the engine management. After a bit of thought, it was decided that HKS F-Con S would be the best solution. Before this was fitted, a new set of air filters were fitted to the car - "Apexi Power Intake" being my choice. During the setting up of the car on the Dyno with the F Con S in place, the car was leaning at at the top end of the rev range, to ensure that there was enough fuel getting in, a Tomei fuel pump was fitted.

The car in this state of tune the car dynoed at 335.2bhp at the hubs ( at 1 bar of boost) on Abbey Motorsports Dynapack - an improvement of 75.2hp at the hubs since I bought the car. This is basically a stage 1 tune and shows the potential of the car.

Here is a set of photo's - taken on 8th November 2003

Here is a set of photo's - taken on 22nd May 2004 (with plenty of new parts)

Over the past month or so I've had a series of new parts fitted. These include an Apexi GT Intercooler, an Apexi hard-pipe kit, an Abbey Oil Cooler kit, a re-map of the HKS "F Con S" engine management and a new set of wheels. The intercooler, hard pipe kit and re-map of the engine management gave a great performance increase - with the car now producing figures of 364.9hp at the hubs and 302 ft lb of torque (at the same boost pressure as before ... 1 bar). These parts were mainly fitted to help preserve the engine, but they've had a great performance increase too. Additionally, I decided to change my 18" wheels - I've now gone for 17" x 9" Asso wheels. These wheels came off of Abbey Motorsports "Project X" drag car. They are extremely lightweight wheels - and look much better than the 18's that were previously fitted.

November / December 2004

Sometime last November / December time, whilst driving the car home from work, unfortunately a turbo let go on the car. This damage turned out to be a shattered exhaust wheel on the 2nd turbo. I was very fortunate in that the exhaust wheel had blown out of the exhaust pipe and had the bits had not gone into the engine. This meant that to fix the problem a new set of turbos were required (it could have been worse .... I could have needed the engine pulled apart !). After weighing up the options supplied tome by Abbey Motorsport, I decided to go for the HKS GT-SS turbos and the HKS Turbo elbows. These turbos are bigger than the standard units - but spool up very quickly - giving full boost at almost the exact same revs as the standard turbos. The car lost 1hp on these turbo's but gained 29 ftlb of torque. Unfortunately, the cams are now restricting the amount of air that the turbos can draw in - as the cams are absolutely maxed out. The only way to improve the performance of the car now is to fit uprated cams and cam pulleys and also to fit larger injectors. At the same boost level as is currently being used, the aforementioned upgrades would produce a pretty hefty power increase. All I need now is the money .....

Here are 2 pictures of HKS GT-SS turbos. These are exactly the same ones as are on my engine - although the pictures are not of my engine.

May 2005

The car went in for its usual 6 month service in May (and for an M.O.T.). Unfortunately this highlighted a couple of minor problems - a split CV boot, a split gearbox gaiter and a slight oil leak from the cam cover. The CV boot and the gaiter were replaced with standard items, but to ensure that the oil leak was completely resolved (as I don't like oil leaks !), the cam cover was completely removed and fitted with new seals. Whilst the cam cover was removed I requested that it was re-painted. I've gone for the "Abbey Orange" colour cam cover - which, as you can see from the pictures, is significantly better than the standard dull black cover.

Additionally, while the car was in, I had the wheels fully refurbished to make them like new. The wheels have been kept to the original style with the plain alloy spokes but with the wheel edges highly polished to bring back the "bling" !!

Engine:

Apexi Induction Kit . Downpipes . Abbey De-cat Pipe . HKS "Hiper" Muffler . HKS "F Con S" Engine Management . HKS "EVC IV Silver Edition" boost controller (running 1.2 bar) . Tomei Fuel Pump . Exedy "Hyper Single" Clutch . Apexi GT Intercooler . Apexi Hard-Pipe Kit . Abbey Oil Cooler Kit . HKS GT-SS Turbos . HKS Turbo Elbows .

Chassis:

Trust "Dow Max" Springs . Front Strut Brace .

Wheels & Brakes:

Asso 17" x 9" Alloys . Falken FK451 tyres (255 * 40 * 17) . R34 Brembo Front Brakes . Standard R32 GTR rear brakes .

Bodywork:

Colour Coded front bumper lip spoiler .

Performance:

363.7 bhp at the hubs (433.7 bhp at the flywheel) . 331.2 ft lb Torque . (As measured on Abbey Motorsport's Dynapack dyno)