Plated...GOLD!!!

Well not quite, but great nonetheless. Got home this afternoon and in the mail had come the notification that my number plates are ready for pickup. They are 'SILLBEER'. Some of you may have wondered where I came about this name. Well if you've ever been to the Japanese Yahoo Auctions before (a boon for used cars and parts from Japan), and subsequently used say the Google Translator service, when Silvia is listed, it is translated to 'Sill beer' or 'Sillbeer'. Here's a link to the Nissan section of Yahoo Japan Auctions:

Japanese Yahoo Auctions - Nissan

Down the left you'll see the names of the cars, some familiar, some not so, and you'll notice 'Sill beer', sitting there above Skyline. Some other interesting translations are Grolier for Gloria, Fair ready for Fairlady and Seaming Machine for Cima. Oh, and if you ever read 'minute mountains' in the text, I think it's short for millimetre.

Cheers
Brendan

Brembo's All Done

On Saturday I finally completed the R33 GT-R Brembo Brake calipers. Original Black with a White logo, I wanted something different, so using VHT's special Caliper spray paint in Cast Aluminium, Red and Clear, the transformation is now complete.

Cheers
Brendan

Take a brake

Well, I went home last night - and between my son Kai crying, I managed to paint the red logos onto the calipers. The mask/frisket worked well. Although, I didn't have any idea when to remove the mask, so I tested one of the fronts and it came off OK, with only minor blemishes. Tried one of the rears however and it wasn't as successful. I left the second rear until this morning and it came away really nicely (as pictured). It's not bad for an amateur job, and once it has the clear coats on, the finish should be pretty flash.

Cheers
Brendan

Driveline time

A couple of weeks ago I had to remove a diff for the project from a subframe. This item was from an R33 Skyline GT-R and is a Viscous LSD. Unfortunately it was at the back of the workshop under another two fully loaded subframes. It took a good 30 minutes just to move the one I wanted into a clear area and another hour to remove the differential and half-shafts from the subframe...ugh! I hurt myself in a number of ways while doing this. The reason for going the GT-R diff route rather than a mechanical is that this will be daily and 'grip' driving fun car, not an all out 'drifter', and secondly, I'm running short of funds to purchase a $1500 diff - there's other more important stuff to still get yet.

Once I got the diff and half-shafts home, it was time for a quick de-rust of the diff housing before a rust inhibitor primer and a few coats of the satin black. Looks good too. The rear cover will be replaced with a prepped and painted S13 Silvia one, and the front yoke will be changed to suit the driveshaft. As for the half-shafts, there wasn't so much rust as there was baked-on grease covering the boots. I had a quick go with the prepsol and discovered that with a bit of elbow grease, removal of the nasty grease coating resulted in a new looking boot. Took about 45mins for each half-shaft but the result was worth it, a quick mask and paint and the half shafts were done. At the same time as doing these, I also cleaned and painted up the drive shaft. It's looking pretty schmick, but for the life of my I can't find any photos.

- GT-R Differential Top
- GT-R Differential Bottom
- GT-R Half Shafts
- GT-R Half Shafts Boot closeup



Now another list on the prep list were the Brembos. These are items I kept from the R32 Skyline GT-R that I wrote off a couple of years ago now. They were in top condition and once I decided on colour scheme, it was time for a quick clean and mask followed by 3 coats of the Silver base coat (using VHT Caliper - Cast Aluminium paint). I've now masked up for the new logos to be painted in Red and finally I'll run another 3 coats of the new VHT Clear Gloss Caliper Paint to make it nice and easy to clean the brakes after the hard yards.

- Brembos Prepped and Ready for Paint
- Front Brembo - VHT Cast Aluminium base coat
- Rear Brembo - VHT Cast Aluminium base coat
- All Brembo - hanging in the cupboard
- Front Brembo - Logo Mask
- Rear Brembo - Logo Mask

I couldn't help myself and wait another day to paint the red logo, so have done up a quick and dirty mockup in Photoshop.



Onto another item now. I originally had a China Trust 'Copy' Sump installed on my engine, but after just sitting there for quite a few months, there's evidence of oil leaking. As such, I decided to purchase a genuine Trust/GReddy Oil Pan/Sump. Paid $510 for this from Tanghy on SilviaWA new (thanks Andrew).

- Trust Sump (Top)
- Trust Sump (Bottom)
- Trust Sump (Parts)

Will post up a shot of the Brembo's once finished (like you knew I would anyway).

Cheers
Brendan

Quickie...

Nothing much to report really, I went in and finished up the underside on Saturday and completed up to the front of the chassis rails (removed front bar to do this). I've now got the all the Brembo's off the Pig now, so will be cleaning and painting them sometime this week. At the moment the plan is to go silver with red Brembo logos - still not sure if these will be painted on or stickered on with a clear over coat.



Next on the prep list is the driveshaft, differential (GT-R) and half-shafts (also GT-R). These are still at the workshop for the time being because if I bring too many parts home the wife gets a little miffed which is quite understandable.

Would have done more work on the car over the weekend, but had to get the bathroom and laundry ready for the tiler starting today. This job was a real paint in the arm. I had already removed the tiles, but that left the adhesive still intact. So out with the bolster and hammer on the walls (hit my hand several times), and them my trusty Ozito jack hammer on the floor. All up I was going at it for 10hrs straight over the weekend.



Oh, and I've decided to not much around with the clutch and have an OS Giken STR Twin-plate on order.

The New OS Giken STR series can handle up to 600hp, yet retains drivability very close to standard with 30% lighter pedal effort than most multi-plate clutches. By using special new plate and diaphragm designs, OS Giken has achieved ample power handling with just 715kg clamping pressure. This makes the STR series perfect for everyday driving applications, along with most race and drift applications.

The clutches come complete with lightweight chrome-moly flywheel, ruby red-anodised billet aluminium clutch cover and the required bearing/carrier set or pull-push converter kit where required.

On blog matters, I've managed to secure the use of www.sillbeer.com as a domain and am just awaiting the owner to redirect the DNS records to my server before I move the blog over to it. Stay tuned.

Enough for now, more next week.

Cheers
Brendan