Skyline R33 GTS-T Series 2 
Engine
Pretty much stock, except for a couple of Jaycar kits that allow 10 psi boost and no R&R... although I've taken those off now for the time being. Just like it how it is - the Supra is the hardcore car!
Suspension Mods
Stock - again, did have a whole "tuned" Whiteline/Bilstein suspension kit lined up for it, but never got around to installing it as I realised it would look crap without aftermarket wheels, so I scrapped the idea and sold the kit.
Electronics
Jaycar IEBC and DFA
Wheels
Stock.
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Ride | 139 Views
Skyline R33 GTS-T Series 2
Make: NISSAN
Model: GT-R
Year: 1996
Color: Charcoal
Power: 268/265
Added: June 08, 2008
I have this ride...
By: benro2
Member Since: December 13, 2006
Note: this is not a GT-R - "Skyline" was not available in the "Model" drop-down list. People may scoff at an auto Skyline, but really, they don't know what they're talking about. Until you've driven one, you should reserve your judgement! People say that stock for stock, an auto will beat a manual up until around 140km/h. This is because you can hold your left foot on the brakes while building up revs/boost with your right, then jump off the line. I haven't tried this, but it makes sense. The auto shifts very fast, and very smoothly, and doesn't stuff around when you put your foot down - it will go down 1 or 2 gears immediately if required. I really like the auto for cruising around the city but wanted a manual basically to learn how to drive one! If I had to drive to work every day in city traffic there is no doubt that I'd stick with the auto.

I tried to sell this thing a few months ago when I bought my Supra and I'm very sorry I did. I had it sitting in a caryard for 100 days (which cost me a packet too - for nothing!) and the day I brought it back home was one of the best days of my life. I missed this thing so much! It's just so easy to drive and cruise around in - it's not noisy, it's quite practical, it even has reasonable fuel economy, and with the cruise control, on long trips it's great.

I took it to Melbourne (about 900 km, or 560 miles) just before I sold it, but had cruise control fitted to it specially for the trip. I'm very glad I did this, because it would have been such an uncomfortable trip for me without it. I must have used the accelerator pedal for about 15 minutes total on that entire trip! I managed to get a best tank of 9.3L/100km (25mpg) on that trip, which I was actually a little surprised at. I'm taking it back there again in 2 weeks, this time with at least one other person in the car, and I can't wait! Last time I actually *enjoyed* cruising along a boring highway, checking out the scenery, listening to music and sitting back in the very comfortable seats. The suspension is stock, and actually more bumpy than the Supra, but it is well damped and because of this, I believe a car with softer suspension would have actually been worse for a trip of this length. The slow up and down motion can make people sick, but with this, you hit the bump and the wheel simply returns back to its original position without any extra movement. Even my grandad says this car is his favourite ride in the back seat! :)

Normal fuel economy, which involves mostly city driving, has been about 12.7L/100km (18.5 mpg) ever since I bought the car nearly 3 years ago. I bought it at just under 50,000 km's (genuine according to two independent people) and now it has nearly 100,000 km's, and it hasn't caused me one bit of trouble whatsoever. Nothing serious, anyway. Just recently the climate control has started doing weird things but apparently that's a common problem and easily fixed anyway. That's pretty much all I can think of that's gone wrong with it. Inside, it's in excellent condition, as with the outside. It has plenty of power, especially if you increase the boost to a handy 10 psi and adjust out some of the fuel so it runs a little leaner. Nothing compared to my Supra (it has literally *half* the power of that at the wheels!) but more than enough to beat most things out there. OK, maybe not the latest V8's, but we're talking about a 12 year old car here! And a (nearly) stock one at that!

I wish it had a 5th gear, and a manual shifting system (as in something like a paddleshifter) like the R34's. This is basically to decrease noise a bit at speed and decrease fuel consumption even more. And maybe decrease the gaps between the gears a bit. It's fine how it is, it's just something that would have been nice. I absolutely love this car to bits and may even start driving it to work soon, but I don't want to put too many km's on it. It must have been a sign if no one bought it after 100 days sitting in a car yard! I apologised to it and gave it a pat after doing that... :)
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My Other Rides
Go down to the bottom if you want to see the mods... if you want to know how this thing drives, read on... Well, here's how the story goes. I bought this baby from Perth, which is on the complete other side of Australia to where I live (near Sydney). I didn't go and check out the car at all, however I bought it off a respected forum member (and moderator) at www.supraforums.com.au. I'd only ever sat in one other Supra once, and that was in the passenger's seat. So, you could say that I was completely unprepared for the lack of practicality this thing has. But I got it professionally inspected, including a compression test and leakdown test, both of which it passed with nearly perfect results. So, when it finally arrived, I had the first shock of how useless the back seats and hatch is, but then the second surprise happened. I had the small problem that I'd never driven a manual before. Ever. Not even once. I hadn't even sat in someone's car and idled it down the road. I figured that everyone if else could drive one, then so could I. Well, that would turn out to be true, but in the meantime, I got my dad to pick up the car with me from the transportation yard to be safe. Now, my dad is pretty good with driving manuals. He's experienced all sorts of bitchy clutches, mechanical ones, all sorts of things. But nothing prepared for this clutch... it literally takes up in about half a cm, right near the top of the pedal travel. Admittedly, he only stalled it once on the way home, but he sure looked funny revving the car for 30 seconds before he finally moved away from every stop! So, I had to get a friend to come over and give me a (fast) drive. He too had no end of trouble driving the thing, and he'd been driving a twin-plate clutch in a Skyline for the past 3 years (although it was almost like a stocker to drive). I invited about 10 other friends over in the coming days, and ALL of them either stalled it or spun the wheels when taking off. Not good! This was about the point where I'd wished I'd taken it for a test drive... In the end, after about a month of practise driving up to the local university late at night, I finally took it out on public roads and now I can drive it just fine. It's still a little tricky on hills, but generally I can manage it OK. I'm getting more and more brave with hillstarts and things now and I can shift and take off pretty much just as smoothly as with a regular clutch, but it requires a fair amount of concentration to do so. I must also match revs on both up and down shifts all the time if I want to shift smoothly, which doesn't trouble me, as I kinda like it, and since no one else does it on downshifts, it sounds cool too :) The lightened flywheel comes in really handy here because it will pickup and drop revs very quickly, making revmatching quite easy. From what I've heard, the HKS GD Clutch Pro is one of the bitchiest twin-plates around, and for those of you who have never driven or heard a twin plate clutch, you're in for a shock. These things are NOISY!!! As in, much noisier than the car itself, even with a fairly loud exhaust. At idle, unless you increase the idle speed up to about 1100+ rpm, it'll rattle like hell, especially on hotter days and even more with the A/C on. Even turning on the headlights makes the bloody thing rattle more! When accelerating under about 1800 rpm, it's even louder again, probably almost twice as loud as the car, and you can hear this especially when you're driving in enclosed areas. People must be thinking there's something wrong with the car (and I must admit it does sound like it a bit!), as I'd say 99% of people out there wouldn't have heard one before, or know what it is, which would have been the case with me until I bought the car! Why is this clutch so hard to use? Well, I've found out it's because of a number of things. There are two main models in the HKS twin-plate clutch range, the GD Clutch Pro and the GD Clutch Max. The Pro (mine) doesn't use the anti-rattle clips (which simply makes it louder), the sprung centre or the sequential plate engagement system of the Max. I think it's more of a track clutch, because the unsprung centre allows for faster shifts, and I presume the non-sequential plate engagement would do the same thing. I also think this clutch uses a six puck design, which gives it higher grip, but can also make it vibrate a bit and take up more aggressively. It also uses the regular "organic" type clutch material rather than the carbon type, which also apparently has a more aggressive takeup. Anyway, that's enough about clutches. Bottom line, be *sure* you REALLY need a twin-plate if it's a road car, and be prepared to put up with a LOT of noise. There seem to be a few single plate solutions out there that can hold plenty of power (mine is good for 600hp apparently), but these will require higher pedal pressures. One advantage of mine is that it has an incredibly light pedal, probably about 30% lighter than a stock one, so lighting fast shifts aren't a problem. So what's it like to drive? Awesome. It's noisy but sounds cool, the engine is incredibly smooth, and it's an absolute rocket. Other than the lack of grip (even with 285 rears), where it'll rip out the tyres in 3rd gear in the dry, it's just stupidly fast. I've had one guy go for the grab handles when it comes on boost... Because the previous owner did a permanent TTC (True Twin Conversion) mod, where both turbos are being used simultaneously rather than in the factory sequential mode, where one is used for lower revs and both are used at higher revs, meaningful boost doesn't really happen until about 3000 rpm. But from there to about 3500 rpm, power pretty much doubles. Boost comes on HARD and just fries the tyres in the first 3 gears (with traction control ON!) and it really hooks up well in 4th, but by that stage you're doing 100mph... Because of the insane injectors (they came fitted from Japan and are estimated to be about 1000 cc, which is good for about 1000 hp!), getting it to start easily, idle properly, etc. is not that easy with the PowerFC, as it just doesn't allow fine enough adjustments at low injector duty cycles. It runs well enough, at least well enough for me not to consider buying a more expensive ECU. It misfires slightly at idle, which makes the clutch rattle even more. Starting, especially when cold, is a bit hard, but it does start every time after 10-20 secs. It has a weird problem where it hesitates for about a second after changing gear - I put my foot down, but no power, which can make changes a bit rough, but once the water temp is above about 75C, it's fine. So a few little quirks here and there, but that's what you get when you start modding cars. Fuel consumption? The first couple of tanks were absolutely shocking, because all I was doing was stop/start driving, not even going anyway. Think about 22.5L/100km (10mpg). Now, with mostly city driving, it's down to about 15.5L/100km (15mpg) on a bad tank, and about 13.5L/100km (17.5mpg) on a good tank. Cruising, I don't know properly as I haven't done a full tank like this, but people have reported figures as low as 9.0L/100km (26mpg). I doubt I'll get this, however, because of the aforementioned problem of the fine tuning potential of the PowerFC with such huge injectors. So not the best fuel economy for me, but when you compare it to a 6-7L V8 making the same power, it starts to look OK... plus I don't really care as I only drive it enough to require filling it up once a month. I use my Skyline as the daily driver... this is purely a weekend car :) Other notes: comfort is fairly good, although I have to say the Skyline's seats are better, particularly for longer cruises. Practicality is shocking. Absolutely useless back seats unless the person in the back sits cross-legged, and that is only good for 10-15 mins max. Hatch is useless. It's probably 8-10 deep at *most*. Good for long, flat things, but crap for anything else. I have have to lie bottles of milk on their sides when shopping! Steering is great, especially with the TRD/Momo wheel. I would have liked to have an airbag there, but oh well... I'm not going to change it back to a stocker now. Just the right amount of feel and weighting, and very direct. Tramlining is a bit of an issue though, especially with these wide tyres. And I've worked out that I really should be using 265's and 295's to get the correct outer diameter... Aquaplaning hasn't been a problem either but that's more down to the tyres rather than the car itself. Exhaust noise is a bit of a problem if you want to listen to music, as is tyre/road noise. I've found that I will just drive with the windows down anyway, as unless you've got a huge sound system with subs and up at a loud volume, music just gets lost and drowned out by the bass of the exhaust. And the previous owner said that it's "not *that* loud"... :p Looks? Awesome. I think the styling of this car will go down in history as one of the classic shapes of the 90's. This thing draws attention like nothing else. People will hear it coming 100m down the road and turn around to have a look. People stare at it in their cars or walking down the streets. I'm normally not an attention seeker, but if you are, buy a Supra :) The Top Secret bonnet certainly helps. I personally love the black, as it looks great and it's one of the rarer colours. I think an RZ (the "hero" car in Japan), which is only available as a 6-sp TT, in black, is an extremely rare car to find. The previous owner said he had to wait for 9 months (!) before a suitable car popped up, and even then he had to pay a ridiculous price for it. So it's nice to know I have something fairly individual and will (hopefully) hold its value fairly well. Future plans? Well, I'm unsure what to do with it. I currently have two cars and almost nowhere to drive :) It's a bit of a waste of money, and at the moment I can't really afford to keep both for much longer (I've been saying that for 9 months though...). I've been thinking of selling both and getting a Stagea, but then I see some track vids of a Supra on streetfire and think that I should go big single and put a full HKS T04Z turbo kit on it and get some nice Brembo brakes, and have it as a track car. So I don't know. If I get the job I'm hoping to get, I'll be able to afford to do so but now, it's not going to happen for a while... Plus, I REALLY like the Skyline - it's such a nice car to drive... Anyway, I know this read has been pretty long but if it helps someone make a decision about buying a Supra, I'm happy. My suggestions: definitely at least go and sit in one to see if you can stand the impracticality of it. If it's a second car, no problem. Definitely take it for a test drive, as you never know what mods have been done to it. If it's modified, check out all the mods, ask people on forums what they think, and have it fully professionally inspected. Some people try to cut corners with mods and IMHO, it's just not worth the risk. You can often make the car hard to drive, less enjoyable to drive, or even worse, you could blow up your engine if you have an aftermarket ECU that's not tuned properly (like mine was when I first got it). Other than this, I think anyone who wants one and drives one, will buy it. It's just one of those cars you HAVE to own at some stage of your life if you're into Jap imports :) Anyway, onto the mods. This list may not be comprehensive. I keep on forgetting things here and there every time I type up this list... but I think the main things are on there. Reasonably highly modified all-round, notable items include: hardcore HKS twin-plate clutch (GD Clutch Pro) with lightened flywheel makes it nice and hard to drive and incredibly rattly, Top Secret fibreglass bonnet, HKS SSQV, HKS FMIC, Sard pod air filter, Apexi GT-Spec cat-back, 3" TuneAgent dump, 3" HKS midpipe, TRD replica CF spoiler, 1000cc (estimated) injectors, Apexi PowerFC, Blitz ID-III boost controller, TRD front strut brace, Greddy rear strut brace, Evolution "Intensive Hunk" 18x9 and 18x10 wheels (black powdercoat finish) with 255/35ZR18 and 285/30ZR18 tyres, Greddy electronic boost/EGT gauges mounted in A-pillar pod, the list goes on... Supra RZ 6-sp TT
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