Waiting for the "Morning Miracle"

Hello motoring world…..

How quickly a week goes’s by before I’m back to the pen or tapping at thin bits of plastic as the future has now became…

This week we saw the pinnacle of four wheeled Motorsport F1 deliver us one of the tightest, most exciting finale to a season in a long time. Where a drinks company can beat the prancing horse yet again for another year in a row, and true to name the prancing horse is annoyed and seems to have “thrown the toys out the pram” by writing to the FIA for clarification on Red Bull’s overtake of the Toro Rosso. Happily the investigation showed Vettel doing no wrong, and Vettel will retain his world title after F1 director Charlie Whiting confirmed his overtake on Jean Eric Vergne was legal.     

So back to story of getting my New Nissan home to the land of ever green.....With the vehicle in North Tokyo I was told that a boat would be leaving on the 26^th of December. ( A nice Christmas present ) So with the Nissan boarded on the “Morning Miracle” a roll-on roll-off car container, it would sail direct from Japan to Dublin Port, ETA for this journey one month. A long wait, but just before it left I was sent all the vehicle’s documentation for its arrival in Dublin Port, where it would be met by Irish customs for inspection and cleared into Ireland ( after paying them of course) , On the 31^st of January the Morning Miracle arrived in Dublin Port and a confirmation call from customs that the car could be collected.

So trailered up, I headed for Dublin Port to actually see the car I had owned now for nearly two months and to me and my father’s amazement (who only told me afterwards that he was somewhat concerned about me buying a car over the internet), the vehicle was perfect and as described in the auction sheet.

I would suggest to anyone if they are concerned about buying from Japan that all you need to do is find a good trustworthy vehicle exporter and understand the auction sheets. You will have no problems and to be honest I found it easier and more straight forward then buying a car 2^nd hand from a private seller in Ireland

I did forget to mention that I got a Uras Monkey Magic bumper fitted before it left Japan , something that caused more problems and heartache than it ever gave styling to the vehicle.

I think over the years of having the bumper on the car it must have been damaged and repainted dozens of times, but on the upside I am now a master of repairing Fiberglas and with all this knowledge you would think I had learned my lesson, but at the time I was obsessed with ‘THE LOOK’ and would not listen to reason and insisted on fitting more Fiberglas, this time ‘skirts’!

The real reason I had bought the vehicle was because of the performance it could offer, The Nissan Skyline R32 GTS-t is fitted with a RB20DET engine.

          This code can be broken down into:-

·         RB: (some say Race Bread I don’t think it means anything)

·         20: Standing for the engine size 2.0L ,

·         D: Double over head camshafts

·         E: Electronically fuel-injected

·         T: Turbo (just the ONE)

Out the box, the engine performance is quite good with power at about 215BHP in stock form but with a little work more power can be released quite easily, My RB20DET came from Japan already fitted with a Hi-Flow de-cat exhaust and a Hi-Flow airfilter. With some research I found that the Turbo elbow is very restrictive and the waste-gate outlet reduces flow because of the shape of the OEM turbo elbow

So with the exhaust side of things sorted the next part that can show good improvements for low cost is a larger intercooler, The R32 GTS-t in standard form would run a small wing mount intercooler, this can be improved by fitting a larger item to the front of the vehicle, where the larger area would cool the intake charge more efficiently and the larger intercooler would dissipated more heat.

With the above fitted to the Nissan there was an improvement in performance, but simply fitting these items is not enough. The ECU will not be able to take full advantage of what is available, So I needed some way of changing the ECU’s programming, This is where a little box of tricks came into play.

A HKS F-con S is a piggyback ECU, that goes between the vehicle loom and the ECU (piggyback), In simply terms what it does is changes the signal the ECU is receiving hence the Fueling and Ingition timing can be altered. I booked the Skyline into www.TDP.ie, a HKS mapper, to have this ECU mapped for 95 octane fuel as the vehicle had been set up for Japanese fuel which has a higher octane value, and if the vehicle was driven for long period it would cause pre-ignition inside the conduction chamber ( but more on that next week!! )