The Making of "The GTR Run Tokyo" by HartnettMedia (and my role in it!)

 A few months ago, my friend Dino contacted me - "hey you want your 33 to become the most famous 33 in the world?" with "Pennzoil wants to do a little something, so I am working on a project"

Of course, I had no idea what he was talking about. But the end result was this:

Ok so here is some background information.

First, Dino and Alec had me show up VERY early to the Hakone Turnpike. That is where Dino introduced me to Ben Hartnett and Chris Hofstaetter.  The guys drove a Nissan Serena minivan that Nissan had lent them, and Dino of course came in his 34.  A few minutes after I arrived, Sudo-san pulls up, NOT in his 32, but driving a flatbed truck that carried his 32! 

Then our first challenge of the day - it turned out that the original section where Dino and Ben wanted to film was closed to the public - apparently Ferrari Japan was renting it out for their own video shoot! Undeterred, we took some side roads and found some other good places.

Then, we had to also find a place for Sudo-san to park his truck where he could unload the 32. But after that, the magic happened.  

Here are some photos I took while waiting to be told what to do and how to drive.

Closer up, but without Mt Fuji in the background.

After a few back and forth scenes, we parked. This is where we tried to choreograph getting into our cars at the same time. Clearly, we are neither actors nor coordinated.

Same shot, I was experimenting with the exposure setting. Was hard to balance getting the background to show while keeping the foreground coloring accurate. 

Trying another angle...

Around noontime, I actually had to go back into Yokohama as I had meetings at work. Lucky for me, the cars were running out of gas and so we headed into Atami to get gas.  It was then when I decided to not bother driving back but have Chris take over - turns out he is a 33 fan so was THRILLED at being able to  drive my car.  All the evening shots of the cars on these roads, that is him driving, not me!

And of course, having been dropped off at Atami station as they went to look for a gas station, I  took this train back into Yokohama:

But of course, this was only part of the plan.  The next day, Friday night, I found myself driving my car at night, meeting up with Dino and crew at a Parking Area outside Tokyo.  Somehow, several random Japanese Skyline GT-R owners were also there, so we invited them to tag along and include them in the night filming.

All I will say is, it was FREEZING cold... which made for great turbo boost of course. But the Japanese guys were super excited about their luck, and one youung guy just happaned to be an avid Ben Hartnett fan and was literally gushing with joy at being able to shake Ben's hand and take a photo with him.

Ben and Alec plotting

Yep, we have seen this 33 before... original LM paint, too!

Lots of waiting. It reminded me of the one time I was an extra in a movie.  Many retakes, from various angles, with most of my time spent waiting.

Staying inside the car to stay warm!

Obviously no shots of me actually driving at night since of course I was boring and followed all the speed limits, driving in a safe, controlled and mature manner, as befitting my job and position in society. Right...

Anyway, we called it quits at about 0500 just as the sun was about to come up. I can see from the finished project that a lot of what we did not make it into the final cut, but that is to be expected in the editing process.  Still, I had fun and it really is nice to be memorialized in this way by a real professional cinematographer.

Thank you Ben, Dino, Alec and Chris!! Hope to meet up with you guys again soon!

Now This is Talent!

So via the magic of social media, someone pointed me to a drawing of my car. When I checked it out - I think it was on IG -  I was pleasantly surprised. Inspired by the cover photo to The Return of Project 33 article I published on Speedhunters:

I found this on Instagram - I actually like it just as much, if not more, than Dino's photo:

Obviously, Harley is a pretty talented guy - and when I contacted him, turned out to be a super nice guy too! (and yes, his brother is ok...).  He directed me to his Etsy store - and then a few weeks later:

And the Japanese is almost perfect! WOW!

First order of business, I had to get a proper frame to mount this in. Not just the same size as the drawing, but with a proper mat too.

Looks like it will fit perfectly...

Love it! Signed and dated. Could be worth a lot in the future, maybe??

That is spot on!

And yes, he also sent me this as a bonus:

Not sure what I will do with this but will hang on to it! It's signed on the back!

So I'm super happy that my car - or at least a photo of my car - is now generating art! NFT, anyone? But in all seriousness, if any of you see anything like this out there, please let me know! Totally happy to support artists and of course such art gets added to my R33 GT-R collection!

Anyone else out there with this kind of talent? Let me know!!

Another World's First! (Mine's Visit, Part 3)

 So take a close look at this. 

Specifically, the brake rotor.

Yes my friends, it is a carbon ceramic rotor! As you saw from the Speedhunters post (note, I wrote this article and the SH post at about the same time, hence a lot of repetition between the articles), I just got these installed at Mine's during my visit there, and let me tell you - they are absolutely fantastic! A game changer.  Basically, all of my mods I think have been evolutionary in nature - one dimensional. So improve engine breathability or exhaust for more power; or increase body rigidity to make handling better; or improve the interior to modernize.

But this is the first mod I can recall, that improves handling, acceleration, AND braking. So perhaps a revolutionary mod?

So here is the background - it took over a year from inception to delivery, but it was well worth it.  A fellow R33 GT-R owner (Matt J) - crazy machine, more modded than mine - in the UK told me he was running carbon ceramic disks (his sizes are 343 and 330, I think). Naturally, I had been toying with grabbing some R35 Spec V carbon ceramic rotors I had seen on Yahoo Auctions, but everyone I talked to - Nismo guys included - recommended against it.  Apparently the Spec V rotors were not as good as they could be? Apparently they are noisy and require warming up before they start biting well. 

It was at this time that Matt let me know that he had gotten carbon ceramic rotors for his R33 from Simon at Midland Brakes, and was kind enough to e-introduce me to Simon.  Simon claimed his company could produce a bespoke set of carbon ceramic rotors in any size up to 420mm, so naturally it meant I could keep the R35 calipers on my car, and simply have him reproduce the steel rotors in carbon ceramic.  Truth be told, I was not confident that the rotors would arrive and would bolt right up to my existing R35 rotor hats, so I also asked him to make me a custom set of rotor hats as well, and to have them all assembled together so I wouldn't have to bother doing so.

Anyway, here are some photos Simon sent me during the build. First, he showed me what was happening with the rotor hats:

Then he sent me photos of the carbon ceramic rotors being made:

Once complete, he wanted to show me how light these rotors were, so Simon sent me the following as well:

Weight of rotors on scale, in kg. Front:

Rear:

And then of course with the rotor hats fitted. Front:

Rear:

Front on top of rear, showing the backside of the rear rotor which works with the R33 parking brake! (It's not a steel ring like that I had Ninomiya-san insert when I first got the R35 brakes fitted. Can't believe it's been 10 years since I got the R35 brakes...) 

Flash forward and just a few weeks before I was set to go to Mine's for the new Silence-VX Titan III exhaust install, the rotors arrived in the mail. Perfect timing!  I was planning on doing the install myself, but figured I'd take them down to Mine's to see what Nakayama-san thought.

When I dropped the car off and showed him the rotors, he was a bit skeptical.  He had dealt with UK companies before and apparently the quality was hit and miss (and unfortunately that has been my experience as well - even with parts from so called well known Skyline shops...who I will not name here).  Nevertheless he agreed to see if he could install the carbon ceramics.  I was half expecting a call with bad news - "sorry they don't fit" - but that call never came.

Rather, when I picked up the car after the install of the exhaust, R35 injectors and R35 AFMs, the first words out of Nakayama-san's mouth were - "where did you get these rotors again? Can you introduce us to him?" 

In other words, the guys at Mine's were very impressed.  Indeed, Niikura-san magically appeared and also started asking me who made them, where the company was located, how much, etc. And that after Nakayama-san had fitted them and broken them in, given Nakayama-san's rave reviews, he had also driven my car to see how they were - and pronounced them spectacular (although now, he could feel that my car was having some torque steer! Nakayama-san told me later this is a common issue on 33s)!  Nakayama-san agreed, saying these were the best they had ever come across, as they were always testing carbon ceramic rotors but had never found a set they liked.  He told me he had weighed the stock R35 rotors and hats, which came in at about 13kgs, but these carbon ceramics with hats were only 6kgs, resulting in unsprung weight loss of about 7kg per corner! 6kgs is lighter than the steel OEM R33 GTR Brembo rotors, which I think weighed about 9kgs each!

As I described in the Speedhunters post, I initially thought that I would have to lower the spring rates for the Ohlins coilovers, but Nakayama-san assured me they were fine as is. And after having now gotten used to how the car is, I have to agree. However the benefits of the reduced unsprung weight continue to impress me - the handling is light, yet communicative; with reduced rolling resistance the car accelerates now with a new fury, making it easy to get wheelspin in second and third gears, in addition to quicker starts from stop. As for braking, if there was any small complaint, it would be that these don't have the quick initial bite that I recall the old steel rotors having, but it is still very close.  And this is something I will work on improving, hopefully with some assistance from Simon and Mine's.

Incidentally, the guys at Mine's weren't the only pros who were impressed. When I dropped off my car Nismo Omori Factory right before year end, I had Ochiai-san drive my car and he was similarly impressed, although he said he could feel a slight judder - but nothing that further breaking in would not fix.  Otherwise, he said he was surprised at how natural the brakes felt, and how stopping power seemed to be without issue. 

So next steps... honestly not much more I can do with the brakes (except maybe experiment with different brake fluids) but Nakayama-san did hint he had a few more tricks up his sleeve that he promised would make my car even more responsive than it is currently.  Even though he told me my car is now "scary fast" and I have to agree with that assessment.

There is also the issue of having enough mods to do that are Speedhunters worthy, but I will worry about that when the time comes. 

New Mine's Silence-VX Pro Titan III Exhaust! (Mine's Visit, Part 1)

Sitting pretty at Mine's after a bunch of new parts!

So I have to admit to not posting much these past few months, because of course I was planning a few things for my car.  Of course I am busy at work too, but that excuse gets overused.

In any case, as I hinted in this post from September,  there are some newer parts at Mine's that I have been interested in lately that I think will help to further improve the car (yeah, it never ends...).  One of these of course is their new Silence-VX Pro Titan III exhaust:

Courtesy of Mine's

So even though several years ago, through connections at Tomei Powered, I was lucky enough that my car was used as the jig for their Expreme Ti full titanium (off-road spec) exhaust system, and further lucky enough to have my car featured in their catalog, it was time for a change.

So that's my car representing the 33s!
Courtesy of https://www.tomei-p.co.jp/catalogue/ti-gtr/

Change in that there was nothing wrong with the exhaust. It was just loud. Very loud. Clearly designed for the racetrack such that I could feel how free-flowing it was.  Unfortunately some shops in Japan (like Nissan Prince Tokyo Motorsports Division and Nismo Omori Factory) will usually refuse to work on cars that do not have JASMA certified (and thus street legal) exhaust systems.  Never mind it was always a problem starting up my car on an early weekend morning in order to go for a nice drive.  As readers know, I ended up installing not just an electric valve to try to muffle the sound for in-town use, I eventually even installed an aftermarket exhaust bung as well. This allowed me to get down to close to street legal levels, after which Omori Factory kindly chose to not make a big issue of the legality of the exhaust...

In the past, I had told the guys at Mine's that there was bound to be demand for their titanium exhausts from 33 owners, which until recently were available only for 32s and 34s. So I was pleasantly surprised to first get a phone call from Takayanagi-san of Mine's giving me a heads up that they had developed one for the 33 due to popular demand, and then thrilled when during my earlier visit to Mine's Nakayama-san promised me that I would be one of the first, if not the first, r33 customer to have this new titanium exhaust installed! 

Flash forward to a few weeks ago, when we had arranged for me to drop off the car.  For posterity, I wanted to record what the Tomei sounded like, so...

And then of course Nakayama-san again took my car into the famed garage.

And then the fun began!

So it seemed like I was the only customer that day - yes, I felt special, like this was a historical moment! In any case, I wanted to test fit the new exhaust, just to see how it looked.

While a couple of the Mine's mechanics began to prep the 33 so they could unbolt the Tomei from the car, Nakayama-san gleefully opened up a very long box.

And pulled out a very large, very beautiful piece of art!

Look who happened to be in the neighborhood.  Of course he had to take advantage of this instant so

He was mumbling something about Speedhunters. I guess we will eventually find out if this photo gets published on SH.

I'm no pro, but here is my photo taken with my Sony Xperia 1 Mark III:

Another angle:

Very tasty!

Meanwhile the other mechanics had jacked my car up, and were trying to figure out how to remove the diffuser.

A few bolts here and there, and voila!

After which it was relatively easy to remove the Tomei exhaust, and temporarily install the Silence-VX

I say temporarily because, unfortunately there seemed to be a clearance problem caused by both the diffuser brackets and the extra oil capacity rear diff cover. 

Realizing that this issue wasn't going to be solved in the next few minutes, and because I had asked Mine's to install some other tasty bits, I then decided to go home and save a few hundred yen by hitching a ride with Mr. Dalle Carbonare to the nearest train station.

In my next post, I'll discuss some of the other parts that got removed and the new ones that got installed. Stay tuned!

Picked Up From Nismo Omori But...

So while I did pick up the car from Nismo last Wednesday, I'm not going to write about it here because I have a long overdue Speedhunters post on the event coming soon - I'll post here when it goes live. Meanwhile because there are other things going on with the car, I will gloss over the pick up (for now) and talk a bit about what I did after leaving Nismo Omori Factory and then in my next posts a bit about future plans for the car.

Obligatory shot of getting ready to say goodbye.

Anyway, first order of business was to head over to the car alarm specialist that Ochiai-san had found. This shop specializes in a variety of car alarm brands, including the one that was installed by Worx. Given the shop's willingness and confidence in being able to remove the wiring, I was looking forward to finally getting rid of this cancer in my car. 

Because every drive in my car could be my last, instead of putting the car on carrier truck I elected to drive the one hour to Yamato City, where Pro-Tecta Shonan is located.  I was able to experience some high way speeds, along with some usual inaka (countryside) stop and go traffic. What an awesome car! So easy to drive, so raw and direct! And yet, it feels so much more civilized now, with the ride much less jarring (and yet still very firm) now, and yes the roof insulation that the Nismo Omori techs installed REALLY making a huge difference! Combined with the very quiet Pilot Sports 4S (compared to the previous tires I had on before), dare I say you can have a conversation in the car at speed without raising one's voice now?

Felt like the middle of nowhere... definitely not Tokyo or Yokohama!

The owner, Mizutani-san was waiting for me and immediately began to inspect the car.

He immediately recognized that the alarm install had a back up siren, as well as some other options

And then told me to come back on Sunday to pick up the car.

There was also a white R33 GT-R there also for an alarm install, I didn't think much about it at the time (so no photos)... meanwhile I traded contact information with Mizutani-san before I departed.  He assured me he would of course be super careful taking the car apart to find and remove the wiring. Just in case, I asked him to message me if he found anything weird.

And he did:

Mizutani-san was surprised to see this and sent me this photo...I told him that was nothing given the other crap...

So on Sunday afternoon, I went back to pick up the car.

Slow day...?

At last, I got to check out the headache of an alarm.

All in all, it weighed about 1-2 kg!

As I made it a point not to bad mouth Worx too much, Mizutani-san was able to give me a fairly objective report.  He said that he could tell that the installer was skilled (Mizutani-san has more years in the business however) and that the install was done with minimal cutting and splicing.  Finally some good news (relatively speaking), but as I told him, it was mainly in the OTHER areas where I found a lot of problems due to Worx Nakamura's questionable decisions and failure to let me know what he was doing.

So does that mean that the guys at Nismo were in over their heads? My interpretation is that they simply did not want to learn alarm wiring on my dime, so that is fair.  It is after all a business, and I'm not a rich man like some I know, so a line had to be drawn somewhere before it became too costly for Nismo to continue.  Plus as we all know Nismo is basically OEM, so that is their comfort zone. And that of course means not everything at Nismo is the best... or better stated, what Nismo does isn't for everyone (hint of possible future post).

The lesson here friends, is avoid installing Japanese-brand car alarms. They have too many features, and place a premium on flash versus ease of use.  My old Clifford alarm remote had two buttons, this one had 5, and so many cute graphics that the battery quickly wore out in a month (and they must have known, as it was super easy to change the batteries - no special ones needed, just AAA size). I don't recall how many times I changed the battery on the Clifford remote on the other hand... Plus I would like to think that US brands probably have more experience against car theft (a good thing) due to more cars being stolen in the USA (a bad thing).  Mizutani-san agreed that Cliffords (he installs them too) were easier to use, but said that they tended to break more so there wasn't a perfect solution.

Mizutani-san also told me that the owner of the white r33 GT-R that was there when I dropped off my GT-R was also a Nissan employee, but over at the Technical Center (an engineer or designer I'm guessing).  Apparently he spent about an hour checking out my car, remarking that I must have spent a lot of money on it so far... I told Mizutani-san to have the guy contact me and I'd be happy to discuss all things R33 GT-R!

Anyway I said my good byes and drove home.  I cleared out the other vehicles from my garage, and immediately did what I had to - give the GT-R its first wash in several MONTHS!

I could actually see the dust on the roof of the car....

I thought it was weird that they didn't wash the car at Nismo Omori Factory, but then again their ceramic coating contractor took a look at my car and told them the car was too clean to make it worth his while to do any work on it. And knowing that they know how OCD I am, I think not washing my car was probably the right thing to do (they wouldn't want to be accused of scratches done in the course of the wash)...

Epoxy floor, weather proof concrete walls and interior faucets means a wash out of direct sunlight!

So now that the car is back in my garage, is it done? Nope, a few more things need to be done before that can happen... this journey isn't quite over yet...