Dino DC: I Bought My R34 GT-R BRAND NEW | GTR Restoration Ep.1

Dino DC Video Transcript

Foreign Thank you thank you hey welcome to a slightly different episode and one I’ve been really wanting to do for well since I started YouTube earlier this year and that was to actually present to the channel my R34 GTR that’s kind of a project car that we

Are going to be bringing back on the road and I say that because this car’s kind of been I wouldn’t say neglected or kind of abandoned but let’s just say I put it to the side about five years ago now four or five years ago mainly because you know life

Got busy we have small children and there was a lot of stuff that was happening and I didn’t want to sacrifice doing the right thing with the GTR and at the same time you know prices went a little bit crazy as they continue to do

So today to this day and I kind of halted what I was doing tuning wise to the car and I thought it would be a great kind of period of time to maybe you know think about what I was actually going to create with this car my main

Thing with the R34 has always been like if you followed my stories on speed Hunters project GTR which I’ve been documenting for you know a good decade now my thing has always been to modernize the R34 and kind of just take the things that have aged and at least

Have progressed in modern cars and trying to inject a little bit of that into this car but before we get into all that I think I should probably go back right to the beginning of when I got this car foreign So the year was 1999. it was basically the launch of the car and this was delivered in late March 1999 so I’ve had this since new for 24 years which is insane if I think about it now I mean it just blows my mind that I’ve had a car

For so long and I’ve only ever tried to kind of use it in a fun way it’s never been used for like long trips or you know doing in a daily drive it’s always been a fun toy for the weekend or you know maybe the old track day and of

Course with it my attempt at perfecting what I thought was supposed to be my image of the perfect GTR at that time of course it’s all shifted for about a decade now so there’s definitely things I will go back and change because I not regret them but you know things have

Progressed new things have come out new products new parts new know-how so basically up until I guess 2018 when this car was at tokyoto Salon that was pretty much my perfect image of what the R34 should have been like so I got a bit of catching up to do and starting with

Actually getting it on the road so it’s been off the road for five years which means I need to get back to the regular maintenance check things over and get it shakened again so the the yearly well by yearly Japanese roadworthiness test that I need to do after that’s done car needs

To be mapped so we did fit HKS turbos at door lock back in the day and along that an elite 2500 I’ll take ECU which was kind of Base mapped for me to just move the car around during the Tokyo that’s a long time when I got it wrapped and

Other parts like the brakes fitted so so there’s a bunch of stuff that I need to do to get this car completely where I want it to be and kind of take advantage of the parts that have been fitted and I think with that I’m going to pretty much

Create a whole new series on the channel where it will be taking this car to various tuners that you guys will probably have known for many years legendary shops to kind of help me each step of the way and hopefully make it a fun voyage for for you to follow and

With that you know we’ll try and do shop tours and kind of talk to tuners that have been you know building cars like the GTR for so many decades here in Japan and just kind of get their low down on what the whole GTR world is all

About now that you know things have progressed values have showed up to the stars and so many cars that live in Japan because so many foreigners are picking these very rare cars up and there’s so much that I want to do this car to get it you know pretty much the

The kind of level that I’ve imagined for so many years so I think it’s going to be an exciting Journey I’m really looking forward to kind of sharing it with you all so you know I hope we get as many updates on this car as possible

Over the coming months and with that it will also be the first project car of many there’s a few other cars I want to introduce to the channel but the GTRs first Thank you Okay so like I was saying this car was purchased back in 1999 when it first came out at the Nissan red stage dealership in Mito in ibaraki which is where near my family we’re living back at that time and the car kind of stayed stock for the first year or two because

I was very much new to the whole GTR world and I took a good couple of years to kind of read up on everything go through all the GTR magazines and just kind of understand you know what tuners were doing with them you know having had

Experience with the R32 and r33 a good decade before that so one thing that I remember doing was hitting up my first event at scuba which was a top secret track day and shooting it for fun I wasn’t working as a photographer or a journalist back then but I remember

Having my parents film camera and snapping away some shots of these crazy r34s that you know a year after the car was out we’re already kind of heavily modified I remember being blown away when nagatasan brought his gold R34 demo car and it had a t78 fitted already so

It’s been a wild journey and it was through these kind of initial events that I hit up at scuba that I came to not only I guess find out but understand tuners like minds and they were the first shop that I took the car to probably in 2002 or three now I’ll have

To look it up but I just wanted to kind of take that initial step to wake up the rb26 so basically it was a full exhaust system and HKS EVC boost controller fitted to the car and their minds VX ROM ECU kind of retune I remember picking

The car up and driving for the first time after this initial kind of modification and just being blown away kind of you know for the first time feeling what an rb26 should have been like instead of this uh you know 280ps limitation that you know manufacturers

In Japan kind of agreed to stick to in that period it kind of snowballed after that I didn’t really do much engine work per se I concentrated more on suspension uh taking it to a Mori Factory back at the original movie Factory when it was still in omori just uh outside of

Shinagawa and fitting the s-tune suspension and along with that these c28 ends though the car is actually running to this day these are 19s by the way which was something really new to be doing back then because in 2003 not a lot of 34 owners were running 19s

Everybody was sticking to you know the the safe 18 by nine and a half kind of sizing weren’t playing around with too much aggressive offset but I wanted to stand out a little bit and that’s why working with Rays I kind of decided to go with the 19th and it’s been my you

Know Street kind of wheel setup since then I liked the look of it it balances out the wheel Arch to to kind of wheel ratio and plus I’m a big fan of the c28 ends so it was in 2003 that I finally managed to do the first aesthetic modification which was this z-tune

Bumper at that time for work I was beginning to kind of get going in magazine work I followed a couple of builds of two zetunes that Nismo was doing and I fell in love with the design of this bumper you know having kind of followed the the zetrium development I

Think Nismo started in 2001 just kind of praying and hoping it would release it for you know normal people and once they did I was over the moon I got it of course it’s the FRP version the carbon wasn’t available back then and I just felt like it changed the whole look of

The car I always contemplated whether to go for the side skirts or the rear finishers that nismoso did I sort of liked them I sort of didn’t I never really made a call on it so the car kind of stayed like this kept it fairly simple pretty much when it comes to

Aesthetics this is pretty much the only part I’ve changed I’m on my fourth OEM diffuser it tends to split the seam so kind of always wanted the Nismo one but you know dry carbon five thousand dollars but that said 2003 I started taking the car more on like gay runs

Going down to the turnpike experimenting with different roads around the Fuji area and hitting tracks like motegi scuba Fuji not really driving it too hard I had a lot of love for the car I didn’t want to you know put it in a wall or anything I think the hardest I ever

Drove the car was probably later on when I did a story for Speed Hunters where together with dolak and Tarzan Yamada we fitted the digital G meter that Tarzan and dolok developed together to kind of sharpen up the way that the car responds sending drive to the front wheels I

Remember that track day it was so much fun mainly because the car’s character changed so much just from a g sensor one cool thing I got up to with this car in 2008 was donating it for a good six months to eight months to Tomei power so

Together with my friend akis r33 his 33 and my 34 were used to develop the Tomei titanium exhaust that is you know to this day on sale so it’s really cool to see my car used in you know all the advertising and the brochures and you know having a professionally shot in the

Studio so following that the car kind of evolved into a more regular appearance on speed Hunter so I was always trying to figure out next steps to Kind of Perfect it modernize it one of the things that I did was change the ignition coils and got rid of the actual

Cover in the middle of the rb26 something that I’m actually going to be going back and fitting even more modern coils now that actually fit within that just to keep it more clean that was kind of a prequel to the work that came afterwards which was getting the mines

ECU taken away and replaced with a haltec platinum computer shortly after that haltech released the elite 2500 so I quickly swapped ecu’s and went for the more modern more programmable more kind of like easier to use a computer what followed afterwards was I had to get the

Car ready for the Tokyo Auto solar in 2018 and that’s where I collaborated with HKS it was time to finally you know take advantage of all the parts to be kind of renewed in the HKS range starting with some GT3 turbos which replace the 2530s that’s what this car

Is running right now along with some Tommy poncams and some big 1050 CC injectors so it’s pretty much all ready to go to get that kind of final map and get that 500 horsepower gold that I was always shooting for suspension wise I originally got rid of the Nismo s Tunes

Which were amazing suspension I still think they’re probably the best choice to go for if you’re just planning to drive the car on the road but I ended up getting some custom-made Club sport coilovers done by KW and they’re fitted at Each corner with hydraulic lifter so

At the Press of a button the car Rises 45 millimeters which is handy because I run it way lower than I did with the S tunes and you know if there’s some ramps that I need to get extra clearance I just hit the button and the car goes up

Braking wise I got rid of the stock braking setup and I replaced it with some Brembo six spots at the front with 380 millimeter two-piece rotors front and four pots at the back with 355s so it’s pretty much you know the best setup for kind of Road and track I haven’t

Really tested it out much because you know after fitting it for Tokyo Salon the car kind of sat so I only got to really use it once so I’m looking forward to kind of finalizing an actual brake pad Choice as well it’s currently running the stock pads occurring with a

Brembo kit so I’ll probably up it up to some project news or something like that so there’s a lot of stuff that needs to be done and you know we’ll document every step of the way including you know getting up to some proper driving and hopefully some nice trips as we get the

Car to some cool shops so the first thing I need to do to get the car going is to get some slash plates on it so I can start moving it around I have a set of Yokohama tires you’ve probably been seeing behind me since the beginning of

The video so these are the new advent ad09 yovas Yokohama have sent me a set of 275s 19s that will replace the bridgestones I’m running now so all the work will be done at Sunbeam here in Tokyo and then I have a very important piece here this is an anti-gravity battery and lithium-ion

Battery the the guys from anti-gravity sent me this is key because the battery that’s currently in the car now is completely dead so getting life into this car is going to be priority number one and what’s cool about this one aside from the fact that it weighs absolutely

Nothing is that it comes with this jump start system built in so basically as the voltage drops it senses that and it cuts voltage and it keeps enough in their store so you can jump the car countless times just so you can get going so first few things along with

Taking the wrap off it’s been on for four or five years now it’s time to return the car to its original Bayside blue color and start cleaning it up we are going to be fitting the battery right now because I need to get this car

Started up and be able to move it as soon as possible so I’m just going to Pop the trunk get rid of the battery that’s currently in there and Slot this one in there now Sort of blows me away oh incredibly light this uh lithium battery is from anti-gravity it’s crazy and it comes with two key fobs so you can keep on your key and you can hit this and activate the jump start feature if your voltage is dropped I should probably mention that

I’m not really the kind of guy that works much on this cars I usually end up breaking stuff losing bolts and screws and screwing it up so that’s why I plan to go to proper shops Strengthening Probably like a good year since I turned this over 34 degrees intake temperature outside 32. it’s a hot night okay so there it is I’m drenched probably not the best of ideas uh trying to get my semi-abandoned project going in the middle of July but it was success thanks to the guys at

Anti-gravity they gave me a battery which basically fit in beautifully in the spot that the GTR has in trunk and it’s literally a tenth of the weight of the other battery I had in there cranked on straight away and now we’re at mobile we can get this car to shops

We can get it to some beam to change the tires get the Yokohama tires fitted and progress throughout the year and hopefully get this car to a good position that you know I’ll be comfortable to take it to daikoku and do some proper drives with it so I hope you

Enjoyed this new series make sure you check back for more I try to update as much as I can from now on with the GTR so thanks for checking in Thank you