Dino DC: Japan’s Best GTR Tuning Shop – MINE’S

Dino DC Video Transcript

Foreign Hey welcome to another episode and today we are at another really legendary tuner here in Japan a place that I’ve been personally coming to for about 20 years probably over 20 years actually and it’s very kind of near and dear to me because I kind of

Very much like what they do their style of tuning and I’m of course talking about mines so mines is one of those really well known and respected tuners here in Japan so I think you know as somebody that’s been covering the scene here for so long I

Really want to try and show what kind of is behind Brands like mines you know the legend that is mind uh you probably all grown up watching uh you know legendary drivers like keichita or maxorito taniguchi putting Minds cars and other tuned GTRs through their paces and hot version videos

Uh but a lot of people don’t really understand where they come from and I just love kind of bringing shop tours like this to kind of help people understand the brands and the philosophy behind the tuning ethos is these uh well-known and respected tuning shops

Have here in Japan so I think uh we should probably go and talk to the president nikurasan and uh kind of ask him simply what the brand is all about we’re here in the main shop so this is where customers would come in and wait for if they’re doing kind of like

Regular maintenance that wouldn’t take so long and of course all around here or a ton of Mines parts specific to some other cars as well mainly of course GTR but they also tune fairly disease or other Nissan’s for example the March and the note and another popular upgrade here is the

Infinity caliper we’ve got various specs of our 35 steering wheels front pipes titanium shift knobs they’re legendary M3 E36 M3 style mirrors bunch of miscellaneous parts and gadgets a couple of demo engines here dummy engines rather I mean this is kind of showing you what a complete mines engine would look like

You only get the crackle finished blue color if you spec a complete engine build there’s an option for the VR R35 engine to have a carbon engine cover to kind of hide the cast stock Inlet manifold so one thing that I’ve always kind of respected about mines is that they’re able to extract

You know so much performance and power from seemingly not doing too much at least aesthetically to to engines and anything in the engine bay with people change unnecessary products mines sticks to things like the stock plenum or you know not exaggerating when it comes to like

Going for higher spec cams or you know doing crazy things they’ve always had a very specific philosophy which we’ll find out soon from uh nikurasan that basically the less you change the better of course it’s up to the customer if they want to customize other parts but they just concentrate on the important

Stuff and that of course is performance and in in their kind of philosophy of performance that means high response uh very usable mid-range torque and an engine that revs out because you know after all the rb26 is a race engine it was developed and made for group a

Racing back in the day legendary Hulk version Awards trophies [Applause] thank you so Mr nikura thank you again for having us here today and I just like to know what the minds tuning philosophy is what defines the brand and also what you think of the current GTR scene and market and how things are all kind of progressing and evolving um I know

My name is no no um foreign I know foreign that has been fitted to demo cars and of course customer cars has been built by nakayamosan who is the master engine builder that mines and this is his office of course temperature controlled where countless countless engines have been put together of course we’re talking

About rb26s here okay Amazon how many engines have you built I don’t know you don’t know so so basically this is what mines is reputable for their very high response very powerful but very reliable motives and it all starts here where blocks are mated to heads and all the components are put together

I just love seeing workshops you know that are used you know you go to certain places and it’s so clean you actually wonder if they do work but here there is no mistake they’re definitely putting things together here’s the 2.8 and a 2.6 and of course the 2.8 that we saw here

When we came in and I think you know in today’s market where the GTR has been kind of perched up on a high pedestal everybody really wants to have the most perfect the highest spec engine and I think to kind of show you what actually that

Means for shops like mines I think we should ask Amazon if we could show the engine block storage just to see the amount of engines these guys are actually waiting to build which is pretty shocking when you actually visualize it for the first time these are all rb26 blocks

That are waiting for builds so you can imagine the time that you have to wait you’re gonna have a Craftsman like Amazon put these engines together so you can see they’re as they’re pulled out of the inventory here matched to whatever piston set they’ve the customers

Specified so it’s either a 2.8 block or a 2.6 block or a board out 2.6 so depending on what you specify you either get a 24u or a 5u block to begin your build I guess if you if you commission a bill now you’ll probably be put pretty much behind there so

A few years waiting list if you want to have a mindspec engine and rightly so because it’s the know-how that is put into these motors that really make them so special there’s going to be a really cool car that we’re going to see later on downstairs in the workshop that kind

Of represents the highest execution that you know mines can kind of put together for customers yeah this is the dream for for a GT owner like myself you know having your engine put together by Nokia Amazon at this level it’s something very special and you know

The GTR world is so I wouldn’t say divided but uh there’s different schools of thoughts um I love for example what Australians do with GTRs they’ve pushed the whole development and research Behind These engines that are they’ve created something so crazy but then again the Japanese are very conservative when it

Comes to tuning so having something that you know is very responsive and very usable very drivable and of course very reliable nobody wants a drag spec motor that you know puts out thousand plus horsepower when it’s going to break every couple of months so so basically he’s saying that you know it

Could actually take him just a week to to build the engine but in today’s market there’s a lot of a lot of time that goes into waiting for parts and of course uh mind collaborates with naprec for Machining and head preparation and it’s just a question of waiting for parts

Um actually a friend of mine got his engine built here last year and uh it’s just finding those little parts from Nissan little hoses little gaskets and little parts that are just not made so you always have to look outside of regular channels and it always kind of

Ends up making things way longer than they need to be so basically the most popular engines of course are you know just a regular rebuild of a 2.6 or maybe a spec op 2.8 um five to six hundred horsepower is the range and if you really want to push hard or go to

The track most people would specify something like this this is a high response full tune engine 2.8 650 horsepower if not more depending on setting which is the same engine that’s being fitted downstairs or has been fitted downstairs to the BBL r33 that we’re also here to

To feature today so that kind of gives you an idea of what people go for Thank you this is not really the entrance a customer would take but um this leads directly into the workshop where the BBL guys are finalizing the r33 project which is 99.9 done and after this comes the R34 but uh we’re going to take this car out for the

Next installment for our mines they’ll be in a different separate video I think it’s such a special thing and such a great opportunity to spend some time with such a impressive build that you know it really deserves its own episode it’s always such a pleasure to come here

Mines I hope you kind of get an idea for what brand stands for what their philosophy is and you know the way they do things is it’s so conservative that most people will question it like why is it all so simple but I just love that

They focus on the things that make that difference the the adds to the character of the GTR and I’ll never forget the moment that I took the 34 away from mines that first time just even a simple remap with an exhaust just change the whole card just unlock

That potential that the rb26 has and it just made it so magical and for that reason I have always you know admired minds and always hoped that maybe in the future I could also upgrade my engine to a 2.8 high response we’ll see how that goes but anyway I hope you enjoyed this

Quick shop tour and chat to nikurasan make sure you check back soon because we have the video coming of the BBL drive so I hope you enjoyed it let me know in the comments what you thought and thanks for checking in