Larry Chen: 1500hp “RB36” Paddle-Shifting GT-R: The Most Batsh*t Crazy R34 I’ve Ever Seen Video

Larry Chen Video Transcript

Know s I wanted to talk about I think probably one of my favorite r34s if not my favorite R34 at yesterday’s GTR Festival in Sydney Australia I don’t even know how to begin I mean it’s just so crazy it is so beyond what I thought R34 could be built like yeah but this is actually

About a buddy of yours and he’s a little camera shy which is fine you’ll tell us all about this incredible build starting from the engine bay oh my goodness and this is the funny part is this this level of engine bay in Sydney in Australia

Is actually I hate to say it’s kind of normal the titanium is a big highlight with this one compared to some other builds but this sort of engine look and combination is actually not out of the ordinary in Sydney anymore which is wild to think right because most people you meet overseas

They think an R34 you can you wouldn’t do much with it because of the value or collector or whatever but in Sydney we go all in whether it’s a 32 33 or 34 we just go all in so but so this started Life as a very very rare version of the

R34 this is uh Midnight Purple Three yeah original Midnight Purple Three vehicle and uh for those of people who actually don’t know uh the engine bay wasn’t actually painted no that’s right a lot of GTRs don’t have the same color engine Bays they do the outside of the

Car whether it’s a matte version of that color or whether it’s just black most of them actually have terrible engine bay paint to be brutally honest uh I think pretty much every GDI needs engine mode painted because they’re just they’re nothing special from Factory but yeah it

Surprises a lot of people when they see the black they go oh is this car not midnight purple originally like no that’s that’s how they are so the paint’s so expensive that that’s probably part of the reason and so difficult to get it right that it probably wouldn’t have looked great if

It was done in Matt in the engine bay so so this is kind of like a z-tune inspiration yeah yeah in terms of body but all genuine though so a lot of people do the Z tune swap with non-genuine but this is genuine you can

See the carbon Z tune Hood the Z tune bumper the the fenders guards or Wings whatever you want to call them on the front but it’s all genuine and then all refinished yeah the real Nissan midnight purple yeah paint yeah yeah the guys with this build did I originally got

Built in South Australia before Ricardo got it but it has been repainted in Sydney um to kind of just give it a freshen up and you can see the quality of work as you expect from you know someone who runs Cultura it’s impeccable so this is uh also

Really really crazy yeah like in terms of horsepower wise I mean is this something that is pretty regular here in Australia look this engine combination is a little bit I guess the top one percent spec but it’s not uncommon here in Australia so this is a bullet engineer Race Engineering

Billet block there’s actually a lot of cars in Australia now running Billet blocks on the street at the start line people said you couldn’t but you’re seeing more and more of it now most people run the rb30 Billet block and then have you know usually they have

Like a Nitto 3.2 stroker in it this one is actually a 3.6 liter so what the Billet block enables you to do is have a much larger ball 3.6 liter point six one liter more yeah so here’s the thing is the way that they do it is it’s not just stroke it’s a

Bore increase so if you’ve watched any of our Modi videos on block testing with Platinum Racing Products you’ll know that you basically can’t go any bigger than 86 and a half mil on the RB blocks before you risk having too thin a bore but with a Billet block I think 87 88 if

You want to get crazy and go custom head guys can stop you can go to 90 mil if you really want to it does get quite complicated though with obviously where it attaches to the head but you can go bigger and still have plenty of ball thickness so you don’t have any problems

With the block so this is a 3.6 bullet Race Engineering does this setup with the Cali’s crank and a larger bore but the good thing is is if you’re matching a larger ball with a larger stroke you don’t you don’t lose that border stroke ratio that you do by having heaps of

Stroke and not changing the bore so the revability is actually still there everyone has this assumption that an rb30 can’t rev that is ridiculous my own rb32 revs to 9600 you know goat 32 and a few other cars rev past ten thousand this can rev to ten thousand so ten

Thousand and then how much power does this one make in this how much how much does it make how much does it make now because this is a street view yeah put it this way the tune that they put in it to go here you go Ricardo off you go

There’ll be multiple Maps but the the I guess the top map for the straight is 1250 at the hubs on a Mainline Dyno I always like to say what Dino because puts it into perspective because they all read different measure at the rehabs so that’s CID of tuning this car motek

ECU so what can that make it’s an 83.85 and you know that with a dash of nitrous if you wanted to could probably make 1500 um if you wanted to but 1250 is only on like 32 33 pounder boost so I know that sounds like a lot to some but obviously

In the world of big powered engines like this that’s considered relatively normal honestly while this is crazy enough that’s honestly not the craziest part of this car oh there’s a lot of crazy bits you guys actually yeah make this yes so the back story is I’ve been making

Headlight ducks for I don’t we’re not a parts manufacturer motive but essentially one day I woke up and I couldn’t find a headlight duck for my 32 and I found like a copied Tome one that didn’t have a light you couldn’t buy silk grow they’re out of production so I

Just contacted someone I know that’s a cad designer and said can you design me some headlight ducks and then we started selling them and just about every GTR what is genius thing though because it’s so funny you have to build your car yeah so crazily to Warrant this mod like this

Is like the last thing that you do you would be shocked though that the amount of I guess it’s not so much how much power up lets you make it’s the consistency if you can imagine a GTR having an air filter here on a single turbo twin turbo so they just draw so

Much hot air it’s all drawn through the radiator like you’ve got your intake Air temps pre-turbo a 60 70 degrees driving around on the street you get heat soaking the engine baby this thing just means as soon as you got any movement you’ve got fresh air again and then so

Tell me about the actual light are you able to align it or are you able to level it look I’m going to be completely honest with you they’re pretty terrible in the like I wouldn’t go driving out in Pitch Black Country Road Darkness um with one of these but honestly the

Guys that put these in they’re not they’re not driving 10 hours on a country road um they’re they’re you know they’re street cars that are usually driven within their Hometown or driving the truck and back things like that it’s fine but it’s not I’m not going to sit

There and tell you that it’s some highly engineered light for you but it has a light yeah but it is a pretty strong LED light yeah it’s a good LED it’s got a park light and a headlight there’s obviously there’s no space for a high

Beam but most of the guys just run the one the other side still means you’ve got a high beam on the other side so yeah what a great solution though yeah I mean because typically I’ve seen you know the drag setups where it’s the whole life yeah that’s right yeah and at

The end of the day the thing is I and the exact reason I did it is I had a headlight duck with no light at all and every time I wanted to go to the truck I had to change it I just got over it so I’m like let’s just it’s inspired by

Silk Road but our own design all designed in CAD and then we ended up doing 32 33 34 then we switched to do double-sided ones because some people wanted symmetry my own car uses one on both sides everyone always goes have you got a twin turbo V8 in there but no it’s

Just symmetry so he goes back away from my car please we will Um it has kind of like a mild street drag setup yeah yeah I don’t see this in the U.S I mean no I’m not thinking about the meat so much meat I I just don’t see this in Japan or in the U.S it’s so cool

To see a 34 with this much Tire well you have to you got the amount of power you’re on 250 horsepower with paddle shift sequential in it they’re going to drive around on rubber bands on them man it’s ridiculous like it’s a lot of guys even go 15 inch wheels here but Ricardo

Wants an all-round street car so it has R35 brakes and to clear them you need to have a race wheel and an 18 to clear them and everyone on a drag radial there’s a really good these are a really good 18-inch drag radials so I’ll be

Honest with you man like it’s if you want to have power you’ve got to be able to use it right what’s the point of having 1250 on the dyno and then you go to a car park meet and you can’t use it on the way out right so it really is the

King of JDM like this is it is this is the king it’s kind of interesting it’s like the number plates are King JDM but this so much Australian flavor in the car as well if that makes sense like it’s it’s it’s this is definitely an Aussie spec GTR when you start looking

At the specs of it but it’s also yeah it’s the king of JDM the R34 GTI really is this is where the magic is and this is the part that I’ve never seen anything like this people are scared to re-trim GTRs like because I 34 seats you know

Paying 10 grand for v-spec two ones in the Black version of them and some people are just scared to touch them but in Australia we’ll re-trim and customize everything in a GTR like headlining’s all redone look at that beautiful welcome stitching it’s really good there

Is a knob this is a BMW iDrive like you were saying someone’s about to go is that an automatic GTR no it’s technically still a manual so in the actual transmission tunnel is an OS 88 six-speed sequential transmission but basically power tune a workshop here in Sydney makes an adapter kit where

Instead of having a gear lever there’s two actuators on it that moves it for you and then the ECU controls those and then you tell the ECU via paddle so in theory it’s a manual transmission because it still has a clutch still has a manual transmission inside it except

Instead of you using your hand you now use your fingers so wait but does that mean you start with first gear with a clutch yes but then after that you don’t need to use the clutch correct you you if you want to you can use the clutch but you don’t

Have to so people get a little bit confused about this whole is a sequential a manual this sort of stuff our H pattern is different blah blah blah look a sequential and a manual inside the gearbox they both have an input shaft and an output shaft they can

Both be either Synchro or dog engagement they can both be straight cut or helical cut everything about them can be the same except the shift Direction people keep carrying on about sequentials not being manual no offense you’re wrong because you’re still controlling it with a with your hands it’s just a different

Direction it’s just the shift pattern yes the sequential can have often a shorter throw they say you can’t miss a gear well pretty much you’re not meant to be able to miss a gear but what there’s people caring about having a h pattern or whatever but sorry if you want to go fast

You want to sequential transmission right like you want to worry about going fast but then someone instead of here is just yeah I’m assuming this is probably a program where you can just flat foot oh yeah and just hit the gears so whether it’s this or this it’s the same

Right so when you do it this way you’ll have a strain gauge telling the ECU that you want to shift so that way it obviously cuts the the ignition and has a strategy of how it cuts ignition and how it re-engages it over what time Etc

So when you put like usually there’s a strain gauge you pull it it tells the ECU and then another sensor lets you know that you’re back in gear and then the ECU brings the power back the difference is this is instead of it waiting for you to tell

You that you’ve got enough strain on the gear lever you’re just going hey I’d like to shift honestly this is probably safer yeah yeah you don’t have to keep your hand yeah you don’t have to take your hand off some people actually naturally when they’re driving when they go for the

Lever they kind of naturally steer over I’ve seen that in a lot of videos um it’s a bit of a bad habit some people have but honestly if you say Auto or paddle shift or whatever you want to say that’s a bit boring I mate try driving

1250 horsepower R34 can you turn it on so we can kind of take a look at the system it’s got Double motek Dash yeah this is what blew me away so I hear the air system probably for the shifter yeah so that’s a new so basically it’s a

Pneumatic shifter so there’s a like like airbags there’s a compressor in the boot that keeps compressed air and these actuators are actually operated by a compressed air so it’s very quick super quick but like look how cool this is yeah cool um I mean because it’s it’s essentially recreating the GTR original yeah

Um MFG right yeah so with the motek c127 you can actually do all sorts of different programs and put your own custom skins in everything like sky’s the limit and yeah they wanted this one to sort of represent what the factory one was like so that’s so cool and then

When you shift yeah it actually shows right yeah yeah and what’s also cool is there’s like a a little bit of a GTR uh inspiration for for the gauges right so driving one of these is quite interesting because it’s the upshift is the easy part the downshift is the

Difficult part to get right and get smooth because obviously when you want to downshift if you’ve got drive by wire it can blip the throttle for you so the best thing about paddle shift versus I guess the gear lever is the paddle shift means the ECU is in charge it’s it’s actually controlling

Everything well when you have a lever you still got that manual operation where it’s waiting for you to tell it what to do while in this instance it’s the paddle shift can be quicker faster safer and programmed to always be the perfect shift so and with motec you you

Know it’s not a lot of people don’t understand that with the flat shift that you do with a sequential transmission it’s not just how long that shift goes for because that can change so not every gear shift is the same so you really want a system that’s got closed loop and

What it does is it doesn’t just sense when you are trying to change gears it sense when it’s back in gear and it changes how long that I guess that shift strategy so how long the ignition cut happens for changes based on RPM boost Etc so look how cool this is too they

Got a little rear camera button that is so cool all of this yeah yeah who knows what’s hooked up but this is so cool that there’s just this yeah some of it’s self-explanatory but you can see here that’s my favorite button the Boost button oh okay you can go basically low

Boost medium boost high boost now as much as I uh feel I’m qualified to drive this it’s still Ricardo’s car yeah okay and you know what HC should definitely take from a drive it’s his car it’s his place here and um yeah he loves his thing like he’s a super passionate owner

And um yeah he loves it I love it too all right cool plus if I drive it things will happen yeah all right This is your quickest car hey I’ve had a few V8s with more power than this but not this puts it to the ground correct that definitely feels the quickest out of all time I’ve just never felt an R34 accelerate like that yeah It really pushes you back in the sea but also it feels like we’re Wheeling because the suspension is just getting so loaded up so the popping is is the fuel cut or when you’re shifting correct yes so crazy so you actually feel if I don’t use a

Clutch yeah so if we’re cruising if I do the clutch it’s smoother right right so because when you’re shifting it actually clunks because yeah but when we’re going high ribs you don’t even feel that smooth amazing and then if you downshift if it’s if it’s going

To uh rev too high it doesn’t like you you won’t do it okay how convenient look at that clock still smooth very smooth yeah I mean for something that has this much power it’s it’s pretty straight away the cow is built to be straightable very impressive

Often do you get to drive this I’ve tried to drive it as much as I can like a few times a month at least you know weekends that’s not bad yeah yeah you can hear that air pump going as you’re shifting you’re using up air it accelerates so fast I get vertigo

That was probably yeah 20 30 throttle yeah really that’s it yeah toys are still a bit cold it accelerates faster than it can break yeah and I’ve got the 35 brakes on it I’ve never ridden in a car like this never thank you this is so cool my favorite part is a steel drivable yeah because it’s not overheating no there’s no problems it’s awesome so not that low where you can run over speed bumps right I mean it

Has big balloon tires on it yeah I used to run it off This has got to give you a smile when you drive this you can’t you can’t not smile when you’re in this thing turned it into pretty much an R35 you know this is like a r34.5 in a way but you’re you’ve taken the best parts of the R34 and then um

Our Chase vehicle uh is really we lost them yeah thanks for that that was incredible what an experience I wish we had if I had Rego we’ll go for a nice drug this afternoon through the city come to Australia experience GTRs they said I almost lost my hat not from the

Wind because of the g-forces it was like this it was like it just started going up and up and up I’ve never experienced anything like that that was so cool thank you so much I appreciate it what a place amazing hey thanks for watching if you want to support us directly go to

Larrychanprince.com I print and sign every single one of these this is the perfect gift or it’s the perfect piece of art for your wall Foreign [Applause]