A Win of sorts..

Well Ms Skyline is back, alas not without a healthy dose of drama! What should have been a straight forward job soon developed into a pain in the butt. I dropped the car into the garage on Saturday morning, the plan being that the work would be done and the car on the dyno by Friday. Wednesday and the first problem reared its ugly head in the shape of a cracked exhaust manifold, this was a real problem as where the hell could a new one be sourced. As luck would have it the garage knew of a used item that could be purchased for £50 locally. Result then and drama avoided. Oh that it were, the replacement manifold was warped and would not fit. Giving the garage it's dues they managed to source another from JDM garage, these are probably the most expensive and unreliable source of parts in the UK. True to form they wanted £86 for the part, although I was desperate so would have probably said yes to anything at that point. Giving JDM Garage their due's they did come through and had the part at the garage next day. Although I would still suspect being 'the man in the street' and not 'the garage'. I would have had a slightly different experience.

So with new 'old' manifold, turbo and camshafts fitted the car went to the tuner...

Naturally this didn't go well either and a decent tick over could not be achieved. To cut the story short, the garage had fitted a R34 camshaft to my R33 (approx 1.5mm extra lift).

Now I can accept a mistake, although everyone seemed to point at everyone else. The garage were not happy and I got a distinct vibe that they were upset at having to do the job again. Personally I can't see how I would have been at fault here, as for once, all I did was pay the money, leaving sourcing of parts to them! The garage said that the wrong camshaft was in the right box. Well it could happen...

The correct camshaft was promised for the start of the week. I heard nothing, nothing and nothing. I asked when the car would be going in and was told maybe Thursday. happily this happened and the car did its thing. I took Friday off work to collect her.

I will come back to the tune etc. in a different post.

The car was unhappy cosmetically under the hood. For some bizarre reason I had beautiful bright blue pipework! What the worlds obsession with blue silicone is I dunno, but it has to go! Where the heat shield fits there are two new bolts and the slam panel had been drilled badly to fit these (can only assume the original bolts were lost). There were plenty of scratches on the slam panel too, the bracket to hold the air filter in place was loose, the Strut brace had been tightened by the bionic man, cracking the powder coating both sides and the new pipework for the turbo was looking a bit tired.

So it's all action again in another lurch towards the finish line. I have prepped the slam panel for painting, removed, polished the pipework, removed the strut brace pending painting and have some silicone black pipes and clamps on order.

Have yet to decide anything, I may send the pipework to chrome, if I do that then I may as well do the strut brace at the same time and get the end's re-powder coated. The silicone is on it's way, although I really need to finished the slam panel. The car's tax is due although possibly I will put this off a month and just forget I own the car a bit!

Think of this as an interim post.. whilst I work out what to do next!