Litchfield's 2011 GTRs have arrived!

[imattersuk]

Excellent work Iain, I look forward to the launch of lot's of retro fit upgrades for the 2009 model in order that you may empty my wallet further

[Grimblin Gibbon]

Was looking at mine on Saturday and the Blue seems to have a very suttle flip to purple visible at certain angles.
11 Days and counting!

[Zed Ed]

Originally Posted by Litchfield

It should do but we're going to try over the weekend.

I'll have one, if it does

[David.Yu]

Originally Posted by Litchfield

You have hit the nail on the head David. Any car that runs Camber angles of a 1 degree 40 like the original GTR will feel twitchy in a straight line. The beauty of running more caster like the 2011 car is that they can reduce the static camber and therefore the nervous feel off centre as there is now a bigger tyre contact point on the road. Once the steering wheel is turned the extra caster then creates more Dynamic Camber to improve front grip. We've being doing similar things with the Subaru handling kits for years.

We have the lower arms off and Powerflex will look at making a new rear bush kit so we can retro fit these to the original cars. We also have Forge looking at chassis strengthening parts.

Glad to know my driving analysis skills are up to scratch! Yes that's exactly what it felt like, that there was less camber than my 2009 on track settings, and yet it resisted understeer very well (pulled 1.2g on a roundabout!)

Biggest difference in road driving is the better ride. I reckon it's more compliant in Normal than the 2009 is in Comfort, but less underdamped.

It would be interesting to see if the turbos are the same size, because the very slight reduction in "snap" at low revs almost feels like they are larger...

Bushes have already been uprated, and another lesser known improvement you might want to have a look at is a polished and teflon coated inlet manifold.

[Steve]

Again well done Iain, will see you shortly

[Naranja]

Great stuff but, how are you getting on with the 3 flash, 'lane changing' indicator function?

[David.Yu]

Oh just remembered one very important improvement they've made, which I noticed: if you're in R mode and switch from Manual to Auto or vice versa, it stays in R mode!

Thanks for listening on that one Nissan.

[Litchfield]

Will put some pictures of the turbos up soon They have enlarged the Turbo intake but until Turbo Dynamics have a look at it on Monday we won't know if the internals have been changes as we expect.

Given the changes we have seen so far we guess that Nissan have made the Turbos slightly bigger. If they have enlarged the intake pipes slightly, improved the cooling and removed a few psi of back pressure with revised CATs and exhaust they can afford to run a slightly larger turbo with no downsides and plenty of benefits. That might explain the 50bhp claimed power increase for the modest boost increase. We'll soon know for definite

[David.Yu]

Originally Posted by Litchfield

Will put some pictures of the turbos up soon They have enlarged the Turbo intake but until Turbo Dynamics have a look at it on Monday we won't know if the internals have been changes as we expect.

Given the changes we have seen so far we guess that Nissan have made the Turbos slightly bigger. If they have enlarged the intake pipes slightly, improved the cooling and removed a few psi of back pressure with revised CATs and exhaust they can afford to run a slightly larger turbo with no downsides and plenty of benefits. That might explain the 50bhp claimed power increase for the modest boost increase. We'll soon know for definite

Yes and the very slight increase in lag I noticed. You wouldn't know unless you literally drove one straight after the other and the extra oomph of the 2011 above 5k is very impressive.

So we should see some very quick stock turbo 2011 cars shortly...

[E5.UNICORN]

Originally Posted by David.Yu

Oh just remembered one very important improvement they've made, which I noticed: if you're in R mode and switch from Manual to Auto or vice versa, it stays in R mode!

Thanks for listening on that one Nissan.

Thank god, someones actually got a brain.

[Litchfield]

That’s the plan David although the fuel system is exactly the same so cars will need bigger injectors and MAF housings as before



Before we pulled the engine and gearbox out Alcon came down to look at the brakes on the new car. Alcon thought the original car was a touch under braked at the rear so the switch to larger front discs was a surprised. The Superkit Alcon developed on our car has slightly more rear bite which doesn’t seem to unsettle the car under trail braking so perhaps Nissan have changed the bias with the Brembos or are the larger discs just to improve reliability?

From the initial inspection the Brake disc construction looks exactly the same but they have taken a front and rear away for a closer look.



We tried refitting a 2010 Brembo brake kit and Alcon kit to check if anything else had changed but looking at how Nissan have fitted the larger disc has given us some exciting ideas for replacement discs on all models….



Both engine and gearbox have now been removed and we’ll be taking a close look at them next week

[David.Yu]

Re the brake bias, I think the rear of the 2009 can get quite unsettled under hard braking, particularly over bumpy surfaces, so more rear brake bias would potentially make that worse?

One of the things they've said they've done is increase rear damper stroke to prevent it running out of travel under hard braking.

And yes the main reason for the different front discs is that the originals cracked too easily, a point Mizuno looked really annoyed about.
He claims to have had a hand in the design of the new discs and is proud of the fact they weigh no more than the smaller originals and are supposedly much more resistant to cracking.

Certainly the cars we were in at the Ring showed zero signs of cracking even though we were being passengered at sub-8 minutes with no cool down before stopping.

The press car I drove (which was the same one I passengered in at the Ring with Suzuki-san) still had fine looking discs with no cracks.
Of course we have no idea how often they are changed...

Are you saying that the existing aftermarket discs won't fit the 2011?

One other very interesting thing, I just saw a Tweet from Terry Steeden that the service intervals for the 2011 have been increased to 12 months/9k miles!

And gearbox/diff intervals to 30k miles! Under normal usage, I'm guessing.
Will make a massive difference to running costs and shut up the Porsche fanbois to an extent...

[Litchfield]

If thats the case they'll be the first drilled brakes I have seen that don't crack outside of the MOVIT stuff. We're weighing various parts tomorrow and the brakes are one of them.

The aftermarket fronts won't fit as the caliper spacing isn't right but the bell design is the same.

The servicing intervals sounds like great news for owners We'll have to see what the new cars service schedule/requirements is like as we've not had our service books yet.

[David.Yu]

I'm sure they will crack eventually under hard track use, but they should be vastly better than the earlier ones judging by the state of the ones at the Ring.

Looks like AP, Alcon and co had better get redesigning pronto!
BTW, thinking about it, wasn't it obvious they weren't going to fit seeing as the new ones are 10mm bigger?

[Chris956]

All of this is good news for us Gen 1 owners as I am sure that the changes will cascade down to us via the service schedules. I for one like the idea of the R mode not changing when going from Manual to auto and vice versa , surely thats just a software update. If the same fluids are used I can see no reason for the earlier models to adopt the same longer service intervals. We shall wait and see.