My modification thread - Litchfield Stage ????

[Adamantium]

Hi all,

I've done this with previous cars so thought I might as well document everything on this car as the first car I've ever really intended to hang on to since my 22B.

This is my fourth GTR, and I've already done more mileage in it in a month than I did in any of the other three.

I bought it new following the sale of an identical MY11 to Blade. I realised within a day of the sale going through that it was a mistake as I felt totally flat. I had spent ownership of the previous three cars worrying about the mileage,cost of fuel, depreciation, warranty etc.

I decided on buying this one that such thoughts prevent me from enjoying the car for what it is and so I have wiped the slate clean and started my GTR ownership from scratch.

I bought the car brand new (first time I've done that) from Aldershot Nissan, and received excellent service from Guy Millar who I would recommend.

I am London based and have since had the car optimised by Peter at Mill Hill who I can also recommend!

So.

The car is a 12 plate but is a my11. On 1st March, I collected it from Aldershot and drove it straight to Robbie at Valet Magic to have it protection detailed.

pics to follow.

[Adamantium]

The car was perfect other than a blemish that annoys me whenever the sun catches it, which is a fault in the weave or the resin on the carbon fibre stereo fascia. Peter at Mill Hill Nissan is authorising an exchange for me.

I took a picture which does show it, but some people think I'm being too fussy.




didn't photograph the oustide before dropping it to Robbie, but did take some after shots.

[Adamantium]

Not fussed about the number plate showing because it's going to change very shortly! (see thread in general section!)

Whilst going to Robbie, I met up with David Yu, who along with Robbie convinced me that this was the right time to protection wrap the front end.

I was reluctant because I was never keen on the change in appearance, yet Robbie and David assured me the difference would be marginal on a lighter coloured car. I was never that happy with it on the Kuro black car, preferring to repaint once in a while than to contend with the change in finish.

In the end I caved and was forced to collect the car the next day.

Robbie wrapped it to the A-pillar and included the vents, wing mirrors, grille area and head lights.

I am totally over the moon with the results to this day as I simply can't see it, even when I spend time looking for it it's just not different enough to bother me.

can you see the difference? (the lighting and angle helps hide it in the first pic)

[Adamantium]

So far, theres hasn't been a mod as such, more protection to ensure longevity, so it's time to start making it my own.

Three GTRs ago I bought the first front and rear camera kit from Brian (BDL99) an ex-pat who "defected" to the states. Brian is hugely talented when it comes to making cars do things they were specced to do in a way that doesn't involve soldering and cutting stock wires.

His kit was perfectly conceived and executed.

Litchfields now supply these, but I bought mine direct from Brian and went to Litchfields to have it fitted since they know how to take the car apart better than anyone else, having torn their own 2011 apart to the shell.

I won't go into a lot of detail about the fitting of the kit, since it's fairly arbitrary, but the result on the sat nav onwards cars is a switchable input that lets you choose between front or rear camera on the press of a button acutated by the remote control.

I put together a demonstration video on youtube which you can find here:

Front and Rear camera operation video - YouTube

It took about three hours to fit, possibly more, can't remember exactly but I'm really glad I did it due to the protection it affords the front lip when approaching kerbs. I wouldn't advise watching the front camera whilst driving which can be done due to the override facility of the switching unit, as it makes you incredibly sick. There is also no way on hell you could judge the width of the car with a wide angle lens doing its thing.

Another benefit is that the spare two switches of the remote as stated above, disable the video in motion lock-out. There are two of these, one is handbrake defeat, the other disables the input from the speed sensor on the can-bus which stops the video playing above 10 km/h. Both need to be defeated if you want to watch video whilst driving. These are not actually required to watch the rearview camera input whilst driving. It can be selected on the move regardless of gear position, handbrake position or speed, although it will automatically show the last viewed camera when reverse gear is applied.

This picture shows the front camera installed. We didn't remove the bumper so neatening up of the wire position wasn't an option with the limited access. This will be done during a later mod, which I will come to later.



Here you can('t) see the rear view camera. It is so wide angle that it can be mounted in an invisible position yet still gives an excellent view out of the back. I need to do some more testing to work out how useful it is when parking to within a mm. For now it is perfectly good to get me close without hitting.



The downside of using the shared input for front and rear is that the guidelines are overlayed by the headunit. This means if you don't want them for the front, you have to remove them for the rear and vice versa. I make do without them though I'm thinking of reinstating them for a trial.

I really should add in the baseline dyno numbers that I took at this point.

I took the car to Surrey rolling road where I met up with Anders who had just had his car modified by Litchfields prior to mapping.

His car was incredibly fast but also not unbearably loud. It has helped me to decide where I want my car to end up as I was mightily impressed with the car at around the 600bhp mark.

So, my stock numbers before I start down the really slippery slope.

It made 516bhp or 410 at the wheels. I will add the scans when I figure out how to get them in colour and allow imageshack to read them,

Not particularly special, but I was happy. The stock car should make 525 on 100 ron fuel, so with V-power, give or take, it was doing exactly what it should be (allowing for some further loosening given that it was only 1300 miles).

Charlie did comment that it was the first ever completely standard GTR (possibly my11) he had run, so didn't really have anything to compare it with.

[Adamantium]

Next I wanted to deal with something that I can't stand about the GT-R and that's the scratch-o-philic plastic that adorns the interior.

In GTR#2 I removed the large gear lever surround and had it recovered in a grey alcantara. I was really happy with the result, but on that car there was already some alcantara to match. On this car, being a 2011, there's only leather, scratchyplastic, dash rubber/vinyl, a bit of magnesium and carbon fibre.

The solution I decided on was carbon fibre, though I was concerned about matching the matte finish and the tackiness of interior carbon pieces that are stuck on.

I contacted Robbie to see if an interior wrap could be applied, but Robbie is not aware of any matte finish carbon wrap that would match.

This led to the aftermarket where there is a wealth of gloss carbon but not much in the way of matte.

I then saw a post by David Yu recommending JM carbon who refinished his steering wheel. They advertise that they do interior parts too and have a matte carbon that will be as near as damnit to what I want. I've taken a chance and can't report on the results yet as they haven't arrived, but I'm posting this here to try to retain the correct chronological order of the mods.

I have typically been against putting tacky covers on top of existing plastic trim as I think the carbon adds nothing. I prefer bespoke replacement parts, but these have the problem of often being poorly constructed but also of not fitting properly. Accepting that the weight difference in adding carbon covers is pretty insignificant, I was happy to learn that JM Carbon's process is to laminate the carbon directly onto the article, ensuring a perfect finish and fit, because the carbon becomes part of the article rather than being 3m taped on.

As stated I can't show you pics, I'll add them later but to give you an idea.

I am having this item:



With this carbon finish (on the right):

[Adamantium]

Ok,

Next comes the fun part.

Running in period meticulously followed, optimisation service carried out, I can now start modding.

I am insured for the first time with CCI with all mods declared and so am at liberty to add a little performance. I figured it would be wrong not to.

I bought an exhaust for my last GTR, but in typical me fashion, the day after I took collection, I decided I was being nuts because of the cost and sold it along with the car.

I had pined over that exhaust and decided (with some pressure applied by blade) that I had to understand the greatness of the products of this company, and so I had to go through with the purchase and this time the installation.

So a quick call to Litchfields, and a suitable date arranged and it was time to fit this:



Edited this photo since someone else might not be so happy to have their number plate on show!

[Adamantium]

There's nothing exciting about showing pics of one exhaust coming off and another going on, so I'll just give you the end shots.

Some will know that I was reluctant to put the carbon tips on, favouring the titanium. The jury is still out on this decision as thanks to Blade I still have the option to swap with him when his is ordered.

Either way, this is the outcome.

[Adamantium]

But, I didn't just go over to Litchfields for my exhaust to be fitted. I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to have the car remapped.

With the new exhaust on, I was already beyond stage 2 once I had a remap, so I needed to choose what I'd be having done.

Seemed like somewhat of a shame to go all the way there just for a stage 2.5, Stage 3 didn't really make sense to me, as I might as well have the injectors done, so stage 4 it was!

New injectors went in along with custom air intakes, all in black for that subtle standard engine bay look.

I also conisdered fitting the forge black water header tank, but I wanted to stick again with a stock look.

So....



Looking at this pic now, it seems I forgot to mention the forge dump valves. Again, I went with black for that less in your face look.

After everything was back together, I was left with this rather standard look:

[Adamantium]

First impression was that I was amazed by the idle of the car. Totally smooth and stocklike. It was rich initially, but then this was in moving it out of the workshop, before it was mapped. I was in shock as to how smooth it would be on the stock ecu control, despite the huge increase in flow rate.

Then came the mapping.

It would seem that ecutek's constant development remains unabated. They are progressing all the time with stock ecu, and you can feel the difference on the road.

Iain spent a long time mapping and with each run I was in shock at the performance. At 0.5 bar the car was stronger than it was before the remap, at 0.8 I was laughing in disbelief, especially considering there were two more boost levels to contend with.

The main thing I wanted to display, which I've not taken a picture of yet, is the post remap mpg and range values on the mfd.

Exactly the same as they were before, despite 1100cc injectors in there.

I'll take a photo to show you but it's just going to look like it does in all other cars. The thing is the numbers are totally unaffected. I assume that ecutek have spent a long time getting the parameters of these specific injectors exactly right. I am over the moon with this as it was one thing I was hoping wouldn't be an issue. Iain said it wouldn't be and he was spot on.

More pics to follow.

[CT17]

Originally Posted by Adamantium

The main thing I wanted to display, which I've not taken a picture of yet, is the post remap mpg and range values on the mfd.

Exactly the same as they were before, despite 1100cc injectors in there.

Is that due to it not allowing for the bigger injectors (like mine, you are not getting what the car is telling you) or have Ecutek fixed this now?

[Anders_R35]

Sounds like EcuTek are modifying the Canbus data to take in to account the larger injector flow rate

When are you going back to see Charlie for post mapping power run?

Anders

[Blade]

My exhaust looks lovely - damn you

I shall be following Adamantium as soon as I get the time to even think about "what's next"

Just too damn busy right now.

[Adamantium]

Originally Posted by CT17

Is that due to it not allowing for the bigger injectors (like mine, you are not getting what the car is telling you) or have Ecutek fixed this now?

Yes - exactly that.

[Adamantium]

Originally Posted by Anders_R35

Sounds like EcuTek are modifying the Canbus data to take in to account the larger injector flow rate

When are you going back to see Charlie for post mapping power run?

Anders

Am thinking of going very soon.

Need to empty this tank first as not one station on the way home had super.

I put the minimum amount of 95 in, and switched to low boost. At 0.5 bar it really did feel faster than stock. Iain has done something special with this map I swear, and from what I hear there's more to come in terms of adjustments, from the ecutek camp that should yield more power.

Can't imagine needing it.

[Henry 145]

Really enjoyed reading that Adam...also have the Stage 4 from Iain, and it has transformed the car...look forward to seeing the interior parts as something I am considering.

Also Blade get your new seats ordered buddy!