Alex's R32 GTST suspension upgrades

When I first took my car on the track I was amazed by the wallowy handling, on the road the standard setup had seemed reasonably sporty. Attention to this department was obviously necessary if this was going to work as a track car, but what to do that would leave me with a car that was still sensible for the normal pot holed speed bump infested UK roads?

Whiteline anti-roll bars I'm a great believer in the ARB's as they reduce roll without having to increase the spring rates and whiteline seemed to be the most obvious choice. I bought mine from Powerstation in Cheltenham along with the rest of the whiteline handling kit which includes; offset tension rod bushes for increased castor, offset rear upper arm bushes for adjustable rear camber. To start with I only fitted the ARB's. The whiteline ARBs are much fatter and heavier and you'd expect somewhat stiffer than the original units and when combined with the RK tuning lowering springs I fitted around the same time gave what in retrospect I realise was the best "road" setup I have had on the car. Fitting was not too bad though is a two man job really as you need one person to hold everything in place while the other does the bolts(thanks CAS). The heigher you jack the car the easier as it requires dropping the exhaust for the rear ARB. One thing I found was that the captured nuts in the chassis that the ARB bushes mount into are made of low grade cheese alloy and are really easy to cross thread, luckily I only crossed one of mine and that was saveable as I'd only damaged a couple of threads.

RK Tuning uprated lowering springs on standard shocks Initially I tried to order some Eibach springs from Amber Performance, who after mosts of waiting eventually told me they didn't know when they may arrive from Japan. So I got on the phone to the ever helpfull Ron at RK and he sorted me with some cheap and chearfull uprated and lowered springs. Eventually these made way for the fully adjustable Tein that came next but I think I've still got the RK springs in the garage somewhere...

NISMO Top arm bushes A classic skyline MOT fail lead me to follow Ron and others to Gary at G-ART to get some uprated nismo top arm bushes fitted, not cheap but cheaper then new arms from Nissan.

Tein NA adjustable ride height and damping suspension. Having tried the ARB+Uprated springs combo on the track and found the setup still wanting. I decided to go the whole hog and get some "proper" suspension. Now the Tein NA were at the time the cheapest height and damping adjustable that I could find. I ordered them through TDI ltd, and after a short wait for the bits to come from Japan and small delivery cock up I had my shiney green suspension on the car. Tein NA's come with S-Tec springs. NA's aren't like proper coilovers but they do have an adjustable spring seat which can be moved up and down by moving a circlip between 4 grooves 10mm apart on the strut housing. They have 16 way damping adjustment (fairly hard - to incredibly hard). The instructions recomended the second heighest setting of the four so thats what I went with this look pretty good though not "slammed" which is fine by me (though the front sometimes looked a few mm heigher than the rear). The front and rear camber was still within sensible limits. On the track the car now started to behave much better most of the understeer had gone and there was 0 body roll. The ride for the road is much less comfortable even on the softest setting - we are well into the "complaining girlfriend" zone. However I still got a the feeling the car would benifit from a degree or more of negative camber on the front. The expensive/proper way to do this is by buying adjustable length top arms and I may yet get some of these but since I only recently forked out for the nismo bushes I thought I see what extra camber I could get by lowering the front suspension one notch. The result, even though this only added 1deg -ve camber, was much better handling on the track, almost totally removed the tendancy to understeer. Note:It's a couple of years since the tein suspension was first fitted and not a great deal of winter driving, I was disappointed when I came to lower the front suspension the I found the struts quite rusty and the lower spring seat needed some precusive maintenance to free up. In the real world when shocks normally last 15years thats not upto stratch, and for the money these cost I'm not thrilled, apparently Tein have improved this on the newer ranges though. When I put them back together I gave them a good coat of underseal - which doesn't look nice but should stop them from turing into a single lump of metal in the near future.

Whiteline tension rod bushes These came with the ARBs but I fitted them about a year later. As it goes the bushes that came with the ARB kit were for the wrong car but fair play to Powerstation they sorted me out with the right bits FOC despite it being a year later. The tension rods hold the front wheels in the correct position under longditudinal forces like braking. One of my tension rod bushes looked a little cracked and I fancied seeing what a bit of extra castor would do exactly. Castor is similar to the "rake" angle you'd see on a motorbike (very exagerated on a "chopper" style bike). The change in castor is achieved by inserting offset bushes in polyurethane replacements for the standard bush in the front end of the tension rod, effectively shortening the tension rod and pulling the wheel forward. You can also do this with "proper" rose jointed replacement tension rods which have turn buckles for easier and more extreme adjustment. I'd heard that it could be a bitch to get the bushes out of the tension rods so I got some drifts machined up to the dimensions in the R32 GTR service manual and gave drifts, rods and new bushes to my friendly mechanic Mr Richardson in Barnes to sort out with his press. Anyway the difference is obvious - loads quicker initial turn in, heavier and more precise feeling around the straight ahead position and a stronger self centering effect. I'm pretty happy.

Whiteline subframe locking rings (aka pineapples) One day I was jacking the car up on the diff and I noticed how much play there was in the rear subframe bushes. I was quickly on the phone to Abbey Motorsport who sorted me out with a set of pineapples off the shelf. They was very easy to fit, remembering to be carefull of the patent Nissan cheese alloy captured nuts in the chassis. The difference is just noticeable on the road, but on the track the car feels much more connected to the road mid corner. The downside is you can now hear every clunk and whine from the drive train, exacerbated by the uprated nismo gearbox mount.

HICAS locking washers HICAS is Nissan's speed sensitive four wheel steering. HICAS is bloody clever and for normal road driving gives a reasuring fealing to the handling of the car through corners. HOWEVER its pretty odd feeling when you're really pushing hard and the car starts to second guess you and help out by steering the rear wheels! I was also concerned about the effect. There's a few ways to disable the HICAS, encouraged by Ron K I chose the most cost effect, which is to cut a slot in some chunky wahsers and jam them firmly in the ends on the HICAS steering rack thus pinning it, you then just unplug the HICAS hydraulic solenoid in the engine bay. If you can't put up with the orange warning lamp you can just take bulb out - as it goes I quite like it :) The results were exactly as I hoped, me, the steering wheel and wheels were working together to the same ends without a computer brain trying to help and in the process generally getting in the way.