Hello NICO!
Im a long time BMW owner and contributor over at bimmerpost, some of you may recognize my Santorini E92 M3, It got a few likes on instagram over the past couple years.

Anyway, I'm waiting for my '16 F80 M3 to be built and in the mean time I decided to indulge in a long time fantasy of mine which was to own a RHD JDM vehicle, I've always admired the Skyline GTR in all its forms so when I started seeing R32s come available through various importers I knew it was only a matter of time before I snagged one.

After speaking with several importers, I found a that there was a wide variety of interpretations of cars that were in 'Good' condition. I started familiarizing myself with the auction rating system and was looking for my 3.5-4 rated example without too many modifications. Everyone claimed they 'have a guy' in Japan but it seemed that 'guy' was just throwing up the card for them at the auction any time a skyline came on the block. The 'guy' snaps 5 pictures and puts the car in a container and it seemed every single one sold before it hit the port... To me, that business model was just too risky, I needed to have eyes on a car before I purchased it. I then came across Phase9Motorsports, they are Anaheim based but have an office in Japan where they hand select their vehicles from private sellers, not the autction-block like other importers. The result is pristine, well cared for examples, I believe they have a bone stock Gunmetal grey with only 30K miles and a genuine Nismo GTR currently available. I spoke with Franz and he quickly answered my myriad of nit-picky questions and quickly agreed to meet up with my friend to allow the car to be inspected. My friend said it was in excellent shape and had very well thought-out and high-end modifications. I'll be having it shipped to my house in Las Vegas this week. All-in-all my experience has been excellent dealing with Phase9 and I would recommend him to anyone who is considering purchasing a JDM classic!

So on to the car!
- Gunmetal Grey
- 40,322 Miles
- Gram Light Wheels w/new Bridgestone tires
- Tein Coilovers (not installed in pics)
- 60mm Garret Turbos
- Mines Turbo-back exhaust
- HKS Intakes
- Nismo Twin Plate Clutch
- Nismo front/rear Tower bars
- Nismo R_Brake pads
- Nismo Steel brake lines
- Greddy Turbo Gauge.











The plans:
- New head unit w/USB & BT
- Install Tein suspension
- Paint wheels pale gold
- Hide Greddy boost gauge wires
- Replace all window gasketing
- Remove and polish Mines Exhaust
- Boost controller
- Tune
- New steering wheel
- replace shift boots and knob
- Paint correction and polish

Stay tuned for updates!
Cheers,
-Curt

Wow, look at that ground clearance! Rally spec?

I dig the old school 80mm Greddy boost gauge. I always rocked that type back in the day. Pretty clean car. Welcome to the formus!

themadscientist wrote:Wow, look at that ground clearance! Rally spec?

I dig the old school 80mm Greddy boost gauge. I always rocked that type back in the day. Pretty clean car. Welcome to the formus!

Yeah the coilovers will be the first mod to be addressed.

It's a nice car, I was looking at it when I was shopping for a GT-R but they where asking $45k That was a bit too high for me.

RainR32 wrote:It's a nice car, I was looking at it when I was shopping for a GT-R but they where asking $45k That was a bit too high for me.

You must have been looking at the NISMO GTR they had, this is just a regular GTR, they were only asking $25k for it.

That's a nice clean R32. If they really do also have a genuine Nismo for $45K then it should be a low-mileage, very clean example for that price. When I got mine my importer was keeping an eye on two that were expected to be sold at auction for around that price and this may have been one of them.

Curt2000 wrote:

RainR32 wrote:It's a nice car, I was looking at it when I was shopping for a GT-R but they where asking $45k That was a bit too high for me.

You must have been looking at the NISMO GTR they had, this is just a regular GTR, they were only asking $25k for it.

My Bad lol But still very Nissan GTR

GSX-R35 wrote:That's a nice clean R32. If they really do also have a genuine Nismo for $45K then it should be a low-mileage, very clean example for that price. When I got mine my importer was keeping an eye on two that were expected to be sold at auction for around that price and this may have been one of them.

Yeah it had like 17k miles on it, I believe it sold yesterday though.

Curt2000 wrote:
Yeah it had like 17k miles on it, I believe it sold yesterday though.

I'm not surprised by that - Nismos are in high demand right now and the prices are going up. I'm getting more and more glad as time goes by that I snagged mine while I had the chance lol. Congrats on joining the R32 owners club!

GSX-R35 wrote:

Curt2000 wrote:
Yeah it had like 17k miles on it, I believe it sold yesterday though.

I'm not surprised by that - Nismos are in high demand right now and the prices are going up. I'm getting more and more glad as time goes by that I snagged mine while I had the chance lol. Congrats on joining the R32 owners club!

Thanks! The more I inspect mine the more surprised I am at how good of shape its in for being 25 years old.

Got her detailed today, the exterior is damn near flawless and the interior looks just as nice, very pleased!




List of things to do:
Redline Synthetic Oil Change
Transmission fluid flush and replaced with Redline fluid
NGK Spark Plugs
Oil and fuel filters
Differential and transfer case fluids
New eBrake and shift boots
New external window gaskets
Polish lip and restore paint on wheels
Remove CD changer headunit and replace with Pioneer Bluetooth/USB unit
Tune

Let me know what kit you used to installed your need headunit.
I'm missing my and I have no idea witch kit to used to fit a new one.

RainR32 wrote:Let me know what kit you used to installed your need headunit.
I'm missing my and I have no idea witch kit to used to fit a new one.

ditto that. mine doesn't have one and i would like to know what will work. i have heard any corresponding model year 240sx will work, but would like real world feedback.

joshga wrote:

RainR32 wrote:Let me know what kit you used to installed your need headunit.
I'm missing my and I have no idea witch kit to used to fit a new one.

ditto that. mine doesn't have one and i would like to know what will work. i have heard any corresponding model year 240sx will work, but would like real world feedback.

I guess I could try that out .

RainR32 wrote:Let me know what kit you used to installed your need headunit.
I'm missing my and I have no idea witch kit to used to fit a new one.

I haven't done my stereo yet because I'm waiting until we strip the interior prior to respraying the whole car but I researched the required stuff quite a bit and according to the DIY's I read I bought the following:

A Metra antenna diversity adapter - the R32 has two radio antennas so you'll need this.

http://www.amazon.com/Metra-40-NI10-Nis ... ty+adapter

A Metra Nissan 1984-1994 harness - if you check this link there's a review that specifically says someone used it to do an install on an R32:

http://www.amazon.com/Metra-70-1763-198 ... B0002BEX0A

Just need to pick out a single DIN head unit, speakers, and some Dynamat and once my respray is done my friend and I are gonna go to town

GSX-R35 wrote:

RainR32 wrote:Let me know what kit you used to installed your need headunit.
I'm missing my and I have no idea witch kit to used to fit a new one.

I haven't done my stereo yet because I'm waiting until we strip the interior prior to respraying the whole car but I researched the required stuff quite a bit and according to the DIY's I read I bought the following:

A Metra antenna diversity adapter - the R32 has two radio antennas so you'll need this.

http://www.amazon.com/Metra-40-NI10-Nis ... ty+adapter

A Metra Nissan 1984-1994 harness - if you check this link there's a review that specifically says someone used it to do an install on an R32:

http://www.amazon.com/Metra-70-1763-198 ... B0002BEX0A

Just need to pick out a single DIN head unit, speakers, and some Dynamat and once my respray is done my friend and I are gonna go to town

Thank you for this info

looking around to buy a nice R32 GT-R , finally saved up some money for it! but 25k for a regular one seems very high; although i do understand that
it would be very risky to buy one from japan direct and not see the unit firsthand.

my cuz and i are trying to contact companies from there. we are planning to head out to japan and check the auction out for ourselves. any
suggestions on where to start? once we do make a trip we want to make a log here and keep people informed on our experience. does anybody have any guys to recommend?

akumazeddo wrote:looking around to buy a nice R32 GT-R , finally saved up some money for it! but 25k for a regular one seems very high; although i do understand that
it would be very risky to buy one from japan direct and not see the unit firsthand.

my cuz and i are trying to contact companies from there. we are planning to head out to japan and check the auction out for ourselves. any
suggestions on where to start? once we do make a trip we want to make a log here and keep people informed on our experience. does anybody have any guys to recommend?

You don't have to go to Japan to get a good R32 that you can inspect first since there are plenty of importers offering landed cars already here in the States (and for less than $25K to boot). I bought my R32 as a landed car here in the States from International Vehicle Importers and got to test drive and inspect it in California before purchase. Of course, if you want to go to Japan I can't blame you - I've already got my R32 and been through Japan on layovers several times but want to do a proper trip myself.

I mentioned some reputable importers here on my blog if you want to try getting one here in the US:

http://23gt.blogspot.com/2015/05/buying ... 5-hot.html

I also wrote an importation primer that you can find in the post list that discusses the auctions and exportation from Japan.

akumazeddo wrote:looking around to buy a nice R32 GT-R , finally saved up some money for it! but 25k for a regular one seems very high; although i do understand that
it would be very risky to buy one from japan direct and not see the unit firsthand.

my cuz and i are trying to contact companies from there. we are planning to head out to japan and check the auction out for ourselves. any
suggestions on where to start? once we do make a trip we want to make a log here and keep people informed on our experience. does anybody have any guys to recommend?

Phase9 has an office in Japan as well, should give him a shout!

Update:
The car is officially registered! Not without some consternation though! Even-though I had the CBP, EPA, NTSB, and MCO which are all the documents required by NV law to title a grey market vehicle, the supervisor at my local DMV shop decided to be a grade-A 'C-U-Next-Tuesday' and told me that she would need to see the entire ownership history of the vehicle in notarized bills of sale in order to allow the vehicle to be registered. Asinine, I know, luckily after countless hours on the phone with the state registration legislators I was able to have them call the branch manager at another DMV and talk them into signing the title paperwork. So long story short, even if you have all the legal documentation, you are still at the mercy of willfully ignorant government employees who will work harder to get out of doing work than putting in the lesser effort to be helpful and reasonable.

Regardless, I have my plates and temp title now, meaning this car will be infinitely easier to sell/register in the future.

I took her into a local drift/JDM shop and had all the work listed in the previous posts performed. Come to find out the car is in near perfect shape and the shop informed me that I did indeed have a HKS GT-SS turbo kit with heat wrapped downpipes. Great little bonus!

I drove her home in the 105 degree Las Vegas heat and to my surprise the A/C was able to keep the interior icy cold (which is much more than I can say about my old 2005 Audi A4). On top of that the coolant and oil temps never seemed to climb above normal operating ranges which surprised the hell out of me. The engineering and quality of design in this car is unprecedented considering its age.

Finally getting to open her up and hear those turbos sing was a blissful experience as well. The partial throttle release compressor surge sounds like that of a big single 2JZ and the low RPM hissing gives way to a turbo whistle that seems unachievable with small twins only pushing 1 bar. Granted it has been a few years since I've driven a turbo car so I'm probably overly giddy.

Here are some shots of the interior and the plates that I worked so hard to get!

Nice I'm happy for you
I'm stilling waiting on my plates to come they had to send all my paperwork to the DMV main HQ.
Did you get her tune ? I'm taking my car to get tune on Monday and get something's done to run it right.

RainR32 wrote:Nice I'm happy for you
I'm stilling waiting on my plates to come they had to send all my paperwork to the DMV main HQ.
Did you get her tune ? I'm taking my car to get tune on Monday and get something's done to run it right.

I left the EVC in standby so the turbos are only seeing stock boost levels. I'll be upgrading the injectors and MAFs then will probably just spring for a full stand alone. Target will be 400whp.

Curt2000 wrote:

RainR32 wrote:Nice I'm happy for you
I'm stilling waiting on my plates to come they had to send all my paperwork to the DMV main HQ.
Did you get her tune ? I'm taking my car to get tune on Monday and get something's done to run it right.

I left the EVC in standby so the turbos are only seeing stock boost levels. I'll be upgrading the injectors and MAFs then will probably just spring for a full stand alone. Target will be 400whp.

I'm running a HKS F-COM with Map, So I'm upgrading the injectors, if I hit 400whp I'm going to be happy for sure
Post some pics of your engine bay I want to see what you got

RainR32 wrote: I'm running a HKS F-COM with Map, So I'm upgrading the injectors, if I hit 400whp I'm going to be happy for sure
Post some pics of your engine bay I want to see what you got

I will after I clean her up a bit, no much to look at right now

Curt2000 wrote:

RainR32 wrote: I'm running a HKS F-COM with Map, So I'm upgrading the injectors, if I hit 400whp I'm going to be happy for sure
Post some pics of your engine bay I want to see what you got

I will after I clean her up a bit, no much to look at right now

Sounds good, I took my car to the tuner today, I should be getting it back later this week I hope it does well

RainR32 wrote: Sounds good, I took my car to the tuner today, I should be getting it back later this week I hope it does well

Curt2000 wrote:

RainR32 wrote: Sounds good, I took my car to the tuner today, I should be getting it back later this week I hope it does well

I got the car done last night. I max out to where the OEM turbos are safe and I did not upgrade the injectors, So I made 375 AWHP on Cail 91OCT ( I wish we had good fuel out here )

I guess next up on Power mods are turbos, injectors and cams.

RainR32 wrote: I got the car done last night. I max out to where the OEM turbos are safe and I did not upgrade the injectors, So I made 375 AWHP on Cail 91OCT ( I wish we had good fuel out here )

I guess next up on Power mods are turbos, injectors and cams.

Nice, still sounds like a lot of fun! some serious mods coming too.

https://youtu.be/Id1JLjcbAa0

Congrats on your r32. I hope you enjoy it as much as I'm enjoying mine. I just got my r32 recently too. Maybe we will cross each others paths whenever I'm in Vegas.