96 skyline

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INJEN78

HS LEGEND
long story short my bothers buddy had this car imported from japan, did a bunch of work to it, daily drove it, and one day it just decided to stop running. the guy got fed up and sold it to my brother for $500. Neither of us know anything about nissans, and to make it worse its all japan spec so its unreadable. i was just windering if anyone might have some knowledge on things to check outside of the normal.
my brother said the car turns over, acts like its going to run(really rough) and then sputters out.

cars is a 96 skyline gts-25t. hes going to check the obvious things over the next couple of days(spark, fuel and compression) anyway here are a couple teasers.
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Nice! I was under the impression that there wasn't a way to make them legitimate to register and drive though?
 
fucking hell, 500?

how the fuck does that happen

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

fuck you chris! 1500 cash today! lol
 
Not sure what the other owner look into before he got sick of it....

Mechanical timing dead on?

Fuel filter?

Engine code(s)....does engine light work?

Maybe research in some Nissan forums for starting issues?

If compression is good and there's no signs of leakage anywhere....shouldn't be too crazy to fix.
 
$500 is crazy. Too crazy. I don't know any of the parties involved, but that almost makes me think stolen/illegal. Parts of that car are worth that by themselves. Hell, you can't get an EG/DC shell for $500.
 
im still just as shocked as you guys. he got it yesterday both my brother and his buddy are military so i guess its like throw away money to them.
but anyways i had him check the grounds, fuses, intercooler piping, clamps and couplers. i had him check all that because he said before the car quit running it took awhile to build full boost. whenever he has more time hes going to check spark, fuel and ignition.
also has a civilian buddy that will read the codes for a case of beer(its all in japanese so he cant do it himself)
i guess after the guy bought it and had it imported he paid another $9k on top to have it converted to spec. so whenever my brother is done in england the military will ship it back to the states and he can register it. car has a drift works aluminum radiator and a blitz full exhaust.
 
battery is shit, has a vacuum leak, and bad gas....he got it running.
hes going to order an intercooler kit(pipes, clamps, couplers and intercooler) to replace the hacked existence. and go from there.
 
He's going to wish he chopped it up and sent it back to sell as parts. It wont be worth the effort in the long run.
 
He's going to wish he chopped it up and sent it back to sell as parts. It wont be worth the effort in the long run.
im not sure what you mean by this?? the car has already been converted to us spec, and now runs. for $500 with a couple hundred at most worth of fixing its a great deal.

found the vacuum leak, none of the vacuum lines on the manifold have clamps on them and one blew off under boost.
 
im not sure what you mean by this?? the car has already been converted to us spec, and now runs. for $500 with a couple hundred at most worth of fixing its a great deal.

found the vacuum leak, none of the vacuum lines on the manifold have clamps on them and one blew off under boost.

For some reason i failed at reading. i thought the car was still in the UK and he was trying to bring it over.
 
Unless you have a crash-test for that specific vehicle, you'll never get it through customs. There are ways around this, but not for street-cars.

Even if you skirt the law, (call it a race car, import the drive train and chassis in separate containers, call it an antique, other blatant lie, etc.) you're still going to have issues when registering it. If it was delivered to the UK, it will have a UK VIN, and won't "check" in the US, since we use a different check digit scheme here. On top of that, you're never going to find an insurance company that will insure it.

You could cut the chassis into parts, separate the engine into shortblock, head, transmission, rear diff, and pull all of the electronics and glass out and ship it that way, but you'll only be able to register it as a "street rod" or "custom." If your friend thinks this is do-able, more power to him. But it's going to cost him somewhere around 90k, with no guarantee that it'll even be drivable (legally) in the US. Ever.

As a vehicle, if it's got even a single piece of E-code glass, or a single indicator light that is E-code and not USDOT, it'll fail the Customs inspection. That's not even getting into the EPA standards.

Sure, it's on the FMVSS "importable list" but that doesn't mean it's easy. Ask Hosmer about how easy/cheap it is to get an r32 or r33.

ETA:
This is just scratching the surface. There's hours more of this stuff -- don't think that because it meets one criteria that it will meet all. Example: Aftermarket exhaust (non oem): auto-fail.
 
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