When I got this car back in 2009 someone suggested I should post it here, today I've finally gotten around to doing so.
Bought the car back in December 08 from a random car dealership in Sapporo, Japan that I found on the interwebs just by googling for the specific chassis version that I wanted, LNA31, which is the 4WD facelift variant. Most of them are RWD which I wanted to avoid for reasons that will become apparent shortly. It arrived in February 09 and was on the road at the start of March as I'm too cheap to pay a month's road tax when there's only a week left
This is how the car looked upon entering the country:
There aren't many of these cars over here and they're quite unknown but the J import enthusiasts will probably recognise the engine bay:
That's an RB20DET (I6, single turbo) straight out of the R32 Skyline GTSt/GTS4. The 4WD version of the car also gets the same ATESSA ETS 4WD system and the same suspension setup as the R32 Skyline. The RWD version of the car gets the same setup as the S13 200SX/Silvia which isn't as good, hence me wanting the 4WD version.
The other reason to get the 4WD version is that the RWD version is a very popular car for drifting. If you are buying a second hand Cefiro from a random website in Japan then you have no way of checking if it's been thrashed to death in the mountains by the next drift king wannabe. 4WD and auto is more likely to have been owned by a salaryman. As a bonus this one only had 28,000 km on the clock and the interior pics supported that figure.
Both versions of the car come with S13 brakes, brakes which are regarded by owners as woefully inadequate even on an S13 let alone the heavier Cefiro (it's heavier than a Skyline). These are the first thing to go. I fitted a set of R33 GTSt discs and callipers and replaced the stock 15" wheels with 16" Momo Sports that I had refurbed for the occasion. The car now looks like this:
That picture was taken after I had the car detailed.
One problem I had to deal with was the rear numberplate. It doesn't have a traditional numberplate light, but instead a special backlit frame, similar to certain TVRs. To get it through the initial MOT I used a stick on LED, but I eventually found a company that would supply a transparent plate, which is what I'm using now. I have the same on the front since both light up over in Japan
Next mod is the exhaust. One trip to Pro Speed in cardiff and one bank account £500 lighter and I have a 3" turbo back system with two silencers in it. I asked for "as loud as it needs to be, but no louder" and got a system which is actually fairly quiet, no droning on the motorway and definitely no loud obnoxious fart cannon noise in McD's car park. I also asked for twin tailpipes which are in keeping with the original twin pea-shooter design.
Of course, you can't have a Japanese import without a few gauges. I'd already had to go down the route of using Defi gauges as the car's speedo is in kilometers only. The standard trick to fix this is to put a little 5/8 reducer gearbox on the speedo cable, then write "mph" where it says "kmh" but in this car the speedo converts the cable driven signal into electronic pulses which are sent to the main ECU, autobox ECU and (if fitted) HICAS ECU. Thankfully I don't have HICAS but I didn't know that at the time. Instead I bought a Defi heads up display unit and the guy selling it was also selling a link controller and a boost gauge so I got those.
The gauge pod is Cefiro specific and came from an Australian company as the Cefiro has a bigger following down under
Since taking that picture I have added an oil temperature gauge in the second hole, and an oil pressure sensor that lights up an idiot light on the HUD if it drops below 14psi. The Nissan one waits until 4PSI so is basically a light to tell you you need a new engine.
Here is a better shot of the HUD, also shows my Apexi multichecker, which I mainly bought to cover up a small hole in the dashboard where the previous owner had a mobile phone holder fitted.
The question I get asked a lot is "why? You could've bought a Skyline for that money and that thing looks like a minicab", and indeed I could, however a Skyline is much more expensive to insure, much more likely to get stolen, much more likely to get hassle from the barryboy crowd and thanks to the existance of the barryboy crowd, it's much more likely to get hassle from Gwent Police. Gwent Police pay no heed to my minicab and the barrys don't even look at it. It's a great sleeper.
It's definitely a split personality car. Boring looks but can go when it needs to with great modifying potential. In the recent snow it also performed admirably, though I did replace the Goodyear Eagle F1s with Nokian WR-G2s, driving around in the Brecons in snow so deep that the front splitter was planing the road flat.
In the second pic I'm on my way back, having flattened the snow on the way out!
This is kind of handy as one of my GFs hobbies is photography (and since I'm using her pics, she'll kill me if I don't link to her Flickr). When we have really heavy snow I get to take her out to places like Brecon. On this day it was so heavy that in the time it took to take this:
This happened:
Didn't have to dig the car out, just clear off the glass and drive. Meanwhile everyone around here has been stockpiling food like it's the zombie apocalypse, refusing to drive anywhere or driving like idiots.
Best car I've ever owned, even though it's the second oldest.
Bought the car back in December 08 from a random car dealership in Sapporo, Japan that I found on the interwebs just by googling for the specific chassis version that I wanted, LNA31, which is the 4WD facelift variant. Most of them are RWD which I wanted to avoid for reasons that will become apparent shortly. It arrived in February 09 and was on the road at the start of March as I'm too cheap to pay a month's road tax when there's only a week left
This is how the car looked upon entering the country:
There aren't many of these cars over here and they're quite unknown but the J import enthusiasts will probably recognise the engine bay:
That's an RB20DET (I6, single turbo) straight out of the R32 Skyline GTSt/GTS4. The 4WD version of the car also gets the same ATESSA ETS 4WD system and the same suspension setup as the R32 Skyline. The RWD version of the car gets the same setup as the S13 200SX/Silvia which isn't as good, hence me wanting the 4WD version.
The other reason to get the 4WD version is that the RWD version is a very popular car for drifting. If you are buying a second hand Cefiro from a random website in Japan then you have no way of checking if it's been thrashed to death in the mountains by the next drift king wannabe. 4WD and auto is more likely to have been owned by a salaryman. As a bonus this one only had 28,000 km on the clock and the interior pics supported that figure.
Both versions of the car come with S13 brakes, brakes which are regarded by owners as woefully inadequate even on an S13 let alone the heavier Cefiro (it's heavier than a Skyline). These are the first thing to go. I fitted a set of R33 GTSt discs and callipers and replaced the stock 15" wheels with 16" Momo Sports that I had refurbed for the occasion. The car now looks like this:
That picture was taken after I had the car detailed.
One problem I had to deal with was the rear numberplate. It doesn't have a traditional numberplate light, but instead a special backlit frame, similar to certain TVRs. To get it through the initial MOT I used a stick on LED, but I eventually found a company that would supply a transparent plate, which is what I'm using now. I have the same on the front since both light up over in Japan
Next mod is the exhaust. One trip to Pro Speed in cardiff and one bank account £500 lighter and I have a 3" turbo back system with two silencers in it. I asked for "as loud as it needs to be, but no louder" and got a system which is actually fairly quiet, no droning on the motorway and definitely no loud obnoxious fart cannon noise in McD's car park. I also asked for twin tailpipes which are in keeping with the original twin pea-shooter design.
Of course, you can't have a Japanese import without a few gauges. I'd already had to go down the route of using Defi gauges as the car's speedo is in kilometers only. The standard trick to fix this is to put a little 5/8 reducer gearbox on the speedo cable, then write "mph" where it says "kmh" but in this car the speedo converts the cable driven signal into electronic pulses which are sent to the main ECU, autobox ECU and (if fitted) HICAS ECU. Thankfully I don't have HICAS but I didn't know that at the time. Instead I bought a Defi heads up display unit and the guy selling it was also selling a link controller and a boost gauge so I got those.
The gauge pod is Cefiro specific and came from an Australian company as the Cefiro has a bigger following down under
Since taking that picture I have added an oil temperature gauge in the second hole, and an oil pressure sensor that lights up an idiot light on the HUD if it drops below 14psi. The Nissan one waits until 4PSI so is basically a light to tell you you need a new engine.
Here is a better shot of the HUD, also shows my Apexi multichecker, which I mainly bought to cover up a small hole in the dashboard where the previous owner had a mobile phone holder fitted.
The question I get asked a lot is "why? You could've bought a Skyline for that money and that thing looks like a minicab", and indeed I could, however a Skyline is much more expensive to insure, much more likely to get stolen, much more likely to get hassle from the barryboy crowd and thanks to the existance of the barryboy crowd, it's much more likely to get hassle from Gwent Police. Gwent Police pay no heed to my minicab and the barrys don't even look at it. It's a great sleeper.
It's definitely a split personality car. Boring looks but can go when it needs to with great modifying potential. In the recent snow it also performed admirably, though I did replace the Goodyear Eagle F1s with Nokian WR-G2s, driving around in the Brecons in snow so deep that the front splitter was planing the road flat.
In the second pic I'm on my way back, having flattened the snow on the way out!
This is kind of handy as one of my GFs hobbies is photography (and since I'm using her pics, she'll kill me if I don't link to her Flickr). When we have really heavy snow I get to take her out to places like Brecon. On this day it was so heavy that in the time it took to take this:
This happened:
Didn't have to dig the car out, just clear off the glass and drive. Meanwhile everyone around here has been stockpiling food like it's the zombie apocalypse, refusing to drive anywhere or driving like idiots.
Best car I've ever owned, even though it's the second oldest.
