Check gearbox oil level

For anyone reading this who is building a car at the moment, for the love of God please think about future maintenance and access panels! Today's job was to check the gearbox oil level but I had to basically remove the whole interior of the car to get the centre tunnel cover off in order to access the filler plug on the side of the gearbox. My gearbox is a Getrag common to Jag XJ6 and early M5 so the fill plug is in the middle on the right hand side. Just need to remove the plug and if the gearbox fluid dribbles out when you rock the box side to side then its at the correct level.

Another quick job, found some scrap wood and threw some shelves up for spare Pulsar track day tyres

First MOT

Finally a cobra related post.

I can't believe that its 3 years since the cobra was finished and registered on the road. In the UK that means its time for the MOT. dun dun DUNNNNNN.........

I knew the car would be fine for everything but was a bit nervous about the emissions. I don't really know why as I have kept on top of engine running with in depth carb tuning so I was on top of everything. CO limit was 3.5% for my engine (1977) and HC limit is 1200ppm. Sailed through with 3.1%CO and 692 HC at slightly elevated revs (allowed by the test). Everything else was bob on.

Another new car, K11 Nissan Micra!

It's 1996, Ace of Base is on the radio,  and the Nissan Micra is the chariot of choice for getting to work cheaply over winter :). This particular fine example is a 1.3 with luxurious finish including a sunroof!

the dream for race prepped micras:

Few pics of our Pulsar GTiR and first impressions

Tadaaa, Pulsar! Cobra looking on disapprovingly in the background. This Pulsar GTiR is from 1992, with the SR20DET 2.0 litre single turbo engine also found in the 200SX mated to a full-time mechanical 4wd system with 50/50 split. It makes around 230bhp in standard form and the engine in this car is absolutely completely standard. 

Apart from being painted yellow at some point in it's life, the car is totally standard and not modified in any way. All those bonnet vents are completely standard.

Spotlights and front aluminium undertray are exceptionally rare factory options.

No clock, but instead a boost gauge gives a hint to the purpose of this car :). It's also the only car I've owned apart from my Jag XJS that has an oil temperature gauge. 

This car is basically built to completely nail 0-60 and 1/4 mile against it's contemporary hot hatch rivals. The first 2 gears are really long, 1st gear in particular which goes up to about 40mph. Engine red line is 7500rpm. I think Nissan did this on purpose to win 0-60 top trumps which for the Pulsar I've seen reported in various sources as anywhere between 5 and 6 seconds. Remember this car is from 1992 so that's quite impressive!

First impressions driving the car, those quoted figures are about right although my first attempt at a proper launch was on fairly old and hard tyres. There's no electronic trickery to the 4wd system, its basic mechanical. I actually found it surprisingly difficult to do a perfect launch. Too little revs and it bogs. Too many revs or too sharp on the clutch and it attempts to spin all 4 wheels, and it bogs and feels extremely harsh on the drivetrain. Don't want to be doing that too often. You have to have a little finesse to the clutch control to get the best launch. I had got too used to launching the Cobra where you just give it beans and then modulate the throttle to keep the rear just on the edge of traction, which I found easier to do than launch the Pulsar properly. 

I don't know what the top end is on this car as ours still has the factory 180kph speed limiter (112mph). It gets there pretty smartly and still has a lot left so I'd guess it would do 130 or so, maybe 135. Not bad for 1992! For comparison our Stagea tops out at 125mph which I did on the Kemmel straight at Spa Francochamps in Belgium and that's slightly more power (about 240bhp) but much heavier and larger frontal area.

An interesting note - the speedo is still in km, another plus for originality. Typically all the imports are converted to mph immediately on hitting UK shores.

For some completely unfathomable reason, Nissan decided to hide an umbrella in the B-pillar.

Still got the original tape deck and radio made for the Japanese market so it doesn't pick up UK FM. Japanese FM is a different frequency band to UK FM.

Open the bonnet and the original car colour can be seen:

This car was extremely tidy underneath, showing prop shaft and rear diff in pic below. I don't know if its standard or not but on our Pulsar the front differential is LSD and the rest just plain open.

It looks like no human rear-end has ever graced the back seats, absolutely factory pristine.

The steering wheel is suffering the same fate as our Stagea, the outer layer seems to come off and go a bit nasty, but other than that everything is in tip-top condition.

Pulsar GTIR

Continuing the theme of non-Cobra posts, we have a new addition to the JDM side of the family: a 1992 Nissan Pulsar GTIR. The Stagea with its auto box was just too hilariously bad for track days so we thought we would get a smaller manual car with a fair bit of power to take over track day duty.

Here it is next to the faithful old Stagea.

More pictures and details here: Pulsar Pics