Nissan Skyline R34 – 453 hp with a curse
“I can say that I had a rather rough childhood, where I very often had to take care of myself in everyday life, without the presence of any adult. Can per se thank my dad for letting me drive Go-Cart. ”
“This car reflects a lot of my personality and I use it in the fight against my depression. My way of taking care of all the bad memories and my problems is to modify the car. ”
Jimmy enters the street with a faint rumble from the exhaust pipe. He pushes the gas the 50 meters up to where we are to meet and the turbo goes – “PUUUUSSSSSHHHH”.
The feeling of Fast N Furious is palpable when you stand in a small industrial area in a suburb of Stockholm and a modded Nissan Skyline R34 from 1998 with delicious wrapping slides up the street.
“Maybe it’s the fastest mail van in the world,” Jimmy says with a smile as he steps out on the right side of the car. All R34s were made right-hand driven for the Japanese market.
Jimmy does not hesitate for a second and begins to tell about himself and the car.
The curse of the R34 gave it it´s name – Voodoo
“It has a curse on it – almost every time when I come around it rains. In addition to that, animals have an incredible ability to always jump out, in the middle of the road when I come riding. So far, there have been four animals during the years I have had the car. Which means I have to fix the front all the time. ” says Jimmy, pointing to the clear cracks in his front body kit.
“All this plus the car can not really be identified as a female or male, so my friends named it by the appropriate name – Voodoo.”
The rain part of the curse makes me draw associations to the computer game Need for Speed. Where the game takes place in a constantly raining and wet urban environment. This so that you can drift and slide as much as possible.
When I mention my thought to Jimmy, he counters with the comment: “Actually I did the whole wrap on the car in Need for Speed Heat. Copied it directly from there and gave it to the wrapping company Autowrap in Tumba (south of Stockholm). I got some inspiration from Dan Burkett who runs the drifting team Radandrift. ”
The first intervention on the R34 was to put a snail in the engine
“When I got the R34, it was modifying straightforward – no exception. All credit to all the R34s that are original, although I wanted to mod and create my own character in the car. ”
“I think a car should reflect your personality. You should express yourself through your car. With that, every single car you see will be different and sickly cool, which I think would be fantastic. It would be storytelling about every owner. ”
While Jimmy talks about how he built the car, he weaves in stories about his upbringing and childhood that sometimes seem to have been really hard.
“What I usually say is that my life started like everyone else’s and if you look at the car completely original, we have all been the same. All modifications to the car are my scars, so there are a lot. ” he says with a big, but sad smile.
“Voodoo is my outlet for all the bad things that have happened. A good example is the manifold. It was original from the beginning but I wanted it to sound cool, so I replaced it with a Cockpit manifold. At the same time, some things happened in my life that I wanted to ward off, so I installed a big f–g snail on it to fight that pain. ”
Both manifolds and snails were replaced on a “Do it yourself”-box on a gas station without a doubt that he might not be able to get out of there. The snail (turbo) was named Garrett and had a size of 72 mm. The snail that was replaced was the original of “only” 43 mm.
“The turbo can handle up to 700 horses and is both oil and water cooled and has double wheel bearings.”
The R34 was in 5 cm of mud
When Jimmy bought the car, it was standing out on a farm. The seller did not really want to sell it but needed the money to continue to build on his drifting car, a Nissan s13.
!He had bought an R34, in the belief that he would turn it into a drifting car – which it is not. So he came up with buying a S13 instead.”
It had been standing out there for almost a year before the seller realized that, if he wanted to afford his brand new V8 for his drifting construction, he needed to sell the R34.
“It was melancholy to see the car for the first time. It was in 5 cm of mud, the panels were applied totally skewed and it was completely neglected. ”
“To top it all off, the car kind of only lived in a forest environment and on gravel roads before it came to me. Which totally had destroyed the paint on the car. It was so sad to see how it looked right then. ”
The dream car that sounded PUUUUUSSH
Jimmy says that he had worked for more than a year to save up for his dream car.
“I had worked hard and saved money for more than a year to be able to buy it and all of a sudden Voodoo was standing in front of me. It was not a difficult decision. The money was not enough all the way, so I took a small loan to cover the last, so that it would eventually be mine. ”
Jimmy was then 20 years old, 2016, and had dreamed of an R34 since 2005 when he saw an R32 GTR with an R34 front, which Jimmy’s friend now owns. Plus when he saw Realcar’s orange R34 GT-T in real life. After that, he was stuck to this particular model of Nissan Skyline.
“The seller really did not want to sell it, but realized that he could not have both cars, and I might have convinced him a bit that it would come home with me. I was just thinking will I test drive it- this one have to be mine. ” Jimmy’s face changes a bit and you can really see how he thinks back on that moment and how happy he was that it became his.
When Jimmy left the farm, he sat with a big smile while the original turbo knocked out his “Puuuush” for each gear he changed.
Not a second to lose when he got hold of the Skyline
The job started right away when Jimmy got Voodoo in his hands. He did not save any gunpowder and started at once.
The car got a place on Norrorts PaintShop, where he himself helped out in the sanding process to get the car ready from the ground up.
“I had to remove all the panels from the car, because as I said, they were completely oblique. It was quite tragic to see how they were attached. Instead of the existing holes that existed on the car, they had made their own. Furthermore, a lot of rust had been created under those panels, which was grotesque to see. But the feeling when everything was in order was lovely. ”
The body kits are still the ones that were on when he bought the car.
“There are two kits mixed on the car. In the back and the Rocker panels is a Cross Factory Side Body Kit and in the front is a Euro body kit. The car is 5 cm wider than the original. ”
“But as you can see, there are cracks here because of the animals that just love to jump in front of the car.” says Jimmy and smiles.
Mechanically it is an original monster
While we are standing there in the industrial area in the suburb, the sun begins to look down on us and the wet road begins to dry up. Jimmy opens the hood.
“Purely mechanically, the car was more or less completely original when I picked it up.”
The engine block that sits in it is untouched and Jimmy points out that it can handle almost 600 horses, without having to do anything with it.
Otherwise, the list is pretty solid on what has been done. Homemade intercooler, new oil cooler, new Blitz cooler, larger diffuser and an equel length – low mount system for the turbo. Plus there are 3 inch tubes a little bit behind the engine, to then rail up to 4.5 inches.
“The fan is completely original, even though it actually takes 30 horses from the engine.” Jimmy looks at me, due to I make a surprised facial main and continues: “Well, many do not know that this is the case. Electric fans would be more efficient, but it might be a later project. ”
Promising Career in Carting
Jimmy says that he had a very promising and successful career in the Kz2 class in Go-Cart. But disagreements with his father about what driving style he should have on the track made the passion run out from both him and his father, who was Jimmy’s coach and sponsor.
He then dropped the Go-Cart career. But the urge to drive fast on the track was still there. Jimmy is trying to attend as many Track Days and Time Attack´s as often as he can and have the time for. There he lets those 453 wheel horsepower in the engine work through the entire rev register.
“Driftworks wheel suspension is located all around with Control System 2 Coilover at the front. A little older model but it is on the list to do. ”
“Right now it is set to the hardest setting, which is for the track Mantorp Park.”
When we later get in the car and push meter after meter on the highway, I feel how the craving in the engine comes from low revs all the way up until the next gear is kicked in. No break or “kick in” function, it pulls evenly all the way.
“Having a predictable car on the track is a must. Because as a driver, you have to know exactly how the car reacts in and out of curves and as you can see, this car is smooth all the way through the register. ”
Jimmy continues as an old racing legend and talks about how he thinks when he drives on the track with the car and how to set things up, that the Gotland Ring is the best track to ride on, and that number 11 on the roof is taken from his Carting -career.
Furthermore, he talks about how he and his friends fires up during the F1 Sundays. They stand up and literally scream when there are heated fighters on the track.
While he is talking, the feeling is calm in my body even though he pushes the gas pedal hard as soon as he gets the chance to show what the car is made of.
The best driving experience was like the Fast N Furious movies
“One of the most amazing driving experiences I have had with this car must be the journey from Barkarby to the famous grill in Vega. (from the North side to the South side of Stockholm)
It was after the big car meeting in Barkarby, we were hungry and Vega BBQ is always where you go to eat. ”
“The road there goes through the southbound tunnels which were then just built and there were no speed cameras set up.”
“A large number of cars hooked up on the trip. When we got down to the tunnels, it felt just like in the most beautiful Fast n Furious movie. Cars slipped over the lanes – it was Evo´s, Supror´s, Rx7´s, Honda 2000, Mercedes, you name it – all kind of cars that slipped and cruised in the summer evening. ”
Jimmy looks really dreamy when he recounts his memory and I really get the feelin that he is there when he tells the story. Iin the middle of the tunnel, changing lanes, downshifting and accelerating.
The last thing Jimmy says on our ride is:
“Then it’s good to do this as well.” – he pushes the pedal to the ground, turns the steering wheel to the left. The 2-way diff does not have to work a bit and in less than half a second the Advan Sport tires of 275/30 slides over the asphalt. The laser engraved Volk Racing rims with the name te37 – Ultra s2 get to taste three fast circles. The G-force presses in the face and at the third lap I see how the smoke rises outside the car.
What a car and what a building. This may be the world’s coolest carousel put together by a young engine magician, who has driven nearly 6000 miles with the car since he got it.
All the way home after meeting with Jimmy, I smile with my whole face and body. He was full of stories, knew exactly what he was talking about, and always had a humble approach to the things I did not know about. And that the car was a predictable monster that created a “have to go again!”-desire.
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