The ULTIMATE buyers guide | NISSAN R35 GTR

welcome back to the channel guys this video we are going to be doing a buyer's guide on a Nissan GTR the R35 like the one I've got behind me [Music] I'm just going to go through a few things with the car I'm going to start on the outside going to the inside and then have a look underneath mechanically on what you know the main things are to look for when you are buying one of these cars obviously it's a big investment for you so you want to know the things to look out for and the common problems so this car like I say it's a it's a 70 plate GTR so it's a 2020 car which is the latest version of the car they do three main differences on the cars 2009 to 2010 it's called the CBA and then they do a DBA which is 2011 to 2016 and then they did the latest facelift which is a they call an EBA which is basically 2017 to present day they actually stopped making them in 2022 so this is one of the latest cars available to buy this particular car is for sale with my sister company 80 performance cars it's just sold actually so someone's picking up at the weekend this is a very an example of a of a EBA car it's a car we've looked after from new actually so this particular car has only got 1500 miles on it and it is yeah three years old so it's very very clean car we've looked after it from New so um we know that it's a very mechanically sound car it's hardly done any mileage and we've always serviced it and we've also done our stage modifications on it so uh things to look out for if we are starting outside with the Bodywork um typically on these cars so if we're thinking about cars it could be up to I guess if it's a 2009 car they could be up to sort of 13 14 years old now so um Japanese paint that's one big thing is they're very known for having really thin paint especially the GTRs they don't put layers and layers of paint on it like the German cars so they do they are prone from prone to Stone chips um I would say the main points are obviously on the front end of the car we'll have a look at that in a minute but also um if you come around the rear arches they've got a real thin lip and they're all they're all metal and they don't have any protection on them this car's got ppf on it in the in the um pronounced places but you do sometimes see the chipping on the Arches and obviously that can cause corrosion over time something to look out for is um corrosion on the rear arches um Wheels Tires and Brakes that's a common thing sort of General General bit of knowledge really for any any car buying look out for the condition of the of the tires obviously if we were selling a car as a as a Trader we like to make sure there's a good three and a half mil on the tires that's approximately half of the wear tread left on it um these cars the GTRs they come with run flats from new so this car is still on its first set of tires because it's only done 1500 miles my advice would be if you are going to own one of these cars is to actually change the tires from a run flat to a um a Michelin pilot super sport or a Pilot Sport 4S um they are the go-to tire because the run flat tires make it quite a firm ride and they do actually make the car tramline a bit pull you over the road so um like say this car's only done 1500 miles so there's no point that's changing the tires just to sell it because there's obviously a good amount of tread on this one but a good thing to do is get your head under the car have a look on the inside of the tires because these cars are they are quite heavy on tires and they do wear generally speaking the inside of the tire first um so it's always good just I mean if you look at the outside you probably see there's a bit of tread there's probably more tread on the outside of the tire than there is on the inside so always get your head underneath have a good look on the inside because they will wear on the inside first Wheels check the condition make sure there's no cracks buckles scratches because they're diamond cut Wheels they're a little bit more expensive to refurb than a solid color probably expect to pay between 80 and 100 quid for a 20 inch diamond cut alloy to get that refurbished and then brakes again check the brake condition I'll go into the brakes a little bit more in depth when we're up on the ramp with the car but um they come with standard drilled Brembo discs if the car's been modified at all sometimes people get rid of the drill discs and they put on upgraded um AP disks or Alcon disks normally like a j-hook or a c hook disc that gets away with the uh the drilled discs again this car didn't need brakes but it had the upgrade because when you are pushing the car a bit harder getting a bit heat into it the drilled Brembo discs tend to crack from the drilled holes it's a common thing on these cars so something to look out for it's always good to get a car that has got the upgraded discs on it's nice to get away from nice sorry there's a lorry going by there's a lot it's nice to get away from the drilled discs especially if the car is a little bit older because the holes fill up with brake dust and they also yeah retain the heat causing them to crack so upgraded discs is a big one again on all four corners you are looking at obviously the consumable so you've got the brakes roughly speaking this about thousand to fifteen hundred pound per axle to change the brakes if you're doing discs and pads so it's quite a big span so you want to make sure you know the discs haven't got big lips on them the brake pads aren't wearing too thin and also the tires Again full set of tires for the michelins is about 1200 quid fitted and then you've got wheel alignment that sort of thing so you could quite easily if you've got a car you bought and it needed Brakes and Tires you could be into you know a good two to three grams worth of spend before you've actually got it to where it needs to be so Tires and Brakes are obvious but they are obviously a lot more expensive and bigger cars bigger Wheels like this car front end wise like I said about the stone stone chips um quite a lot of these cars now are getting ppf this this particular car has got ppf on quite a lot of the panels um front end on the GTRs is important because like I say the paint's thin and they are yeah they're quite um prone to chipping and being vulnerable so front end ppf check the headlights as well again if the front paint Works chips nine times out of ten you'll have little chips and them headlights as well and potentially the windscreen so give the paintwork a good look at and also inspect the windscreen check that it's um not got any big chips in it because it's got you know sensitive rain sensors in the in the windscreen for the wipers um it can be an expensive windscreen to replace so make sure that's not too chipped [Music] um again prone areas like Wing mirrors as well and the rear quarters for stone chipping so have a good look look over that older cars the they did suffer from corrosion on the on the doors and below the wing mirrors I'll just show you where to look for I haven't actually got an older car in at the moment so this is um this car's not got it but if you look along the inspect along the seams where this little plastic piece is for the um the door trim sometimes underneath there and around the bottom of the mirror you will see like bubbling of corrosion um because it's an aluminum door it gets aluminum oxide oxidization under the paint and it can cause bubbling of the paintwork and there is a bit of a myth with these cars that when they were built in the factory there's a robot that picks the door up in two particular places and what it does it takes like um the galvanization off of the door in certain places so along the bottom of the door on the front corner this car is obviously fine so I can't show you but always look along the Sims cylinder the door for corrosion as well because there's basically two particular places where the where the robot picks the door up and it's under the front of the door and it's on under the on top of the the rear of the front door so basically check the front door so corrosion around the mirrors around the bottom of the door top of the door there and then around this bit of plastic here which is ever so important because Nissan we're doing under warranty because they knew it was a fault but I think the age of the cars now some of the older cars they won't touch them because they're certain uh gone past that point I think they had like a five-year paint protection yeah that's really the Bodywork Wheels tires brakes um if the car's tuned it's probably um a little Telltale sign if these cars are tuned and running rich is you might often see the back of a GTR like has like staining on the paintwork because um the exhausts are quite pronounced and if they are tuned especially if they have the cats taken out of them you can you can get quite a lot of black smoke from these cars um and yeah you can check the back of the car I mean this car's been cleaned and ceramic coated but as a rule this was pretty tidy anyway there was no sort of staining on the paint but just check that because last thing you want to go go down the road with a tune car and bellowing out black smoke which was a which was a known thing like back in the day on some of the early maps of the cars so if it has got an accitec tune on it try and check what version the ekitek is on as well because the latest version now is version eight and they have refined that map nicely now so it's not actually you know as Smoky as some of the first Maps but um that's something just to look out for when you do do a test drive is obviously when you get it warmed up accelerate hard checking the rear view mirror make sure there's not a lot of black smoke and that is basically just on a tuned car without the cats so a car in standard form you shouldn't see anything at all so we'll head inside have a little look at the interior so one of the first things you do is obviously get in the car you unlock the car um always good to check you're getting two keys with the car these keys are very expensive to buy if you're going to buy one get it coded to the car it's going to cost you in and around 350 pounds to get that done so it's well worth checking the key actually works as well there may be two keys but make sure they do both unlock the car as well because um if it don't someone may have just bought a dummy from eBay or something and it may not have the coding on the car which is which is a part of the expense basically when it's um when it's getting getting programmed also check the keyblade you've got you can see the little holes in there so that key has been cut and that has been cut to the cut to the car if the key hasn't been cut and it's a cloned not a cloned key sorry a key off email something like that I may have just got it so you've got a key but then that potentially won't work so just make sure the key is being cut and it does work in the door handles so yeah two keys is important um check the mileage obviously uh on the on the dash of the car make sure that relates to the service history and the the service book and also if it's um the car's a few years old it'll have some mot history as well so always good to do an online check and check the mot history have a look at the previous advisories see what may have been flagged up on the last mot's um it's always good to check the chassis number against the logbook on these cars the chassis number is in lots of lots of part lots of places in the car most cars have it in one or two places but these cars actually have it on most of the panels so even on the bumpers doors on the dash uh yeah everywhere you look basically there is a chassis number on the on the panels and the parts because obviously they're known for potentially getting stolen and parts being sold off so that's one thing to look out for so this is an eBay car 2020 car so the dash is a little bit different the interior is slightly more refined um lovely place to be these later cars I would say things to check for uh on the on the earlier cars so say 2009 to 2015-16 they did suffer from um the stereo controls they were quite um intermittent so if you've got one that was quite worn then you'd have like a lot of um control on the steering wheel that didn't actually work um mainly the volume on the on the um head unit so check the volume on the head unit works because sometimes it's intermittent and it won't go up and down as you turn the turn the knob on the stereo and that could be a fairly expensive change if you need to change out the control unit on the head unit or it could be just a contact on the back of the button which is also a common fix quite an easy fix so yeah depending on what the fault is but just basically check all the controls check the stereo make sure that all works um one other thing I will will show you is I'll just turn the ignition on if you come and have a little look in here um check these buttons here all GTRs have these buttons so all these GTRs have have like the transmission set and suspension settings and the traction control setting just check um press and hold that one down you'll see it going to save and then if you press and hold it up it will go into race mode just check all those LED lights light up because it's very common for that that blue LED at the bottom not to light up and that can sometimes mean this this control unit goes down and the LED goes out so that is um we set up quite a lot on these cars something worth checking other thing to check actually we have had in the past common failures is the electric folding Wing mirrors so there's a little button just down here you can switch the wing mirrors open and close um again that's quite an expensive fix if the mechanism goes down inside the mirror then you're into buying a basically a new unit and they are a few hundred pounds so that's worth worth looking at but other than that generally speaking have a look at the condition of the cars seats the interior some of this silver trim um especially on the early cars it's a slightly different layout and a lot of people just Chuck their keys in there and they do get scratched up it's not the end of the world you can get it re-coated but it just makes the car look a little bit untidy so that's something we always look out for when we are buying and selling these cars we want it to look nice and fresh inside so keep an eye out for General condition and then when you do drive the car run the car keep an eye on all the gauges if you have a look you can there's so many settings on the dash that you can actually adjust and see and read different different gauges so you've got you know coolant temp engine oil temp transmission temp oil pressure there's all those those three are probably those four are probably the most important just make sure the car gets up to temperature stabilizes and doesn't um throw any warning lights on or any excessive temperature warnings that's um a good thing if you do have diagnostic equipment which I know not all of you have but a um a good little tool is the egg attack blue Bluetooth dongle so if you if you if the car has been tuned on ekitek or you can plug in a USB dongle under there sync it to your phone there's an app on the phone um and it basically you can read the historic fault codes and you can also you can also read the historic temperatures so if there's any excessive transmission temperatures or if there's any excessive um engine oil temperatures you can check all that so that's quite quite useful um so yeah do that also trying to launch count if you have the use of a tool diagnostic dongle or like an architect dongle is check check the launch count because um it's nice to know if the car's been launched and how many times if it has been just gives you a bit of an idea of what the potential life of was a car before before that before you owned it so that's always useful see I think that's about it for the uh internal stuff and the electronics we'll head into the workshop and we'll have a look underneath the car just before we take it into the workshop and get it up on up on the ramp um the good thing to do is when the car's warm on idle just listen out for a get out of the car and listen for a little rattling noise because the bellhousings on these cars if you Google GTR folks bell housing will be up there one not top top three um it's a part of the transmission the bell housing has a bearing in it and actually wears and it causes a rattling noise so when you experience it is when the car's warm in idle in neutral just get out of the car have a little listen and then if you get to the middle of the car and just sort of stick your head down a little bit listen out below the sort of seal of the door you can normally hear a transmission rattle but this car as it's so new and low mileage it hasn't got any noises at all but I'll show you on the car when it's up in the air exactly what to look out for but that's definitely a good thing to point out because um I'll give you my top five things in a little while at the end of the video to listen out for and look out for but that is definitely up there so I'll show you how to how to identify on the ramp so um starting at the front I would say under trays under trays are one of the big things um they are in about three or four different pieces under the car and they can be a real pain to remove during servicing if if they do get really corroded and rusted um you see the boys at the back there they're actually putting this one back on because it's just had a service and one of the biggest things we come across in the workshop is the under tray bolts uh being Rusty and corroded so a nice little upgrade for yourselves and for us in the garage is to actually change the steel bolts to stainless steel we we install them full kit we've plenty of copper slips so they are really nice to change and to remove each time it gets serviced because most Services um every service includes doing is oil change in the engine and that's one part of the under tray and then every third service is the gearbox Transmissions fluids which includes the rear section of the undertrave which are two big carbon fiber trays held on by loads and loads of bolts so um bolts and brackets on the undertray they're a big thing corrosion the age of these cars now some of the early ones they are getting quite quite bad um for for the brackets so when you undid a bolt if they are seized in it will twist the bracket up sometimes snap the bracket um we do keep up with brackets in stock for that reason and there's a couple of little upgraded stainless steel brackets we offer as well so that's something if you're viewing a car you know around someone's house or with a Trader something you probably won't be able to see if they've all been changed but you can like put your head underneath the back end and you can see the bolts you can see if they're stainless steel or not and if they're Rusty side of something something to look out for if they're not done it's not the end of the world we do the full bolt kit it's about 75 pounds to do that and we can change them out when we're doing a service so it's a nice little mod cheap one and it and it saves Us in the garage a lot of time and it'll save you an expensive you know brackets start getting broken and things like that so under trades is a big one brakes I did mention the brakes on the video on the outside of the car one thing you can't do when the cars on the floor is actually see the inside of the disc so um especially on the rear discs where they don't get as much use you will come across sometimes that the inside of the disc does get quite Rusty and more lit than the outside of the disc this card's got upgraded discs front and rear so I can't really show you an example on this one but it's something that may crop up in a service or when you're when you're actually got your car up in the air it's good to have a little look under there and look at the inside of the brakes coming along the car exhaust this is a fair example this is an aftermarket exhaust it's a four inch um Cat-Back this car's at stage two looking at it it's still got the still got the downpipes it could be a stage four but you can see these aftermarket exhausts um they are great but they can get corroded you can see the flange on this y-pipe is looking a little it's where it hits the ground basically because they do they it's a bigger diameter exhaust they do sort of sit a bit lower can get caught on speed bumps so exhaust system is a good good thing to look out for again there's so many options on the market depending on what you want it to look like what you want it to sound like options are endless with GTRs and depending on what package you're going for and we'll determine what exhaust you want but generally speaking these standard exhaust is pretty good and they do get corroded I've never seen any really fail it's mainly like the aftermarket wire pipes that have have problems if anything moving to the back of the car you can see now there there's two big sections of the under tray um this car if you have a little look up here there's um these bolts have been replaced with stainless steel and this particular car has got a rear diffuser kit on it which is nice and we fitted that a few years ago again with all stainless steel bolts so um that's a nice little touch but not every car's got them it just makes it look a little bit more aggressive which is good exhaust tips again this has got standard exhaust tips on so you can have modified exhausts with the original tips on um this car's really well looked after although it's driven here you know a good few miles the exhaust tips are quite clean sometimes tuned cars they're really thick blacks are on the back of their tips and can be quite hard to clean up once they've got to a really bad stage um but yeah generally speaking I think um the other thing I was going to show you was the Bell House in which we spoke about outside but I thought I'd just show you why we're underneath the car so you know exactly what we're talking about if you haven't seen one before but up there above the y-pipe you've got this prop shaft here and it's going into the the bell housing is is that section there I don't know if you can see that there but there's a bearing just behind there and that's what has a bit of play in it if you grab the prop shaft and move it up and down you can hear a little noise there I mean that is that is there's going to be a certain amount of movement in it but if you if you do up and down movement and then if you do in and out you can do that with like a pry bar and actually check the measurement that's how we check on the services actually we pry it forward and back and we check the measurement of the bearing so um it's a good Telltale sign if you know if you've got play in the playing the bell housing so like I said it's a very common problem um it is we're replacing them quite often on average I would say the life expectancy of a standard one is about 30 000 miles so if you're buying a car with around 30 000 miles on it all coming up to that then I would say have a look in service history see if it's been changed you've got two options for changing it you can either change it to a a completely standard Nissan part which comes better housing and a new torque plate the part alone is around the 2000 pound Mark and it's the best part of four or five hours to fit it or you can go for a modified version which we do we have a modified bell housing with a modified bearing in it and that is basically a strengthened bearing which reduces the um likelihood of the bear and failing and the likelihood of having play and those ones do have a long warranty on it so you're almost guaranteed for that to see you out the life of the car once you get it get it changed that job for the modified version drive in drive out service on a part exchange is approximately 900 to 1200 pounds so it's considerably cheaper than buying just the brand new part which is like say about two grand so I would always opt for that the only downside to that is if your talk plate the talk damper inside the bell housing has a has a failed spring or a failed plastic clip which can happen and that also can cause a bit of noise but unfortunately the only way to buy new ones of those is to buy the brand new bell housing from this hand so it's a bit of Catch-22 we'll always remove it check the Bell how to uncheck talk plate if we think the talk Plate's good to go we'll always replace it with your original one and advise you if we need to replace the actual torque damper talk plate and then you would be into potentially a new a new bell housing but that happens very very uh it's not not a big amount of times that we change them where it needs to talk right so normally nine times out of ten you're finally modified version we've got um why we're under here you can't actually see now but um the sump pan of the gearbox which is just here so when we do change the transmission of they are a steel sump pan we do often change them because of corrosion so they basically the paint comes off the sump pan and they do start getting a bit corroded again modified version we do an aluminum um sump plan gasket all the bolt kit and that is a nice little modification because it has some nice cooling fins on it as well and it will never rust because it's made from aluminum so that is something to look out or when you're getting your car serviced us the technician have a little look at some because we have seen them when they get quite bad and they start blistering and obviously filling the metal they can start weeping oil out of them so that's the only other thing so yeah I think we're done underneath the car I will get out from underneath the car and give you my five tips of what to look for so earlier I mentioned about the tires this particular car we've just gone underneath is the um the owner of this car does quite a few track days goes to Europe Nurburgring and Spa so he's opted for the big brake kit um I did mention about the upgraded discs um the next level up from an upgrade on just a standard size discs is the AP radical brake kit which I do rate and I'm first-hand experience with because I've actually had that on one of my own cars front and rear so um massive rotors big six pot calipers and the stop in performance is phenomenal front brake kit is approximately two and a half grand for that and then the same again for the rear if you wanted it on the rear what I was mentioning earlier on the tires is this this Chap's gone for the Michelin uh these are actually pilot Super Sports I believe yeah and another good modification to do is go to the oversized tire so the typical oversized tire that we would recommend command is a 265 on the front and a 305 on the rear this one has gone one step further because he's doing track days he has actually got on here a 285 on the front and on the rear is a three one five have a look at the Rears they are massive they do fit the standard Rim fine um but they do they do obviously fill it and they will probably be quite close to the arch so you wouldn't want to lower this car because it would probably rub on the arch but that is 335 that's huge that's that's a really wide tire that's probably as wide as I would go um but like I say if it's just for normal Road use I would still probably say 305 on the michelins and Michelin Pilot it's bought four s's um are the ones to go for uh you can go for cup twos but they're a bit more truck orientated so yeah a decent row tires first oversized tire and the michelin's transforms the car so that's the video coming to an end I just wanted to recap that because I've given you quite a lot of information there in a short period of time so um I wanted to give you my top five things that I would uh look out for whilst buying a GTR and I will go through them now briefly I've gone for them earlier in a bit of detail but uh first of all it's probably service history so I would check the service history book they will all have a book in the glove box as a little manual and they should it should have stamps in it it has enough stamps you should see a receipt um for that service and whilst you're looking at service history it's good to check if it hasn't had any other mechanical work done to it for example like the bell housing that sort of thing and any other repairs so service history check the um check the stamps check the service history invoices and also it might be worth ringing the garage if it's been to a specialist like for example us if you get a service book out and it's got some Auto Talk stamps in it feel free to pick the phone up with more let's have a have a look into the car for you and we can give you our advice on potentially what condition Condition it's in and if it's a good car um whilst you're on the service history and looking at the car like I said if you did have a dongle uh OBD ECU Tech to plug into it you can check the um historic fault codes warning uh warnings on the car if there's any excessive temperatures reached and also launch count is quite a nice one to know about um so service history bin number one Brakes and Tires like I said it's a fair expense if you've got a shell out for them you know in your first few months of actually owning the car so it's nice to get a car with michelins on it that aren't the Run flats and also ideally a nice little modification at the same time is to go for the oversized tires like I described um there's a couple of different options on the tires but again if you want any advice uh give us a call we can talk through entire sizes and prices on that and brakes being the second thing ideally if the cars had a set of brakes in its lifetime it'd be nice if it's had an aftermarket set like I say AP or Alcon I prefer AP are sometimes prone to the bells cracking they have aluminum Bells that's why I like to go for for AP they're a great performing desk good price um probably turn out to be less than the original uh cost of the original equipment and a decent brake pad in it so yeah ideally you get away from the standard brakes if it has got standard brakes on it check for hairline Cracks around the drilled holes and make sure we've got plenty of meat on the disc and on the pad so you're not looking at an expense for those thirdly come most common problem on the GTR is probably the bed housing bell housing rattle so like I said earlier get it warm give it a test drive have a listen to the car make sure it's up to temperature in neutral and on idle and then you'll hear it if it is you could probably sit in the car just give it a slight rev and you'll hear the rattle come in and out it's not the end of the road if it has got a bit of a rattle these cars are quite mechanical and they do um I don't suffer from mechanical noises but that's that's the nature of the car they are quite mechanical if you drive around in a car park on tight lock you'll probably hear the diff sort of you know clunking a little bit and just just making some noises which again is perfectly normal but uh the bell housing is is something that you want to try and avoid having to spend on be nice to get one that's already done or low enough mileage that it doesn't need one um but again there's something we can help you with it's not not the end of the world it is a span you're into about like say a thousand pounds to 1200 pounds to get that fixed but just something you could avoid if you know about it before buying and then lastly number um four or five points are probably the corrosion Underside um you get the corrosion on the under trades we spoke about the bolts of brackets other than that is actual subframes some of the earlier cars like I say they're getting to sort of 10 years plus old and you will start seeing some corrosion now on the subframes and on the rear seals of the car so be nice to get it inspected and actually see if you're into any sort of corrosion issues some cars now we see we are changing subframes so we have actually changed rear subframes on these cars now because the corrosion issues uh very worst case scenarios are the subframes are made of sort of tubing so they are sometimes can rust from the inside out and they can put holes in the holes in the tube work which obviously weakens the structure of the subframe which then is a mechanical problem you need to get that changed but that is very bad uh very worst case situation but it all starts with a bit of surface rust so the cleaner they Underside the better to avoid that and then the corrosion on the outside check the doors front doors um rear arches any stone chips that happen on the paintwork just check there's no problem enough corrosion set in there so um that's that's key very common on the early cars again and then moving on to the last point was the Bodywork sort of covered it just then but mainly the um the stone shipping on the front end if you're into painting the front end of a car you know it depends what paint shop you use but um you could be in it you know front Bonnet bumper Wings you're into you know easily a thousand pounds to get that painted from a decent body shop maybe double that depending on the level of work they do and the quality of their their workmanship so yeah generally I think that's a good good overview so the five key things are service history Tires and Brakes Bella housing corrosion and Bodywork so hopefully that was helpful to you guys any questions any comments drop them below and we'll try to answer them to help you out also pick up the phone I'm in the office 24 7 nearly so yeah feel free I'm happy to talk for any any issues any any concerns you may have with a potential purchase or even with your own car please check out our sister company 80 performance cars we do sell GTRs um we offer cars for sale and we also offer a buying Service as well so even if you have a car you want to sell feel free to drop us a line we're always interested in buying nice low mileage examples we'll be happily help you out whether we buy it from you or we can offer a sale a return service so yeah please head over to that site ATP cars.co.uk um and it shows all our services on there from seller return to buy into selling and we've also always got some nice Vehicles there for sale so yeah take a look at that um so yeah I think that's it for now thanks for watching see you next time

Channel: Auto Torque

Views: 22,045

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Id: Pmz8_P7ImKI

Length: 34min 2sec (2042 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 04 2023