Longtime readers will know that I tend to dislike building multiples of the same car. It’s a bit of a restrictive mindset, but there are still so many cars out there that I want to build in my own style, so it feels wasteful to spend my time and energy building say, three different R34 Skylines. The sort-of exception to that rule is if it’s a rebuild – in which case the new model will take the place of the old one, or more often than not, I’ll cannibalize the old model and rebuild the parts I wasn’t satisfied with. This is a case of the latter (again).
Recall, this Top Secret Aoshima R34 was actually a rebuild off of my original Tamiya Z-Tune kit, since it was trashed by one of my college roommates many moons ago. Ironically, the Top Secret body actually won the Best Engine award at a model show a few years back too, but I was still never really happy with the kit.
I was never happy with the body style, the fitment, the wheels, the turbos on the engine, the hood-exit exhaust – so I was always planning to come back and redo this kit eventually. It feels bad tearing into an award-winning kit, but I’d rather parts of it live on in a rebuilt version than keep a model around that I’ll always be unhappy with.
The only thing I really want to do with the engine is upgrade the turbos to better resin-cast ones, since these old resin ones from EightyOne Models lack detail and the turbine fins look all sorts of funky. I’m also planning on running a normal exhaust this time – I only did the hood exit exhaust here because I couldn’t find a way to fit downpipes on the turbos the way they were top-mounted, but I’m determined to work around that this time.
I built this kit in 2018, five years ago now, so I really don’t remember too much on how I put it together. Imagine my own surprise at my own work when I started tearing it apart and forgot I had hot glued the chassis and body shell together lol.
After trying out the Aoshima Top Secret body, I found that I really wasn’t happy with how the bumpers and skirts were so high profile – they didn’t have the low slung ground-effect look that I tend to like with my cars so low. I actually really liked the look of the Z-Tune body when I first built it originally in 2017, so I decided to go back to that. The fenders and bumpers are also subtly more aggressive.
Engine was surprisingly easy to remove as a single unit, intercooler and all. This engine kit was originally from EightyOne Models, whom I’m pretty sure is defunct by now.
Tamiya’s Z-Tune kit is a curbside kit, so the hood was never meant to open to accommodate an engine. Easily fixed with a heat knife and some careful cutting.
Y’all already know I’m obsessed with aftermarket body kits and aero parts, but there’s really no aftermarket body kits or widebodies for the R34 that I like. Ironically, I really think the pseudo-factory Z-Tune kit is the best looking version of the R34 GT-R body – a rare time where I actually prefer the factory look, since nowadays my attitude is very much stock = bad.
That being said, I still couldn’t resist throwing on a little aftermarket wing, just to set my kit a little bit apart from all the other Z-Tunes out there. Instead of a GT wing like almost all my other builds have, I decided to try out a resin 326 Power wing, mounted on the factory wing stands.
Upgraded resin turbos. It’s very easy to see how much more detailed and clean the new units are compared to the blobby looking old ones. These are actually smaller in size than the giant one I used on my recent Fast & Furious Supra, since I still intend to use the top-mount twin-turbo configuration, so there’s only so much engine space I have to work with.
Hilariously, this chassis has now been through some serious shit – it’s actually the original Z-Tune chassis plate all the way back from my original 2017 Z-Tune build. I had used it for the Top Secret rebuild since it was more detailed, and I didn’t want to rebuild it from scratch and do all the work of cutting up the frame and engine bay to fit the engine again, so I’m just stripping the bay area down and repainting it the new body color to match.
Breaking the turbos off the resin EightyOne manifold and intercooler pipe connections. Now that it’s been a few years and I’m a little better versed in cars, I’m only realizing now that top-mount twin-turbos on RB motors really isn’t a thing in real life (due to packaging reasons, it’s hard to fit two turbos up top with enough room for the intake and exhaust for both), so EightyOne’s original twin-turbo RB engine kit wasn’t very realistic from the get-go.
Still, I wanted to keep my two giant twins top-mount, since it just looks cool, realism be damned. The rear turbo I had to angle backwards so there was still room behind the first one to squeeze a downpipe in.
If I recall correctly, the Top Secret kit actually only included one race seat – it always intended for you to build it with mismatched front seats, but I was never a fan of the look. Tearing those out and putting in a pair of red Brides already with harnesses attached, cannibalized from my Jada Datsun 510 build that’s now been torn down.
Since there are harnesses now, I felt like I had to build a roll cage/bar for the harnesses to strap to. I guess I could’ve tried to run them to the bottom of the rear seats, but I figured a half-cage would spice things up a bit more in an otherwise plain interior anyway.
I was racking my head about what color to paint the cage, when I decided to just be lazy and make it completely out of metal aluminum tubing and leave it as bare metal. This was less of a style choice and more of a pragmatic one – the aluminum tubing is actually easier to bend and work with than styrene tubing, since this kind of metal tends to hold its shape and rigidity better than plastic when bent.
I like my Skylines blue, especially R34s, but I feel like I’ve built too many blue cars over the years, especially in metallic mica blue that the last two versions of this R34 were. So, my daring and adventurous compromise – TS-44 Brilliant Blue.
After the body color had already been painted I totally forgot I had built a custom radiator and hood supports, since no version of the R34 body was designed with a motor in mind. Ripped it out of the old Top Secret body, cleaned it up a bit, and glued it into the Z-Tune body.
I also totally forgot I had built a custom firewall for this thing last time via what looks like a Revell firewall piece (probably out of a Civic or Eclipse) and added pla-plate L pieces to each end to make it longer so it fit the dimensions of the R34 chassis. Since it’s a Revell piece in the center, the wiring detail was all molded into the piece, so I had to bring out those details via black brush paint by hand. I had also installed my own master cylinder/brake booster piece last time, but changed it out here for a more detailed resin-printed version I had laying around in my parts bin.
I think what bothered me most about the Top Secret version of the R34 I had built last were the wheels. They were just plain TE-style six-spokes on some pretty meaty tires – I don’t even remember where exactly they came from. Now that I’ve discovered the wonder that is resin aftermarket wheels, I can never go back – they always tend to have crisper details, more aggressive lips, better looking tire fitment.
On a whim I decided to go for these HRE 505’s paired with a set of Toyo R888R’s, ordered from Fugu Garage. I thought the large star-shaped 5-spoke look would go well with the R34 body, and you know I love me some dishes.
Fugu Garage gives you the wheel faces and barrels as separate pieces, making for very easy painting. As per usual, my barrels and lips are going to be chrome’d using Molotow Liquid Chrome, because I have no originality or style variation.
Debated for a while between doing the wheel faces in pure white or machined silver. I figured the white would pair well as a high-contrast look with the Brilliant Blue body, and machined silver with the chrome barrels would maybe make the wheels look too silver. Note the gold lug nuts because I’m extra.
Z-Tune lip kit edges masked for gloss black paint. I didn’t do this for my original Z-Tune build since that was completed way back when I was first getting into scale car modeling.
Bless Tamiya masking stickers. Always love having these to make window frit painting a breeze.
Quick test-fit with the wheels painted on the body before clear coat. One of my other main issues with the Top Secret body was how the body kit didn’t ride low and have that “ground effect” look. Thankfully the Z-Tune body fixes that with its low skirts, and coupled with the smaller 18″ wheels with low profile tires, it’s finally looking the way I always envisioned my ideal Skyline.
Adding some carbon to the hood vents, to give it the look that it’s a carbon fiber hood that’s been paint matched, with the vents exposed.
Since I’ll be displaying this kit with the hood up, the underside will be very visible, so I’m actually forced to make it look mildly presentable. I actually looked up a bunch of Z-Tune GT-Rs with their hood open, and it looks like the Z-Tune hood is actually painted carbon fiber or painted fiberglass, so I decided to replicate the look with a piece of carbon fiber decal, cut to fit thhe shape of the underside of the hood, but with the edges exposed blue to look like it was painted on the topside.
I planned from the beginning to run HKS stripes down the sides of the lower doors from the beginning with this body color. The decals shown here are actually from TK Diecast’s premade decal catalogue, though they’re meant officially for 1:18 scale models. But, water slides are water slides, and I think the sizing still works fine for 1:24.
Hard to tell in photos, but I actually messed up while wetsanding the clear coat on the body after sealing the decals and burned through some of the clear on accident. You can just barely make out some discoloration on the rear quarter panel next to the gas cap. After all this work on the body I was absolutely not down to strip it all and start over, so…
My solution to cover up my mistake is to add another decal over it lmao. I ordered these Nismo stripes from TK Diecast in the same batch as the HKS stripes, with the intent of possibly using them on this GT-R if I didn’t like how the HKS stripes turned out, but here I am now unintentionally being forced to use both.
Using the mesh provided with the original kit for the bumper openings. I’m opting to leave the main grille opening bare without any mesh, just so the intercooler can be shown off a bit more prominently.
Fugu Garage provided the three-piece wheel hardware molded into the face of their wheels, so we’re bringing that detail out now with some precise brush work. Going with gold hardware to match the gold lugnuts.
I, uh, didn’t account for my scratch-built radiator support bar not fitting in the Tamiya chassis because of its different headlight housing design. The Tamiya headlights are more prominent than the Aoshima versions, so the thickness of the rad support bar causes it to collide between the headlights and radiator.
Thankfully it wasn’t impossible to fit, it just needed a little trimming.
For the exhaust, I’m going with one of these metal detail-up mufflers from Zoom On Models. Size large of course.
Straight pipe baby. The front portion is run as one piece all the way from the back of the turbos up front, after which I cut another piece of styrene and bent it to reach the muffler can.
Finishing touches – I dug around my spare parts bin and found this set of aero mirrors – I’m not sure if they’re supposed to be replicas of a specific brand like APR or Spoon or anything, but they work for our purposes here. I’m pretty sure these were also originally from ZoomOn.
Cutting the mirror bases down to fit the openings where the stock mirror bases would’ve gone.
And done. For a not particularly complex build this sure took a lot longer than I would’ve liked. Trying so hard to get a deep glossy finish out of the body with all the wetsanding and polishing really burned me out.
The fitment especially in the front looks kind of whack when the wheels aren’t turned. This is actually a direct result of me wanting to keep the steering rack – there wasn’t enough room with all the suspension components to push the wheels any further into the body, especially with the aggressive offset and deep lips, so I ended up with more front camber than rear on the final fitment.
I tried compensating by introducing a little more rear camber to make it look a bit more even, but something just feels off with the look. Ideally, I would’ve liked to have run no camber on this build.
It does look a lot better with the wheels angled, so I guess it’s fine??
I also had some serious fitment issues with the front bumper, mostly because I accidentally broke the tabs on the fenders that would’ve clipped to the front bumper keeping it aligned and clipped in place. Without those tabs there’s almost no contact surface between the front bumper and leading fender edges, so it was a challenge to get it lined up at the end, especially when it was already a tight fit with the intercooler rubbing right up against the inside of the bumper grille.
Despite my best efforts, the whole front clip still has some unsightly gaps between the fenders, bumper, and hood. There’s still a bit of “underbite” with the front bumper fitment – where the bottom is sort of jutting out a bit more than it should instead of having the lower lip fit perfectly parallel to the ground. This is a result of the fat intercooler pushing out against the bottom of the bumper cover.
I’m happy with how the motor turned out, at least. Those new turbos are a serious upgrade from the old units.
I didn’t think I was going to be able to fit the strut bar back in the bay, with the bigger compressor housings and all, but I was pleasantly surprised when it happened to all clear. I built that strut bar completely from scratch for the last version of my R34, so it would’ve felt like a huge waste to lose it here.
I uh, totally didn’t just paint match the aero mirrors to the body color because I hate working with carbon fiber decals and didn’t want to go through the hassle of wrapping carbon over such a tiny complex shape. Nope, definitely not me.
Even now, I’m not sure if I should have panel lined the doors to have it somewhat match the big panel gaps on the front clip. The large HKS decal really blurs over the door gaps, to the point where the panel lines have almost disappeared. I generally don’t like to panel line my car kits since more often than not it shows up too heavy and makes the car look strangely out-of-scale, but in this case it’s sort of the opposite, where the lines are too filled-in with decals and thick paint.
See you in a few years when I decide to rebuild this R34 for a fourth time lmao
