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Dahtone Racing Talks RB26 Reliability The Best GTRs & Australia Car Culture

Street Alpha Podcast

Dahtone Racing Talks RB26 Reliability The Best GTRs & Australia Car Culture

194 annotations

From Sydney show-car culture to Group A “Godzilla” Skylines, the conversation traces why RB26 builds became a centerpiece of Australian car life. They compare early-2000s tuning—PowerFC, airflow meters, and “you've got no safeties”—with modern ECU access and Haltech plugins. A big reliability thread focuses on rust and corrosion hotspots on GT-Rs, plus how extreme RB-series power pushes sealing and oiling limits. The episode also covers streetability, compliance, and why many builders chase functional, repeatable setups over “copy paste” specs.

0:00 --:--

00:02

Topic

Australia Car Culture

They’re talking about car culture in Australia, and how the local community connects people through cars like the Skyline. The guest’s history is used to set up the rest of the discussion.

00:42

Skyline

Car

Skyline

The Nissan Skyline is a famous Japanese performance car. People associate it with big power and racing history, which is why it has a legendary reputation.

00:49

Term

Godzilla

“Godzilla” is a nickname fans use for the Nissan Skyline GT-R. It means the car was seen as scary-fast and legendary.

00:58

Term

JDM

JDM means “Japanese Domestic Market.” It’s used by car fans to talk about Japanese cars and parts that were made for Japan (and the whole scene around them).

01:36

Brand

HKS

HKS is a well-known company that makes performance parts for turbo cars. The host is saying that in Australia, there was a shop closely tied to HKS that did a lot of tuning and racing work. It’s basically shorthand for “serious turbo performance parts.”

01:41

Brand

CRD

CRD is referenced as a major Australian tuning shop in the early 2000s GT-R scene. The host also notes it used to be called “Cordon Auto Sports,” tying the brand identity to a specific local workshop history. This matters because the episode is about who supported and built the RB26/GT-R ecosystem locally.

01:59

Term

single turbo

“Single turbo” means there’s just one turbocharger on the engine. It still helps the engine make more power by pushing extra air in. The host is saying even single-turbo cars were already making huge numbers back then.

01:59

Term

twin turbo

“Twin turbo” means the engine uses two turbochargers instead of one. Turbos force more air into the engine, which helps it make more power. The host is comparing different turbo setups people were running back then.

02:51

Car

SR20

SR20 is Nissan’s 2.0-liter engine family. The speaker is saying they worked on cars using that engine a lot before focusing on GT-R tuning.

02:58

Term

PowerFC

PowerFC is an aftermarket computer for the engine. It helps tuners adjust how the car runs so they can make more power and drive better than with the factory settings.

03:02

Term

airflow meters

Airflow meters are sensors that tell the engine computer how much air is going into the engine. The computer uses that info to decide how much fuel to inject.

03:18

Term

safeties

Here, “safeties” means the built-in protections that keep the engine from getting damaged. Without them, the car may run, but you can’t push it as hard because there’s less protection if something goes wrong.

03:27

Term

stand-alones

“Stand-alones” are aftermarket engine computers that let you tune the engine more directly than the stock system. The episode is saying that these upgrades help, but they don’t magically remove every limit when you chase big power.

03:47

Term

98 octane

Octane is how resistant the fuel is to engine knocking when the engine is under heavy boost or load. Saying “98 octane” means they weren’t using race fuel—just a higher-grade pump gas—yet the cars were still extremely quick.

03:47

Term

kilowatt

Kilowatts (kW) are a way to measure how much power an engine makes. In this episode, they’re using kW to compare how fast cars were back then.

Welcome back to another episode of the Street Alpha podcast.

I'm your host, Tukes, and we are back with another banger out here in Australia.

So we're in Sydney, Australia, and we have the pleasure of sitting with Anthony

of Datsun Racing.

Anthony owns the shop, of course, right?

And he's been doing this for well over what?

2008, the shop opened.

Yeah, one time.

So whatever, there's nearly 20 years, but in the community since 2001.

2001, years, years in the game.

So a lot of history, experience, really, really nice work

that you do here.

So I'm actually honored to be sitting here and having this conversation with you.

And we're glad to have you on the podcast as well.

So what pretty much drew you to the RB platform and the DTR?

Just owning a Skyline from 2001.

That was it.

So, yeah, it was just being part of the community and owning a Skyline.

And the Skyline was just such a kind of like it's Godzilla, right?

It was always known as Godzilla and because of the group A stuff.

And it was like when you're a kid, you look at it and you go, man, like,

if you're a JDM guy, like you like Jap cars, you, yeah, that's the pinnacle.

So that's, that's how I ended up going in that direction.

It's an expensive car, right?

So I'm assuming it wasn't something that you had as a first car.

No, no, no, no.

So probably, like I said, 2001, I got the first one.

It was a non-turbo GDS R32.

Yeah.

So they were, they were, weren't cheap, but they weren't that dear.

They were sort of ball in the middle of the ballpark.

Yeah. What, what shops at the time were working on the GTRs?

Here in Australia.

Yeah, yeah.

It was mainly back then we had a shop called BD4s, which were a HKS.

The big HKS shop back in the day and and CRD, which used to be called

Cordon Auto Sports back in early 2000s.

Yeah.

So they were the big, the big hitters back then.

And they were doing more like racing stuff.

Yeah, more everything really.

But back then it was not, it wasn't like this.

It was, you know, twin turbo cars and even single turbo cars was like 450 kilowatts,

you know, so 600 horsepower was a was a big car back then.

Yeah.

It's a long time ago.

What, what were you guys doing in terms of like tuning?

I know HKS was huge, ready.

All those companies were like pretty much at the top of the market.

Yeah.

A lot of people were using their parts and they still do have parts for the GTRs,

I'm assuming, but mainly like in terms of performance, they were the top company.

I'm assuming back then.

So what were you guys doing when you were tuning and stuff like that?

So originally we were, everything was stock bottom end back then.

You know, like for us, we weren't, we weren't a big player at all.

We were just having fun building cars back then.

It wasn't really a, we didn't look at it as a business sort of thing.

It was just like, oh yeah, cool.

I want to open up a shop, build cars and luckily enough, we make money from that.

So it was, it was a lot of stock engine stuff back then.

We used to do a lot of SR20 stuff as well back then.

And then slowly, slowly we were doing, doing the GTR stuff.

And PowerFC was, was it for us?

You know, it was just everything had a PowerFC in it, you know, airflow meters

and all that garbage that the people, the people, I think there's some cars

that still use that.

No, like you get, you get the odd guy here and there that it's been in it for 20 years.

So they'll leave it.

Yeah.

Oh, it works.

The car works.

Yeah, it call it works, but you've got no safeties.

You've got no, you're very limited to what you can do.

But you would think that after all the years of that, without having the safeties,

you know, we have safeties now and all these ECUs and stand-alones,

they worked for so long, right?

So they, but they have their limits.

I'm assuming, right?

Of course.

Different market, different time, so people want to make more power and so on.

And we weren't making the power back then.

That's the thing.

You thought you were a problem.

Well, yeah, we thought, like if you had a 600 horsepower GTR, you were king of the street.

Like even even a 300, 300 kilowatt S 15, S 14, that was crazy back then on pump

fuel 98 octane, right?

It was all borderline a drag car.

You know, it was, it was like, oh, yeah, I got a 300 kilowatt SR and it's a,

it's a race engine.

Yeah.

Whereas now that's like average stock bottom end stock internal engine.

So which that's still fast though.

I mean, I don't know.

I still think 600 horsepower is fast.

If you're driving a 600 horsepower car, it's still quick.

Yeah, it is.

It is.

But when everyone else is, is so much faster than you just go, okay.

It pushes the whole everything up.

So it's different, different times.

Yeah.

What was the inspiration to start a business and start working on cars?

I was heavily into the show car scene back then.

Okay.

So we had auto salon, which was like a big late model sort of car show.

Yeah.

It was, it was massive.

And that was a lot of the guys sort of my age and around that sort of that age group,

we were, we were all show cars were the thing, you know, so it wasn't so much power

and all that kind of, that wasn't the, the sort of driving force behind the industry.

There were, you know, guys with, with money that could do that.

But then you had the show car guys, which is where, where I started doing things,

you know, so it was like paying jobs and interiors and engine bays.

Engine bays were my thing.

Like I really, I wanted to have that minimalist, minimalist engine bay, you know,

nothing in there, just the motor, everything detailed, you know, to within any.

Shave, shave engine bays too.

Well, that came later.

Back then, back then we couldn't afford that kind of stuff.

I like, we were young, we're all still young then.

Right.

And there weren't as many people doing it.

And it was like, yeah, it was only the, the elite top end guys could do that stuff and afford that stuff.

Yeah.

So the car show stuff is what pretty much inspired you to kind of build the cars

the way that you do now, right?

Now, where does Australia draw the line between having a show car and performance?

Because the one thing I noticed about Australia is that these cars are immaculate,

really pristine condition, but they also are functional.

They're not, they're not cars that you just see in the States where they're built for shows

and they have all these performance parts on them, but they never really do anything on the track.

You never see them driving or do anything crazy.

They just go to car shows, park up, win the show and that's it.

Australia is much different.

It seems like a lot of the cars are built for both looks and functionality.

So with your shop, where does, where do you, where do you stand in that line?

Pretty much everything I build, I try to make sure it's a road car like you can drive it.

OK.

Yeah.

Like even, even my car, garage, active, wide body 32, fully shaved engine bay,

brake booster under the dash, like everything is just it's got a flat firewall motor.

And that's it in the engine bay, you know?

So even that is built to be something you can drive.

OK.

So the show car thing, I think once you start doing underbodies and things like that,

you get a bit reluctant to drive them because there's so much work goes into the underside of the car.

Yeah.

That and it's so easily damaged.

We're everything else we do.

It's it's drivable, right?

You know, you can just get in it, drive it, go wherever you want.

You know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's it's kind of in Australia.

Sydney, especially, it's it's kind of like a like a badge of honour kind of thing.

OK, if I can, if I can drive my car anyway, you know, even even big power cars,

like you said, God's 2,000 horsepower, calling it a street car, right?

And they get in the car and they drive it, right?

So that's it's like a thing.

It's just, yeah, that's how we yeah, we are here.

I know I noticed that it's like all the cars, they have a street car feel.

Yeah, they're not overly done where it's like, you know, you can't drive on the street or it's,

you know, it's got interior windows, AC, all that stuff.

So it's it's definitely a much different kind of culture over here, for sure.

Now, you mentioned that the you do a lot of under under the under the car restorations, right?

So what goes into that?

So essentially, the car goes on a rotisserie.

It gets completely stripped.

OK, the best way to do it is to put the car in a rotisserie

and so you can turn it on its side at least and get to everything.

I have had guys do it on hoists before, like before we had a rotisserie.

But it's it's dirty and it's difficult and it's awkward.

So the right way to do it, put on a rotisserie,

address everything underneath, fully strip everything right to to nothing.

Essentially, you're starting from a shell. OK, you know, so that's that's the start.

And then obviously, powder coat, everything depending on what what the customer wants.

If they want OEM, then you have to do it. OEM.

Yeah. So the the purple 33 GDI that we had at the show.

It's completely OEM down to colors and where the deadener goes

and all that kind of stuff back to factory or other guys that have

like a car like this 32.

It's got everything is black stone guard underneath.

OK, everything is powder coated black and then all the zinc coated parts

and new bushes and all that kind of stuff off the market.

Like to to handle the, you know, 900 to 1000 horsepower

that that they want to when I put through these cars.

Now, out of all the chassis, right, I know.

I don't want to say that Australia has better cars in other places, right?

But have you found that a lot of cars in Japan are cleaner than here?

Or what cars are usually the best ones to get to if you want to pick up a GTR?

The cars that came here in the early days. OK, most of those are the better ones

because they've been in this because it's quite dry here.

Came here in Australia. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So they were all imported, except for a small, a small batch of R32s.

So they could homologate the Group A cars. Right.

So there was allegedly 100 made and 70 odd sold. OK.

So but everything else is an import from Japan.

So the cars that, yeah, the cars that came

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