Larry ChenLarry Chen, from the YouTube Channel of the same name, is well-rounded on the everything Nissan GT-R. Tommy F Yeah is the same. In Larry's latest video posted to his channel, the two finally meet at R's day in Willow Springs racetrack in the beautiful deserts of Rosamond, California (where Larry also interviewed the famous founder of Built By Legends Mine's GTR) to discuss the greatness that is Tommy F Yeah's personal Nissan GT-R R33.
Not Meant For North America
Larry initiates the conversation by telling Tommy that the GTRs are becoming such iconic cars and that he still finds it "hard to wrap his head around the idea that these cars were never meant to touch American soil".
Larry tells us that their generation while talking about Tommy and himself, grew up on video games like Gran Turismo. This opened a bunch of doors to see what the rest of the automotive world was doing, and, like himself, this turned the Skyline into somewhat of a "want what you can't have" car in America. Which in turn of events made a market for this car in the US.
Tommy also in wonderment asks why Nissan would put so much thought and effort into making a great engine like the RB motors and only limit its production to one side of the world.
Tommy F Yeah's R33 GT-R
Off to the side is Tommy's personal R33 which he claims he's built in nine days. He does tell us the reason for the quick build was to have the presence at R's day. Although it is not 100% complete, he tells us being around the other GT-Rs was more important than having a high-horsepower, high-cost build.
Thinking that it will just be a stock car with some wheels thrown on for good measure Tommy begins to name off things that happened in those nine days. Wheels, coil-overs, dash-swap, engine-swap, color-matching paint job, and $8,000 headlights to name a few.
Under The Hood
Under the hood, we find many goodies. Tommy tells us that HKS does magic with these engines and therefore all their GT-Rs come with HKS parts unless the customer specifies otherwise. These include HKS piping, cold air intake, GTSS turbos, and the HKS V-Cam which adds variable cam timing to the intake side of the head.
This is interesting since the V-Cam allows the turbos to spool 1,000 RPM sooner which in turn means the torque comes 1,000 RPM quicker. With it being only a 9-day build, the car is impressive, to say the least.