Before You Buy — The Nissan GTR Bellhousing Issue Explained

It’s pretty cool when you get to hear from customers who are using your products and they say things like, “It is honestly been a night and day difference. I have been able to notice a significant improvement and throttle response. My car sounds a lot quieter. And to be quite honest with you guys, I really just got used to the noise until it got really, really bad.”

That’s what we woke up to one day from the guys on YouTube Channel BoostedMPLS. Check out their video covering the infamous Nissan GTR Bellhousing issue and their process for replacing!

In this week’s episode, I’m going to be covering the infamous Nissan GTR bellhousing; The issues I had, the symptoms I had, and what we had to do to replace it.

Hey guys, and welcome back to the channel. If this is your first time here; Welcome! On this channel I like to showcase the automotive culture and the positive impact it has on the community. And if you’re a car enthusiast or like anything about cars, please be sure to hit that subscribe button for future videos.

If you guys haven’t been following along, on the last episode or segment, I showed that the car was at Eurocharge, Minneapolis. That’s who’s doing all the work for me. And they had just removed the motor.

We didn’t have to remove the motor, necessarily, to remove the bellhousing and install the new one, but it made things a lot easier. And we had to remove the motor anyways. And I’ll address that in a future episode.

In this episode, I’m going to be discussing the infamous Nissan GTR bellhousing issue.

I say infamous because the Nissan GTR bellhousing has always been a weak point due to the separation of the engine and the transmission. The bellhousing is mounted on the back of the engine where it has needed to adapt to a rearward facing drive shaft going towards the transmission.

Nissan was not really able to come up with a better design where the transmission was more firmly in place. So as a result, there’s a chronic push and pull effect between the transmission and the engine. And this happens anytime you accelerate or deaccelerate.

So with that constant push and pull effect that’s happening, the bellhousing is an unfortunate weak link of all of this.

The bellhousing was made of aluminum. There was a bearing that was kind of the weak point. This bearing would take most of the damage from that acceleration or de-acceleration. And over time it would just fail. So this issue has become infamous. Every GTR basically has to have the bellhousing replaced at some point in its life.

Me, I think I was lucky enough, my car just hit the 75,000 mile Mark, and I’m just having to replace it now. However, I’ve heard of other GTRs that have had to get this replaced anywhere from even 10,000 miles on.

The number one sign of telling if your bellhousing is shot or not, is to really get the car on a lift. You want to look at the drive shaft, if there’s any movement or play or anything like that, like this (seen in the video), that basically means your bellhousing is shot.

Another sign that might not be as obvious…

When I was getting my car tuned previously, I would have issues of the tuner seeing a lot of knock on my knock sensor that was actually happening due to how bad my bellhousing was. It was creating that much movement to the motor itself, that there was just so much movement, from the bellhousing. And the tuner would just see an engine knock from the NOC sensor.

So now, just to dissect the good bellhousing versus the bad bellhousing. I’m going to shoot it over to Dave Rasmussen. He’s the lead tech over at Eurocharge in Minneapolis.

Well, we got it out and found pieces of the isolator in here that are supposed to go right there (video) in comparison to the new bellhousing, where you can see all the isolators are in it, in the springs.

The bellhousing that I upgraded to had a steel bearing that was in there, and it was much stronger than the OEM bearing. The other thing, and the reason why I went with this company, was because they have a warranty.

So if your GTR is under a thousand horsepower, they’ll warranty the bellhousing for a year. And if you’re interested in getting this bellhousing, um, I would suggest reaching out to AJ at Eurocharge in Minneapolis. They’re the company, they, they work with that supplier.

The bellhousing itself, isn’t terribly expensive, it’s about $1500. The labor is kind of the more intensive parts. Since I was removing the motor for a separate issue, I figured it’d be a perfect time to address the bellhousing.

Now that my bellhousing has been replaced. It has honestly been a night and day difference. I have been able to notice a significant improvement in throttle response. My car sounds a lot quieter. And to be quite honest with you guys, I really just got used to the noise until it got really, really bad.

So that’s why I’m making this video, you know, for other fellow GTR owners to, to know kind of the signs of when the bellhousing is going bad.

In the midst of all this, I also had my car converted to 85, but we needed to get it retuned. AJ at Eurocharged Minneapolis was able to get my car tuned on flex fuel. And when he tuned it, he was able to tune it to the max.

We came to a conclusion where the fuel pumps, uh, needed to be upgraded, but just because there was only a couple more weeks in that season left, I really just wanted to kind of just get my car out, finish the rest of the season, and then look to do the pumps later on in the spring.

Before when I had the housing issue, I wasn’t even able to get my car tuned properly because of that engine knock sensor and the knock that it was well sensing.

So with all that being said, guys, I hope this video helps you. It’s a really annoying issue with the GTR platform, the R35 platform, I should say, but if you haven’t gotten it replaced, I would really consider getting it replaced. And if you’re local here in Minnesota, I would definitely suggest going to Eurocharge, Minneapolis. These guys absolutely treated me with the utmost respect.

If you guys have any questions, please be sure to leave them in the comments below. So that’s a wrap. Thanks again for watching the video. Peace.