What Are the Best R35 GT-R Transmission Upgrades?

How to Upgrade Your Nissan GT-R Transmission

The R35 GT-R is a popular choice among automotive enthusiasts and dragsters, with its stock platform lending well as a starting point for a dominating drag vehicle. While a stock Nissan GT-R can be argued as a reliable vehicle, the same may not be said for heavily modified vehicles that don’t implement the proper supporting modifications. One area that may often be overlooked when adding more horsepower is the transmission, but there are a few things you can do to your Nissan GT-R transmission to ensure it’s not a weak link. We at Boostin Performance have had our fair share of experience with the GT-R platform and its GR6 transmission, and these are some of the upgrades we’ve found to give great results.

Nissan R35 GT-R Upgraded Transmission Fluid Management

Pushing a vehicle to its limits is sure to cause its inherent shortcomings to surface, and while the R35 GT-R offers some legendary performance, there are some flaws that become more apparent as you bring up your power levels. One such flaw is the situation many high-powered GT-R experience on hard launches where the transmission fluid rushes to the back of the transmission pan, staving the pickup and causing it to pull in air. That leads to missed shifts and can cause other damages you won’t want to have to repair. This can be mitigated with a deep transmission pan (increasing transmission fluid volume) and a pickup relocation (offering better fluid intake characteristics). The increased fluid volume of a deep pan also increases the thermal capacity of your R-35 GR6 transmission, allowing it to take more heat over the stock setup.

Another option to help mitigate this concern is to overfill the transmission and, to prevent the additional fluid from spilling onto the track, including a transmission overflow reservoir. This similarly increases the fluid capacity and reduces the concern of fluid starvation, ensuring you can hit each of those crucial shifts even when those G-forces are at their highest.

Nissan R35 GT-R Upgraded Transmission Cooling

Overheating your transmission fluid is a sure recipe for failure, and with a component as complex as the GR6 transmission, failure is sure to be pricey. Luckily, you can mitigate the concern of failure and improve transmission performance by ensuring it can stay adequately cool by implementing an upgraded transmission oil cooler kit. One of these kits can help to stabilize the transmission oil temperature for more reliable performance and an extended transmission oil service life. And, by working in conjunction with the factory water-cooled transmission cooler, an upgraded GT-R transmission cooler can reduce the thermal load on the engine cooling system.

Nissan R35 GT-R Upgraded Spring Plate & Input Shaft

If you’re seriously into competitive drag racing with your R35 GT-R, you’re likely to be putting out much more power than the factory setup. And, with more power, there are some lingering factory parts that may not be up to the task. Among those parts that need reinforcement to keep your build running smoothly are the Nissan OEM spring plate and input shaft for the GR6 transmission. The spring plate and input shaft are integral components for transferring the power of the engine to the rest of the drivetrain, so ensuring they’re strong enough to withstand the extreme forces is imperative. The factory spring plate begins to bottom out the springs at around 1900whp, causing stress fractures and can ultimately lead to failure. A high-performance aftermarket GR6 spring plate can raise that horsepower ceiling to over 3000whp. Similarly, a high-performance aftermarket GR6 input shaft ensures you won’t have to deal with a cracked factory shaft. Should your stock input shaft suffer a catastrophic failure, surrounding components like the bell housing and drive shaft can suffer collateral damage. Investing in a high-quality input shaft upgrade can help prevent that headache altogether.

Nissan R35 GT-R Upgraded Flywheel

The flywheel is another one of those components that’s integral to transferring power from the engine to the rest of the drivetrain, bolting up directly to the crankshaft. The stock GT-R flywheel is good up to about 1300whp, then it runs the risk of cracking. As you might imagine, a flywheel failure can be absolutely catastrophic. And, especially as your horsepower numbers begin to creep higher and higher, fretting between the flywheel and the crankshaft becomes of increasing concern. Equipping your R35 GT-R with an upgraded aftermarket flywheel can minimize this risk so you can carry on worrying about how to make more power, not how much power you can make before things start breaking.

Boostin Performance: Your Local Shop for Nissan R35 GT-R Transmission Upgrades

We at Boostin Performance have vast experience with the R35 GT-R platform, putting together a wide variety of purpose-built cars for all kinds of drivers, but our expertise shows in the track-dominating drag cars we’ve helped put together. Give us a call and see what we can do for you and your GT-R to reach your power goals while keeping within your budget. We’re conveniently located in the suburbs of Chicago, IL, in Hoffman Estates, so get in touch with us today.