joshuaho96

In my area it's something like 2.60 USD per liter for 100 octane street-legal race gas. E85 is substantially easier to find and often 30% cheaper than premium unleaded pump gas so if you can afford to convert to flex fuel instead it is much, much cheaper to run than proper 100 AKI. You can also adjust your ethanol mix to find the minimum ethanol percentage needed to balance between range and octane.

AFAIK you can get around some of the Haltech vendor lock-in but you have to be willing to put in work to reverse engineer things. I did this recently for the AMP Superseal 1.0 connectors. If there's interest I can post up all the little things I learn along the way. If you want "modern -5s" AFAIK the GTX2860R gen 2 is available in bolt-on form for the RB26. Speed Academy ran them but I'm not sure the results are all that impressive. A lot of this is probably because the factory piping is just restrictive.

I think your idea of "not huge power" vs my idea of "not huge power" is very different. 2867s are big turbos and arguably too big for the factory twin turbo setup. If you want to stay with factory twin turbo to reduce the amount of unknowns in your build I wouldn't go larger than 2860s. Especially if reliability is a concern at all.

It isn’t absolute no but I wouldn’t want to install one that indicates excessive shock. And I’m not sure a used one is a good idea anyways, the springs and pots in there have probably aged significantly. Modern MEMS like the Do-Luck or Midori Seibi sensor are the way to go IMO.

They don't explode, the indicator just releases dye when damaged by excessive force. Probably most sellers don't know you need to pack that particular sensor like you're shipping an egg. The AWD cars have pinouts that look like this: I would see if power and ground are on the same pins. If it is then more likely than not it will work, when I check the R33 wiring diagrams I see that the AWD CU uses the same pins as the RWD A-LSD ABS/A-LSD CU for the same things. It actually seems to me that you might be able to leave the other part of the harness disconnected altogether. Only issue I can foresee is potential fitment issues if the brackets are different.

Check the Nissan parts catalog, no idea what your precise chassis code is but it might be 28932-JK000.

The lack of keying the crank hub to the crank is a cost cutting measure. Getting everything to be perfectly clocked on the crank and keyed correctly takes more time in production and assembly. Modern engines use nickel-diamond one time use washers that generate incredible amounts of static friction when torqued to spec. All of that can work as long as you do the math correctly. Obviously the problem is when you look at stuff like the BMW N54/N55 they don't do the math correctly and there's not a sufficient factor of safety to avoid spinning the crank hub when people use the DCT kickdown too often. You don't hear about Mazda's MZR/L-series engines/Duratecs spinning crank hubs and losing time en masse even though they are built the exact same way. Also let's not forget that people absolutely mangle crank keyways on RBs so it's entirely possible for the timing gear even on traditional designs to be held on purely by crank bolt torque. Belt in oil is not the same as a traditional dry timing belt where oil causes it to fail rapidly. The belt is built for engine oil, although like timing chains if you stretch oil change intervals too far it will cause the belt to age faster. The design logic behind using those is first and foremost about fuel efficiency. Belt in oil has less friction than a timing chain. This alone is enough for most manufacturers to go for it when fleet average fuel economy drives so much at these OEMs. On top of this though belts don't transmit crank harmonics as strongly to the cams as a traditional timing chain. The belt can be narrower than a timing chain which means the whole engine can be smaller to cram more electronics in the engine bay or whatever else is fighting for space. Unlike a dry belt you don't have a bunch of oil seals on the front of the engine to separate the timing components which is another win for production time, part count, and cost. Those belts are also designed to last something like 150k mile change intervals which is about when the whole front of the engine has to be taken apart anyways. Anything that doesn't use hydraulic lash adjustment will also need a valve adjustment at the same time so either way you're doing a pretty major overhaul. RTVed front timing covers are usually also leaking pretty nicely by that point regardless, especially when engine mounts are attached to them for transverse FWD commuter cars. Personally I think when assessing what engine/car is worth buying boiling it down to simple spec sheet comparisons like "belt in oil" vs "timing chain" vs "dry timing belt" is really not a good idea. I can show you timing chains that need service at frankly incredible intervals like the BMW N20/N26 engines that frequently self destructed themselves at 60-80k miles from timing belt stretch. I have seen RBs turn their timing belts to shreds well under 60-80k miles because of unexpected interactions like overboost fuel cut causing the belt to catch the crank trigger wheel. I can show you GDI engines like the BMW N63 that are an absolute nightmare to service or something like a Toyota M20A which is comparatively hilariously easy. It is tempting to boil the world down into "after x feature all engines suck" but it's really not that simple.

No, but Ohlins themselves mention this and I've seen anecdotal reports that specifically R&T coilovers really don't last that long, Aki Itoh's blog mentions it too: https://forum.miata.net/vb/showthread.php?t=562848

Maybe some coilovers are less finicky than others but supposedly the Ohlins get noticeably worse with not a lot of mileage on them. If you drive on crappy roads like what we get in CA that will cause noticeable changes sooner than later. Personally the stock VSpec setup is stiff enough for me, it's a little soft up front but the rear feels more than stiff enough.

Why not just run stock then? OEM shock absorbers usually are the most durable even if they aren't the best performing. AFAIK stuff like Ohlins requires frequent rebuilds, like every 40k km.

Loose bolt that adjusts the unlock/lock rods. After futzing with the adjustments to try and get it to the “right position” it shouldn’t rattle anymore. Like any project with this car that I expect to only take a day though this has immediately turned into a week or longer because the factory vapor barrier is ripped up and some clips are missing so I want to fix all of that and get it absolutely perfect before putting it back together. Of course between mail ordering parts and the right sealant for the vapor barrier only being sold by mail it’s going to be a solid 5 days before any of that appears.

I figured it out. It was actually comical. After pulling out the cylinder I realized it turns both ways. When I put it back in suddenly it was fouling on something. Looked carefully and realized the lock cylinder arm was facing the wrong direction. Checked the cylinder on the driver side and realized it has an L on the arm. Pulled off the passenger side door card and removed the lock cylinder and put the “driver side” lock cylinder into the passenger side door. Now it works in both directions. So anyone with a similar issue where the key can only unlock the door but you have to lock it from the inside should check first that their lock cylinders weren’t mistakenly swapped at some point. If the lock cylinder arm is facing the front of the car instead of towards the trunk this is the warning sign.

I finally mustered the willpower to take apart the door on the driver side to figure out why it was rattling in there and also why my door locks can only be unlocked with the key but not locked from the outside. Now with the door card removed and the actuator arm unhooked from the door lock barrel I see that if I turn the lever it acts on the lock and unlock function works in both directions. Any advice for figuring out why my door locks are unhappy to lock but are seemingly fine with unlocking?

One cylinder being down is proof positive you need to pull it and rebuild. Even if an engine compression tests ok you still want to leakdown test it ideally to verify everything is healthy.

This needs ECU logs badly. Most likely what's happening is a lean misfire followed by fueling catching up.

I would find that hard to believe, that's just creating another break in the circuit.

That circuit is always live, just switched through the dashboard. So you'd have to figure out why the circuit is completing when it shouldn't.

Not supernatural, someone has probably messed with the wiring and it has effectively made the acc line always live. I have seen improper radio grounding do something similar before.

A very familiar dirt floor. I am definitely curious about the story you're alluding to. I suspect many of the story beats will be familiar but the devil is always in the details.

Are there bleeders on the R33/R34 ABS units? I thought it was just the R32 but maybe I haven't looked hard enough.

Interesting, I've suspected for a while that long runner is the way to go. Not sure how that packages though, it looks like it might be challenging to make everything fit.

O2 fluctuating like that is normal. The sensor is basically like a light switch in the response curve. The moment you go lean it drops towards 0V, the moment you go rich it shoots up to 1V. Right at stoichiometric it will be roughly 0.5V. The way the fuel control works is basically bumping the fuel trim rich when the O2 voltage drops below 0.3V (30 on NDS1) and then bumping it lean when it shoots past 0.7V, trying to keep the average around 0.5V in parts of the map where closed loop fuel control is enabled. Also forgot to mention it's not unusual for idle to not move enough air for the O2 sensor to go past 0V. Fuel pressure is supposed to drop when pulling vacuum so when the throttle is closed. If it is dropping when you are pressing on the gas pedal below what it is at idle that means you have a fuel pressure problem.

I think it's more a practicality issue. Done wrong it can definitely be problematic, I see a lot of BBKs that are clearly track-only because they want you to remove/cut away most of the dust shield, have no dust boots on the pistons/generally a full race kind of caliper, require you to grind away significantly at what is arguably a fairly weak suspension knuckle as-is, etc. Pad knockback and wheel bearing issues on track are not unusual to hear about with these cars. Kind of questionable to spend all that money and have it be worse on the street than when you started if it's not a dedicated track toy.

Yeah I don't recommend doing this unless you need more thermal capacity. If your heart is set on doing this anyways I don't recommend random unknown brands for this stuff. Akebono or Brembo is fine though. Alpha Omega racing seems to like the Falcon FPV Brembos or Evo Brembos as you already mentioned. The fact that they're thinking about issues like pad knockback, suspension knuckle rigidity, brake bias, dust shield/piston dust boot retention, etc... is a good sign IMO.

May as well just actually follow Nismo's directions at that point and drop the whole subframe with the engine and transmission out.