Radical_Goodspeed

I figured give the crack seems to have propagate from one side to the other, at least on the inside, the lower one would serve as a good anchor to keep it from jumping off while I work the rest of the bolts.

Thank you all so much for your advise and suggestions 😊. @GTSBoy I think I'm going to go with your first option. I attached a few photos with my first stab at where to put the bolts to brace the wobbly bit and would love your feedback and thoughts. On the back I outline two spots for bolts one low one high. The lower one I think will be easy to set up but likely wouldn't draw the crack closed much. The high one would definitely close the gap but would be a challenge to drill properly. Do you think it's worth doing both or just going with the lower option? The only other major challenge I see is try to drill these out but I think I can pull it off with a radial drill press by coming at it from the side.

As the title suggest this is not a happy story. A little back story for those who find the "why/how" interesting [If not feel free to skip down a paragraph or two]. Back in end of 2021 after saving all my birthday money, sell one RB26 project engine, and even parting way with one of my project cars I decided to take a huge leap in my GTR journey and purchased a complete RB30 bottom end from RIPS Racing. After months of waiting, the day finally came when the engine arrived at my shop. Understandable I was like a kid on Christmas morning wait with the shop doors open as the truck carrying my present backed in and delivered my engine. Only to have all my joy turn to dread as I noticed some damage to the packaging. Upon further investigation it turned out that at some point in its trip across the US something large and heavy crashed down on the the block cracking the rear drivers side oil return. Wait you might say shouldn't insurance cover that? You did get the additional insurance didn't you? Welp....no...no I did not. This was my first time handling an international shipment that required additional insurance and I learned the hard way what "limited liability" means and because I didn't get said insurance I was stuck trying to figure out what to do next. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So after assessing the damage and getting the sad new from the shipping company I reached out to RIPS to see what could be done to make the block useable. [See below response from RIPS] I’d put a straight edge on the deck surface and see how much the outer edge had dropped and then make the call of either cleaning the inside and the outside of the block and smear some high quality high temp 2 pack epoxy over the crack inside and out not allowing any to protrude above the deck surface (could literally wipe it off the deck surface while its wet) then once fully cured and all the rags out etc when installing the head gasket and head, apply a tiny amount of high temp sealer to both sides of the gasket in that area, torque the head up as usual, install the little M6 bolt with a spring washer only (this ill dig into the head and allow you to nip up the bolt GENTLY and it won’t come loose. If you go too tight you would risk braking that little area of the head casting so it wouldn’t need to be very tight at all, just enough so the M6 won’t come loose. Alternatively If the area has dropped too much you could carefully break that small section off, clean up any burrs remove some material in a V on the inside and outside edges of the crack (on the removed section only and possibly the OUTSIDE of the block, not in the inside) then test fit it until you can see its sitting back exactly where it was, the top is flush and level (it will naturally kind of click back into place) then clean everything real good and do the same as above with the 2 pack epoxy and gently clamp across the block (with a woodworking clamp with soft pads) make sure nothing is proud on the deck surface then once fully cured, as above apply just a tiny amount of sealer both sides of the gasket just in that area and once again just nip up the M6 bolt enough so it won’t come loose. I reached out to a local machinist, mans built/worked on everything from nitrometh bikes to COBBs R35, and he recommended something similar. His only additional concern was supporting the cracked area and ensuring that the damaged position doesn't "pop" off. Unfortunately do to the location of the crack there's no good way to run a bolt from the outside of the block into the water jacket to lock it in place. I've looked into "block sticking" and most traditional methods are likely to make the crack worse as it pushes they the metal apart as the bolt and tap go in. I have looked into Lock-N-Stitch which is specifically designed to pull material in as its installed but I'm not sure if that would work or be applicable in this circumstance given the location of the cracks and the fact that at least to some degree the crack goes from one side to the other. The only other thought that's been bouncing around in my head is running the epoxy on the outside completely across from one crack to the other to create a skin/outer layer to try and mitigate the chances of the damaged section popping off. I've attached the pictures of the damaged area as it currently sites. Any advise you guys can give would be greatly appreciated and my apologies for the lengthy post but this has been a very long a draining process.

So I known the GTR manual wants you to inspect the valve guide clearance by using a dial gauged to check the deflection of the valves, but I was wondering if anyone has worked out what the corresponding valve to valve guide clearances are so that it can be done with a small hole gauge and a micrometer.

Would anyone happen to have a wiring diagram for the late model cluster? I believe the one in the manual is for the early model cluster?

Forgive my ignorance but why would that be an issue considering the speedo on the R32 NISMO 320kph cluster is cable driven as well?

So after about 2 years of hunting and missing out I final managed to get my hands on a NISMO 320kph dash cluster only to find out to my horror that it was a late model not an early model cluster. I've seen a post or two outline how to swap out the speedo from the late model to early model cluster but i was wondering if there was any way to rewire the plugs so that cluster will work before I go tearing them apart? Apologies in advance if there is already a post buried some where regarding this issue but after about two days of failed search result i figured I take a risk and come up on the net.