haw001

I've got the turbos out of the road car and one of them, I can't tell which is blowing smoke through the exhaust. I'm on a tight ass budget here, and while I can get the standard R32 turbos rebuilt, I'm not a big fan of the ceramic wheels so I'm a little reluctant to spend money on them. My goals are not power orientated. This is my road car, daily driver, to and from car. I've got race cars which I play with, so I'm after economical in both purchase and running. Immediately after finishing this post I'm moving on to putting the new KME lpg system in to the car so that should give you an idea where I'm coming from. I've checked on getting steel wheels on the T28s and that's going to run about $1k each, which is not in the budget. I can get N1 wheels for about $1250, but again, that's not in the budget. My thoughts are using a set of turbos off a pair of SR20s in the RB26. I believe they are steel wheel, and/or there are cheap Chinese turbos out there for about $300 each. I'm not afraid of using the Chinese turbos, the quality has increased greatly on these things and I do all the work myself, so if the thing shits itself, It's just a little more time for me in the shed. So big question is, has it been done, and what are the possible problems. As it is, I believe the exhaust inlet flange is the same, but I can't tell on the exhaust outlet. I believe that air inlet is the same, but I'm not sure if the angle is right, and I know that air outlet flange is different, but that won't be too hard to change. Must be a few people out there that have done the reverse from GTR to RB20, any help would be appreciated.

Opened the turbos up last night after bringing them home. The quality is surprisingly good for a something so cheap. Some issues though, specifically they have a different exhaust fitting to the normal t28 GTR turbos which will mean some modifications. I was aware of the T03 exhaust inlet was larger, but this didn't worry me because It's a pretty simple matter of getting some new flanges and cutting the old ones off and welding the new ones on. Also will allow us to change the angle if needed to make the fit better. Exhaust outlet is not so easy. I thought that all five bolt exhaust outlet were the same, but apparently not. They are larger than the t28 5 bolt, so the dump pipes we've got are not going to fit. If I'd known I would have just got 4 bolt exhaust type and flanges. Anyway, not the end of the world, there are options, adaptor plates, flanges, something will work. Details on the turbos are: .50 a/r compressor .63 a/r turbine .57 trim Turbine wheel: Exducer: 2.48" - 63mm Mayor : 2.89" - 73.4mm Compressor wheel : Exducer: 2.07" - 52.6mm Mayor : 2.36" - 59.9mm As a comparisson, 2530s below: TURBINE: Wheel = 53.8mm Trim = 76 A/R = 0.64 COMPRESSOR: Trim = 63 Inducer = 47.7 Exducer = 60.1 A/R = 0.60 By the specs, they should spool up slightly faster, but will probably peak sooner. External gate may change this, but we'll see.

Wouldn't destroy it, wouldn't do anything at all except maybe clog it permanently. Spray gun is far too small to allow anything as big as sand through it. As ben said, sandblasting kits are cheap. You need a decent compressor, but the kit is really just a container and a gun. The booths can be costly, but if you are not doing it much, then you can just wear a mask and forget about collecting the used sand.

Damn it, now you've set me a challenge Dave! Have to wait til Duncan breaks another motor to try again. Should be sometime next week Do you guys drill out some holes in the back of the sump so that you can get to the 2 10mm bolts in the rear main seal girdle? I've often though of making a couple of holes in the 2 winglet areas so that I can get a 1/4 drive socket in and remove the bolts without having to remove the gbox. In theory, you should be able to drop the sump in car and change a spun bearing, blown diff, or in my case swap my sumps between standard and extended.

Yeah, I've witnessed, been involved in the event, caused at least 1, and helped him take the motor in and out more times than I can count. We've done it so often that a bunch of plebs like he and I can take the motor out in under 2 hours and put it back in in around 3. He's even got to the stage where he can do the contorted starter motor bolt dance and only need about 3 skin grafts for his hands.

Notice how Duncan says 'once' instead of 'if'. O ye of little faith. Wait a minute, this is Duncan, 'once' is probably appropriate

Duncan's too scared to tell everyone, but the cars going to have, at least in the beginning, chinese turbos. Yes you heard the lunacy here first, but instead of the 2530's I've ordered a pair of chinese turbos and an external 50mm wastegate. I'm pretty confident that the setup will provide a pretty good balance of low down torque and not peter out as happens with internal wastegate turbos. A/R is .63, which may be a bit laggy, but I'm hoping that they will come on full at about 3800 and boost solidly right through to 7500. I'm a big fan of smaller turbos, but if this doesn't work, I'm going to have a tough time holding Duncan back from the 3L conversion. I intend to get the turbos properly balanced before going ahead just to make sure, but if they come in alright, then they are going on! Let the flameing begin! Mark

I'm glad to see this thread has taken on a life of it's own. Glad to see so many good ideas coming out of it. I'm starting to think that the front screen would be better staying glass, and we could put it back in, but given that it's already out, we may as well go the whole hog and do it all round. What did the Gibson GTR's have? Sean, thanks for the tailshaft. I promise we will put it to good use. Do you need a standard one to put back in it's place? I'm pretty sure that I can get the exhaust out without having to cut into the chassis rails or the floor. I'd really like to avoid it if possible. With a seperate wastegate it's pretty easy to keep it seperate all the way, reducing the pipe from a big single to two smaller ones. They can also be flattened and squared to reduce the profile. Otherwise running it all the way back is not that bad. Mark

The cage will add weight, but not as much as you think. All except the A pillar bars are chromoly and relatively thin walled, so about 40% lighter than CDS. Getting the main hoop done in chromoly was a mistake. The bar was expensive, and getting it bent cost $180 for the four bends. Not to mention you need to give the exact dimensions and hope that you have it exactly right because there's no take backs. Next time I'll do the A pillars and main hoop in CDS and chromoly for all the straight bits. Also, now that it has been done once and all the measurements checked, we'll be able to get the bars to fit much closer to the body. From memory, the tar amounted to 18kgs. At this stage not doing the under body and not acid dipping. Under body worth some weight savings, but would have to be re-coated with something so I'm not sure that the savings would amount to much after this was done. Everything under the dash is gone. We'll put the top of the dash back, but that doesn't weigh much. Still not sure what do to with the rear hubs. Would like to do something about HICAS better than a lock bar. New hubs would be nice, but not sure what that will cost and what's involved. Drive shafts are also quite heavy, but again, not sure what a replacement would cost.

We should start a pool on the end weight. No carbon fiber in this thing, not in the budget, but it's amazing the weight that comes out of the things you wouldn't normaly consider. For those thinking on going the weight route, a couple of surprising things. There's not a lot of weight in the front and rear windscreens, but there is huge weight in the door windows because the winding mechanism and pillar less doors windows are really heavy. The boot with spoiler is huge dead weight. Probably about 25kgs in the 2. Not easy to find or make a replacement, but a huge savings, and the mounding point for the spoiler is pretty poor from factory. You've heard about taking the spare out to save weight, we'll try the spare tub! Weighs more than the wheel. I'd love to see 1250kgs, but realistically, getting below 1300 is going to be tricky and expensive. The cradles and running gear are heavy and there's not a lot of alternative on a budget. You can only take so much out before you have nothing left to mount and engine to. Not much we can do with engine and gearbox either. My guess is about 1325. Comments welcome

All comments are welcome, between the two of us we've built a few of these, but are by no means definitive experts and always welcome ideas. Turbos are under debate at the moment. We've got a set of 2530's, but I'm seriously thinking about a set of similar low mounts with an external wastegate. I'm a big believer in punch over power for most tracks and hill climbs, but there's no question that ultimately, you need herbs to really get the times down. Hopefully this will give us the best of both worlds with the low down punch, with the external helping the top end when internals start to show their weaknesses. Time and testing will tell. I'll measure up the cage piping and post it up. Won't be able to do it for a little while. It's tarped up in this rain. Rob is a master with the welder and building cages. No joint has been done without serious thought. He's been making them for 20 years and it's amazing how much thought goes into them. It's not just a case of putting bars and crosses everywhere, but really covering everywhere the cage has a bend and making sure that all the different stresses are reduced wherever possible.

Hey those door mods are top quality We did those about a year ago, long before finding the joys of a plasma cutter. Fortunately, I have some nicely guilotined aluminium skins which hide all evils. Seriously though, I reckon the doors would be no more than 4-5kgs now (and flimsy as hell!)

Ok, some cage photos as promissed. Basically finished now, need to add tabs up and down the A pillar and main hoop and finish off some welding, but otherwise there. These are rushed photos taken at dusk, so the colours are a bit funny, making everything look a bit rusty. Stuff through the firewall is an absolute bitch. Took nearly 2 days to finish it all off. You can see in one of the pics what we did with the rear cradle mount. Nothing too hard but should help. Spread a plate across the mount tack welds. Only thing that could have been better would be to cut the floor and weld direcltly to the mount, which just seemed like too much work for little reward. Still considering a second bar across the A pillars in the front with the steering column between them. Last photo is one from the old car showing the roof rolled around the roll cage. I looks bent, but it's just the angle, it's not bent at all.

Before and what it looked like about 10 seconds later... It's a part of racing, just like blowing motors and paying for tyres. It ain't cheap but those hooked still can't seem stop doing it.

Both, but not enough of either in the last little while for my liking. I'm trying to put some effort into getting both cars up and running and getting back out there. I knot that when I start getting tempted to get my road car back on the track that withdrawls are starting to set in.

I have proof (unfortunately), sitting out in my front yard, that just about any cage with the basics will keep you safe as long as there's no direct impact. The cage in my now defunct combined touring car was fairly basic, but survived 2 good crashes without any damage at all. The first had a lot of up and down impact as I hit a few hard ditches on the way down the hill with the car still upright and the parts that were damaged were the front and rear when the cage didn't go. The second time it rolled 6 or 7 times and despite every panel being damaged, the cage is unmoved and unbent. The skin from the roof is actually molded around the cage so that you can clearly see the top and cross bar across the top. I guess the moral of the story is once you've got your main hoop, a pillars and a few crosses in, the rest of the cage should be designed around rigidity of the chassis. The weakest point of the cage in terms of safety is always going to be a side impact on the doors, which you can't really do much about because the driver gets in the way of a bar across the middle! Mark

Russ, Thanks for the pics. I'll post some tomorrow. They are remarkably similar, with just a few differences which don't amount to much. My only comment would be that you probably should have taken the doorway crosses up to the bends on the main hoop and on the a pillars, they are your weekest points. More a safety issue than a rigidity issue, and since this will likely not be in too many scenarios where other car collisions can occur, it's not much of a problem. I am planning do to the rear cradle point just in front of the rear wheel arches, but I'm going to mount them differently to the cage. I'll show you tomorow. Have you though of putting a second straigh bar under the dash below the steering arm. Only way I can see to get the box effect. Mark

Russ, Mark here, the other half of Duncan's R32 sprint car build. Just finished off another half day of cage work on the R32; 4 hours pissed away putting bars through the firewall to the front strut towers and it's only half finished! The rest of the interior stuff is a breeze compared to these four little bars. Can you post some more pictures of the 34 cage you a putting in. Ours goes every which way, and it's a case of not knowing when to stop, so I'd love to see some other ideas. I'll take some photos of ours on Friday and post them up for all to critique. I'm thinking of putting some bars up from where the rear cradle joins to the chassis just in front of the rear wheel arches, but not sure if it will be worth the effort. My main concern is the front end. Compared to the rear, it has very little cross bracing. The rear is a tank, and the front, well, this damn thing called driver and engine just get in the way. I'm going to go through the firewall 2 more times from the top of the strut towers to the cross member under the dash, but can't think of any better way to brace the front. Mark

I like the picutre with my legs hanging out. The dukes of hazzard made it look so easy! As to tyres, as Duncan said, price does not always equal value or performance, and you really need the right tyres for the event you are doing. Same applies to compound. I'm not blaming the tyres (well not totally anyway) and really can't fault the bridgestones in the dry, they were good when they got some heat in them, but when 4 days old and cold, they absolutely suck in the wet. We didn't have bad traction, they just let go completely without warning, and we were only doing a very low speed 40-50km/hr max. Those who saw us go over the bridge will testify that we weren't pushing hard. Mark

Hi all, the ill fated 811 here! Thought I'd add a quick bit of info giving the run down on what happened. First off, this was our 3rd Targa, so no excuses, I should have known better. Targa can always bite you in the ass, no matter how you think you are doing! We had a terrible prologue, missing a traffic island down near the watter and having to slam on the brakes. In the end I just went up and over it, causing no damage, but losing all sorts of time. For those unfamiliar, the prologue has no impact, other than to set your starting position each day for the rest of the competition. A slow time puts you in with slower cars, which means more passing in stages than you would like, but also gives you more time when things go wrong as there is more cars behind you. Day 1 started out alright, with a fairly cruzy day. First couple of stages are easily clearable and even a bad day will not end with much penalty time overall. We finished up the day in 23rd I think with about 2:30 minutes of penalty time. As far as rankings go, there is a big difference between the top five and the rest of the pack. Overall, the individual classifications don't mean much as there are so many categories now, and it's probably better to compare the 9 series, 8 series, 7 series etc to see how you are doing. From memory we were second or third in the 8 series, with Rick Shaw in his RX7 way out ahead. Day 2 was a very average day, no real issues to speak of, but just never really fired up. We had a good sideling, but so did everyone else and actually fell back compared to most of the cars that I cared about, even though we didn't fall back in the overall rankings, due entirely to some prime competitors crashing out ahead of us. Day 3 saw us determined to get back on form. We dropped some air from the tyres which helped a lot and changed the navigations strategy with me providing more feedback to the navigator which helped a lot with pacing. As I got more comfortable with the calls and got over flying around blind corners at warp speed, our times improved dramatically The car really had no issues to speak of throughout the race, with only a nagging persistent oil leak which never went away. It looked worse than it was as it was coming out of the rear turbo and landing on the exhaust. This caused a big cloud of white smoke to follow us and a big plume when we stopped after each stage, but there was no leak from the head gasket into the head or pistons, so no performance loss, only the need to add about 1/2 a litre of oil at lunch. Overall, we were way underpowered compared to the competition, and struggled with the lack of rain to give us an advantage (or so we thought until day 4). While we could maintain high speed well, we just didn't have the torque of the big dollar entries to pull us out of trouble on the tight and winedy stuff. We would smash everyone on fast stages made up of long sweepers, but every time we hit a stage with a lot of switch backs and hairpins we couldn't maintain the pace. Next time we'll address this, because in the end, it's the fast stuff that's hard to master and gives you all the time, the tight and winedy stuff is easy if you have the torque. So day 3 was good and I think we ended up in 21st, with Rick Shaw still way out of reach and the only car that worried me, the 32 driven by Tony Alford still about 30 seconds behind. The only GTR ahead of us was the 34. Not bad for a 17 year old 32 put together by a bunch of slap happy mechanics in their spare time! Day 4 started out great again, with Cethana just after lunch a personal favourite. Cethana winds down into a valley and then climbs out at the end, somewhat like the Galston Gorge for those who have driven it, only it's 35kms long so you have lot's of time to get in to the groove and get some pace. We passed the big shelby mustang boat easily and were chasing the green 32 of kimber an o'kane. The 33 gtr of Ayers and Bolton had to stop for an accident and slotted in between us so we had some fun for a good half of the stage. We'd reel them in through the run, then come to an uphill hairpin as we climbed back up and they'd be off like a flash while we struggled to build boost. Frustrating as this happened about 6 times, but still a lot of fun. Gunns Plains, the next stage was also a lot of fun, with it raining half way through and the fact that we blazed past a brand new 6 bizillion dollar porche turbo like it was going backwards. The rest of the afternoon was fast fun and uneventfull, which found us in 18th outright, first in class, and second in the 800 series far behind rick shaw, and only 9 seconds behind the 34 GTR, our target car, coming into the last stage. The last stage, Fern Glade was a short 4 km run in the wet. Nothing we hadn't seen before, and should have been an easy one, if not a little slow. I softened the suspension for the wet and the tyre pressures were ok, if a little low. We started out fine, crossed the bridge and came around a short 3. For some reason, the back end just let go completely, not into a slide, but with the car going into a slow 180. All I thought at the time was that I better get out of the road so that the next car doesn't come around the corner and hit me head on, when we just tipped over the edge of the cliff and started rolling side over side. There was littlerally less than a metre from the edge of the road to the cliff and no guard railings at all. Racing is at your own risk, but in the wet these roads would be seriously dangerous for the average driver. What should have been a simple off with no damage turned into a complete write off and a fairly hairy ride. We ended up at the bottom near the small river having flipped 5 or six times. Car totalled, targa over. So the moral of the story is, Bridgestone re55, good in the dry, shit in the wet. The D02s were much better and the D03s probably better still. I would have been happier if we'd gone off because I'd pushed too hard or missed a call or even mechanical failure, but to just slip off doing about 50k/hr was a big disapointment. I guess that's racing as they say! A big thanks to all the sponsors and crew who stuck by us, and my wife for not killing me a second time when I got home. Should have brought the helmet home with me though! I'm sure Duncan will post some more pictures when he gets around to it. I'd be surprised if there was a GTR out there with more dentend panels. Mark

Yes, a bag of bolts in the intake! Not that I can talk

The oil return is an easy thing to do even if the motor is assembled, provided it is out of the car. Pop the welsh plug out, drill and tap a new one with a 1/4 BSP thread and put a 90 elbow fitting in. If you drill closer to the edge of the welsh plug and install it near the top, you won't foul the metal lines that cross the back of the head. The other side is to the sump, same scenario, but use a straight fitting.

Are these still for sale. Left several PMs, no reply.

Dropped price to 125$. Someone must want them at this price!

I've got a factory installed Sony 10 Disc CD Stacker which mates with a standard R32 stereo. It will work with a r33 stereo, but the controller is designed to fit in the R32 armrest so would be better on an R32. Everything is included, removed from my car last week completely operational, no faults whatsoever. Simple to install with a direct plug into the back of the stereo and 4 wires to join which are colour coded to match factory wiring exactly. Would prefer to send the armrest complete with the controller with another returned as exchange. Reason being that the controller is mounted already and would no doubt leave some marks and have a small hole for the wire if removed. If this is not possible then something else coud be arranged. I also have a factory stereo if anyone needs one. $100 ONO. email or call me if interested [email protected] 0411 471 684