haw001

Anyone have any head bolt washers to spare? I was bolting up the head and nearly shit my pants when something went snap and all of a sudden the bolt had no tension. I thought it was a snapped head bolt, but it turned out to be a washer. Must of had a hairline crack. Anyway, they're very hard to find. I have a few smaller ones, but I can't drill them out, they are harder than my drill bits.

Rich, I understand the theory, but when you were talking to others about it, was there any discussion of decking the head to drop compression back down? From what I get from your post, removing one or more squish zone would essentially increase the volume of the chamber thus reducing the compression. If this is the case, and lower compression is desired, couldn't a similar result be achieved by using a thicker head gasket. My discussions with the engine builder involved more profiling the squish zones and then decking the head so reduce the compression back to a desired point. It was more about developing exhaust velocity and terminal speed on the piston. Again, I need to point out that I'm no expert, more just trying to suck up info from different sources and trying to understand it better.

Steve, Glad we finally fooled someone with 31 pages of posting! We all got together and invented a secret code of automotive bullshit hoping to lure someone in. Seriously though, take everything you read with a grain of salt. Everything is an amalgamation of opinions and not necessarily based on any fact. This forum is a good source of information, but all of us have differing views, which is what makes this so much fun!

I personally don't know all the theory about it, but I had a long discussion with the engine builder and he was fairly adamant that squish zones of the rb26 heads are pretty good for a turbo setup. Much more and the piston's would have to be dished to allow valve clearance. The rb26 is a high compression engine, so cleaning the squish zones then decking it has it's set of problems. Head porting is a magic art, one which I don't profess to know very well. It's not just a case of bigger is better. Velocity is very important for turbo spool up and so you don't want to port a RB26 head too much or you will gain top end HP at the expense of usable torque.

Can't remember for sure, but I think they are 1mm oversize.

The dry ice works great. Don't know about burns, I decided to use gloves. -70 is a little cold even for me! Couple of tips for those doing it, get extra dry ice. I got 7 kgs, and it was just enough, but it would have been easier and less messy to get 10kgs. Keep a separate 2kg in a bag for doing odd shaped parts, vertical etc. Also a hammer works wells, but a cold chisel works better. I found towards the end, that you can crack it with the cold chisel and lift it easy with a scraper without doing any damage to the paint, but for it really to work well, you need to cover the area properly with the dry ice. As I ran low, it got harder to do easily. 90% of the job was done in under an hour, but there's still a few hours cleaning the vertical parts and the silicone sealer.

You are right, but it's just fun when you get to to point of bolting new things on and it's getting close to being driveable!

John, turbos are t03/04 fittings so needed bigger flanges. Also because the turbos are bigger in general and there is much more space than would be in a normal engine bay, we've moved them around for ease of piping the intake and exhaust. The rear one sits out a fair bit from the front to give it clear access for the intake and to offset the two exhaust outlets. We won't be able to take the motor out by dropping the cradle and lifting the car as the rear sits over the rail, but that's not a big deal. I thought about re-flanging a set of custom dumps, there are a few sets lying around at home, but it was just easier to work with the china stuff than the cast stuff. Besides, we had to mate chinese turbos with chinese flangte

Zebra, The pics are deceptive, the outlet from the intercooler is basically in the same spot as the standard one, just higher up. We could cut down a standard intercooler pipe and it would fit, except that the intercooler fitting is 3" so too big.

Doesn't whe look pretty with all the shiny bits in! Don't worry, the 'gay' yellow plenum is a loaner!

Stuart, Many thanks for the offer, it bears some serious consideration. The main issue is your location. I try and fit a couple of hours in here and there where I can, and more importantly, my wife doesn't really mind me working on cars as long as I'm home, can come in for lunch and occasionally beat on the kids to keep them under control. She would not be so happy if I had to go off to do the work. On the other hand, I really could do with some enforced discipline of working on one project at a time, so maybe dropping a shell off for storage and keeping the one I'm working on in the garage is not a bad idea. Duncan and I will nut it out over the weekend and get back to you. Again, thanks for the offer.

Get in line! You haven't seen the amount of empty shells that are in my front yard!

I guess we better get started on some more work so we have something to post!

Don't think it's a good idea to move it. I'm sure it will still work, but it will work best when located in the most central part of the wheelbase. I suspect it should actually be moved backwards a bit.

I made up some turbo water feed lines from speedflow connections and braided hose for about 80$. This was only 1/3 of the overall lines that Angus has.

If you are running the sump extention, then you cannot run the sump baffle, and it would be pointless anyway. The sump extention comes with it's own round baffle, which is a cylinder with holes in it, which reaches down to the bottom of the extention. It welds on to the standard sump trays. It also comes with and extended pickup. The sump baffle kit would sit above the sump extention with the oil below it, making it pointless and it would foul on the baffle that comes with the sump extention kit.

Are these new turbo water and oil lines. If so, they are a really, really, really good idea. I have had to destroy a standard set on at least 3 occasions because the fittings wouldn't turn on the pipe and it ended up just twisting the pipe up until the metal fatigued and ripped itself apart. A real pain in the ass, not only because they needed to be replaced but because it's a bitch to get your hand and a spanner in there in the first place, then you have to turn hard enough to rip the pipes apart. What's in the box under the VRS kit?

The alloy thing you see here:

Angus, Just had a thought. Going to machine up a couple of allow steering wheel linkages on the weekend, how does one of these sound. You can probably see one on one of Duncan's previous pictures, they replace the standard rubber steel one that links the steering wheel arm to the steering rack.

Yes please, I have someone else who can rubber/plastic weld. When's a good time and where about's are you. I'm away until Friday. What can I throw your way for the pleasure of taking it off your hands? Thanks,

That'd be great Angus. If your mate can fix it even better. Happy to sling a few slabs around for the effort. Pretty sure I have a lower lip lying around.

The water/methanol sounds interesting. I didn't want to start an argument, but I was very skeptical about a less than ambient temperature on a straight air/air intercooler. Just couldn't get my head around how it was even possible. A lot of these total loss or injection type systems bear a bit of looking at as they have a real possibilty with what this car is being used for. Supersprints, hillclimbs, etc all have short spurts of running. A decent cooler set up is important for going round and round, but something that cools below ambient would be interesting, even if it only lasted one lap.

Giant, not saying that you are wrong, I'm sure they are able to use Air/Air efficiently, but rally is very different to track, and the RB26 is very different to a 2L 4 cylinder. I never had any air intake temperature problems with the standard intercooler at Targa, nothing like 20 degrees, but it did stay around 45 degrees. The air's colder, it's always fresh and not someone else's exhaust, and more importantly, your revs stay lower most of the time. In the still air of the track where you spend most of your time above 6000 rpm, it's just not possible to keep the temperature down for long with an air/air. Have a look at the Gibson GTR and see what they had to do to try and keep the heat down. No guarantees with the water/air, but there's no way an air/air will work on a GTR on the track and keep it down near ambient.

Scratch that, the ARC was the one the brother in law smashed when he borrowed my car. I do have the blitz blow off valves and a just jap intercooler.

I'll check tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure my roadie has a 70mm ARC and we have a pair of Blitz blow off valves to go with if that's what your after. Let me confirm and I'll give you a price.