JimX

Hmm. I'm looking at Castrol's oil site and I can't find any GTXT. The closest I can find is GTX, which is the cheapest stuff they have. The synthetic stuff is Formula R.

Do you mean the reservoir has a leak? Or the rack itself? If it's the former, you can buy a bottle of stuff that will seal it up again from GP Auto 1. I had a VS Commodore before the Skyline, and the power steering pump was leaking like a SEIVE. I put this stuff in and it fixed it up totally! I was only expecting a mild improvement, and the bottle even said that it wouldn't work on bad leaks. But it did, and I was amazed. My leak was so bad before that if I filled it up on Sunday, it would be half empty (on my garage floor) by Friday (which would be the usual next day I drove it). In the end I never topped it up more than halfway to keep the leaking to a minimum. But I could fill it up after I put this sealant stuff in. I've got no idea of the mudguard lights, but the bumper lights sound like the factory option spotlights? If so there should be a switch for them.

Isn't GTXT one grade below GTX2/GTX3? Personally I would run semi or full synthetic in my Skyline (actually, this is what I do ), especially with that hot turbo slowly cooking your oil between changes. If you have to run mineral oil then definitely change it every 5000km at least.

Nulon's probably the best. But don't expect miracles, if your injectors are badly clogged then you should pull them out for an ultrasonic clean.

Gearbox oil will help but won't cure it altogether. It's a very common problem on these cars, it's just worn synchro's, probably from too many Japanese boy racers flat-shifting before it arrived here. Redline heavy weight shockproof oil is the stuff to use if crunching is bad, if it's not too bad then try the light weight. I find on mine that it crunches a lot less after the gearbox has warmed up. Until then I find that I can help stop crunching by not going straight into second from first, but going to the centre first (ie, where the gate for 3rd and 4th is). I can also stop crunching by doubling the clutch, but it's easier to do it the former way.

Ed, have you got a link for the emanage? I read your thread about it, but I couldn't really see a full list of features and what it can and can't do. Does it cost more to tune than an S-AFC? (which is about $150)

Mark was going to put it over the top of the radiator instead of back through the air box like it is at present. But anyway, I'll shop around when I have some money in a few months.

Sydneykid, I agree with you on all points except the boost controller. Even if you get something like a Power FC, the bleed valve is still going to be inferior to an electronic boost controller. It's best to get an EBC as well as the Power FC. But you're right, it is generally best to get the Power FC instead of most of those things. However, some people don't want all those things. For example, my car already came with an EBC and fuel cut defender, so adding in a S-AFC was a pretty cheap upgrade. If I had neither of those things then I might have just waited a little longer (who am I kidding - a LOT longer) and gotten the Power FC. The S-AFC is a very good interim mod if you're low on cash. And when you can afford the Power FC, you'll know that there will be somene to buy it off you.

$400 for custom cooler plumbing (he said there would be about 5 mandrel bends) and $300 or so for custom dump pipe. Seems reasonable to me. If you know someone that can do a good job on intercooler plumbing for less, let me know I don't know what brand the IC is, it measures about 600x300x60 I think. Edit: haven't done compression check. Pretty much installing the S-AFC and tuning it are the only mods/tests I've done to it since getting it. Oh, and changed spark plugs

Ed, dyno run done at Hills Motorsport in December. It was a hot day, so maybe that caused me to lose a little power It's quite strange, I can hardly tell the difference in power at .6 bar and .8 bar, but when I bump it up to 1 bar it's like I've opened the flood gates. I get wheelspin in 2nd at 1 bar so I'm starting to think I'll just leave it set there. It uses around an extra litre per 100km at 1 bar but who cares No photos of IC piping, but it's got several sharp 90 degree bends (ie not even rounded) and seems to be of a smaller diameter to the intake and throttle body. Mark said it was atrocious and all things considered 166kw was quite good. I am going to get it redone along with the front/dump pipe for a total cost of around $700 (custom items for both at Hills). But I'm a poor bastard for now, this mod is a few months away at least. I don't think I have the AFR chart, but I did see the readouts on the screen. Mark kept the AFR around mid to high 11's because he was worried about detonation and said that pushing it higher wasn't giving me much more power so he left it in the 11's. I haven't had a good look at the turbo, but I do know it says Garrett in big letters on the housing.

Ed, current mods are fmic, 3" cat back exhaust, some unidentified aftermarket Garrett turbo that's bigger than stock (previous owner said it was a T04 flowed to 450hp, but who knows?), EBC, and S-AFC. However I'm only getting 166rwkw at 12psi, and my mechanic is pretty sure the intercooler plumbing is the main item to blame. It's really shockingly bad, so I was going to look at upgrading the whole intake at some point. Also have to replace the dump pipe with a bigger one, hoping to crack 180rwke after these are done.

Ah ok, my misunderstanding then It's just that I've heard lots of people complain about the stock Skyline's AFM being quite restrictive, so I assumed the Z32's was bigger. I guess I was wrong.

What is the advantage of upgrading the AFM to a Z32 or other item? I realise that the diameter will be bigger and the restriction less, but is there any point if you don't upgrade the rest of your intake plumbing? What about the throttle body? That will probably be the hardest/most expensive thing to upgrade, is there a point in doing the AFM if you don't also do the TB? How much roughly will it cost to get a Z32 AFM and hook it up to the turbo with the correct-sized plumbing?

I think sequential turbos are largely a waste of time for a performance car. They only really improve driveability. They also lower your off-boost threshold so you'll probably find that you're always going through more fuel. To overcome the disadvantage of not having a sequential turbo setup, launch from a higher RPM and keep the revs up.

Actually, it was my gf taking the car up north from Sydney to Taree (about 300km) to visit relatives, then back again. Worked out to be 9.5L/100km when I did the mileage when she got back. We both then travelled back up the same day (she had to come back to Sydney for a job interview) and I decided to experiment with the boost pressure and set it to 1 bar. I got 10.6L/100km for the trip up, and 10.4L/100km for the trip back. It was slightly worse on the way up because we had a little bit of city traffic to get out of before hitting the highway.

If cost is a concern then I would suggest getting the cheapest one you can find. All of the big name brands are of good quality and have better features than your bleed valve, the Profec-B is somewhat lacking in features compared to the rest but it does control boost well enough for most people's needs. The important thing is they all set the boost with controls in the cabin, on the fly, and very easily. They also all control spiking a lot better than a bleed valve, and these are the 2 most important things. So if they are the only important things for you, then go for the cheapest you can find. Even go second hand as long as you can be sure it will work.

I have no concept of how good or bad 20mpg is. I don't even know how to do the conversion. My car gets 14-16L/100km around town (usually just under 15) when running at 0.8 bar boost. At 1 bar it is usually just over 15. I am experimenting with a tankful on 0.6 bar to see how much fuel I'll save, if I gain another litre/100km I will set it to 0.6 when I'm low on cash and need to save money on fuel (I love EBC's!) On the highway I get 9.5L/100km on .8 bar and 10.5L/100km on 1 bar. Keep in mind that this is with a lot of spirited overtaking. It's the main thing that keeps me awake! Man I hate this L/100km crap, makes it really hard to work out how far you can go on one tank on fuel. Sod it, I'm going to start doing kilometres per litre too, starting right now. 14L/100km = 7.14km/L = 428km per tank (fill up around or before 400km) 15L/100km = 6.67km/L = 400km (fill up ~370) 16L/100km = 6.25km/L = 375km (fill up ~345) 9.5L/100km = 10.53km/L = 631km (fill up ~600) 10.5L/100km = 9.52km/L = 571km (fill up ~540) If I had been working off kilometres per litre instead of this stupid L/100km crap I could have saved myself from a huge stuff-up in refill planning on a recent holiday trip up north. I wasn't sure if I had enough fuel to make it to the next available servo on a round trip while in the area and ended up running around for an extra 60km that I later discovered I didn't have to (long story).

It is easier and cheaper to get big boost happening with a single turbo. The main advantage of the two turbos is for better response low-down. If you're not concerned with this then there isn't much point having 2 turbos. Of course, the twin turbo setup on the GTR is better than the single turbo on the GTS-t. But the GTR owners doing the single turbo conversion are usually bolting on one bigass $10k+ Trust turbo or the like, not a small turbo off a GTS-t

You have an uninformed, arrogant opinion.

Skyline_paul, a valid concern. However as far as my insurance company is concerned, I got the car like this from Japan, and it was all legally registered and has gotten pink slips every year for rego, so as far as I know it's legal I have a good insurance company though, I've made one claim through them and it was approved on the spot when the inspector came out (I got rear-ended) with the repairer of my choice rather than one off a cheaparse list that some insurance companies use. It would all depend on your insurance company I would say. Give them a ring and ask if they would deny your claim if it was discovered that you had 20% tints on, and if they wouldn't, get them to send you that in writing. If they ask why, then tell them that you think the tints you got with your new car might be too dark, and you're not sure if you should bother getting it checked/replaced. Hmm, I might even do that myself for some extra piece of mind should I ever need to make an at-fault claim. But I do know that I'm definitely covered if I'm not at fault because I've already been through the process once and the question wasn't even asked about my window tints (they had 20% on them before I got it re-done after the repair/respray).

Hmm, I'm more inclined to believe Doctor's theory over macka's. If there is no signal coming from the sensor, it would have no idea of whether to run lean or rich. I don't think it would just swap arbitrarily between the 2 mappings, I'm sure it would try to do one instead of the other. Since Nissan err on the side of caution with the default rich mappings, I'm inclined to believe that it would just run constantly rich with no AFM signal. What I did was the equivalent of the AFM dying, and I think the ECU would be designed with a possible AFM failure in mind in the general scheme of things. Anyway that's just my theory, I've got no intentions of testing it again!

Ok, storytime I had duct-taped the S-AFC under my dash because the double-sided tape that comes with it is shithouse. This only lasted a few weeks though before coming off, and I never got around to putting it back on. So I just took up some of the slack from behind the dash and threw the whole unit across the centre console and had it rest sort of where the passenger seat meets the console. This was ok for a few days, but then one time last night I slid the seat forwards to let the rear seat passengers out and it pulled the S-AFC forwards with it because it was trapped between seat and console, resulting in no more wire connection If I had the right sized screwdriver with me I could have fixed it before we left. So now some tools are going into my car permanently, including the right sized screwdriver for that thing

I accidentally ripped the wires out of my S-AFC last night (long story). Anyway I had to run the car without the AFM sensor wire for around an hour. It sputtered and choked all this while but I didn't really have much of a choice except call for a tow (at 3am). Anyway I'm wondering if this has done anything harmful to my engine. I'm guess I only have to worry about it leaning out the mixture too much, but it didn't seem to ping at all. I just couldn't go over 2500rpm or so Fortunately the wiring loom just plugged back in again when I took the unit apart today and it was all good. Oh yeah, one more question - I want to reset the ECU after last night's episode, but I don't know if I should disable the S-AFC after doing so while the ECU "learns" its new map again. If I don't, won't the S-AFC settings interfere and it will think that they're all zero when they're not? (hope that makes sense). Ok, example - If I reset the ECU as-is, will it then run as if I'd set everything on the S-AFC to zero, and then revert to the complete OPPOSITE of what it's set to now if I disconnect the S-AFC and re-attach the AFM wire? Argh, that looks so confusing. I hope someone knows what I'm on about here

Thanks darK I don't know what grille it is, it came with the car. I think it was a Nissan factory option at some point but no one can give me a definite answer. I personally think it looks better than the GTR grille and the Nismo one that looks similar, but that's just me. I've only seen this grille on 3 or 4 other Skylines, and they've all been black so I assume that's the way they come from the factory. Mine was black too, but after I had the car resprayed I got them to do the surround in silver. Looks much better this way I reckon. They originally did the mesh silver as well but that looked crap so I got them to re-do it in black again. I think all mesh should be subtle.

I don't know how common this problem is but I thought I'd write up a message about it anyway and how I hopefully have fixed it. For awhile now I've had a squeaking noise coming from the front bar on the right side. Today I finally got around to having a look to see what it was. I moved the bar up and down in the general area and got the sound to reproduce. It was the little square plastic lug which goes into the guard. This thing rubs up and down as the wind and road bumps cause the front bar to flex. I got from my garage what I thought was motorcycle chain lube and sprayed it onto the lug, and this got rid of the squeak. I then checked the can and found that I'd used my chain cleaner instead of the lube (it's kind of like a less harsh degreaser). Still, it must have dislodged something to have fixed it, but I got the can of chain lube out anyway and gave it another spray. So far so good, but I only did this a couple of hours ago and I don't know how long it will last. If anyone knows of a more permanent fix then please tell!