sneakey pete

PC decided to die and i'm back at work so this has been delayed a bit. After I got the car back from Melbourne it was running but with a bad knock. crawled it up the driveway and shut it off. Dropped the oil out... not great, couple of liters of coolant where it shouldn't be. Before Christmas with the help of my dad and a few friends we pulled the engine out through the top. Fun process... on a summers day. Had considered taking it out the bottom but in the end decided to go from the top. All in all not as bad as i expected, though had a lot of fouling on the AC compressor so may need to remove that to put it back in. Got the gearbox off after a bit of head scratching, the car is a 1994 it has a pull type clutch. That done, up on the stand. Pictured: one broked engine. Note the weird water cooling arrangement, out of the block, into rear turbo, out of rear turbo into front turbo and then back to the cooling return. Not sure what Tomei was going for here, going to have to rectify that one. Started stripping the engine down in my spare time over the holidays. Tomei!!!111one turbos off Starting to untangle the intake side. Will probably be simplifying this more where possible. The cold air idle actually started to leak after i replaced the plenum earlier, i didn't realize i could delete it when running the haltech. Cam covers off. Not pretty in there... nice glycol and oil sludge more mess: Head off. Dirty but not damaged. some head bolts had oil penetrating around them, others not. Not sure what the go is with that, any comments would be welcome for that one.. Gasket at the location pointed too on the previous photo. Not great... Same area, other side I also noted this on the rear of piston 6. Its rather odd, gasket has been pushed up by the piston a tad. looks like its been there for a while? Bores look.. alright i guess Rod bearings out... yeah, not good. Know where the sparklies came from. Cylinder 5 is the obvious one: Mains All stripped, ready to be sent off for... bigger and better things So that's the descent into ruin, next up the future plans, in a few days.

Pressure tested mine and had a gun welder do it, so fingers crossed..

Dont bother doing a rebuild, do do headgasket and upgraded head studs. Can lift a stock 26 head with 20 psi. Fit the oil restrictor on the block while the head is off. The hi octane sump has a provision to attach a return line, make that a catch can vent, that seems to be a key in helping prevent oil blowby issues. For what you want n1 pump should be plenty. Do do the oil cooler, but I'd go for one with a thermostat. Also consider removing the water to oil cooler. You make find the golbeys one hard to fit with that length of hose, the popular greddy/hks ones mount below the passenger headlight as its got room and airflow. Also do a quaife front diff while it's all apart, heck leave the gearbox till it gets worn if it's still good they are not that hard to remove. Rear diff wise don't bother rebuilding the a-lsd, get a proper mechanic one. Apart from that, replace all consumable bits. Water lines (under the plenum) also get a good quality braided line kit for the turbo feeds. Do all relevant seals on the engine while you can get in there good.

Didn't know that hicas delete kit existed. Neat.

Its about time I made a proper build thread, its always nice to get peoples feedback and advice when playing around with these things. As soon as I was getting near my opens up here in Queensland, I was starting to itch for a turbo car (i went through to early for the new rules where P platers couldn't own moderately powered turbos, but I was too late by 3 months to have open slather) and after a while I got myself a nice R32 gts-t. It provided me with some nice trouble free motoring for 3 years out of uni and into the workforce however after a while I wanted more. At the time I figured I could either do the GTR treatment (guards/bonnet/bar etc) to it but for a similar price I could upgrade to an actual GTR. So, at the end of 2013, this: Became this. Magic Transition!: I probably rushed into buying it too quickly, and in hindsight I probably should have kept looking for a better car, but more to come on that later... It was certainly more powerful than the gts-t, (biggest smile on my face ever accelerating when i turned onto the highway picking it up) and the seats made it feel much more sporty (i'd have to say, bang for buck best mod you can do to a gts-t would be gtr seats) but it didn't have the handling of low end that the gts-t did. Part of that was the turbo's.. here's a quick list of the interesting points of the car when i got it: Tomei ARMS turbos with tomei dumps/turbo back exhaust TE37's, 17x9 HKS coilivers Greddy EBC Nistune ECU mines 320kmph speedo nismo front bar water lines behind the block replaced I've deduced that the previous previous owner flogged the shit out of the car with the stock turbos until a point which they decided to stop working in a reasonable fashion at which point he flogged off the car to the previous owner, who decided to replace them with the Tomei items. Without supporing mods etc the car was making pretty average power, no better than stock. So, cue acquisition Z32 AFM's, 850cc injectors and a Walbro 400lph fuel pump and booking in a tune at EFI. After a struggle I got the Z32's on using an Ebay intake adaptor kit (due to the bigger body size of these AFM's), in hindsight i'd probably have been better off buying Genuine Nismo items that would have bolted right on, but i got a good deal on the Z32's so it wasn't to bad. Turns out the pump I had wasn't suitable for E85, so i had Sean supply and install one in the morning, and it was on the dyno in the afternoon. Cue... cue... Blown intercooler hose that night. Cue... new hose clamps Anyway, after a few more months I noticed I had a leak between the afm and the turbo (thanks, dodgy china intake kit!), fixing it caused the tune to be thrown off, so I thought... might as well get it tuned on E85. the car really needed it, full boost was extremely late, car really wasn't great to drive despite having a bit of power and would bring itself back out of the power band on gear changes. So, this happened. New cooler on the recommendation of Sean, Made 398hp on E85 but valve float struck though. Was good enough for then, picked up something like 800rpm of response on the turbos so i was pretty happy A few other little projects over the next few months. Undertray: Posing with a non nissan leopard Hardpipes Local lookout with my dad Aspiring: Anyway, around the end of the year I noticed that there was a small drop of fluid appearing just in front of the rear drivers side tyre. Closer inspection showed the subframe bushing was shot. Inspired by Cadmoon doing a similar job with his car, I set about doing a full entire suspension refresh, minus shocks. All new ball joins, adjustable upper arms, new bushes throughout. After a lot of help from knowledgeable friends and people here I accumulated the parts and set out doing the changeover over a Christmas break. As it turned out, the entire front right subframe bush crush tube had completely separated from the outer (no danger of falling out, but its not really doing much bushing), a few days of buggering around and they were out. Got some help from a friend who kindly did the wheel bearings and ball joints for me. Back together. There's a fronts photo but its even worse. After this, a good alignment are the car was driving pretty dam amazingly. Bit of road noise and you can feel the bumps more but you it feels so much more planted than it ever did. Note you can see from the photos the sils aren't in great condition, particularly in the rear right. That's one of the reasons I probably should have passed on the car, as I mentioned at the beginning. However as many are I was simply to excited and looking to much at other things to ever actually check them when I got the car. Its something I will need to address soon, though as yet I haven't fixed them. After this I enjoyed a good start to 2015, working back in Brisbane on a nice Monday to Friday gig instead of site work, i got to use the car quite a bit on week nights and weekends. Lot of cruises, few happylaps sessions (non 100% rate cruise sessions at the track basically) and went to the skidpan in Gympie for a day. However, after this I started to have a few issues. AWD pump decided the pressure sensor should now be a vent point and spilt fluild all over the diff. Pulled the diff out and got it refreshed while I put in a new unit however it failed to bleed properly or had some other issue and started spilling fluid out again. Refreshed diff was nice though. Spent most of the time running the car in RWD from then on while waiting for a fix. I had other issues crop up aswell. The tune on the car started using more fuel, averaging 15L/100 on E85 everywhere, even on the highway. I developed some sort of fuel pump issue, causing the rather large drama's from fuel starvation, and I also developed an intermittent miss. Ontop of that, some kind of oil leak in the turbo side of the engine bay started up. New fuel pump solved one issue, though what was left in the tank was distrubing. Oil leak turned out to be blowby oil stuck in the vertical part of the rear turbo intake pipe that was a slightly oversized diameter causing a spot for it to pool, and and slowly leaking past the hose clamp onto the dump of the front turbo. It caused some rather wild smoke though! Chucked a dodgy catchcan in to try rectify that one. The miss issue came and went, annoyingly. Plugs would get rid of it for a while, so I managed to get a track day out at QR in. I managed 61.8 on sprint, which was pretty respectable I thought, though I needed more grunt to get past the AMG in the group who was lapping 2s slower but always going out at the front. in the second last session I had brakes decide to go foot to the floor, so I called it a day. I had some Brembo's I was in the process of putting on, so that would easily resolve that. The miss and fuel usage issues didn't abate, so after a lot of researching and pondering future goals, (the tomei turbos were becoming very annoying by now) I decided on going down the haltech route for the ECU. I was also planning a road trip to Phillip Island with some friends so needed the ability to run 98 when required, but didn't want to loose the response that E85 gave the car with the laggy turbos. It seemed like a nice package, did all I needed, reasonable price, though if I were doing it again now I would probably go down the Link path. Anyway, come July, before the ECU is going in, and i'm out scouting the charity cruise route for 2015 with da prez, and on the way back home suddenly he's flashing his lights and Calling me. Wonder what's wrong with, I thought. Cue "TURN OFF YOU CAR" being yelled out... not good. Turns out a water line under the plenum (water to oil heat exchange returnto be precise) had just decided to randomly go while just driving back home. Cue plenum out. I seriously considered doing an engine out, and doing the oil pump, sump mods, front diff HG and valve springs and headstuds, and new turbos instead, it did seem to offer a slightly better effort to reward ratio, but in the ended up pulling the plenum in the bay and doing a hose refresh. Not a fun job. Also did a water to oil heat exchanger removal and put in an oil filter relocation+thermostat controlled oil cooler. Back together it went, the haltech went in and i got a flex tune done on it a few weeks before going to Melbourne. Unfortunately the miss came back in short order, as intermittent as usual, and I noticed that a bit of coolant had gone missing post tune... but it went away with 98. E85 and petrol tunes Also did the brembos and MCA purples (X-R series) as i'd need both for Phillip island and a semi comfortable drive down. Turns out the HKS coilovers had just busted a seal in the rear right, so that was lucky. Anyway, drove down in late October to do a session at PI, winton, the melbourne cup and swing by wakefield on the trip home. As it turns out it was an eventful trip. 200k's north of Melbourne the car started to get temp spikes, after pulling over and waiting for it to cool enough found the radiator was missing a few liters of water. So I had a leak somewhere. Filled it back up and had a nervous rest of the trip to PI but made it. Decided to take it on the track anyway and keep a close eye on the temps. It was a slow leak so should have been right on short track sessions. Had a blast at the track, it is really amazing, everyone should drive it at least once I reckon, however after my 4th session I parked up but then returned to the car to find a patch of oil on the drivers side of the engine bay. Oh shit, day over. there was a decent amount of oil all over everything, wasn't great. First suspicion was a leak from the oil relocation/cooler kit, which was second hand. Trailered it back to our accommodation and cleaned it all up but found nothing, which was even more disturbing really. There was still a decent amount of oil in there, above low (was overfilled for the track), so fired it up. Oil pressure goes straight up to the top of the guage... well, that's not good. Oil change and it comes down a bit but still a tad high. Take it for a short drive to the other end of PI, runs alright and pressure settles down a tad. Drain the oil pan... struck gold... or bronze.... shit. I deduced that the blowby has popped the dipstick off, and the righthander onto the straight at PI has pushed oil up it and out the end, causing the leak, but i've also run low at a point and started to chew the bearings out. As the car was running with no noises/issues with the fresh oil I decided, what the heck i'll see if i can't do the great ocean road, and go from there, see if i either drive it home or drive it to a car transporter. We set off, and I made it to Torqay just past geelong before the car suddenly got rather hot, and then pumped a rather large plume of white smoke out the rear. Headgasket for sure. At this stage I left the car overnight and jumped in with someone else to do the road. Luckily one of us had a trailer, so the car was trailered back to storage and then onto a Brisbane bound car transport. Anyway, this takes it up to November last year. I'll continue on in another post tomorrow, i've written enough thisarvo. Apologies for all the inevitable spelling mistakes.

Don't forget to add in a breaker or something, should that feed wire ever rub through there's no fuse against the body.

Haltech or link plugin. If you ever want to go flex link will be a few hundred cheaper i think

I was suggesting that they could be put into the tomei Rear housings. They are a tad bigger, so could help or may overwhelm it. Was just throwing the idea out there. See attached comparison between the gtx2860's and the Tomei's

77,7mm spool, 9.5:1 compresson ratio. Head work, 1mm over valve, unigroup cams. Should be a nice little package. when its done... Who knows, if you count these as the same as -5's it might be the most powerful car on -5's I should start up a public build thread for it this RnR Have done a little research RE exhaust wheels. M7655 56 47.5 M8260 67 58.8 gtx2860/-5 53.9 47.0 gtx3071 60 55 Want to see one of the M8260 exhaust housings in person now... thats massive for stock location. I might hit someone up locally and see if it would be possible to put a gtx3071 into the m7655's i have, if you could that could make for a hell of a lowmount setup...

Shop building the engine placed an order for the stroker at the begging of match but the pistons still haven't arrived yet apparently. So I dunno, august at this rate between me putting it back in when its done and my site roster.

The arms m7655, the smaller of the two in terms of wheel size. The housings are a big chunk bigger than -5.-10 housings, I'll try dig up a comparison photo when i get home thisarvo

Hey ID anyone thinks the rears are tok small feel free to buy my tomei turbos and put a gtx3071 in or something

The flex issue is between the two pipes to the turbos, not the rest of the system z as I understand it. After all the exhaust has enough play

What damage is there actually on it? Will be interested to see what it sells for.

I need to come for a ride in the zed sometime mike, maybe then I can make a decision

You could also make the observation that none of those 4 times were due to the stroker itself, and good condition used motors to drop in are probably getting a tad hard to find

That's not what he was asking though

Are you using one in your car currently? could you post your setup if possible? Noise out of these is a somewhat contentious issue from what i understand.. The one car i've been in with one wasn't great and the other guy up here who has put one in hasn't said it was silent.

Forgot headstuds. Also you did't use the spool stroker kit Add a few thousand for miscellaneous stuff like new seals, gaskets, timing belt kit etc. I'd also say that machining and assembly cost is maybe a tad low?

506 is on a hub dyno. Car was at the drags last week though I don't know what mph it ran.

I'm leaning more towards the dual walbro option at the moment, the voltage booster is all well and good but very pricey. Do you run any check valves and staged pumps etc?

They have an interest in you buying one don't they... You don't need one. If your stock one is broken buy a new stock one. End of thread. Dose pipe ftw.

Ill pay whatever he wants plus one dollar for a Gibson manifold.

Ill pay whatever he wants plus one dollar for a Gibson manifold.

There's issues with the 30 fitting into a r32, engine number changes, sump adapting etc that means its not a clear progression of 26<28<30.