Kinkstaah

@Dose Pipe Sutututu get a slice of the BMW life going on here. This is what, $6k for... fixing some leaks with some OEM quality gaskets/lines, to fix up OEM gasket/lines which were failing/failed?

Thank you, this was comprehensive and I consider myself an expert on the subject now. Regards, The Internet.

I mean technically you don't. And you don't need a wideband if your tune is good. But this is what I was getting at. It's really hard to tune something to that degree. Narrowbands are used to take a 'somewhat accurate map' into stoich, like a boost controller, and you're really just tuning how much 'work' it needs to do, with the aim of 'Better tune, Narrowband/Wideband has to compensate less' But anyone who has ever done something like tuned one day, then DARED to drive on a day where it's 5 degrees colder/warmer, or in a slightly hillier region, or slightly higher altitude will look at their tune and "If only there was some kind of device that could compensate on the fly and hit a target to account for...." And now you know why Narrowbands, Widebands, and things like MAF's exist.

I have an Innovate, but it's a LC-2. I want to update to a 4.9 sensor... but the 4.2 sensor refuses to die. So considering it's that old, and I'm still using the 4.2 sensor means that I think that not all Innovates are created equally, or sensor position matters a lot. I have a brand new 4.9 sensor sitting in a box waiting for the day... but..

Also you're fixated on the terminology here. "Very rich" isn't a measurement. Very rich relative to what? It makes perfect sense for a tuner to say "On boost, you need to run very rich" if the Tuner is comparing "very rich" relative to Stoich, and they'd be accurate. 11.5 is very rich relative to 14.7. Because anyone here knows that 14.7 on boost is not possible, terms like "Rich" and "Very Rich" and "Very Lean" and "Lean" typically revolve around/on top of the assumption that we're all running richer than stoich (14.7/lambda 1.0) to run any boost at all. If you're talking boost, 13.5 on boost is very lean, but it's still richer than stoich. 10.0 is Very Rich, and Very Rich relative to stoich. These terms are very stupid when not defined. Get the numbers, and I suspect this guy giving "bad advice" is actually giving reasonable advice, but you're fixated on words and definitions and stuff instead of getting the actual data. I reckon old mate is probably tuning to 11.8 or something on boost and all is well. As dose said, fouling plugs is usually a symptom of too much fuel OFF heavy load. How would you know for sure? GET A WIDEBAND. It's near impossible for a tuner to properly dial in off-fuel loads while using a dyno. They get it roughly in the ballpark with an assumption that a guy with a tuned perfomance car will change their plugs every 5000km anyway, so the distinction between plugs fouling at 7000km instead of 10,000km is not a concern.

It's also worth mentioning you can get custom valved suspension revalved. My OG ones from SK above did eventually start leaking after many years, and I contacted Bilstein Australia on FB who directed me to Sydney Shocks who repaired and revalved mine to my what I asked for, after they had a chat/consult about the handling behaviour I wanted in the shocks. Lets just say they ended up pretty different, and they did exactly what I asked of them. So the expertise is definitely there!

But a Skyline is not a OEM hardware flash tune. Skyline mods pretty much START at Stage .. 8 or something like that. To "fix up" a tune you have to first familiarize yourself with WTF is going on. Any tuner will realistically have a look and see if the baseline actually makes sense. If it does, then yes of course they will use that as a base and spend time tweaking and modifying it. If it's way too far from what they are used to they will start from scratch, but treating the current tune like a baseline is as good a place as any to start as long as it makes sense to do so. However it is a CYA technique. They do not expect that the tune to be 30 seconds of work away from being perfect, and they have a paying customer with a complaint that they very much want to resolve. To do that properly they quote high and will go over everything to make the thing work as well as possible. It would be crazy for them to assume that they can make a fast tweak to fix a tune made by someone else on a car they don't know. It could also not be a software problem as well.

I should restate, after watching the video I feel bad about my 'Maybe' vote and want to revoke it. My 'Maybe' was basically dependent on scientific testing to know for sure.... and now I know for sure. So just don't. I don't doubt that some time in the future there will be good tyres that come out of there like pretty much any developing place.

I want to say that I would consider it for a commuter-only-cheap-as-chips-car. Because the floor for handling in 99.9% of performance is "Can I emergency stop, probably in the wet, once". If there's tyres that can do that, that's all tyres really need to do. There's also a video of Tyre Reviews man plowing through a human shaped obstacle, so perhaps they can't do that task well enough :p

That's the kicker for me anyway, wrinkle paint on interior pieces seems weird. You could probably re-texture it by pressing something in there, but at some point you could get the whole thing flocked or lined with cloth or some other option. Sadly the scratches on mine are really pretty severe. They happen when people take the head unit out. The head unit/center carrier 'thing' has some wild edges on it that just mutilate the plastic when people are in the process of taking it out/removing plugs and twisting it this way and that to disconnect it all, or reconnect it all.

The problem I've found is that these panels have a texture to them. So sanding them removes the texture, which means you'd have to re-sand it all, and re-texture it all in some uniform fashion. I believe there's various kinds of plastic fillers that are probably well suited for this, but I only ever noted it in the "Doable but pretty damn hard basket". Plus, my scratches are on the passenger side :p

Sorry yea - I know 93 = 98 = Premium, I only said Hello USA because that's how people use the term, nobody down under refers to anything 93 But I was wrong, and it was Canada, aye. So hello, better USA.

None of those are important and you should save $ and accept sad and depressed life, which is what a SUV is. Get from A to B, and be miserable. It's the JDM way. (the other alternative is get from A to B, maybe)

Another rule: No SUV is cool. Buy the most boring reliable one available, always. If it's boring and shit, that is what a SUV is.

Ye, Toyota finally settled by the 2JZ vs RB25/26 feud by having BMW run in with a steel chair :p

I think you'll find that the cost of this bare shell would have gone up considerably since then, so be mindful if anyone bumps this thread to not entertain the absolute steal that a 8K 34 GTT coupe shell would be (and was, back then)

Yeah the stock ECU has a fuel cut at 180kmh. Having a car with a screamer without a tune would boggle the mind, but I admit this and "I had to sell it due to emergency financial situations" do somewhat go hand in hand with regards to questionable mod paths. The cars are 90's cars with not-great-fuel economy to begin with, the often quoted figure is 11-12L/100km, and that'd be with a manual, not a old style torque converter auto which would have added to it. Now if your N/A one got 13.3/100 then I suspect your foot or commute is heavier than most. I remember commuting to Sydney I got 600km from a 50L fillup for purely highway driving. The fact you know there is a speedo cut at 180kmh is also a bit of a giveaway that your driving has not exactly been economy focused, plus the previous N/A being involved in a smash. Correlation doesn't mean causation but...... y'know.

You won't know until you know. It's possible whoever had the mods used a different ECU when using them, and put a stock ECU back in. Have you done something crazy like a full tank of gas doing nothing but cruising along at 100kmh? And I mean nothing? because look at your economy then and you will know if something is out or not. The mysterious loudness implies there could be a leak, and some of your driving is going into making noise instead of it efficiently giving power to the ground. I don't mean skids, I mean boost leak etc etc etc and/or something else is off. It is not because it is auto. You can barely even hear the turbo in a genuinely stock R34 GTT at full throttle, even if you actively listening out for it.

Huh! TIL I guess. I found that the LS fit easier than the RB does. There was questions about getting around the steering side of things, but in the end there's plenty of space, even though it looks like there's no way before headers actually get made up. I remember sitting in a XR6T at a tuner when we were getting fuel, and hearing the BOV do it's thing at like 8kmh in 3rd gear and thinking "This is just absolute bullshit, this is a whole nother level than a RB" But hey. I also wanted less transient lag. A barra still has _some_ But generally speaking, you need to do the same things with a LS swap that you would need to do with a Barra swap. I'm with you on EV's, and they all handle great for what they weigh. However, they still outweigh their ability to carve up a track, especially for say an interval that's longer than a 5 minute session which is still a non-starter for track people. Nobody would accept a 5 minute session for a full track day. However on a single hot lap, can't really argue that a Model S Plaid being in the same conversation space as P1's, 918's, Huracan Track specials is incredible. And that's as is. In a world with lighter batteries, a scenario where a car makes 3000KW if you use its battery charge like now, but it's restricted to "only" dispense 1000kw max, and weighs half as much, put in a sports car chassis? That "next step" is amazing, potential wise. We're all oldies riding harleys now, in a world full of better performing sports bikes, putting around in our vintage cars. Pick up your hats, fellas. (side note, wore one of these and people were offended how good it looked on me, so I'm ready)

There's no way it fits and is easier than a LS swap. It basically has exactly all the same elements of doing a LS swap though, though the Barra is a bit bigger and you have to worry about Turbo things (and rebuilding/looking at the motor to make RB power unless you get a late model barra). I wanted to do the Barra thing, but the main reason I wanted to walk away from the RB was dealing with turbo problems at the track with turbo lines, overheating, space and all that. I told myself that if I really wanted a turbo I could have a turbo LS, and that doing the LS would be fundamentally simpler :p I say ad nauseam: Getting it to work is easy. Getting it to work well is extremely hard. EV's powertrain is supreme, it's instant peak power all the time with no downsides. Around a curve though still a lot remains to be desired. However, if the weight issue becomes solved, I can imagine a track day where you do your 20 minute session, then charge for 40 minutes for your next session, and away you go again. That said that is a niche situation for 99.9% of people. However a lot of the 0.1% are on this forum. :p

@pavilionbucket this ad with it's last two images is a good insight into how much a barra swap would cost. Once you get started, and if you have a mind to do things 'correctly', this is the outcome.

Also yeah, that is a reasonably good result for petrol at 19psi. I'd say this is working as one would expect. If you dialled in 25psi into it it may be interesting to see what it'd do, but because you're on 93 (hello USA) the answer is probably knock. Almost all of the results you read here are on E85, which makes dramatic differences.

I thought about barra'ing mine when I put the LS in. To be completely honest, there's no real way of it being sensible unless the car you want literally does not exist (mine didn't at the time.) But for a barra to work, you more or less need the entire drivetrain and electronics and a lot of know how, not to mention if you want to do it right you're going to need specalist fabricators to do things like exhausts, aircon custom setups etc, including wiring. It's really not for the faint of heart. In 2024, your money can go into far more sensible car places. It'd be SO simpler to get a FG and lighten it and call it a day, or get a Mustang. Or if you want something lighter, a MKV Supra is going to save you a lot more sanity for probably the same total price once you're all in. A modern GTT is either the MKV Supra or something like a 240/440i with the B58 and ZF8. They can be had for outrageously cheap, relative to this thought experiment.

This is not what I said. What I said was, any shop. ANY TUNER, EVER, is only going to get your tune dialled into like 80% of how nice it can be. This is not a knock against tuners. This is just because there's only so well you can dial a car in in a couple of hours on a dyno. You (and they, and anyone) needs TIME and lots of it, to really dial in a car. People are not going to pay 200+ hours of dyno time to fully tune a car. But your labor is free. In any scenario, you would get a tuner to do the baseline stuff, and tune the car. You can learn and refine it, to patch up the little gaps that WILL be in there, because tuners cannot predict the future, which is exactly what GTSBoy is saying. Having things like Wideband O2 control is a very useful training tool where as something like Nistune is a more 'basic' ECU, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's better/easier to learn on. You have much less safeties in it too. You get tuning wrong, you can destroy your motor in seconds.