GTSBoy

Yeah, no surprise there. The chances of getting the fuelling right with a DE ECU trying to run turbo injectors with boost are slim to none. The chances of the timing advance being right (ie, not way the hell too much) are even lower. You will be lucky not to have damaged the engine if you have managed to put it under any serious load. Yes, but..... You really shouldn't try to run the factory ECU without any mods to it at all - even if you didn't have an FFP. By this I mean that the only sensible way to run a standard ECU is with a Nistune put into it, so you can tune it, to get the best out of it. And if you have something unnecessary, like an FFP, then it would be almost mandatory to be able to tune it, because the FFP will definitely interfere with the air distribution (compared to the stock plenum) and you'd want to be able to deal with that. But, most importantly, if you do want to use a factory ECU, then you're going to need to use the factory throttlebody, because the factory ECU won't be happy with anything else. And this brings in another problem. Unless the ECU and TB are from a Stagea, then there is a bloody great big traction control auxiliary throttle in the TB. This does not fit well in front of an FFP, and you can't easily hack it off. Well, you can hack it off, but then you also need to go down the path of dealing with the DTC codes in the ECU (only possible with Nistune, by the way) and so on and so forth. Not impossible, but stuff that must be dealt with. If you must have an FFP, life will be easier with a Haltech and a modern e-throttle, so you can abandon the IACV and keep everything compact.

And, to be fair, that could be the sole source of any noise I have heard.

Yes. Coils are powered from that 2nd relay. You can bridge terminals 3&5 to take the relay out of the equation, but you can always just probe the terminals to find out if the relay is closed or not (when it would need to be, ie, when you need power to the coils).

It's not at all clear how fast the grease moves and how long it has taken to put enough muck into the speedo to be detected. It has been ~10 years since the conversion, and whatever the seal is at the drive end might never have been any good. We could just be seeing the result of a really slow process. Or, we could be seeing the result of a cable drive being a better screw pump than any could believe. it's also not clear what the seal arrangement is. It could be an o-ring or it might just be a reverse screw/helix thingo. Will have to pull it out to find out. But I think I will have to combine that with an oil change, because I think that pulling the drive out will result in something else coming out too.

2 drives down with no shenanigans. Am convinced that the grease explains all. Now all I need to do is make sure to fix the drive end before the problem comes back. Is it still called procrastination if I just forget?

Grab a couple of metres of rubber hose to use as a stethoscope and someone to use it while you drive. Get them to poke one end of it up under the dash where you think the noise is coming from and see if they can confirm/deny the location and perhaps narrow it down.

A good choice. Being in Europe, you locally have some excellent alternatives to those though. KW, for example.

OK. Thread satisfaction time. As usual, it turned out to be something slightly unexpected. Observe what I saw when it came out. Top end of speedo drive cable. And mating receptacle on the speedo. That greasy sludge stank of gearbox oil. So it would appear that the o-ring on the Navarra-Skyline hybrid speedo drive (for the R33 turbo box to run the cable drive) is buggered. Pushing oil slowly up the cable. At least the cable is super dooper well lubed now. But I'm going to have to pull the speedo drive out and fix the o-ring before it pumps any more gunk out into the speedo. To whit.... It managed to pump a reasonable amount into the cluster. And... You can see it on the outside of the alloy cup that carries the magnet. One can only presume that there was a stack of it inside that cup, in the gap where the copper speed cup runs. A good spray with cancer-in-a-can seemed to blow most of it out. A quick lick of PTFE in a can onto the various worm gears and such in the odometer train (replacing the epic amount of obvious tranny fluid that they'd managed to pick up as a fortuitous lube) and I threw it back together. There was a lot of either unrelated or possibly related filth inside the cluster, so that got a bit of a wipe also. Will go back in tomorrow morning. I'm not squatting in the car in the dark with the mozzies trying to find all the screws. I shall report on behaviour and hopefully preserved single km/h accuracy after a couple of drives. Oh, FWIW too....this is a 252k km old cluster. Everything inside was just absolutely beautiful (apart from the grime). The hairspring on the speedo, every other thing in there - all just in perfect condition. So "dying of old age" does not appear to be a thing, for things that are not abused.

I don't have opinions. Other people have opinions. I have correct positions.

Yes, those are the correct pins. A digital multimeter is possibly not fast enough reacting to show you this. An analogue meter will do better because you can see the needle flicking around. Regardless of whether the ECU outputs 12V or provides an earth, you will see 12V come and go at those terminals (with a fast enough meter). It's just the duty cycle will be opposite with the 2 approaches. If the ECU provides earth then the 12V is visible there when the ECU is not triggering. And vice versa. Having said that, the ignitor pack has a common earth on the triggering (ECU) side, which means that the ECU outputs 12V during MOSFET activation. To this end, if you wanted to, you could pulse 12V onto those terminals and see the result (if any) at the igniter and the spark plug. A quick dab on-off of a 12V jumper onto that wire will simulate the ECU charging the coil and firing it. I would also open the ECU and inspect the MOSFETs to see if they or any of their circuit tracks show signs of being cooked.

I kinda think that's the opposite of what's desireable though. I'd rather a good ride (and by that I mean actual performance, rather than comfort) than the pretty blonde fakeness of TSwift. TSwift is not even for looking at (and she's certainly not for listening to, or considering rooting). My R32 is for driving, not looking at, and so it's at the correct (minimum) ride height to maintain decent geometry. It still looks good at 345mm.

Well, except that it's way too low and the suspension geometry will have AIDS and herpes as a result. But it does look good.

Given the claims of having injector pulse and smelling fuel, not so much this. But the thought is totally valid wrt coil triggers. I would go looking to see if perhaps the ignition MOSFETs in the ECU are still working. They could have been killed by the poor earthing situation at the igniter. The ECU fires the coils by providing a path to earth for the coil charging current (actually, for the current that runs the MOSFETs in the igniter, but close enough for our purposes today) and if they refuse to change state from off to on or vice versa because they have let the magic elixir out of them them, then you get no spark.

Well, in that case best guess is KV2 Athlete Silver. But seeing as your whole car appears to have been repainted, there's no guarantees. https://www.google.com.au/search?source=univ&tbm=isch&q=kv2+-+athlete+silver&fir=3nz3n0ERnk33vM%2C6T35aLeZXlL4nM%2C_%3BeRDO93pjr2Jj5M%2CLZ_T4F5I0dFw5M%2C_%3BfVQrmqKz9LABzM%2C6T35aLeZXlL4nM%2C_%3BeiBuqVgD9JC5GM%2CLZ_T4F5I0dFw5M%2C_%3BPcQl48dTULaOwM%2CWyXoMnG0MDHzkM%2C_%3BAw1LZrZnjoxxgM%2C8BOVV2Q1-RT5ZM%2C_%3BWtdL23L_-qmYWM%2Cdu-nWFaHwFJGYM%2C_%3Bz-1-xr_D5tTpPM%2CWyXoMnG0MDHzkM%2C_%3BkhGazLt4FcunbM%2CXXL3VUSaWv21QM%2C_%3BvRfGGqhNj-xdrM%2C8BOVV2Q1-RT5ZM%2C_%3BPVFvt4v2v0tnWM%2CXXL3VUSaWv21QM%2C_%3BNZCibpirMHo-LM%2C4Lee5IDzlORrRM%2C_&usg=AI4_-kR5L-Ebb9Dk0Zjp4fIiPnkuwM2_rQ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjekY6Ogq78AhXFyzgGHfEiByQQjJkEegQICBAC&biw=1654&bih=844&dpr=1

The colour code is on the build plate - unless it's been repainted, like my car has.

I think the consensus is that the Pulsar turbos are good examples of cheap Chinese turbos, but that they are still cheap Chinese turbos, in that the tolerances/clearances etc are not....great.

It's very nice. I really mean that. FWIW, you don't really need the L brackets. The stocker just holds the battery in place by clamping it.

It's a lot of load for the one belt to have to pick up at the crank pulley and it would be difficult** to arrange the two pumps so that you go enough wrap on the crank pulley to do it. **Potentially impossible to transmit sufficient torque even should you be able to locate them so that you can get the maximum wrap around the crank pulley.

There never was that many of them in the first place, and it was all such a long time ago. Like hen's teeth. Most people, including myself, apparently, barely even remember that the R32 RB25 was closer to the RB20 than the R33 engines.

Hmm. I guess this makes the thread good reference material for the possibly two or three people in the future who will try something similar with an R32 25 head.

Could be. You're going to need and want to break out the wiring diagram so you can start probing around with the multimeter to find where the angry pixies are being blocked.

This ^. ECCS relay is suspect #1.

This concerns me. You'd rather start it with hopes and prayers when you have personally seen no oil? Oil should flow if you've had that much pressure for that length of time.

There is no problem here. Point 1. DC solenoids do not care which way that they are wired up. They throw the solenoid in the same direction regardless of current flow. Point 2. The solenoid coil is just wire. If you put 12V permanently onto one side of it, and do not earth the other side of it, then the 12V will be measurable at both terminals. That 12V is actually measurable all the way down at the ECU. The ECU doesn't care. When the ECU decides that it wants that solenoid to operate, it provides the earth, by switching on a MOSFET (transistor) inside the ECU that will connect the solenoid terminal to earth (exactly as Duncan^ said). Now the solenoid has 12V being fed in one side and a convenient earth on the other side. Current flows, solenoidy things happen.