GTSBoy

From what I understand, the normal Nismo diff is a bit harsh, and the Pro is the one that behaves more nicely, and you only pay Nismo tax twice to get it.

Don't you have specialist fastener warehouses? I can point to a non-trivial number of them in my city of 1.5 mllion people. Sassafras agencies is a 2 minute walk from my office. United Fasteners is almost exactly halfway between my work and my house, so less than 15km from each. All metric sizes, all SAE sizes, all materials, all thread pitches, all form factors. I know the street address of one and have walked into and bought stainless bolts, nuts and washers from, 2000km away in a regional centre in Western Australia with a population of <200000. Only mugs buy their fasteners at hardware stores. Our version of Lowes or the orange hellzone is called Bunnings. A rip off merchant of cheaply made exclusive home brand Chinese excreta of the first order. We can walk into Blackwoods, which is the Oz equivalent of Grainger, and get robbed blind, but at least it's getting robbed blind on proper industrial grade gear.

Or a useable metric unit?

Now we're getting somewhere. All we need is a fractional rotor system so we can also have the RX3 and 5 back, and the world will be right again.

Well, the NC is just an RX8 anyway, right?

Connected to plenum towards the rear end. Yes, absolutely required for the ECU. Even Nistune can't save you if you don't have it.

Yes no yes. Pineapple rings do do a certain amount of subframe "locking up", in that they do add some resistance to lateral movements. But the primary reason they exist is to alter the driveline angle. Depending on how you install them you can either increase or decrease rear traction __ a little bit __ by changing the angle of the lower control arms relative to the car/pinion angle. The thing is, given what they are, how and where they are installed, their lack of engagement with anything in particular, there's a limit to how much benefit they can offer. The GKTech collars put metal into the space in the stock format bushes, thereby limiting how much give they have. The rubber is still there to take up some force, albeit perhaps preloaded a little by having some extra metal jammed up into it, but the increase in stiffness comes from making it so that the stock format bush can't deflect that large bit of rubber over into the space adjacent to it, in any direction. Top AND bottom. Which the pineapples certainly do not do. As I said in my other thread - I'm convinced.

I think he's already demonstrated that that's the way he's treating it post the paint jail release.

There's a fair chance that my bushes are Nismo, because I'm reasonably sure that when asked the question (when putting the subframe into the car in ~2012) "What bushes do you want to run?", I'm pretty sure I would have answered "The stiff ones!". I had to put some silicone grease onto the GKTech inserts I jammed into them last week, because the bushes were quite resistant to having something jammed up their jacksies. So, I reckon you'll be best off doing Nismo + inserts. And, if I'd known you had PU bushes in the subframe AND PU pineapples, I perhaps would have said earlier that that's probably not a good idea. The pineapples are only intended to work with the stock type bushes, because those have a crush tube (which is what makes it end up looking like there is sloppy space in there - but doesn't, because the crush tube does make contact steel to steel) and the pineapples live in the space between the subframe's outer tube and the lower washer/bracket. But the PU bushes don't leave the space in the same way that the stock format ones do, and they do end up fighting for space. Order some bushes and collars and get to it.

All of that is absolutely true. At any time in the history of these turbos the lottery has always been that it could die at stock boost treated exactly as the factory intended, or it could die when pushed to 10, or 12, or 14, or 16 psi, after a short time, or a longer time, or it could last seemingly forever. You have the combination of all the possible statistical (probably) normal distributions of manufacturing tolerances and quality outcomes, on top of the statistical distributions of failure modes (which might be normal, but are probably biased, like Poisson distributions). You get the lucky turbo and you can beat on it for years. You get the really unlucky turbo and it will crap itself as it rolls out of the factory gate. And every possibility in between. But you can definitely still kill the lucky turbo. It's just that most people didn't try, once they knew they really shouldn't try.

Yeah, but it's not "boost" that they can take more of. Well, I guess it actually is. They are the same turbine, driving different compressors. I think the failure is more of a turbine temperature and (probably mostly) speed thing. I think the RB25s end up needing the turbine to reach higher speeds in order to drive the compressor to achieve the same boost level. So they will fail at lower boost on a 25 because they've actually reached the same failure speed that they do on a 20 at a higher boost pressure. If that makes sense?

It's a lottery. I ran my RB20 turbo at 17 psi for a while. It survived, went on to run for many many more years at 14 psi. Was still good when the engine was pulled to make way for the big block. RB25 turbo died as it came onto boost, never having been over 12 psi in my 10+ years of using it.

And if one is a BMW and the other is a Skyline, they will probably both be broken at the same time.

There's a lot of drug money on that side of Sydney. Just sayin'.

Mine is not even a GTR and I've been resisting the urge to make it a power monster for the last 25 years. And as a consequence, I have driven it to work nearly every day across that span of time.

No need to drill any holes. There's plenty of access to reach through and behind all of that steel to "push" from behind with a pulling action on the slide hammer. There's all sorts of attachments you can screw on the end of them.

It seems the definition of "Gregging" something might need to be expanded?

This is why I suggested that there is really nothing that can safely be done in the engine bay at this budget level. Just the work to reassure yourself that the engine won't instantly crap itself the moment the boost gets turned up will wear out the piggy bank long before the first turbo gets installed. Spend $10k and still not have any extra performance? My tip is a version of our standard advice from 15 years ago about buying a GTR, which is not to buy one unless you can afford to buy two. The new version is not to modify a GTR unless you have all the funds required to do it all at once, properly, and enough to rebuild it after it blows up.

15 years is not too long to hold onto something like that, right?

Hmm. I don't think it is possible. As soon as you start, you will be on the hook for all the money. $5-10k is enough to make it fragile. Here's the list of things you need to do to make it nice, and driveable. If Japanese coilovers, get them measured and tested, then decide if you're keeping them or replacing them. If low rate springs, then consider big ARBs. If high rate springs, then probably leave stock ARBs. Either way, ad decent end links. Replace and/or upgrade all suspension bushes. That's LCAs front and rear, UCAs & traction arms at rear, caster rods at front. I highly recommend GKTech FUCAs, although the step to spherical joints is a step too far for some people. Rebuild brakes front and rear. This means making sure the calipers are healthy, discs are up to thickness, hoses are replaced with braided. Add good pads and fluid. Investigate wheel bearings all the way around, tie rod ends all the way around, upright bearings at the front, balljoints everywhere. Any of these that are still original are likely to be a bit wibbly nowadays. Bride or Recaro driver's seat, with fairly deep sides. Nice tyres. Street performance wheel alignment. Or track focused, if you're not going to use it on the road. Fluids everywhere if not known to be fresh. Now, learn to drive the car as hard as it will go, before trying to add any power. Save up big $$. $5k is the minimum cost for putting a decent ECU into it. A big single, with manifold, new exhaust, injectors, fuel system upgrade, ignition upgrade, triggering upgrade, etc, is >>$10k. None of that (except the ECU) is a good idea on an old RB. You really should put head studs in it, investigate engine health (compression and leak down, real oil pressure at revs, coolant condition, etc) before even considering adding power. There's nothing sadder than the "I added boost then it shat the bed" thread.

I don't have a printer, but could at least attempt to make a printable model.

Surely the cam timing is set to something stupid at low RPM?

KYBs are typically twin tube, putting them in the lower tier of desireability. Do you just want to replace worn out ones for the lowest cost? I mean, you wouldn't just replace one end of a car, if the rears are a similar age to the fronts, then they are probably nowhere near what they should be, and likely won't be great against brand new fronts. So, to spend ~$800 on 2nd tier dampers, when you could get a decent set of MCA coilovers for <$4k.....? As to the strut tops. 1st up, the Sparesbox site specifically tells you that they are not correct for an R33. Beyond that, why do you think you need them?

Now that these are NLA, I suspect the answer is going to be to 3D print the plastic bit and glue on some felt or something to replace the brush. I have one or two of them (new) in the shed to go onto the car at some point. I could put some effort into measuring them up and could attempt to draw up the printed part in FreeCAD, if there is interest.

Yeah, unless you're doing it by the book, your data is probably not useful. Boiling point drops rapidly with only just a little water in it.