GTSBoy

Yes, well, mine were 31 years old last year when they finally got done. Started to leak a bit.

Yes. It's either "2 wires", or 1 wire, depending on how you look at it. It is the connection that ties the battery -ve to both the chassis and the engine. Every electron that goes in or out of the battery goes through those 2 small spots (on the inner guard and on the engine block). If those are not clean and tight, then shit starts to suffer. Yeah, but measure it again cold in the morning, after it has had hours to rest. You can't usefully test the charge state of a battery immediately after it has been running because the alternator puts a surface charge onto the plates that takes a while to soak in and balance out. It will always read higher, and potentially look properly healthy, when fresh off of charge. But hours later it can look a lot less healthy. It's also worth measuring the battery voltage while cranking, although this can be difficult with a typical DMM because the screem update rate is so slow on most of them. An analogue voltmeter is actually a better tool for that. If the voltage drops too far while cranking, it is a sign of a poor battery. Although I don't think we're necessarily looking for a weak battery here - just wanting to exclude it.

Meanwhile, 20+ years ago, I pulled out the 105mm hole saw and went straight down through the inner guard in front of the airbox to get my stormwater pipe cold air intake in. Right behind the two stock holes for the intercooler pipes. Those have no reinforcement (apart from a couple of robust pieces of steel pipe through them!). I feel that the Australian vehicle standards crews put way too much emphasis on "maintaining the crash performance" of cars and not enough consideration of "any crash is a new and wonderful experiment with a random selection of parameters and you will never be able to tell if an extra 80mm hole through some sheet metal caused a significant difference...but if you close your eyes and squint at the whole structure, engage your engineering brain and have a good think about it, you'd have to expect that it would do jack all."

Yeah, if you can't breathe for more than about 2 minutes, you're cooked.

Well, all the power should be getting dissipated across the starter motor. Therefore, ideally, the voltage drop across the earth lead should be convincingly close to zero. Certainly you'd want it to be only a volt or so at max, because otherwise that volt doesn't turn up at the starter to do what is required. A car can probably survive a bad enough earth to crank and start with only 9V or so at the starter motor, maybe even a bit less. But you're seeing only 8V at the battery terminals when cranking, so there can't even be that much available over at the starter, which simply won't do. I would have thought that you couldn't pull enough current (with a healthy starter) to make the battery drop to 8V locally. But I was ignoring the possibility that the starter is in fact crook. If it has shorted windings (or maybe the solenoid is borked and shorting to earth) then I guess it could pull a stack of current and not even look like wanting to turn over. So follow the other boys' reccos too. Because they are just as likely at this point.

Depending on exactly where that voltage is being measured, that is most likely the battery is f**ked. If the multimeter probes are on the battery's own terminals, then it is f**ked. If they are on the car's terminals, then there is a bad connection. Either are fatal to the attempt to start it. Literally just put it on the 20VDC range, put one probe on the battery's -ve terminal (ideally not the car's terminal) and the other on the block somewhere exposed/metal, like an engine mount bolt head. You can also test the earth lead is steps, so from battery to body earth, body earth to engine connection point, engine connection point to some other spot on the engine, to see if you can isolate where a shit connection actually is.

You'd be better off digging a pit and standing under it to shoot it.

Yeah, but "restomod" implies Singer and things like it, which implies drug money / trust fund maturity.

Sneaky. I heard the price was more than 4x that only an hour ago!

Not stock. All remade. Mostly looks stock because the pipes run to and from the standard holes in the inner guard to get to the return flow FMIC. I'm not sure which question you're trying to ask, because it seems like "stock position" vs "stock position".

Essentially, yes. Although I wouldn't put the AFM on the crossover pipe. I'd want to put it into what amounts to the correct size tube, which is more easily done in the intercooler pipework. I bought a mount tube for card style AFM that replaces the stock AFM - although being a cheap AliExpress knockoff, it had no flange and I had to make and weld my own. But it is the same length and diameter as the stock RB AFM, goes on my airbox, etc etc. I don't have a sick enough rig to warrant anything different, and the swap will take 5 minutes (when I finally get around to it and the injectors & the dyno tune).

While it is a very nice idea to put card style AFMs into the charge pipe (post intercooler, obviously), the position of the AFM and the recirc valve relative to each other starts to become something that you really have to consider. The situation: The stock AFM is located upstream the turbo, and the recirc valve return is located between the AFM and the turbo inlet, aimed at the turbo inlet, so that it flows away from and not through the AFM. Thus, once metered air is not metered again, neither flowing forwards, or backwards, when vented out of the charge pipe. When you put the AFM between the turbo outlet and the TB, there is a volume of pressurised charge pipe upstream of the AFM and there is a volume of pressurised pipe downstream of the AFM. When the recirc valve opens and vents the charge pipe, air is going to flow from both ends of the charge pipe towards the recirc valve. If the recirc valve is in the stock location, then the section between it and the TB doesn't really matter here - you're not going to try to put the AFM in that piece of pipe. But the AFM will likely be somewhere between the intercooler and the recirc valve, So the entire charge pipe volume from that position (upstream of the AFM, back through the intercooler, to the turbo outlet) is going to flow through the AFM, get registered as combustion air, cause the ECU to fuel for it, but get dumped out of the recirc valve and you will end up with a typical BOV related rich spike. So ideally you want to put the AFM as close to the TB as possible (so, just upstream of the crossover pipe, assuming that the stock crossover is still in use, or, just before the TB if an FFP is being used) and locate the recirc valve at the turbo outlet. Recirc valve at the turbo outlet is the new normal for things like EFRs anyway. In the even of a recirc valve opening dumping all the air in the charge pipe, pretty much all of it is going to go backwards, from the TB to the recirc valve near the turbo outlet. But only a small portion of it (that between the TB and the AFM) will pass through the AFM, and it will pass through going backwards. The card style AFMs are somewhat more immune to reading flow that passes through them in reverse than older AFMs are, so you should absolutely minimise the rich pulse behaviour associated with the unavoidable outcome of having both a recirc valve and an AFM in the charge pipe.

It's certainly not the first choice, but it is a perfectly good bandaid when the alternative is to anger f**k the thing with a blowtorch. It's not just noise. It f**ks bearings.

This almost never happens these days. No. Clean your battery terminals and make sure they are tight. Use sandpaper on a dowel if you have to, to get oxidation off the inside of the terminals, particularly on the -ve. Check the earth cable from battery post to chassis ground and engine ground. Make sure the contact surfaces are clean - including the threads on the bolts that anchor them - because that's where a lot of the contact occurs. Wire wheel on a drill is a good thing for this. Make sure the crimps on those cables are all sound. Assuming none of that causes an improvement: Check the battery voltage after it has been resting for a while. If it's at the lower end of the range, put it on charge for a while, then see if it will crank better.

Something coarse-ish. 180 is good.

You can also get belt dressing in a spray can which can help to settle a belt in that otherwise wants to slip.

Belt polished and/or pulley(s) glazed. Rub pulleys with sandpaper, replace belt.

The downside to that is that the cost of everything, particularly labour, is significantly higher here than it is over there in the Disunited States of Slavery. You can hire 3 tradesmen over there for just the Ranger Raptor allowance of a single 3rd year apprentice over here.

Shit. Starting to look like a car again.

Ceramic coating and heat shielding, you mean?

If you go 2.8, you're going to want bigger turbos. Scratch that. If you go 2.8, you're going to want one single larger turbo.

Yuh. It is very rare for a single turbo to throw ceramic into the engine. Quite common on GTRs. As I posted above. Mine did destroy the O2 sensor on the way out though! Plastic compressor is fine with the temperature. It's not some flimsy PE/PET/PP thermoplastic. It's a thermoset resin with reinforcing material in it (a composite, as posted by @Lithium above). The compressor never sees much more than 100°C because it's never boosting very high. If you boost it high enough to make a lot of temperature, then the turbine will depart the scene and stop the party anyway.

Yes, but it's not as easy as pulling a fuse on anything other than an R32. There's a routine you have to do, involving disconnecting a loom plug and bleeding down the preload.

Son, in this country, that is a piece of Gyprock. f**king drywall. FFS! I also like the autocorrect of trailer to tablet. I was reading it and thing, "what the hell drugs is he on?" Then the photo made it clear enough.

As @Duncan said - the bores are most likely to cop it. But anything can and does happen. Rods are cheap. Rods are good. The work to rebuild the motor will be 30x the price of rods. You won't notice it.