proengines

Some of the S1 blocks don't have the turbo oil feed drilled all the way through, check it with a piece of wire and make sure it goes all the way through the block and into the gallery behind the oil filter housing. You can drill it, just need a long series drill to do it. I've only seen one block like that but it's worth a check.

If you're going to go the spacer plate route you're better off using an SR20 rod seeing you're already making a spacer plate you might as well get the rod ratio better. You also get 22mm pins as a bonus. You need to reduce the stroke slightly to get everything to turn inside the cradle without a lot of modifying and it's not a big hassle given you need to machine the big end journals down anyway to fit the RB26/SR20 rods. I had one dummied up ages ago and it's a lot of work to do, crank work, flanged sleeves, spacer plate, custom studs, sealing the spacer plate etc etc.. using an RB30 block is a lot cheaper. Not necessarily better but definitely cheaper.

I'd recommend using ACL bearings above anything else. They're a proper performance bearing rather than a stock replacement.

I set up a Petersen dry sump drive mandrel today on an ATI rb26 balancer with the P/S drive. No real hassle, just had to machine up a spacer to bring the drive gear past the face of the P/S pulley and machine some thrust washers for each side of the drive gear as the pump gear didn't have any. I should have taken some photos, I'll see if the guy I did it for can snap a few before it goes back in.

The oil squirter in the factory rod isn't there to oil the pin, it's to oil the thrust side of the bore. It will squirt a fair bit of oil around but again, you're relying on splash or mist rather than a jet of oil to the pin. If your rods have the grooves in them I wouldn't worry about doing anything else, it will oil the pins and do some piston cooling.

it's worth doing if you're looking to make >450-500kw or the valve seats in the head are low. Cutting for bigger valves does give you a little more to work with on the short side plus it's easier to get the seats at a good height after you replace valve guides because they rarely end up concentric to the seat when you replace them.

ah ok, if that's the case then they have 3/8" bolts.

You can get a vacuum relief valve to limit the amount of vacuum the pump will pull in the crankcase. Vacuum is a big benefit as long as you still get the oiling you need and piston pins are one of the things you need vapour/splash for, particularly in engines without piston oil squirters. A roots gear set is a pretty good vacuum pump, particularly when it's well oiled and you have 4 of them sucking so pressure fed pins or a squirter might be a good idea in that case. A .5-.75mm deep cut with a 2mm ball end milling cutter on the thrust face of the big end pointing directly at the pin would work well to get oil up to the pin and under the piston if you don't want to go the edm route.

There's not many rods around with forced pin oiling until you get to the top end stuff as the holes are usually edm'ed to keep the diameter down. I don't think it's a big benefit unless you're running a vacuum pump and pulling all the oil vapour out of there. A couple of small cuts with a small ball end milling cutter on the thrust face of the big end sends plenty of oil up to the pin and under the piston.

I haven't used the Precision rods. Anyone who has, can you tell me if they really use a 5/16" rod bolt in them? surely not. Maybe if they were an L19 or Carr bolt it may be a different story. I know some scat ones used to on the SR20 and 3S toyota rods but even they have 3/8" bolts now. Thats a lot of load on a little bolt! Spool and most others run a 3/8" bolt.

I machined a set a while ago for a bloke who had already bought them. I had to narrow the rod and machine the outside of it to allow it to fit down the bore, they weren't made to fit an 86mm bore. These rods also needed the small end narrowed to fit between the pin bosses. Now that there are good quality rods made specificaly for the RB30 at a good price, it's a bit of a waste of time unless you can machine them yourself and buy them very cheap to start with. Most of the used nascar rods for sale are too long (6.2-6.3") to start with though they do run Jap bearing sizes and metric pins. You do need to remember that stuff is used as well and you don't have rod bolt lengths to compare to original and it is probably worth having them crack tested. Some of them also aren't bushed on the small end and require a DLC coated pin, check the price on them.. In all honesty I'd just buy a set of Spool rods, great price, excellent dimensionally and weight-wise and I haven't seen a broken one yet. I used them in an engine recently that ran 3rd (i think) in the last Superlap event and recently had the engine apart and they looked and measured like new.

Where is the need for that much pressure? I left both relief springs in it, I'd just don't see a benefit to it. I'm not knocking the pump, it would be nice to know a little background on it. I don't care if they're made in china as long as they're made properly.

Given that you've spoken to Nitto, do you know where the pumps are made? I'd have more luck finding Mr Snuffleupagus than info on Nitto.

I'd be very interested to know Paul, thanks. The new flyer is a little better written anyway, it would be nice to know the grade of metal used for the gears, just saying "EN series" allows a pretty big variety of materials. The pumps look the part, I still think the relief pressure they are set at is way too high though.

Does anyone have an idea why the nitto pump has been changed to use a billet cover plate rather than the cast one they originally had? Call me paranoid but I just fitted one that had a cast cover plate.

The rods will break before the bolts do on a 25.

James, hylomar wont hurt if the new gaskets aren't coated. You can use the old seal to push the new one in squarely.

Try fitting an RB25/26 idler on the passenger side rather than using two tensioners, it will loosen the belt up quite a bit.

Dart are smart, they have dropped the cost of their blocks to gain back the market, great idea if you can afford to do it. The rest of their products probably cover the cost. The thing with Chinese stuff is, if you specify exactly what you want and supply drawings etc, then get samples, then keep a check on the quality, you get a good product at a good price. I've used some chinese 4g63 and Subaru cranks and they are not bad stuff. Spool rods, wherever Brad has them made are made to his specs and are better than the competition. He does supply specs, drawings and such for what he gets made. I know this for sure because I did a little cad stuff a while back for him. The problem with some parts is they make them to a price rather than a quality, it used to be the same with Taiwanese machinery, it was junk, now it's some of the best around. Chinese stuff will get better as time goes on. Look at their space program, at least one out of every 3 rockets they launch now actually makes it into space and doesn't crash into a town near the launch site. One day it will probably be 2 out of 3..

Chinese cast iron blocks are not a nice thing from those I've seen, the same with cylinder heads. There are copies of the Dart Chev blocks coming from China now and they look good but the hardness just isn't there and the geometry apparently isn't great. There's a long thread about them on speedtalk at the moment. Some stuff from China is really good, including many of the cheaper US branded conrods but a block is a lot more complex item. There are even fake ARP bolts being made there, it's good to know that the Spool rods run genuine ARP bolts, they arrive in the ARP packet separate to the rods. Some other rods around have bolts that look a little suss, they have ARP stamped on the head but not the finish you would expect on the rest of the bolt or no brand at all.

Rob, does the Haltech have the facility to use the knock sensors? I'm computer dumb where it comes to tuning. If you can use them, use them for sure. Have you got it up and going yet?

I have laser cut plates made that bolt in place for the tensioner to bolt up against. You need to cut 10mm off the back of the tensioner centre post, best done in a lathe so it's square.

Ideally, A fit with almost no clearance would be good but unfortunately you need to take into account manufacturing tolerances when the block and oil pump are made. The main tunnels and the inner gear centreline will never be perfectly concentric which is why they need the clearance they have. Saying that, they are very close. My opinion, the N1 pump suffers from a brittle material compounded by a relatively thin wall section on the inner gear. The same drive style is used on SR20's, FJ20's, CA18's all EJ Subarus, 4AG toyotas and a lot more. There isn't excessive clearance on an RB pump, photo below of a std RB gear sitting over one of my collars.

It means you only need use the TDC mark when setting the timing, you dial the advance in on the timing light so you don't need to work out what other marks are on the balancer or timing tab on the engine. Also very useful when you're looking at total advance at higher revs, you just flash the light at the pointer, bring up the revs and use the dial to keep the tdc pointer aligned then read the advance off the light. Probably more useful on older stuff where you play around with a distributor but they are still a handy item to check. A lot of engines timing marks only read to 10 or 15 degrees so past that you can't see what's going on without one.

4140 is a good material for the gears. I spoke to the heat treaters who recommended it over 4340 because although the 4140 doesn't end up as hard, it will not be as brittle. Hardness isn't as critical as toughness for the gears as they are very well lubricated and wear isn't a big issue. Cost wise there's very little difference. If you weren't going to harden the gears you'd use en26 or similar.