Shoota_77

@Dorifudo @BK @UWISSH! @admS15@Dose Pipe Sutututu @Robzilla32 @Everit26 @Looney_Head (and so many others along the way that have stopped by to say hi) thanks for the kind words. I'm not gunna lie, even though this car is being built for my own selfish reasons, it is still nice to know that people either enjoy seeing it come along or will gain something from seeing what/how I've done it. Especially in tough times when you start to question what you've done and are really struggling to keep motivated. That's me right now after my recent setbacks. The kind words are the things that you grab onto to keep pushing through the pain barrier and finish it off when your mind is telling you to dump it and do something else! I appreciate it everyone, keep pushing me! ?

All in good time! What colour are you going to paint it?

Perfect finish on the bob tail Glen, looks awesome. I might hit you up to come around for another look soon, I haven't seen it for a few years now! Look forward to going for a cruise at some point too. Looks like we'll both be finished fairly soon.

I didn't make it clear but I bought the box as a fully rebuilt gearbox with cryo hardened gears. It was a few years old but had never been installed in a car. When I bought it I wasn't expecting to be making mid 500's. I know an upgrade will be on the cards sooner rather than later.

Nice! Vinny Fab do some great stuff. Manifold look awesome. Look forward to seeing it all come together!

I knew I could turn to you for help! ??

Thanks for the kind words. I'm pretty resilient normally but I've just got so much built up emotion in this car plus the frustration of failing its been a real kick in the nuts! All good, onwards and upwards!

Ok so f**k is the most appropriate word for my night last night. It's my own fault for leaving it to the last minute (well sort of my fault, mainly for putting too short a timeline on things). So after getting most of what needed doing done I lowered the car down off the hoist for the first time in many months, started it up, eased out the clutch and goddam what a noise started coming from the transmission!! It sounds like it's trying to grab 2 gears at once so making so horrid grinding noises. The transmission is one of the very few unknowns to me in this whole build. It's pretty much the only thing I haven't done myself (unless it's the transfer case which I did modify...). I bought it off someone years ago and it had allegedly just been rebuilt. Maybe it was but it wasn't checked afterwards. It seems to be fully engaging with the shifter but something is not right in there. I'll try and narrow it down by first dropping front shaft to make sure not front axles, then maybe see if I can get the transfer off while it's still in the car to see if I can eliminate that. If the noises are still there then definitely gearbox. Ahhh the joys of doing your own work ??????. Very frustrating and demoralizing to be honest but we soldier on. Will now have to put off the tune till next year unfortunately. Will mean I can finish off everything though which will be good. I need a day or two off it to clear my head first then I'm back into it.

Electric power steering is all wired up and plumbed in. On the hoist it seems to be working fine. No leaks so that's a bonus! I'll hopefully go for a slow tootle up the road tonight to see what falls off! I'm assuming I'll lose at least one major component! ? A bit of reassembly tonight, mount the water meth tank, plumb it in and we're as close as were going to get to done before the tune as was possible.

Longest gap between posts for a while.... Been very busy with work the last week and a bit. Had to get an accreditation from Audi so had a massive project to put together. Well it felt massive anyway (that's what she said???) seeing it's been so long since I last studied anything other than hot birds down the street... So, I had to pull all of the wiring out from under the dash (prick of a job when you have ABS) as I had to add some extra wires (turbo speed sensor, water meth wiring, new single channel wideband 02 controller, Haltech rotary dial plus some other stuff). I realized that when doing wiring I procrastinate a lot as it's such a fiddly prick of a job! I don't mind it, I just CBF doing it! I worked out all my wiring loom branch locations on the engine then stripped it all out and wrapped it with wiring loom tape (no, not electrical tape, loom tape is wider and a nicer matte finish). During the process I discovered what my engine miss was. On the Haltech loom the injector wires are blue with a trace. Cylinder 5 and 6 are a yellow and an orange trace. The yellow trace is a lot wider but in the average light of my shed they look the same colour. You can see where I'm going here..... Yep, back to front! It was running amazingly well considering 2 cylinders were running off fuel that was sitting in the manifold at the wrong time! It wasn't a miss, more of a stumble/hesistation. I started it up after reassembly and all seems good! Thank God as it was still worrying me. Still got to replaced my crappy Mishimoto fans with some Davies Craig fans, mount the water meth tank, then just do as much as i can to get it ready to go back on the road (bumpers, bonnet, headlights, etc). Tune is booked for Thursday so at this point I think we're looking pretty good with a few nights left to go. The good wife gave me some money for my birthday to put towards some personalised number plates so got GTR21. Bit wanky but I like them! They're a bit taller than I'd prefer but they'll do.

Ok the noise is your release bearing. Should have been replaced when clutch was done. If not, don't use that mechanic again... Unless the sound is there for a little while when you put your foot on the clutch then stops after a bit? If it does that then it's spigot bush in the crank. Again, should always be done during clutch replacement. With the rev limit, is it revving cleanly or is it stuttering and carrying on to get up to its max revs?

Nice video! Well edited.

Good job! It is tricky to get it tightened to the correct torque with the engine still in the car. It won't take as much effort to torque it as it was to loosen though. Definitely use a torque wrench (a big one!) to get it to the right torque as it coming loose is worse than it being hard to get off!

It'll be fine with what you've removed. You're not trying to start it so no problem. It's just a quick hit on the starter 4 or 5 times. If done right zero issues.

A couple of things you can try. Firstly, in addition to what you listed above, get someone to jam their foot on the brake as hard as they can. That might give you enough resistance to get it undone. Put a length of pipe over your breaker bar to give you as much leverage as possible. If all else fails and it's not highly recommended but...... Long breaker bar, large chunk of wood to prevent damage to the car (chassis rail), remove everything in the way on the passenger side of the front of the engine and loosen it with the starter motor. Have the breaker bar sitting 6 inches above the chunk of wood and bump the key. It might take a few goes before it comes loose. Each time it hits but not loosens, lift the breaker bar back up where it was and bump it again. As I say this is not highly recommended but sometimes the only way to get it loose. Disconnect your coils so you don't start the car.... Shocking quality video but you get the idea. He's doing it the "underhand" way but eaither way will work deepending of which side you have more room.

Stunning! I'd never own one in black but it does look great.

@Robzilla32 dunno what you're talking about mate, must be because he's sitting down! ? Ha ha, nah you're spot on, I'm a freakishly big mofo!

Exciting (sort of....) when you find out tour 'replica Nismo front bumper and is actually a genuine Nismo 400R bumper! I better keep it now, I was going to turf it and track down a genuine plastic bar... It needs a few small repairs and a repaint but that will have to wait till my credit card has some fresh air between what's currently on it and the credit limit...

Ok this one may make a few people scratch their head and ask "Why?" particularly when they see where i did what, but well I did it because I could..... So what I did was remove the power steering pump and replace it with an electric power steering setup. Astra of course! I know most people put them in the boot and use weight balance as a justification for the exercise but I'm not most people! I looked at a lot of locations but decided to leave it at the front because i can retain the existing return line cooler and just replace the pressure line with -6 hose. I'm going to try fitting a pressure regulator in the return line (not set too high) and a one way valve in the pressure side to see if holds a bit of pressure across the pump. I've heard people complain about a slight delay in building pressure but that might just be because of long hose runs from the back of the car. It certainly makes a lot of room in the front of the engine! One less belt to fly off or need to replace too... The random photo is a guy I handed over a $200K Audi RS4 Avant (wagon) to during the week. He won it in the Audi Foundation raffle. Not a bad return on a $50 ticket! The winner cant drive the car without modification so the car is most likely for sale for around the $135K mark (pre onroads) if anyone is interested... Amazing V6 twin turbo 331kw beast!

Ok, sort of an update. The car is mostly back together but I've decided to postpone the tune from this Thursday to in a couple of weeks time. At about 10:30 last night being about the 40th consecutive night (give or take a few nights where I had stuff on or was away for work) I've worked on the car I decided that two days just wasn't going to give me the time to get it all done to a level that I was happy with. There are still a few things that I want finished to a higher level than I would have if I was handing it over to the tuners on Thursday. It was a gut wrenching decision to be honest but comparable to the effort required to get the car to the tuner to find something went wrong it was the preferred option! I live 3 hours each way from the tuner and they need it for 2 or 3 days (to do cold starts for 98 and E85) so it means dropping it there, coming home then back a day or two later to pick it up meaning a total of 12 hours driving over 2 days. I want those 12 hours of driving to be worth it! Now I can take my time a bit to finish off the last few bits and pieces and make sure everything is ready to go rather than such a rush where I'm worried something will go wrong. I'm glad I had the deadline to work towards as it made me work my arse off to get to this point meaning it's now a stroll to the line rather than a sprint! If I hadn't had a date to work towards I'd still be a long way off, that's how my brain works... Pretty much all I have left is fitting the water/meth kit (which I would not have got done in time for the tune), wiring in the turbo speed sensor, replace the crappy Mishimoto thermo fans that feel like they move about none air with some decent Davies Craig fans, refit headlights/front bumper/bonnet/etc, fully wrap all of the engine bay wiring looms (I've got wires everywhere at the moment...), and then whatever other else I trip over along the way! I also want to fit an oil cooler and properly mount my remote oil filter somewhere accessible but out of the way. I've got the 2 channel Haltech O2 sensor kit but I'll change that over for the single channel now that I'm not running twins anymore. I'm sure it will still be fine just to run one of the 2 sensors but I'd rather the right kit. I think I need to fit another muffler too as damn it's loud! Sounds amazing but will be too loud for the street. Skylines are cop magnet as it is let alone sounding like a freight train! I'm on licence probation for 12 months so need zero reasons to be pulled over at the moment..... Still heaps to do but now with a bit more time to do it!

Cheers @Everit26. Ok after further investigation it appears as though I might be an idiot.... Turbo noise was because I hadn't put in the speed sensor yet so that was the sound of a compressor wheel passing a small hole at a few thousand revs ??. That was stressing me out so I'm glad it was nothing! Clutch took a bit more effort. Ended up pulling the slave off the box, poking it back up through the engine bay and bled it by pumping the slave back through the master. Got all of the air out, poked it back down below and all good now! Still not a fantastic pedal but it fully releases now so all good. I've still got a miss from cylinder 6 that's proving a bit tricky.... I've swapped over coil packs, replaced spark plug, swapped injectors, checked injector pulse, checked spark with the plug out and still no joy. Injection is there. Spark is there so I'm a bit perplexed.... Further investigation required tonight. Crappy vid attached. 20191114_222437.mp4

Ok, so the engine starts and it runs. It doesn't idle and it doesn't run well but it runs! It has a bit of a miss which I think is coil packs which got cooked when a setting was wrong in the Haltech early days. New ones hopefully here today or tomorrow. I've got two (major plus 50 smaller) issues I'm hoping for some input into. 1. How noisy are EFR turbos at just above idle? Mine (with no air filter on) sounds like it's pushing 50 PSI at just over idle! Goddam it's bloody loud! An air filter will quieten it down but damn it's loud... I didn't take a vid as it was getting really late when I came inside last night. I can grab one tonight. 2. Clutch issues. I've got a shit pedal for the clutch and is not releasing enough to be able to select gears. I've adjusted the push rod to maximum length and I've bled the system but it may need a re-bleed. I'm praying it's just fluid related as if it's not it could be box out job.... My other concern is I've done a clutch booster delete so have a different master cylinder in it. I'm wondering if it's not pushing enough fluid... Looking from underneath the clutch fork is already sitting around halfway along the opening in the side of the box so I'm wondering if the release bearing maybe didn't engage properly in the clutch fingers. Is that a thing with pull type clutches? Or would it be fully disengaged, not partially? I'll have more of a play with that tonight. I'm happy it's running but it's so frightening when little issues crop up! I'm shitting myself that it's not going to be right for next week!

It's been a grind let me tell you! Most nights during the week plus every Saturday afternoon and full day Sunday for the past 9 or 10 weeks. It's probably the longest stint I've put into it in one go. The light at the end of the tunnel is close enough this time to keep pushing!

Nothing much to show in photos... Oil and coolant feeds/drains all done. I'm currently assembling everything to prepare to hit the key. I keep finding things I need to modify the more parts I put back on! Some stuff I will go back and fix later on, getting it on the road is the priority for now. I kept (for now) the factory coolant pipes (modified obviously) for the turbo water feed. I raised it up to clear the turbo and decided to add a bleed screw into the banjo bolt as it is now the highest point of the engine. Worked well for bleeding while filling the cooling system. I'm just finishing off the oil filter rellocation, running -3 AN fittings and braided hose to the MAC valve, install and wire in the turbo speed sensor, tidy up the wiring then it will be pretty much time to hit the key. I've primed the system to get oil into the turbo before starting it so it's not spinning up with no oil pressure. Will hopefully get the water meth kit installed by next week but not a priority at this point. The water meth with be more beneficial when on pump as opposed to E85 but will be interesting to see if there are gains/benefits running it while on the corn juice. No doubt there will be other little bits and pieces to do but will hopefully kick it in the guts tomorrow night! Photos show how dusty the poor thing is from sitting in the shed even under a cover. Its had 2 washes in about 6 years I think....

.....and attempts to remove fingers...