Shoota_77

Yeah maybe... I might have slightly underestimated the cost of going single though. Goddam!

Wow, there goes another 6 months of inactivity.... I tend to lose interest over winter as that’s dirt bike season. Best time to be up the hills playing in the mud. Ok, so I’ve discovered a very expensive motivation technique, buy expensive parts and hopefully you feel guilted into fitting them! In a nutshell I’ve sold my -5 twins and ordered a single turbo, manifold, gate, etc, etc. After MUCH deliberation I’ve ordered an EFR8474. Wont make huge power but that’s not what I’m after. Hopefully should are 500-550ish kWs at the wheels. Anywhere in that vicinity will be awesome. I’ve crossed the ‘dutch’ and ordered a Sinco turbo manifold from NZ to suit 30/26 setup. I’m building my own dump and wastegate piping so stay tuned for lots of swearing! If it all gets too hard I’ll cave in and pay someone else to do it. That will be a mental challenge though as so far, apart from machining I’ve done everything myself. I’d be sad to cave in so close to hitting the road... Attached is a dodgy video of me giving it a quick rev once the exhaust was finished. Shoots some nice flames out the exhaust! I might have been a little bit pissy at the time. Shed beers got out of hand..... 07945466-8E85-45BD-A68A-FE2D7F6A3A06.mp4

I know, I know... But yet again, there has to be a point where you say enough is enough and also - do I actually need to make another 40 kW more?? I can't argue with the improved response though, that's more what I'm after. So... Might have tracked down a 8474.... Will only be 1.05 housing though.

Honestly it comes down to cost. I’d love to have cash to burn but unfortunately not. I know it’s probably only another $750 or so but where do you stop? I haven’t driven my car for 7 years so anything is going to be good! ? I can get the 9174 or 9180 for under $3500 whereas I can’t see 8474’s for under $4250. I haven’t done a lot of research on other 8474 either TBH. Will it produce more than the 9174/9180 or just better spool?

Hi guys, up for sale are a few bits I'm selling off my car. The first is a set of HPI 3" dump pipes. These have only been put on the engine and run for 10 minutes. Have barely been up to full operating temperature. They were around the $800 when I bought them. a quick look on Kudos has them at the same money now. Chasing $550 posted anywhere in Australia. Second is my front pipes that are proper 3" primaries which then merge into a 4" V-Band. They're mild steel (painted with high temp paint) and the V-Band is stainless. You would need to modify your current exhaust if you're adding this to a factory position setup as the cat might be in a slightly different position. They have O2 sensor bungs welded in to suit later model Bosch O2 sensors. Chasing $250 posted anywhere in Australia. Cost on these is a bit to do with the complexity to post. I've more pictures I can send if needed. PM me your mobile and I can flick them through. It's all still on the car at the moment but will be removing this weekend. I'm in Shepparton (northern Victoria) and I sometimes get to Melbourne so could potentially drop them there. I think the prices are pretty reasonable but if you've got a realistic offer then I'm open to hear it! Cheers.

Thanks Geoff, great info. I really want the simplicity of single so definitely going that way. Given I can get a 9174 with a 1.45 and a 9180 with a 1.05 housing for the same price, what would be the better option? I’m leaning towards 9174 for some reason I can’t fully explain apart from gut feeling! The turbo manifold I’m looking at (Sinco twin scroll forward facing) recommends/mandates 60mm wastegate. Is that too big? I would have thought 50mm was the better size but if there’s no option to get 50mm will the 60mm be ok? Thanks again.

For the sake of re-routing two hoses you'd be crazy if you didn't. The life of the turbo and of your oil would be dramatically increased by having the cooling plumbed in.

Hi guys, this is my first foray into single turbos so go easy on me! I'm looking at a few different turbos being 9180 with 1.05 housing and then a 9174. It's going on an RB30/26 and I'm chasing a maximum of 550kW at the treads. If it's more or less I'm not fussed. To be honest I'd prefer more midrange response than massive top end. Obviously two fairly similar turbos in terms of power capabilty but done in a different way. One with flow, the other with the ability to spin up to a higher speed. What effect would whacking a 1.45 housing on the back of the 9174 have? Would that harm low range too much at the expense of top end or would the lower restriction be a bonus all across the range? I'm being a hog here firing off so many questions at once but in regards to manifolds, obviously split pulse but is a twin wastegate (one off each bank) better than a big single wastegate which is not really a true split pulse? I know the signle is a lot less mucking around with less wastegate plumbing to worry about. Many thanks guys, I've been loving all the discussion on here but it's still a bit data heavy for me so hopefully you legends can point me in the right direction!

@JustinP I just used an angle grinder for mine then finished it on the belt sander to get a perfect mating face. I used a 125mm angle grinder with the thinnest blade I could find. Cuts through it super fast.

I don't know much about that particular tranny but the most common place I saw autos leak from was the outer oil pump seal which is the huge o-ring that goes around the outside of the oil pump to seal against the trans housing. They're pretty easy to nick the edge off and create a flat spot on the seal when they're being re-installed. Replace that and your front main seal at the same time and that should realistically fix the leak unless it's leaking from somewhere on top of the tranny and leaking down? Not a leaky cooler line or something?

Looks stunning, top job!

I've backed off a bit the last few weeks. Need to keep the momentum while I've got some! I tend to get bored pretty quickly so need to keep myself motivated while there is still a bit of hope! Made up the rear muffler hanger over the weekend, glad to have all of that behind me but at the same time thankful for the new found skills I've learnt along the way. I'll tidy it up a little bit more before I'm done but all pretty good really. The rear muffler section of the hangers was a bit tricky given the different locations of the hangers on the car (not side by side which would have things a bit easier! I've got the bending of the stainless down to a fine art now though so came up pretty good- .

Yeah that train has all the people on it that 5 years said Skylines would never be worth anything ???. I watched a video on car prices in Japan yesterday and it seems that finally they’ve realised they’re sitting on a gold mine! Prices are skyrocketing there too. As a bonus I guess at least we can still buy brand new parts!

Stunningly stereotypical parked in front of Japanese Cherry Blossums! Do us all a favour and send a container full of parts will you!

Ha ha, yeah slightly unorthodox but they made it easier to adjust the position when I was playing around trying to get it all lined up! I'm still a noob at tigging myself but as they say practice, practice, practice! I got some pieces of stainless off-cuts from a mate and started off just doing line after line after line just getting the hang of welding with no filler in straight lines straight onto the sheet. Then once you've got the hang of that start adding filler. Once you've got that down pat then try joining pieces together with no filler. Then once you've got that nailed start adding filler. It takes a LOT of patience firstly getting all your settings right but then getting the hang of torch height, puddle control, adding filler, etc, etc. It's a bit of a brain overload till you get the hang of it! One big thing I highly recommend is to not worry about using the foot pedal control to start with. Just use a torch that has the button on the torch head to activate the arc. It means you need to have your voltage set spot on for the material you're welding but it just takes out one more thing that you need to learn. I still mainly weld this way without the pedal. The last pointer is that TIG is all about the puddle. This might sound basic but to get two parts to meet they both need to be molten. Sometimes you need to 'tease' both parts with the arc to get them to be both molten at the same time. All you'll do is burn through one side if you keep applying too much heat to one side. Once you try joining a few slightly off joints (not perfectly flat) you'll know what I mean! Once you get the puddle flowing you want to 'push' the puddle. What I mean is use the puddle to melt the next bit of metal rather than pushing the arc past the puddle to heat where you're travelling to. Again that may not make sense until you've done a heap of passes. Good luck and show me how you go!

Got a pretty good start on the mounts. Just bent up some 10mm stainless rod (should have used 12mm to fit the hangers better...). Took a lot of mucking around to get them bent to wrap around the pipe and obviously be on the right angle to slide in the hanger and keep it all where I wanted it. It’s all part of the learning process but I had to grind the face of the stainless flat on the bottom and sides as it was too hard to tig up not being able to get right in there. Prototype- Lots of cutting, grinding and welding but pretty happy with how it sits. After all that I decided I’d put another v-band on the muffler as the section from the cat all the way to the back was getting pretty long and very heavy. Hard to put back in place on my own so decided to make the muffler removable.

Got the last of the exhaust pipework done, just the hanger mounts to weld on and the exhaust is done. Thank fu<k! Don't get me wrong I enjoyed it but it was very tricky and very time consuming. Thank God I'm not paid to build exhausts as it took me days! ?? I'll be honest, some of my welds are just outright shit! TIG welding (I've discovered....) requires perfect mating surfaces to get a nice weld. Any small gap or not perfectly cleaned up weld section (contaminants, oxidation, etc) means that it all turns to shit pretty fast! I got very good at filling blow throughs put it that way.... There's some pretty tight clearances to the body, diff and suspension so I'll have to make the hangers/mounts so they allow minimal side to side movement or I'll be doonk'n and clang'n up and down the street! Don't really want that. I won't know exactly how much ground clearance I've got till I drop it off the hoist but with 4" pipe only so much is possible. Not much room to work with under there...

The ONLY accurate way to do it is get a current payout quote from the financier. Every institution has different early termination fees that they add on based on how far into the loan you are. Generally it's a percentage of what they're losing by you not completing the full term of the loan.

I lost it plenty of times! My finger and my temper! Got the next little section welded on before tools down. So close!

The finger was extremely deeply inserted so it took a loooooog time to extract it!

Got a bit more done on the exhaust today. Pretty much just a straight section but still a bit of a head f#<k getting the length right to get around the tricky diff area where it has to go up and around at the same time. Not looking forward to that bit! I'm pretty happy how high it's sitting at the moment, shouldn't hang too low. Obviously the down side of that is the possibility of hitting on things. Time will tell! No awards will be won with my welding but pretty sure they'll hold together. Apart from where I needed to fill small gaps I'm just fusion welding it (no filler) which I guess isn't as strong as using filler? As you can see I purged the section to keep the weld on the inside nice and clean. It makes a MASSIVE difference so well worth the effort.

Cleaned up the shed and put the car back on the hoist today. Plenty of spiders have made themselves at home under there over the past 12 months+ of inactivity! To start with I made a few timber blocks with 4” channels to make cutting the stainless for the exhaust easier and another set for welding it up. Pulled the TIG out and started welding a few exhaust bits with mixed results! ?? Started ok- Then when it came time to join a couple of sections for a bend I rushed a bit so had a bit of fresh air to fill on the join. Stupid mistake. Should have spent more time getting the fit perfect. I think I was getting impatient from getting stuff all done all day! One side turned out really good, the other side not so.... Had to grind back a few bits and tidy it up. Typically the nicer side will be facing up where no one will ever see it and the shit side faces down to remind me of what I did wrong! ?? Better side- The “you did a shit job” side- Overall it turned out ok, as long as it seals and doesn’t fall off then it’s all good! Working out locations and the exhaust path and making some room..... I must say it’s a bit of a prick of a job to fully build the exhaust. Just trying to get the angles all correct so it doesn’t hit on everything is pretty tricky. I’ve never done anything like it before so there will be a LOT of trial and error I think. It was great to get a start though and keep the momentum!

Yeah I must admit up until a week ago I thought it might never happen! Amazing what a week of motivation and some spare time willl do!

Well, she runs! There’s still a loooong road ahead but I think it’s an important stepping stone to know that it’s all worth it. It now gives me a reason to keep pushing on. Sorry about the weird video commentary but I was bloody excited alright! ?? The wiring is all over the place after stripping most of it down chasing gremlins so I’ll have to tidy all that up again The reassuring thing is that all of my wiring was perfect, it was all just fiddly little things in the software I needed to sort out. Some of it wierd shit that the Haltech did automatically but that’s another story... Next up will be to build the rest of the exhaust. I’ve done about 5cm of TIG welding in the past 12-18 months so I’d best get some more practice in before I butcher my $1000+ worth of stainless bits and pieces! As long as it seals and doesn’t look like a retarded cocky shat it out then I’m really not too fussed. I’m more focused on getting it done now rather than chasing show quality. I’ll park it in the corner again if it takes too long to finish! Strike while the iron is hot! 5D114D47-0957-4748-93DB-8AF1DB823C73.mp4

Cheers @dr phil. You're on the right path, it looks to have been I had the coils set up as"rising edge" as opposed to what they should have been which is "falling edge". It's still not starting but a lot closer now. There's a lot more popping and carry on so nearly there! I'll need to reset the trigger angle to get it firing back on TDC again as changing from one to the other changes the timing. The power has gone out (great, no air con or sans in the house...) and my cheap nasty timing light isn't playing so I'll have to leave it to the next chance I can get out to the shed. It's forecast for 40 degrees the next 2 days so probably won't be then! Great to be back working on it again with renewed interest!