Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

hey guys just wondering what's more cost effective

Rebuilding the current rb25 or dropping an rb26 motor and box in there

Why? Because I can LOL , I know there's heaps of advantages with the rb26 + I'll get to have twins the only thing stopping me at the moment is what sort of labour hours it will take + my motor currently has the following mods

52mm radiator

Intercooler

PFC

Turbo back exhaust

The obvious pod and enclosure

+ I just got some gauges put in

I'm just not sure what will have to be sold off and what can stay to work perfect

The cooler will have to be changed the dump and front pipe as well

How about the radiator ?? Will the radiator hoses fit??

The PFC can make way for a gtr PFC or stock ecu for a while

The reasoning behind this is it'll cost 4k for a mild build to handle roughly 325rwkw while a gtr engine shouldn't need a build for that much should it? Plus I get solid lifters and the 6throttles and twins not to mention extra capacity

Anyhow calling everyone that's done this before to advise me on what has to be changed

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/234300-rb26-engine-conversion/
Share on other sites

Depending on the age/condition, the RB26 will need more than 4k thrown at it just like the 25.

Either way, the RB26 wont take 330rwkw forever. Few years probably but thats it

The extra capacity, is next to nothing, its not even a 100cc, about half that :(

A 26 conversion isnt cheap, and IMO you'd be crazy not to at least through new pistons/bearings etc through it before installing it

26 ain't cheap, to fix, parts etc.

Rebuild the 25= fresh engine, tough etc.

If you got the money though, go for it lol.

I agree with GTRsean. If you got the funds, go for the RB26.

But to be honest what is your target RWHP figure????

That will determine whether you even need to go RB26.

I have seen some strong RB25's doing 500RWHP all day every day................... :(

I have two GTR's. But that does not mean that I will push and promote RB26's........

RB25 is a very solid motor.................

Again, what is your target figure?????

rb20s are cheap and strong

That is true. RB20's are a fantastic motor.

However he already has a RB25. So why would he put an RB20 into his ride?????

It's a case (as he stated in his initial thread post) whether he should rebuild his Rb25 or outlay for a RB26 (Money Pit..............)

yeah target is 300rwkw to around 350rwkw umm it's just for a bit of fun really something to use at the odd track day, motorkhanas etc

Well combining my tax return and savings I've got 7k and I really would like to keep everything as hidden as possible from the eyes of the po po's so low mounts, I've forgot to mention it used to be a non turbo (turbo conversion) so I'm not even sure how much more it can take I've got 202rwkw at the moment oh I'm not doubting the rb25's they are awesome but I am doubting my de bottem end haha, I've had a chat with a few places and really they said just for 300rwkw there is a low mount that can support it + I can get a mild build with gtr rods + upgraded rod bolts and pistons that they have said should be enough for that power figure (and ofcourse a compression ratio of 9:1)

+ I'm not sure how much machining it will need

Anyway at the moment i'm just in the thinking stages

Cheers

i know my rb20 comment made me look stupid yet it wasnt seious, on a serious note however have you considered an rb30, still looks stock so popo dont notice, depending on the turbo can keep you current exhuast and intercooler, retune the power fc you have and keep your radiator, would take more money to get it to 8000 revs though, yet a 500cc increase you will notice more than just 100cc

I think with your budget ($7K) you don't have a choice but to go with the RB25 route.

By the time to buy a decent RB26/gearbox +Turbos and associated supporting hardware you will blow the $7K budget.

If you can save more you will not regret getting the RB26.

But as Nismoid said before, the Rb26 is really only 100cc's more. What the point of going RB26???????????

yeah I have considered it, I've also seen people just chuck the stock rb30 with upgraded bolts on make a reliable 270rwkw what do you guys think it's cheap will last 250rwkw and will leave me cash for other areas of the car

so we are looking at pistons, gtr rods upgraded rod bolts, acl bearings and new gaskets all round that only looks to be setting me back around 2k will I need to do any machining etc? After all it's not an all out build this way I can spend on other areas , maybe If I can keep it to 4k then I can spend 2k on the turbo and 1k tune up, but like I said before if I did the rb30 just with rod bolts and gaskets it'll only be like 1k then 1k bolting it up then 2-3k on new turbo and I'd have 2k to spend on other areas of the car, who's the guy that's done this before he just bolted a stock rb30 bottom end up to his rb25 bigger turbo and started drag racing?

I did the same thing I wanted to upgrade to a rb26 instead of the rb25 and it has cost me in the excess of $20k, this is what you should do if you go for the rb26..

Cost of engine $3000-$5500 (please make sure they supply comp test and op test & a warranty if possible)

Cost of head gasket from Nissan $80.00 this is so you can pull it down and inspect, there is nothing wrong with genuine head gaskets. This is where it cost me so much, engine was sold to me as a good runner but we pulled it down and found damage to the block and pistons so complete rebuild.

Rewire of wiring harness to run rb26 computer $200-$600 (depending on where you go)

Computer $300-$5500 (depending on where you go & what you use)

Modify intercooler plumbing $150-$500 again (depending on where you go)

Modification to sump $300-800 (depending on where you go)

If you want to make power at high rpm a good oil pump and coller is recomended, can go into the whole debate here but an N1 is a good start its supperior to a standard item to start with.

A good harmonic ballancer ATI or ROSS most profer ATI as do I.

Oil control, while modifing the sump ensure extra compacity and baffles maybe even a return from the back of the head to sump.

If you are staying with the twins make sure you change the dump pipes while the engine is out of the car likewise if changing the turbos. (its hard enough doing it when the engine is out let alone in the car)

Replace all heater/vacume/oil lines under intake plenum while engine is out too this is for peice of mind.

I think staying the the rb25 and upgrading the rob bolts to start with is a much wiser choice and will be cheaper in the end. I could keep going but hopefully this will be some help to you.

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • I did end up getting it sorted, as GTSBoy said, there was a corroded connection and wire that needed to be replaced. I ended up taking out the light assembly, giving everything a good clean and re-soldered the old joints, and it came out good.
    • Wow, thanks for your help guys 🙏. I really appreciate it. Thanks @Rezz, if i fail finding any new or used, full or partial set of original Stage carpets i will come back to you for sure 😉 Explenation is right there, i just missed it 🤦‍♂️. Thanks for pointing out. @soviet_merlin in the meantime, I received a reply from nengun, and i quote: "Thanks for your message and interest in Nengun. KG4900 is for the full set of floor mats, while KG4911 is only the Driver's Floor Mat. FR, RH means Front Right Hand Side. All the Full Set options are now discontinued. However, the Driver's Floor Mat options are still available according to the latest information available to us. We do not know what the differences would be, but if you only want the one mat, we can certainly see what we can find out for you". Interesting. It seems they still have some "new old stock" that Duncan mentioned 🤔. I wonder if they can provide any photos......And i also just realized that amayama have G4900 sets. I'm tempted too. 
    • Any update on this one? did you manage to get it fixed?    i'm having the same issue with my r34 and i believe its to do with the smart entry (keyless) control module but cant be sure without forking out to get a replacement  
    • So this being my first contribution to the SAU forums, I'd like to present and show how I had to solve probably one of the most annoying fixes on any car I've owned: replacing a speedometer (or "speedo") sensor on my newly acquired Series 1 Stagea 260RS Autech Version. I'm simply documenting how I went about to fix this issue, and as I understand it is relatively rare to happen to this generation of cars, it is a gigantic PITA so I hope this helps serve as reference to anyone else who may encounter this issue. NOTE: Although I say this is meant for the 260RS, because the gearbox/drivetrain is shared with the R33 GTR with the 5-speed manual, the application should be exactly the same. Background So after driving my new-to-me Stagea for about 1500km, one night while driving home the speedometer and odometer suddenly stopped working. No clunking noise, no indication something was broken, the speedometer would just stop reading anything and the odometer stopped going up. This is a huge worry for me, because my car is relatively low mileage (only 45k km when purchased) so although I plan to own the car for a long time, a mismatched odometer reading would be hugely detrimental to resale should the day come to sell the car. Thankfully this only occurred a mile or two from home so it wasn't extremely significant. Also, the OCD part of me would be extremely irked if the numbers that showed on my dash doesn't match the actual ageing of the car. Diagnosing I had been in communication with the well renown GTR shop in the USA, U.P.garage up near University Point in Washington state. After some back and forth they said it could be one of two things: 1) The speedometer sensor that goes into the transfer case is broken 2) The actual cluster has a component that went kaput. They said this is common in older Nissan gauge clusters and that would indicate a rebuild is necessary. As I tried to figure out if it was problem #1, I resolved problem #2 by sending my cluster over to Relentless Motorsports in Dallas, TX, whom is local to me and does cluster and ECU rebuilds. He is a one man operation who meticulously replaces every chip, resistor, capacitor, and electronic component on the PCB's on a wide variety of classic and modern cars. His specialty is Lexus and Toyota, but he came highly recommended by Erik of U.P.garage since he does the rebuilds for them on GTR clusters.  For those that don't know, on R32 and R33 GTR gearboxes, the speedometer sensor is mounted in the transfer case and is purely an analog mini "generator" (opposite of an alternator essentially). Based on the speed the sensor spins it generates an AC sine wave voltage up to 5V, and sends that via two wires up to the cluster which then interprets it via the speedometer dial. The signal does NOT go to the ECU first, the wiring goes to the cluster first then the ECU after (or so I'm told).  Problems/Roadblocks I first removed the part from the car on the underside of the transfer case (drain your transfer case fluid/ATF first, guess who found out that the hard way?), and noted the transfer case fluid was EXTREMELY black, most likely never changed on my car. When attempting to turn the gears it felt extremely gritty, as if something was binding the shaft from rotating properly. I got absolutely no voltage reading out of the sensor no matter how fast I turned the shaft. After having to reflow the solder on my AFM sensors based on another SAU guide here, I attempted to disassemble the silicone seal on the back of the sensor to see what happened inside the sensor; turns out, it basically disintegrated itself. Wonderful. Not only had the electrical components destroyed themselves, the magnetic portion on what I thought was on the shaft also chipped and was broken. Solution So solution: find a spare part right? Wrong. Nissan has long discontinued the proper sensor part number 32702-21U19, and it is no longer obtainable either through Nissan NSA or Nissan Japan. I was SOL without proper speed or mileage readings unless I figured out a way to replace this sensor. After tons of Googling and searching on SAU, I found that there IS however a sensor that looks almost exactly like the R33/260RS one: a sensor meant for the R33/R34 GTT and GTS-T with the 5 speed manual. The part number was 25010-21U00, and the body, plug, and shaft all looked exactly the same. The gear was different at the end, but knowing the sensor's gear is held on with a circlip, I figured I could just order the part and swap the gears. Cue me ordering a new part from JustJap down in Kirrawee, NSW, then waiting almost 3 weeks for shipping and customs clearing. The part finally arrives and what did I find? The freaking shaft lengths don't match. $&%* I discussed with Erik how to proceed, and figuring that I basically destroyed the sensor trying to get the shaft out of the damaged sensor from my car. we deemed it too dangerous to try and attempt to swap shafts to the correct length. I had to find a local CNC machinist to help me cut and notch down the shaft. After tons of frantic calling on a Friday afternoon, I managed to get hold of someone and he said he'd be able to do it over half a week. I sent him photos and had him take measurements to match not only the correct length and notch fitment, but also a groove to machine out to hold the retentive circlip. And the end result? *chef's kiss* Perfect. Since I didn't have pliers with me when I picked up the items, I tested the old gear and circlip on. Perfect fit. After that it was simply swapping out the plug bracket to the new sensor, mount it on the transfer case, refill with ATF/Nissan Matic Fluid D, then test out function. Thankfully with the rebuilt cluster and the new sensor, both the speedometer and odometer and now working properly!   And there you have it. About 5-6 weeks of headaches wrapped up in a 15 minute photo essay. As I was told it is rare for sensors of this generation to die so dramatically, but you never know what could go wrong with a 25+ year old car. I HOPE that no one else has to go through this problem like I did, so with my take on a solution I hope it helps others who may encounter this issue in the future. For the TL;DR: 1) Sensor breaks. 2) Find a replacement GTT/GTS-T sensor. 3) Find a CNC machinist to have you cut it down to proper specs. 4) Reinstall then pray to the JDM gods.   Hope this guide/story helps anyone else encountering this problem!
    • So this being my first contribution to the SAU forums, I'd like to present and show how I had to solve probably one of the most annoying fixes on any car I've owned: replacing a speedometer (or "speedo") sensor on my newly acquired Series 1 Stagea 260RS Autech Version. I'm simply documenting how I went about to fix this issue, and as I understand it is relatively rare to happen to this generation of cars, it is a gigantic PITA so I hope this helps serve as reference to anyone else who may encounter this issue. NOTE: Although I say this is meant for the 260RS, because the gearbox/drivetrain is shared with the R33 GTR with the 5-speed manual, the application should be exactly the same. Background So after driving my new-to-me Stagea for about 1500km, one night while driving home the speedometer and odometer suddenly stopped working. No clunking noise, no indication something was broken, the speedometer would just stop reading anything and the odometer stopped going up. This is a huge worry for me, because my car is relatively low mileage (only 45k km when purchased) so although I plan to own the car for a long time, a mismatched odometer reading would be hugely detrimental to resale should the day come to sell the car. Thankfully this only occurred a mile or two from home so it wasn't extremely significant. Also, the OCD part of me would be extremely irked if the numbers that showed on my dash doesn't match the actual ageing of the car. Diagnosing I had been in communication with the well renown GTR shop in the USA, U.P.garage up near University Point in Washington state. After some back and forth they said it could be one of two things: 1) The speedometer sensor that goes into the transfer case is broken 2) The actual cluster has a component that went kaput. They said this is common in older Nissan gauge clusters and that would indicate a rebuild is necessary. As I tried to figure out if it was problem #1, I resolved problem #2 by sending my cluster over to Relentless Motorsports in Dallas, TX, whom is local to me and does cluster and ECU rebuilds. He is a one man operation who meticulously replaces every chip, resistor, capacitor, and electronic component on the PCB's on a wide variety of classic and modern cars. His specialty is Lexus and Toyota, but he came highly recommended by Erik of U.P.garage since he does the rebuilds for them on GTR clusters.  For those that don't know, on R32 and R33 GTR gearboxes, the speedometer sensor is mounted in the transfer case and is purely an analog mini "generator" (opposite of an alternator essentially). Based on the speed the sensor spins it generates an AC sine wave voltage up to 5V, and sends that via two wires up to the cluster which then interprets it via the speedometer dial. The signal does NOT go to the ECU first, the wiring goes to the cluster first then the ECU after (or so I'm told).  Problems/Roadblocks I first removed the part from the car on the underside of the transfer case (drain your transfer case fluid/ATF first, guess who found out that the hard way?), and noted the transfer case fluid was EXTREMELY black, most likely never changed on my car. When attempting to turn the gears it felt extremely gritty, as if shttps://imgur.com/6TQCG3xomething was binding the shaft from rotating properly. After having to reflow the solder on my AFM sensors based on another SAU guide here, I attempted to disassemble the silicone seal on the back of the sensor to see what happened inside the sensor; turns out, it basically disintegrated itself. Wonderful. Not only had the electrical components destroyed themselves, the magnetic portion on what I thought was on the shaft also chipped and was broken. Solution So solution: find a spare part right? Wrong. Nissan has long discontinued the proper sensor part number 32702-21U19, and it is no longer obtainable either through Nissan NSA or Nissan Japan. I was SOL without proper speed or mileage readings unless I figured out a way to replace this sensor. After tons of Googling and searching on SAU, I found that there IS however a sensor that looks almost exactly like the R33/260RS one: a sensor meant for the R33/R34 GTT and GTS-T with the 5 speed manual. The part number was 25010-21U00, and the body, plug, and shaft all looked exactly the same. The gear was different at the end, but knowing the sensor's gear is held on with a circlip, I figured I could just order the part and swap the gears. Cue me ordering a new part from JustJap down in Kirrawee, NSW, then waiting almost 3 weeks for shipping and customs clearing. The part finally arrives and what did I find? The freaking shaft lengths don't match. $&%* I discussed with Erik how to proceed, and figuring that I basically destroyed the sensor trying to get the shaft out of the damaged sensor from my car. we deemed it too dangerous to try and attempt to swap shafts to the correct length. I had to find a local CNC machinist to help me cut and notch down the shaft. After tons of frantic calling on a Friday afternoon, I managed to get hold of someone and he said he'd be able to do it over half a week. I sent him photos and had him take measurements to match not only the correct length and notch fitment, but also a groove to machine out to hold the retentive circlip. And the end result? *chef's kiss* Perfect. Since I didn't have pliers with me when I picked up the items, I tested the old gear and circlip on. Perfect fit. After that it was simply swapping out the plug bracket to the new sensor, mount it on the transfer case, refill with ATF/Nissan Matic Fluid D, then test out function. Thankfully with the rebuilt cluster and the new sensor, both the speedometer and odometer and now working properly!   And there you have it. About 5-6 weeks of headaches wrapped up in a 15 minute photo essay. As I was told it is rare for sensors of this generation to die so dramatically, but you never know what could go wrong with a 25+ year old car. I HOPE that no one else has to go through this problem like I did, so with my take on a solution I hope it helps others who may encounter this issue in the future. For the TL;DR: 1) Sensor breaks. 2) Find a replacement GTT/GTS-T sensor. 3) Find a CNC machinist to have you cut it down to proper specs. 4) Reinstall then pray to the JDM gods.   Hope this guide/story helps anyone else encountering this problem!
×
×
  • Create New...