The Dirty30 Dirty3 Of Fail...

[MBS206]

So, I reckon it's about time I post my little project up.

My R33 started life with me in September 2006, where it stayed with just the basics (Clutch, flywheel, FMIC, exhaust, mags, and boost). This lasted for around 10 months, before it headed to Adaptronic for an ECU install and tune... Around Oct/November of 07, I dropped a cylinder, both block and head went... This was around the time the "fail" entered...

Put forth an RB25/30, with an Ibiza of a turbo on a 6Boost split pulse manifold. This gave me all sorts of headaches, from needing a whole heap of piping etc all custom made, oil leaks, water leaks... Then a locked motor... It finally went... For 1200KM... Where it killed a head gasket... The head was ripped off, and low and behold, the motor I'd bought with an RB25 R32 head on it, turned out to be an RB20 R32 head...

Enter the new head, from R33 RB25, I had this head rebuilt, crack and pressure tested, and I put it back onto my car, along with an upgrade in injectors (880CC).

Did some mild street tuning to get it mobile, limped it from one house to another and proceeded to watch the engine bay go up in flames... Luckily the main damage was that awesome heat material stuff that "doesn't burn". I got the fire out, decided it was time to send it to the mechanics for him to do the finishing touches to tune it all up for me.

Once at the mechanics we found the oil drain had melted and split in a large way. Fixed this up, started the off boost tuning... Car developed a savage miss... And then my mechanic let the electrical smoke out and my coil packs stopped working. So out came the split fires and in went the yellow jackets.

Then the ECU decided to give us hell, which turned out that the ECU decided it no longer like the tuning software, a reflash of the ECU, an update in the tuning software, and it all went sweet as pie.

Down to the dyno tuners, part way through tuning it on the dyno (At 10PM at night) and the tuners laptop has a complete f**k out and stops working. Tuner calls his mate who owns the dyno, who luckily has EXACTLY the same laptop... Brings it down, swap harddrives (So we get the software and maps back etc). Onto tuning again...

Then the car throws the next hurdle at us... How it ramps onto boost is so savage we had to turn the gain down as much as possible on the dyno, and attempt to restrap it five times... The car keeps wheel spining and trying to climb off the dyno...

At 12:45AM in the morning, the tune is "complete" (Obviously no cold start done, and not a heap of time spent on all the idle loads etc). The final figure... 250RWKW, at around 6000RPM... Wheel spinning on the dyno.

From here, after a minor detour to find out the car lights 3rd gear up on the roll and make sure the tune was okay on the road, I get home around 1:45 - 2Am...

Climb out of bed at 5:30 AM, pick up my new Semis, meet with another SAU member and head for SAU's OP GP day... Proceed to have the SCARIEST drive of my life (First time really opening the car up) Sideways in 3rd gear under the bridge, over taking cars down the main straight wheel spinning...

The car had a few minor issues, such as an injector plug coming off causing a bad miss fire...

I made it into the 3rd session, was having an absolute ball chasing down 2 other skylines... When what happens? Oil surge... Big end bearing gone...

From here, we land the skyline with a used RB30E block, strap everything back onto it, fit a race seat and harness and head back to OPGP (On another day)... What do we find out here? We've broken a power steering pump in the first session, and the car breathes oil out the rockers... Park the car for the day after about 45 mins of driving, as it's just dropping oil (And we had a Radical doing roughly 1.08 seconds around the track there with us!). The car was also blowing alot of smoke when on boost, but this was first thought to be because of how much oil was breathing into the motor from the rockers...

Come home, do all I could to fix the breathing issue, catch cans, the works.

Head back to OP GP for one last crack at the place before it closes... Make it there, have to skip a few sessions to pull the waste gate springs, as the oil issue also appears to be a complete and utter lack of turbo oil seals... Have a ball driving the car NA and head home.

Fix up an oil drain, make up some plates to do "on the side of the road convert to N/A" and weld up a spare center and throw it in...

The car 2 weeks later heads out to Nirimba Tafe where half of SAU saw the absolute abuse that I give to my $600 RB30 motor... Flames, big bangs on the limiter, and second gear skids bashing the limiter... Whilst sliding backwards...

The motor decides it will only take all of this abuse for so long, and on the second last run developed a minor rattle... (I was having too much fun, and wanted to challenge Amy!) so I took it out for an easy run...

The car drove home, but now has a rattle which I'm yet to find out what it is...

Before the car comes back out, I'll have sussed out the rattle, fitted the new race seat for the passenger side, and added a 5 point quick release harness to the drivers seat and moved the current 4 point to the passengers seat.

As the car sits, there isn't much left of the interior from behind the front seats.

Parcel shelf gone, rear seats gone, the boot is "gone" there is about 1 or 2 trim pieces left in the boot. All sound deadening remains as I figure this isn't going to help me much... The centre console is gone, never to return, it has been replaced with a 1KG fire extinguisher.

The next mods after the passenger seat and harness will be the addition of aftermarket water temp, oil temp and oil pressure guages.

I also have some DC2 coil overs (Yeah, not much chop for racing, but for the price... They'll do)

Then comes the roll cage.

The car sits between 3 sets of tyres... My skid rims (Advan light weight RG2s), my road tyres for traversing to and from work shops on stock rims, and my semis on stock rims.

The aim of this car, was initially street... I got a taste of track work, and now the car isn't "legal" enough to drive often on the road, and as such, is only registered to get me to and from the track as I can't afford a trailer + tow car at the moment.

This car, by no means is pretty, the paint work is a mess with grease stains through it, scratches, the works. (Hey, it picked up Worst in Show at the SAU day recently!)

At the moment I'm tossing up between turning it into a proper N/A 3.0L motor and turning it high comp (As cheaply as possible), or rebuilding the current turbo (Which isn't suited to circuit work), or saving, and buying a new manifold + turbo and fitting it up.

I'd like to get into some form of racing with it, but I'll never be competitive in it... Not the cars fault, but the drivers...

Some pics:

In the beginning:

What I decided would run "well" on a 3.0L (I got it cheap with mani!)

Not long before the first install was complete (Yes it has been tidied somewhat!). See how that turbo fits so nicely?

The next day I drove to the track... And how it came home...

At Texi... The only way to do it... Staying on it...

I think I was the only one game enough to exit the Kangaroo swerve in 2nd gear under full boost... And it showed in the looks of the camera guys face as he ran for the grass

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4058/4318042569_008af5f0b0_b.jpg

I'll grab some interior shots later, but what you'd be looking at is a stripped back section, in the front an OMP TR-S seat and an OMP 4 point harness. Passenger side S2 seats.