Shoota's R33 GT-R RB30/26

[Shoota_77]

14 minutes ago, admS15 said:

Glad you didn't lose it...

I lost it plenty of times! My finger and my temper! 

Got the next little section welded on before tools down. 

So close! 

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

Patiently waits for skids video

[Shoota_77]

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... 

 

[Nismo 3.2ish]

couple of tricky bends there for the first time doing it 

[Shoota_77]

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.

[iruvyouskyrine]

That is the first time i have ever seen exhausts being held in place by ratchet straps ?

But good work, be good to do it all yourself. I just picked up a TIG the other day to learn with, any tips for a noob?

[Shoota_77]

48 minutes ago, iruvyouskyrine said:

That is the first time i have ever seen exhausts being held in place by ratchet straps ?

But good work, be good to do it all yourself. I just picked up a TIG the other day to learn with, any tips for a noob?

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!

[Shoota_77]

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-

.

 

 

[Shoota_77]

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.....

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

Good stuff, twins are gay

[Shoota_77]

Yeah maybe...

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

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

Well if you went to a single from the get go it would have been cheaper

 

[Shoota_77]

There she is. What a beautiful sight to behold!

The turbine housing has been bolted on upside but don't worry about that! ??

I desperately want my manifold to arrive  now but it's yet to be finished so still a few weeks off

 

[iruvyouskyrine]

Nice, looks like iron core? do they do the 8474 in ally core?

[Shoota_77]

Pretty sure they do an alloy core but getting iron core meant getting one straight away.  No real advantage apart from a bit of weight anyway.  Iron should be more heat resilient too.

 

[Shoota_77]

Still waiting for my manifold to turn up so in the meantime I decided to change my power steering high pressure hose to AN fittings. No real purpose, just cleans it up a bit and gives a bit more room in front of the radiator for thermos. 

Took me a few goes (my tig skills are horrible....) due to the thin material of the pipe. Came up ok in the end. Just waiting on more AN6 hose to finish it off.

Did a few practice stainless welds to get my eye back in for when I make the turbo dump and wastegate pipes over the next few weeks. Bit rusty but will do the job! The photo is after a bit on the wire wheel. I wish they looked that good instantly but I'll need to refer to Instagram for that...

[r32-25t]

You know speed flow make a fitting that screws straight into the Nissan power steering rack?

[Shoota_77]

Where's the fun in that!?

 

In other words no, I wasn't aware....! ?

[Shoota_77]

My Sinco manifold arrived today. Took a bit longer than I'd hoped but I must say it's a work of art.  Hopefully it works as well as it looks! 

Hopefully get cracking on it this weekend. The aim is to get the car back on the road for the first time in 6 1/2 years by Christmas. 

So effing pumped to get this nugget on the road again!

 

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

YAY sexspec

I haz one too, no need for twin gates, I can go down to 1bar of boost and there's 0 creep.