BK's eternal money pit build - 1989 R32 GTR single turbo

[r32-25t]

When I took my car to be tuned jem also said they’ve only had a 6766 work well once and believe it has to do with being the only turbo with a bigger front wheel then rear. If upgrading from the 6466 better to use a 6870

[BK]

Next jump up definitely seems to be a 6870, which is what I originally intended.

[hattori hanzo]

6766 I have only seen deliver fail results.

6870 is the next logical step

 

[r32-25t]

To me though if a 6466 is capable of mph in the mid 140s, It’s all the turbo most people will ever need including me 

[BK]

18 minutes ago, r32-25t said:

To me though if a 6466 is capable of mph in the mid 140s, It’s all the turbo most people with ever need including me 

Absolutely. 👍 That's why I opted out of the 6870 and went the 6466 as originally discussed with CRD. I was like, guys like yourself @r32-25t, @hattori hanzo, @Dorifudo were making stupid power in the 500 - 600rwkw region with them, 140+ MPH trap with comparable turbo response to low mount twins !

Sounded like more of a win than any of the EFR or Garrett stuff to me. Remember I came from plain bearing big HKS with light switch delivery.

[Dorifudo]

23 minutes ago, BK said:

Absolutely. 👍 That's why I opted out of the 6870 and went the 6466 as originally discussed with CRD. I was like, guys like yourself @r32-25t, @hattori hanzo, @Dorifudo were making stupid power in the 500 - 600rwkw region with them, 140+ MPH trap with comparable turbo response to low mount twins !

Sounded like more of a win than any of the EFR or Garrett stuff to me. Remember I came from plain bearing big HKS with light switch delivery.

i'm glad i went with the 6466, i did get offered a 6870 for only a few hundred dollars more at the time but decided it was too big for a street car. Friend of mine has the 6266 with a 1.01AR isnt really that much more responsive than the 6466 with a 1.01AR.

[Piggaz]

Is that upside down? 🤣

[BK]

 

1 hour ago, Piggaz said:

Is that upside down? 🤣

Nice one smart arse ! 😂 Paul, 2009 -2010 weren't you running HKS GT-RS turbos and an OS giken 5 speed back then ?  Hence the reason I had to get off of the "awesome" HKSness from the 90's. Power was so late in delivery it could never actually get a decent MPH. Could not get lower than mid 10s and couldn't crack 135mph.

That's why when we discussed turbo options you guys were so kind to persuade me from making another HKS mistake, which I 100% appreciate. Just took me a little while to get into the 21st century that's all...

Thanks again, you are an asset to SAU and always value your input mate 👍

So what's happening with your 33 these days ?

[Piggaz]

9 hours ago, BK said:

 

Nice one smart arse ! 😂 Paul, 2009 -2010 weren't you running HKS GT-RS turbos and an OS giken 5 speed back then ?  Hence the reason I had to get off of the "awesome" HKSness from the 90's. Power was so late in delivery it could never actually get a decent MPH. Could not get lower than mid 10s and couldn't crack 135mph.

That's why when we discussed turbo options you guys were so kind to persuade me from making another HKS mistake, which I 100% appreciate. Just took me a little while to get into the 21st century that's all...

Thanks again, you are an asset to SAU and always value your input mate 👍

So what's happening with your 33 these days ?

Sure was. Only had the car a couple years at that stage. What a shit, laggy, lazy, nugget, falling off boost (if you managed to get it on in the first place, twin turbo trash, over cammed, full of Japanese junk parts, restrictive exhaust, tall ratio shitbox that setup was.

Bugger all. I have a v cam box sitting on the shelf, the interior is in bits. That all started by pulling 3 wires out of the boot and the more I looked the more I found. An old tracker that doesn’t work, old gauge wiring etc. it hasn’t been driven since July. Got a few parts to go dry sump for no other reason of just because. Hopeffully that happens before 2025. 🤣

[BK]

So with being so time restricted this year, progress on the blue 32 has been a bit hit and miss. With working away so much at the moment and pushing hard with the white 32 restoration project it's been hard to get anything done on this 32, and have pretty much forgotten I even have a 33 or a WRX. Seriously, I've worked on my Ford Territory more than this car in the last 3 months prepping it for towing the blue 32 with things like complete fluids and filter changes, new rotors and pads all round, ZF 6 speed heat exchanger delete, front mount PWR transmission oil cooler, steel transmission sump upgrade, tailshaft centre bearing replacement, door lock motor and central locking repairs, Whiteline suspension arm and shock bush replacements - I may as well have a Ford Barra thread !

Amazingly, in between all this the blue 32 has had a few things looked at and done.

First off, was I actually got the new R33 GTR BM57 brake master cylinder installed on the car. Because of being so pedantic I was only going to install it after I could find the exact plug new for the BCNR33 BM57 low level reservoir connector. Well after over a year of searching I found you could buy the plug to suit the 33 BM57 from Ford Motorcraft in the US (I have since updated the R33 BM57 master cylinder thread on the specifics). Well I always thought that the brakes felt much better on my R33 GTR because of the braided lines and Brembos, but after the change on the 32 to the BM57 the master cylinder definitely has a lot to do with it. The pedal feel is dramatically different compared to the BM50 - I like it.

 

Next up was to actually get this car properly running for the first time on flex fuel setup with E85. So off we go to get a drum from BP, as we don't have E85 at our United fuel stations here - grrr ! Entire fuel system is E85 compatible so no worries - sort of. I have an AEM 400 lph E85 lift pump in the tank, Speedflow 200 series lines and Bosch EV14 1550cc injectors which is all well and good, but the surge tank still has the twin Bosch 044 external pumps from the surge tank to the rail. It should be ok for the moment, but their own specs from Bosch for 044 pump life is approx. 3000 hrs on gasoline and a significantly reduced 500 hours on E85. Probably not much stress for me as the car will only run on E85 maybe 10% of the time but I do have another two AEM 400 lph E85 pumps to replace the 044s when I need to swap, as I know a few of you (like Paul above) have had issues with E85 and 044s. Because they are the same physical dimensions as the 60mm diameter Bosch external pump they are a direct no modification replacement.

Anyway filled her up half E85 half BP 98 for testing purposes, made some adjustments in the Elite and what do you know, the car ran perfectly pretty much straight of the bat, which I was not expecting. Went for a drive and was around the 30 - 40% ethanol content. When it got down I put just E85 in and got to about 70% and still ran well. I even put in a fuel density temperature compensation table into the Elite thanks to Johnny Dosepipe ! Thanks heaps for that man as it didn't even occur to me to do that.

So now my car was happy on E85 the next thing was to pull the crank angle sensor off again, hopefully for good.

 

It was time to finally go trigger, I chose the Ross performance setup even though it is the most expensive route over the Hi octane, 5-0 or PRP kits for a few reasons which I preferred after looking at them all. The trigger teeth are on the balancer, the way the crank trigger sensor is mounted to the sump, the housing for the cam home trigger looks a lot neater and mounts the home trigger sensor side on (instead of front on like all the other kits I've seen) and the overall superior finish to the others being all in black and the ability to run Honeywell GT101 hall effect sensors instead of ZF cherry sensors. So for a bit of run down this is what I did-

Purchased and used a male crank angle sensor connector and used Deutsch DT connectors so I could make up an entire trigger sub loom setup that is completely plug in. Means reverting back to crank angle sensor or replacing trigger sensors is completely plug and play.

 

But before I did this a temporary ghetto sub harness was made up and used just to prove proof of operation before committing to the final wiring. Didn't want to do it and then have to pull it all apart again !

 

Mounting the cam home trigger was straight forward, but there was a hiccup regarding the cam home which I'll discuss at a later date (and once I have run it past Ross performance themselves)

 

Now I was running a Ross harmonic balancer before, but had to upgrade as my existing one did not have the provision to mount the 12 tooth crank trigger teeth plate. Install is well, like any other balancer. Did my crank bolt torque with a 3/4" Snap-On torque wrench to exactly 460Nm whilst flywheel locked. My only gripe with the new one is that you can't see the bloody timing marks properly with a timing light when your trying to crank. The marks are there and in 1 degree increments, but they aren't marked the entire edge width of the balancer like the old one or even a stock one so you get a bit lost. No big deal, just had to scribe the 0, 10 and 20 marks wider on the balancer for setup which you can see in the pics.

So after balancer is installed the next thing was to install the sump bracket for the crank trigger sensor and the sensor itself. The excellent bracket picks up the two centre sump bolts and the GT101 sensor is just held in by one 6mm allen key bolt. Now the GT101 sensors have to be shimmed to get the correct gap, which Ross includes a heap of shims with the sensors in two sizes - 2.5mm and 1.0mm. After putting a 3 pin connector on the GT101 and spiral wrapping it I mounted it with the intention of getting as close to 40 thou or 1.0mm as possible. I ended up using two 2.5mm and three 1.0mm shims and ended up with a gap of 48 thou or about 1.2mm which is within tolerance for GT101 sensors. The GT101 will run happily up to a gap of about 2mm which was another reason I chose them as they seem to be more forgiving with your air gap. Anyway with what I had if I needed close it up under 1.0mm I could always take one 2.5mm out and put in two 1.0mm shims in its place, which I didn't need to.

 

Here's a few more shots of how I routed the sub loom to keep it away from the belts.

 

 

So with the temporary wiring still in place up top I decided I'd better find my TDC offset angle. This proved to be a bit of a bastard as I really had no idea where I was timing wise. I bolted the home sensor housing onto the cam gear cover in about the middle and bolted the cam home sensor into the housing, which is at a preset gap of 1.3mm - 1.4mm without shims which seemed a little large to me, even though it should work fine. I called Ross (there is no instructions or drawings supplied with the kit) and they confirmed on their drawings that the gap is right so I turned the injectors off, set ignition timing lock on and set to 0, put a spark lead between coil 1 and the spark plug, hooked up a timing light, started cranking and flattening my battery looking for the 0 mark on the crank. I actually had two batteries hooked up in parallel while doing this but eventually I got in the ballpark and could see my timing marks while I was somewhere in the 350 TDC offset range. I thought well I'm close-ish so I'll fine tune it later. I remove the temp wiring and complete the final sub loom and cam home wiring. I even used a new original CAS loom plastic cover to locate the home sensor cabling to the cam gear cover which ended up like this -

 

 

Finished product -

So after finishing the wiring I went back and tried again to find my TDC offset angle. Now I started at 350 and went up and down until I got it smack on at 390 - and it is definitely 390. If I went 389 or 391 I would move ever so slightly either side of the 0 mark. Very happy about that so I double checked my settings - note trigger signal pullups should be set to on which negates the need to wire in 2.4k resistors which you have to do if you don't have a pullup option. On an Elite you have a 2.4k or 1k pullup (strong) option. Fired it up after confirming settings again, which ended up like this -

 

Ok the engine is running after I disabled the timing lock, no trigger or sync errors and initial timing against light vs ECU looks to be spot on. So the last thing was to do was verify that I am infact half way between crank trigger teeth with my cam home signal as I just centered the cam home housing. This was piss easy on the Elite as there is a log channel called "home percentage of valid travel". When the engine was running it displays a value between 0 - 100%. The idea is to get as close to 50% as possible on this channel, which will verify that you are infact home triggering half way between crank trigger events. I got it pretty much dead on 50% rotating the cam home housing, but it will fluctuate because of timing belt whip, which you can see fluctuating between 48 - 52%. This is of course normal as it is also demonstrating how much the timing belt actually rubber bands around, and why a crank trigger kit is preferred in the first place.

Initial impressions were very good after test driving - the car behaves exactly as it should at idle, nice smooth throttle response, aircon loaded driving etc... and to think I had it sitting here for so long !

Next up on this car is to add a second pre-rail fuel filter and stage my external fuel pumps so I'm not driving around with 3 fuel pumps constantly flat out. Might be able to start that this weekend since the white 32 is now at the panel shop.

I cannot wait until these bloody 32s are close to finished and tuned.

[RBW49N]

Any closer to being done?

[BK]

On 04/07/2021 at 8:44 AM, RBW49N said:

Any closer to being done?

Getting closer, but I did take it for about a 100km drive yesterday. The thing's a freakin' animal to drive with just my road tune. Still waiting for.....

...and the bloody SA / NT border to reopen.

[RBW49N]

On 05/07/2021 at 11:48 PM, BK said:

Getting closer. I did take it for about a 100km drive yesterday, the thing is freakin' animal to drive with just my road tune. Still waiting for.....

...and the bloody SA / NT border to reopen.

Not going to JEM now ? COVID issues?

[BK]

Being in the middle of Australia, Sydney is 2800km away and Adelaide is still 1500km. I'm taking down the two 32 GTR's to get tuned so even Adelaide is a major exercise and cost to tune 2 cars, when I'll be towing this one on a car trailer and getting the other one driven down.

Really it was Con at CRD going to tune it since he built the short motor because I didn't have time to do this one myself. I went to Sydney last year and seen them about it so I'm a bit bummed about that, but the way things are I'm not going anywhere near the east coast when borders get shut at a moment's notice. Even still the SA / NT border is closed at the moment so I'm really counting on that changing in the next week or so.

If I have to go to Adelaide, Simon at Morpowa will be the only one touching these cars. He wanted me to hold off coming down until he had his Prohub dyno to do them which by the looks of it should be any day now.

[mr_rbman]

Doesn't Simon now use Cece @ tunezbycece?!

[BK]

On 09/07/2021 at 12:41 PM, mr_rbman said:

Doesn't Simon now use Cece @ tunezbycece?!

Not for the stuff he wants to do, so I take it CeCe must do most of the Jap stuff he doesn't want to do ? His bread and butter is diesel tunes and most performance stuff he tunes onsite is LS engines. His current dyno is a dyno dynamics 2WD roller, which is being pissed off to make way for a new Mainline 4WD roller and a new $70k+ Mainline Prohub. His Prohub was sent out on Wednesday from Mainline and they're in the middle of building a new dyno room for it.

He doesn't do much JDM anymore except for a few specific customers as he can't handle the flatcap wearing, shitbox owning, cheap arse expects the world for nothing attitude of a lot of Jap performance car owners. Can't blame him really, I can't stand a lot of the performance Jap car owners myself, but a few GTRs are still going through there like Denzos R34 and some R35 owners. He is even the one tuning Keir Wilson's R35 from Willalls, which is interesting indeed if you know what I mean.

[mr_rbman]

On 7/9/2021 at 2:01 PM, BK said:

Not for the stuff he wants to do, so I take it CeCe must do most of the Jap stuff he doesn't want to do ? His bread and butter is diesel tunes and most performance stuff he tunes onsite is LS engines. His current dyno is a dyno dynamics 2WD roller, which is being pissed off to make way for a new Mainline 4WD roller and a new $70k+ Mainline Prohub. His Prohub was sent out on Wednesday from Mainline and they're in the middle of building a new dyno room for it.

He doesn't do much JDM anymore except for a few specific customers as he can't handle the flatcap wearing, shitbox owning, cheap arse expects the world for nothing attitude of a lot of Jap performance car owners. Can't blame him really, I can't stand a lot of the performance Jap car owners myself, but a few GTRs are still going through there like Denzos R34 and some R35 owners. He is even the one tuning Keir Wilson's R35 from Willalls, which is interesting indeed if you know what I mean.

Yes it is very interesting how the JDM tuning scene works in Adelaide.

Even Garage 7 have gone away from tuning for much the same reason as what it appears Simon has, far too many keyboard experts on their phone behind the scenes causing grief...

[BK]

 

On 12/07/2021 at 1:39 PM, mr_rbman said:

Yes it is very interesting how the JDM tuning scene works in Adelaide.

Even Garage 7 have gone away from tuning for much the same reason as what it appears Simon has, far too many keyboard experts on their phone behind the scenes causing grief...

I actually did try to give Anthony Cece a call to potentially give him a go with the cars, as he does seem to know his stuff and has a 4WD Mainline Prohub dyno. Couldn't get onto him and then found out he's basically uncontactable, burnt out and not taking on any new work for the rest of the year.

Not to worry, Simon from Morpowa called me today and we nutted a few things out as his Mainline 4WD roller dyno and Prohub dyno arrived yesterday.

Car is booked in for tuning on the 3rd of August. To say I'm relieved this is now confirmed is an understatement ⚡

 

[mr_rbman]

On 7/13/2021 at 9:06 PM, BK said:

 

I actually did try to give Anthony Cece a call to potentially give him a go with the cars, as he does seem to know his stuff and has a 4WD Mainline Prohub dyno. Couldn't get onto him and then found out he's basically uncontactable, burnt out and not taking on any new work for the rest of the year.

Not to worry, Simon from Morpowa called me today and we nutted a few things out as his Mainline 4WD roller dyno and Prohub dyno arrived yesterday.

Car is booked in for tuning on the 3rd of August. To say I'm relieved this is now confirmed is an understatement ⚡

 

Ye he's a workaholic and it all got to him combined with some personal stuff.

He's stepped back now and got a better balance but the wait times are huge unfortunately...

 

[BK]

2 weeks until the big trip to Adelaide for tuning, I'm trying to get stuff done flatout and running around like a headless chook. I've run into 2 obstacles while rewiring and resizing my fuel pump feed through the car 😄