Mistakes were made, my R34 Story

[Kinkstaah]

Sorry no - The sandtrap adventure ended the day, happened at the end of the last session. At that time I wasn't hearing any weird noises nor were the brakes shuddering anymore.

It was only when watching the videos that I remembered I had these sounds early on!

[Kinkstaah]

More mistakes!

Welp. I drove into the back of a Territory's tow ball at a roundabout.
Then I scraped my own gate driving back home.
I am not a very good driver

At least the aircon is degassed now, in prep for the engine to come out.
What horrors will unfold next?

[GTSBoy]

Greg, you are the reason you cannot have nice things.

[The Bogan]

2 hours ago, GTSBoy said:

Greg, you are the reason you cannot have nice things.

These things happen

And I believe "we, the people, who modify stuff, and actually use it, cannot have nice things"

It's just a shame that it happened so soon after paint 

I still win the award for quickly destroying newly painted panels I think, as my car came back from the paint shop all nice and shiny, until about 4 hours later when the boot was destroyed by a wayward locker that was blown around by the wind....

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and poorer.....dooh

[Kinkstaah]

Ah yes but were you responsible?

In the time I've had it (just before Christmas) I spun off the track twice and drove into things twice, so four separate incidents.. in two outings.

Luckily I have a full OEM GTR front end to put on which is hopefully not a precursor for further, future, more expensive mistakes to come.

It is some consolation that anyone who would want to buy my Altia bar would have to paint it anyway, the guards, too. (if they can get over the asymmetry).

Hopefully over the weekend I will disassemble and see how badly things are bent. From what it looks like, the headlight has actually just been pushed back and bent the headlight support (which .. somehow... crushed the guard in).

I guess the headlight plastic is strong stuff.

[The Bogan]

34 minutes ago, Kinkstaah said:

Ah yes but were you responsible?

In the time I've had it (just before Christmas) I spun off the track twice and drove into things twice, so four separate incidents.. in two outings.

Luckily I have a full OEM GTR front end to put on which is hopefully not a precursor for further, future, more expensive mistakes to come.

It is some consolation that anyone who would want to buy my Altia bar would have to paint it anyway, the guards, too. (if they can get over the asymmetry).

Hopefully over the weekend I will disassemble and see how badly things are bent. From what it looks like, the headlight has actually just been pushed back and bent the headlight support (which .. somehow... crushed the guard in).

I guess the headlight plastic is strong stuff.

Nah, not really responsible for that little fiasco, but I'm still pissed at myself for writing off my 86, or when I reversed my VX into a pole just before selling it, but, meh, 5hit happens to stuff, all it takes is a slight distraction, and life is full of distractions, and "dooh" moments 

 

[MBS206]

1 hour ago, The Bogan said:

These things happen

And I believe "we, the people, who modify stuff, and actually use it, cannot have nice things"

It's just a shame that it happened so soon after paint 

I still win the award for quickly destroying newly painted panels I think, as my car came back from the paint shop all nice and shiny, until about 4 hours later when the boot was destroyed by a wayward locker that was blown around by the wind....

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and poorer.....dooh

I think it's bound to happen, you finally get it all perfect, and bam, something will happen.

I took a while to get a Commodore rear quarter repaired where a P Plater clipped it. Two days after getting it back, Sarah wiped it out on a concrete pillar in an underground car park... This is why I take forever to repair them, it stretches how long until it gets bent again... 😛

[Kinkstaah]

Welp, things are coming apart. The bending was both not as bad and maybe a bit worse than I was guessing.

I'm told this will bend out pretty easily. That said, it hasn't been bent out yet :p. The guard itself also needs a bit of tap tap love but as you can probably surmise, pulling the motor is the other thing going on.

Yes I'm very silly, i've completed multiple problem-free track day (other than my driving off the track) on a 40C day multiple times doing 80+ laps a day, to and from the track, and to reward this excellent service I'm pulling the engine out to tinker with it.

Or I'm standing by to look/learn/not mess up/pay someone money to do it correctly, I'm not that crazy.

More disassembly tonight, and then re-assemble with very expensive fresh new bits to make ~3kw more and be... more reliable?

Yes, I've questioned the logic of upgrading valvetrain pieces for better high RPM stability and reliability on a motor which doesn't seem to have those problems to begin with in any practical sense from my experience/what I use it for, thank you.

[GTSBoy]

It seems the definition of "Gregging" something might need to be expanded?

[MBS206]

That's a write off for sure... Part out? 😛

I kid.

It looks like the rad support has a minor minor bend in it too where the rep support sits near. Could just be the photos (and me not wearing my glasses right now).

Worst case is you can buy a new radiator support, have it swapped over, and leave the car in paint jail for 12 to 18 months while you build the motor to handle twin turbos or a Harrop SC...

[Kinkstaah]

Yea the photos aren't the best. When I was pulling the bumper and headlights out there was a bodyshop guy looking on for it, there is a slight bend behind where the passenger headlight is, but we're talking a few MM and there is a little bit of a bend for the reo.

That said it's supposedly well within the "Drill a hole in it and pull it out with a slide hammer to be close enough" and be on our way. The other option is to buy a GTR reo for the GTR bumper bits but this is a $2000+ fix for something Mr Hammer can probably do 99% of the job for and everything will/can line up pretty closely-to-good-enough.

[GTSBoy]

No need to drill any holes. There's plenty of access to reach through and behind all of that steel to "push" from behind with a pulling action on the slide hammer. There's all sorts of attachments you can screw on the end of them.

[Kinkstaah]

Sorry, that was with regards to the rather pretzeled corner of the reo bar. It's in such a state over the years that drilling a hole is probably preferable to bothering to unbolt the thing 

[MBS206]

Some of the stuff the PDR guys in the states pull is amazing too. Instead of drilling a hole. They crank some insane tension into it.

I actually DIY built a pulling bar myself that I used to pull the Subarus front end out with. About an hour's work, a bit of 30mm *3mm shs, and a piece of 5mm thick plate. Worked great!

 

But I vote replace it with a GTR rad support. And not going to lie, I'll laugh if a GTR rad support doesn't fit a GTt...

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

this thread delivers, once again

Skyline owners, our cars spend more time off the road than on the road  

[Kinkstaah]

I promise there will be no chance of replacing the rad support.... 

It is barely twisted and it's way more likely to just be driven around with a slightly twisty support. As long as the headlight can be bolted in there then no harm no foul lol.

The reo may need to be un-bent a little but truth be told if it all somewhat lines up and is hidden when the car is assembled the level of f**ks will be 0.0 

[MBS206]

48 minutes ago, Kinkstaah said:

I promise there will be no chance of replacing the rad support.... 

It is barely twisted and it's way more likely to just be driven around with a slightly twisty support. As long as the headlight can be bolted in there then no harm no foul lol.

The reo may need to be un-bent a little but truth be told if it all somewhat lines up and is hidden when the car is assembled the level of f**ks will be 0.0 

In a few years from now, you'll regret that. It'll eat away at you, knowing the truth of the ugly hiding beneath the beautiful exterior... 😛

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

Since the motor is out, I suggest pop in a nice dirty LS chop cam.

MOAR of this please:

 

[Kinkstaah]

16 minutes ago, Dose Pipe Sutututu said:

Since the motor is out, I suggest pop in a nice dirty LS chop cam.

MOAR of this please:

 

I've already gone over the cam. A new one is going in. An old one is coming out!

The new one is smaller, with less overlap. It has way more lift, but it will be more mild mannered (hopefully, probably very minorly)

I'm also measuring for two more mufflers, with the goal of having four mufflers in my car. But that probably will be done by an exhaust shop in a drive in, measure, buy parts, install parts later kind of deal.

[Kinkstaah]

21 hours ago, MBS206 said:

In a few years from now, you'll regret that. It'll eat away at you, knowing the truth of the ugly hiding beneath the beautiful exterior... 😛

Thats the current state of the reo. Bit ew, but GTR Reo and supporting bars are $2000, and 2nd hand GTT ones are $1000...

More engine disassembly. The good news is
 

• Various LS weird sounds are apparently normal
• Everything coming out is in perfect condition

The bad news is:

• Everything coming out is in perfect condition

It looks like whoever assembled this engine ~25,000km ago was telling the truth with what's in it and how they did it. Even things I was unsure of like the timing chain - But it's a brand new double row timing chain, spaced perfectly. They even cut up the stock windage tray to keep it instead of being lazy and to work with the baffle.

Cam, Heads, springs, LS7 lifters, Pushrods - All look new and have obviously been working perfectly.

In other news, we removed the pineapples that were loaded below the superpro subframe bushes.
They look a fair bit munted and have deformed the poly bushes that are 'above' them.

I'm telling myself that now that there's space 'under' the bush between the little cup that bolts in... that having a pineapple wedged there was bad and basically made the rear end solid. The pineapple and the superpro bush are ... equally deformed (i.e they have deformed one another from being smashed together).

We'll see how it goes with bushes only. I am sure this cope will fail and the answer will be to drop the subframe and put nismo rubber bushes in there instead.

$400 worth of gaskets and ARP head bolts to replace perfectly new looking gaskets that absolutely weren't leaking  and were installed perfectly with great care - because god damnit.