Mistakes were made, my R34 Story

[MBS206]

The real question is, on some of those wild roads they call highways, how many times did a farmer in an old ute from the early 2000s blaze past you over double lines?

 

Tassie is a wild and really cool place, and after doing a work related road trip there January of 24, I understand why Targa Tasmania is ran there, and is so tough to do well at!

We had a brand new Camry Hybrid that handled quite nicely, and thankfully weren't in an old car, because cresting some of those hills in a 100kmh zone for it to suddenly be like "surprise f**kers, this is a recommended 30kmh hard right turn" wouldn't be pretty. We weren't racing the Camry around, but we weren't slouching in the bends either. But my lord those old farmers know their old clapped out utes, and those roads, as they were absolutely hammering it!

 

You're also super lucky to make it up to Mt Wellingtong this time of year. It's often road closed with snow/ice!

Also, I hope you hit up Salamander Road in Hobart for some insanely good food (I highly recommend the dimly lit Irish pub for a Guiness Pie, or even the bangers and mash!!!)

 

How long did the Ferry take to get across? I want to do a road trip of Tas on my own time, but I get horrifically sea sick, and I don't want me on the Ferry, just the car 😛

Edited August 14 by MBS206

[GTSBoy]

56 minutes ago, MBS206 said:

Salamander Road

Was that deliberate?

[Kinkstaah]

Actually everyone on the roads was really well behaved. The only person that did any minor tailgating was a local hoon in a Turbo Focus. Unfortunately we weren't going the same way so there was no grand initial D touge battle.

Lots of people pulled over and let me through. The amount of "Hey man nice car, omg skyline, nice 34 man woo" was suprising. Like really suprising. Like almost annoying. My partner was obviously surprised, she'd never seen anyone in the real world point out the car/like the car/want to chat about the car before, so to have like 3 people per day mention it was notable, I could finally say SEE? SOMEONE THINKS THEY'RE COOL.

Everyone was also pretty suprised about the weather. Every day was dry and about ~13-14C. Mount Wellington had a sign that said they close the gates at 9pm and I was heading up there at about ~7:30. It was VERY apparent that conditions were getting significantly worse by the minute on the way up and down. The road on the mountain was terrible though, it's no driving road. I have various suspension related questions now. Luckily it was only about 20 minutes from where we were staying to the top of the mountain as said Google maps.

We only had the 2 nights in Hobart. We went to the Farm Gate Market though which was really good - And went down to the Hastings Thermal springs/caves down there during the day. I'd definitely be up for going back again, so luckily there's a few more sights yet to see. Didn't get to do the west coast/queenstown/cradle mountain so this was supposed to be a 'scouting' trip anyway of sorts if I were to one day do/take part in/organize a more car-focused trip.

As for the boat, it wasn't bad. Well it was bad, but not in the way you're thinking. We did the night trip which leaves at 6:45 (though you have to be there ~2 hours earlier) and arrives the next morning at about 6am. There is nothing to do on the ship. If you plan accordingly and bring a book/tablet/show to watch/charger you can just chill out, take some Travacalm and just sleep through it. The food there is an extremely basic buffet that costs $32 a plate, or $14 for a $3 pizza.

The way back we had a travel kettle and a few different types of cup noodles and made our own tea/coffee in the room. This was a far superior way to do it. At the very least book one of the rooms with beds. I guess as we were in the off season we didn't have room mates. You get an option for rooms with 4 beds (2x bunks) or a room with just the two bottom beds. There's also some option for a deluxe queen bed but it's much pricer. We've been on sleeper trains in Asia before so we figured this is similar (and it was)

[MBS206]

21 minutes ago, GTSBoy said:

Was that deliberate?

That was a fark up, it's Salamanca Place I was thinking of.

And now I'm curious as to what potential slur/gaf I have caused with Salamander Road, ha ha!

[GTSBoy]

16 minutes ago, MBS206 said:

And now I'm curious as to what potential slur/gaf I have caused with Salamander Road, ha ha!

Nah. Was just wondering if you were having a small stroke or if there was some slur/gaf/inside joke that I wasn't aware of.

[Kinkstaah]

So, updates.

I have not washed the car since it came back from Tassie. I've driven it around a bit but not got around to actually sorting it out.

I DID raise it because I cracked the rear bar leaving a hotel which was very distressing. Interestingly, the car drives more compliant now that it's raised a fair bit (5mm front, 15mm rear). Also noticed that my FR height was 10mm lower than FL. So that's now sorted out, too.

I also bought this and had it printed:
https://www.etsy.com/au/listing/1576422240/wheel-and-tire-fitment-tool-universal?ref=shop_home_feat_1&dd=1&logging_key=08f604d9fa4cc383550ba985e6ac85cd5cac7fbb%3A1576422240

Now, if I was smart I would have taken my brake calipers off to actually use this correctly but it was evident enough to me that in the region where the caliper was... there was nothing to hit suspension/guard/arm wise. So I'm going with "it'll be fine" after using the tool to hopefully very precisely measure the wheel clearance.

Also while doing this, I had the very VERY bad idea of jacking one of the wheels/suspension arms up while the rest of the car was on jack stands. I did this to see how the arm would travel. This all was well and good until the car slid off the stands and went through a fence.

So don't do that.

Incredibly nobody was hurt and there was only minor damage to the rear bumper as the car didn't have far to slide, and had 3-4 wheels on it.

The only damage turned out to be the fence itself which was easy to fix, and a little bit of damage to the fibreglass rear bumper trim.

I had already planned to try a touch up paint kit to fix the time I drove into my garage door to see if it'd help in the interim before I get it fixed properly.

I used the Dr Colorchip kit after looking online and seeing everyone talking about it. Yes it's made for chips and not huge broken missing pieces and I'll be 500% recommending it for stone chips after using it for stupid things like me.

This took about ... 10 minutes and looking at the half assed photo the 30 second job I did on the bumper corner was almost perfect just by using the tiny little brush and painting it in. The sealact stuff to remove over-painting is really useful, so if/when I do it again I'll likely slather the touch up paint well over it and then clean it up with the cleaning solution.

The wheels should arrive in a couple of weeks. I am still kinda confident after doing a stupid amount of measuring (and borrowing a set of 18x10.5+15) that they will not fit because I overlooked something, somehow and flew too close to the sun.

ALSO

R34 GTR guard liners do not fit on a GTT. I bought the undertray brake duct guides and had the wonderful problem of them not fitting my intake, my oil cooler and the liners themselves were even worse. Attempting to fit them won't work in general - You would have to cut them up as another poster mentioned as the bodywork is different on the GTT. At least I can try to resell them.

So instead of cutting those up, I cut up my old already-cut-up GTT liners and extended them by using some PP plastic and drilling some 8mm holes for some nissan clips for the 'extra' bit. Because I was happy to cut them I was able to mount them pretty damn forward so I now have some semblance of guard liners, and the brake vents seal the bumper from the bottom.

It sort-of-looks like this, to give some idea - If you look at the GTR and then the GTT this is when I realised that I needed to seriously measure as the inside of the rim area is entirely, entirely, entirely different and could not take any internet measurements for granted. 
 

[Duncan]

jeebus. glad you weren't under it while performing the stunt.

Also thanks for the link to the wheel measurer, exactly what I needed

[Kinkstaah]

6 minutes ago, Duncan said:

jeebus. glad you weren't under it while performing the stunt.

Also thanks for the link to the wheel measurer, exactly what I needed

If you like - I have the STL files so I can email em. There's a couple of gotchas (i.e the holes are not threaded so you might need/will need) to utilize some M3 melt-in threads for some of the points.

However if you want to be super accurate, and are willing to remove your calipers and your SHOCKS it's a really good tool. You also might need to scale the part that measures the tyre width a bit wider. It defaults to a 7.5in tyre and I mean who is running that. Luckily with the magic of CAD this is very easy to rescale.

[The Bogan]

Take the fall as a warning sign for future endeavours 

Stay safe mate

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

18 hours ago, The Bogan said:

Take the fall as a warning sign for future endeavours 

Maybe it's time for a M3 F80 LCI, and leave it stock. 

Drive it to a shop, sip on your latte with nutmeg whilst it gets serviced and on the way home swing by and grab some chai mix for the evening.

[MBS206]

1 hour ago, Dose Pipe Sutututu said:

Maybe it's time for a M3 F80 LCI, and leave it stock. 

Drive it to a shop, sip on your latte with nutmeg whilst it gets serviced and on the way home swing by and grab some chai mix for the evening.

I think Greg just needs to wrap himself in bubble wrap and stay inside...

[GTSBoy]

This thread keps giving with the OMG!

[Kinkstaah]

Well GTSBoy, prepare yourself further.

I did a track day with 1/2 a day prep on Friday, inpromptu.

The good news is that I got home, and didn't drive the car into a wall. Everything seemed mostly okay. The car was even a little faster than it was last time. I also got to get some good datalog data too. I also noticed a tiny bit of knock which was (luckily?) recorded. All I know is the knock sensors got recalibrated.... and are notorious for false knock. So I don't know if they are too sensitive, not sensitive enough... or some other third option.

But I reduced timing anyway. It wasn't every pull through the session either. Think along the lines of -1 degree of timing for say, three instances while at the top of 4th in a 20 minute all-hot-lap session.

Unfortunately at the end of session 2... I noticed a little oil. I borrowed some jack stands and a jack and took a look under there, but as is often the case, messing around with it kinda half cleaned it up, it was not conclusive where it was coming from. I decided to give it another go and see how it was. The amount of oil was maybe one/two small drops.

I did another 20 minute session and car went well, and I was just starting to get into it and not be terrified of driving on track. I pulled over and checked in the pits and saw this:



This is where I called it, packed up and went home as I live ~20 min from the track with a VERY VERY CLOSE EYE on Oil Pressure on the way home. The volume wasn't much but you never know.

I checked it today when I had my own space/tools/time to find out what was going on, wanted to clean it up, run the car and see if any of the fittings from around the oil filter were causing it. I have like.. 5 fittings there, so I suspected one was (hopefully?) the culprit.

It became immediately apparent as soon as I looked around more closely.

 

 

 

This is the R34 GTT oil sender connected via an adapter to an oil cooler block I have installed which runs AN lines to my cooler (and back). There's also an oil temp sensor on top. 

Just after that video, I attempted to unthread the sensor to see if it's loose/worn and it disintegrated in my hand.

So yes. I am glad I noticed that oil because it would appear that complete and utter catastrophic engine failure was about 1 second of engine runtime away.

I did try to drill the fitting out, and only succeeded in drilling the middle hole much larger and now there's a... smooth hole in there with what looks like a damn sleeve still incredibly tight in there. Not really sure how to proceed from here.

My options:

1) Find someone who can remove the stuck fitting, and use a steel adapter so it won't fatigue? (Female BSPT for the R34 sender to 1/8NPT male - HARD to find).

IF it isn't possible to remove - Buy a new block ($320) and have someone tap a new 1/8NPT in the top of it ($????) and hope the steel adapter works better.

2) Buy a new block and give up on the OEM pressure sender for the dash entirely, and use the supplied 1/8 NPT for the oil temp sender. Having the oil pressure read 0 in the dash with the warning lamp will give me a lot of anxiety driving around. I do have the actual GM sensor/sender working, but it needs OBD2 as a gauge. If I'm datalogging I don't actually have a readout of what the gauge is currently displaying.

3) Other? Find a new location for the OEM sender? Though I don't know of anywhere that will work. I also don't know if a steel adapter is actually functionally smart here. It's clearly leveraged itself through vibration of the motor and snapped in half. This doesn't seem like a setup a smart person would replicate given the weight of the OEM sender.

Still pretty happy being lucky for once and seeing this at the absolute last moment before bye bye motor in a big way, even if an adapter is apparently 6 weeks+ delivery and I have no way to free the current stuck/potentially destroyed threads in the current oil block.

[MBS206]

Buy yourself a set of easy outs.

See if they will get a good bite in and unthread it.

 

Very very lucky the whole sender didn't let go while on the track and cost you a motor!

[GTSBoy]

51 minutes ago, MBS206 said:

Buy yourself a set of easy outs.

This.

As for your options - I suggest remote mounting the Nissan sensor further away on a length of steel tube. That tube to have a loop in it to handle vibration, etc etc.

You will need to either put a tee and a bleed fitting near the sensor, or crack the fitting at the sensor to bleed it full of oil when you first set it up, otherwise you won't get the line filled. But this is a small problem. Just needs enough access to get it done.

[Duncan]

7 hours ago, GTSBoy said:

This.

As for your options - I suggest remote mounting the Nissan sensor further away on a length of steel tube. That tube to have a loop in it to handle vibration, etc etc.

You will need to either put a tee and a bleed fitting near the sensor, or crack the fitting at the sensor to bleed it full of oil when you first set it up, otherwise you won't get the line filled. But this is a small problem. Just needs enough access to get it done.

Well, this, but braided line to the sender that is mounted on the chassis. Oil Pressure doesn't need to be close, while I prefer Oil Temp is in the active oil flow (bro science, not sure how much it matters). 

That's how I've had mine set up for years and it works OK

[GTSBoy]

1 hour ago, Duncan said:

Oil Temp is in the active oil flow (bro science, not sure how much it matters)

Absolutely matters because, while a temperature change will eventually reach a sensor at the end of a static line, the response time is far far far too slow to be useful. Might as well not have a temp gauge at all.

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

Fuark, at least the motor survived.

What brand was the fitting that snapped?

[Kinkstaah]

I'm actually not sure - I think it was "Stealth Performance" (It really is near impossible to find a FEMALE 1/8BSPT to 1/8NPT male at ALL) but having the thing leveraged on a 90 degree angle on a small aluminium fitting is not too smart.

Also in not too smart, I've drilled out the center of the broken fitting so there's maybe 0.00001mm of thread to bite into, so yeah. I may have to get it drilled/tapped/plugged entirely.

Given I could conceivably tap a thread/adapter/pressure line in any point in the oil system I suppose it's feasible to run a line to the Nissan Sensor to keep the dash working. Do these exist in AN fittings and the like? Like an AN fitting that has a NPT (or other?) thread as well for putting a sensor in?

[Duncan]

So I actually had the cover off my car today, here is a (bad) pic of the setup.

I have an oil cooler thermostat block, the temp sender is straight in there. The pressure sender has a short AN line to a T piece which is mounted (hopefully cable tied counts as mounted....) on the chassis.

BTW every fitting you could ever imagine exists....just depends what they cost and how many you need. Raceworx AN adapters are here: https://raceworks.com.au/fittings/adapters/, I think you said you need BSPT to AN (https://raceworks.com.au/fittings/adapters/bsp/tapered/an-to-bspt-adapters/) and AN to NPT (https://raceworks.com.au/fittings/adapters/npt/)

BTW, braided line is super simple to make. It looks intimidating, is not.