N15 #555 Lemons Car

[Tobz]

Hey all!

so this story goes back a few years! At a bucks party me and a 7 other friends who all owned Toyota 86’s at the time decided to buy a 1998 ST04 Toyota Celica for the 24h lemons racing. Best drunk decision ever. We bought the car next day and started the journey.

our first race was at Wakefield and we finished the race! We learnt a lot and due to poor planning only had shitty brake pads, so we learnt how to do brake changes in 7 minutes while we did driver swaps. Was an awesome race and we finished 14th (lost a bit of time due to brakes)

 

our next event was in Winton. Again we finished we had very minimal issues, but we developed a shifting issue and lost most gears. We finished with only 3rd gear. Turns out our shifter cables failed.

our third event was at Winton and this time we had bearing and driveshaft failures. We ended up retiring at the start of the second day.

our last event in this car was back at old faithful Wakefield park. We had driveshaft nut issues, stupid new driveshaft nuts were weak as, and just stripped and let go. We called around and managed to get some off a wrecker, we also needed to clean up the threads as they got stripped. But we fixed that, and a few other stupid small issues, including a loose seat, a wheel that overheated so bad it made the brake rotor holes oval. Anyway we finished the race and decided we wanted a faster car

Which leads me to late last year. We picked up a series 2, 2000 N15 Pulsar SSS. 180,000kms and it is in terrible condition. Perfect for lemons.

to date we havent done much, we have stripped the interior, removed the sound deadening and bought a lot of parts. Today we drained and removed the radiator and drained and removed the gearbox. We will be pulling the engine out next time we get together and here is my question.

 

if you were us, and you were pulling the engine out, what preventative maintenance or upgrades would you do for a car that will be doing cheap endurance racing? So far we have the following planned:

upgraded thick all aluminium radiator

oil cooler and relocation

new engine mounts

Ceramic spring Clutch

new rear main seal

new rocker cover gasket

new water pump

pads, rotors, braided lines

springs and shocks

15inch rims and tyres

wheel bearings

normal stuff like harness, seat and an AGI cage

plus the usual plugs, leads, oils and filters

 

will continue to post updates

Edited March 29, 2020 by Tobz

[Tobz]

Not much of an update, we have pulled the gearbox, engine and drive shafts and in the middle of changing the clutch, water pump, rms, rocker cover gasket, plugs, leads and all that stuff  was the first time we pulled an engine, so a lot of fun was had!

[The Bogan]

Nice, but needs more short hammer time movies.

I laughed hard watching the removal of the sound deadening.

I am a convert of the dry ice method, leaves alot more time for beer and daydreaming.

[PranK]

This is great. We thought about a SSS too for our Lemons car but we're still undecided. 

What are you going to do about a cage?

[robbo_rb180]

this will be great, always wanted to do lemons. Friends that have done it highly rate it.
The list looks pretty good, could you sneak in a cheap brake upgrade? I remember seeing a N15 with skyline calipers along time ago 

[Tobz]

1 hour ago, mlr said:

I am a convert of the dry ice method

Ooooo so are we! But we couldn’t get any on the day and couldn’t be bothered doing other jobs so we ended up with this awesome hammer video!

[Tobz]

13 minutes ago, PranK said:

What are you going to do about a cage?

We ended up getting the pulsar challenge AGI cage with double side intrusion bars

https://www.agi-precision.com.au/product-category/roll-cages/cams-roll-cages/bolt-in/nissan-roll-cages/pulsar-n15/

 

 

[Tobz]

4 minutes ago, robbo_rb180 said:

The list looks pretty good, could you sneak in a cheap brake upgrade? I remember seeing a N15 with skyline calipers along time ago 

We are going to try and keep the standard brakes for now so we are still eligible to run it in the pulsar challenge if we wanted

[Tobz]

But of a boring update. We’ve fixed a hose that’s under the intake that fails pretty regularly. New rocker cover gasket, air con deleted, new belts, flywheel, sprung ceramic clutch, injectors, water pump, rear main seal, exhaust manifold, egr delete, oil cooler and relocation kit, new engine mounts and a very extreme clean as the engine was black af. 
 

this was a first for me and everyone in the team as we had never pulled an engine before. Overall was a lot easier than I thought, but it’s a lot of shitty little jobs. But having the engine and gearbox back in feels very comforting 

now we need to wire it all back up, pop in the new radiator and oil cooler and see what we stuffed up!

Edited August 23, 2020 by Tobz