RB26 Low Power and Low Compression

[GTSBoy]

On 9/5/2021 at 6:36 AM, SnekDoc said:

what do you think price-wise about going with a complete engine like the HKS step 2 or the Tomei one vs having a shop rebuild my engine with all the equivalent done?

It might not hurt so much if you can supply some lube.

[joshuaho96]

On 9/4/2021 at 2:06 PM, SnekDoc said:

Had it compression tested again, readings were C1: 100, C2: 95, C3: 105, C4:110, C5: 100, C6: 110. Better than last time time and at least fairly even but still lower than originally. Air appears to be leaking into crankcase so consensus is going to need a rebuild. Time for a whole new rabbit hole and a lot more money.

Now need to find out how far I want to go upgrading things if I'm having it rebuilt. My goal was to eventually make it a track-ready 2.8 but wasn't planning on doing it this soon.

I know you guys aren't big on HKS parts, but since I'm not doing the work myself what do you think price-wise about going with a complete engine like the HKS step 2 or the Tomei one vs having a shop rebuild my engine with all the equivalent done?

There is nothing cheap about building an RB either way. You either pay in having someone incompetent wreck your engine which I've heard many stories about or you can take the buy once cry once approach. HKS complete engines are extremely expensive for what you get though, you're going to pay probably 10-15k USD in HKS tax alone. I would start by asking yourself what you actually use the car for and to what degree. If you just want a 2.8L stroker for a responsive street/track hybrid car that is comparable to a stock car in maintenance requirements and general reliability that's a very different set of requirements compared to a 100% dedicated track car that will never spend substantial time below 4000 RPM and will get torn down after every season for inspection if not rebuild. If you're going for something that looks like the latter then you want something like the HKS "high response" 2.8L stroker kit. I'm sure there are a bunch of similar designs out there, don't just blindly drop 1.5M yen on a stroker kit because I name-dropped that one. If this is primarily a street car that may sometimes find itself on a track then there's no point in wasting money on pistons that are designed to take 700+ hp and 9000+ RPM but require high piston to wall clearance with all of the disadvantages that go with that. You need to be honest with yourself here before you get any deeper into this.

Also, I wouldn't let just anybody do this engine build. There is a wide gap between letting the tuner that possibly just trashed your engine attempt to rebuild it and going to HKS/Nismo for a crate engine. Club DSport in the US can probably be trusted to build an RB and not screw things up. They won't be cheap, they may have massive lead times, but they have a reputation to uphold and you can read their published testing and experimentation on the RBs to get a sense of their worldview. They're probably still cheaper than a Nismo engine which is like 7.2M yen if you want a comparable 2.8L stroker. Even if you decide that all you need is something like an HKS 2.8 Step 0 with basically factory cams and factory head, there are still a ton of gotchas in rebuilding an engine.

[robbo_rb180]

Call CRD or the like in Australia and get a motor shipped. Known to produce quality cars and could most likely help with tuning it. Getting a better product for your money than a Japanese brands crate engine.