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Not sure if i can turbo my rb30 motor HELP


JohnnyR31Silo
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Yes you can

Yes you should

Keep the single cam for "historical" reasons (twin cam heads go foe drug money)

There is a bazillion things for sale on the interwebs to help you do it

Talk to the person who is building the engine for what you need

Finding a transmission that will survive could be a costly hit to your budget (anything RB is going for drug money)

Thread needs pics

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On 03/02/2022 at 8:12 PM, Ben C34 said:

What difference do you think the block makes?

There is clearly a plug in there you pull out for the oil return. So that's handy . Oil feed is super easy to sort out as per above post.

 

Are you going to turbo a 30yr old wrecker engine? Sounds fun.

What do you mean by that? 
what’s wrong with going turbo ?

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On 04/02/2022 at 11:13 PM, mlr said:

Yes you can

Yes you should

Keep the single cam for "historical" reasons (twin cam heads go foe drug money)

There is a bazillion things for sale on the interwebs to help you do it

Talk to the person who is building the engine for what you need

Finding a transmission that will survive could be a costly hit to your budget (anything RB is going for drug money)

Thread needs pics

Yeah I agree finding a rb25 transmission will be very difficult 

what is a fair price for a rb25 transmission?

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On 03/02/2022 at 9:27 PM, Duncan said:

Oh, and BTW, don't turbo it, leave it stock, repair anything you can and sell in in 10 years for a fortune. You have a collector's car.

Will going turbo really affect the value ?

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On 03/02/2022 at 9:58 PM, GTSBoy said:

And if you turbo an RB30 in front of an old RB30 NA manual gearbox.....the gearbox will not last long. Even at lowish boost. Too much torque for the poor little thing.

Iv heard same thing, heard it will eat through my gearbox... what gearbox would you reccomend ? And how much would I roughly be paying ? 

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On 2/4/2022 at 11:39 PM, JohnnyR31Silo said:

Iv heard same thing, heard it will eat through my gearbox... what gearbox would you reccomend ? And how much would I roughly be paying ? 

RB25DET box would be the obvious choice. But a brand new one is in the area of $4000 now and good 2nd hands ones are not changing hands.

Otherwise T56 or Tremec conversion. More money. More money.

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On 05/02/2022 at 7:41 AM, Shoota_77 said:

Yes mate, Headspec in Clayton.

How much roughly you reckon I’ll be spending ? Does he rebuild the motors as well? 
got a quote in footscray for 7500 for a full rebuild and to upgrade some parts so I can run it turbo instead of na 

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On 05/02/2022 at 12:28 PM, GTSBoy said:

RB25DET box would be the obvious choice. But a brand new one is in the area of $4000 now and good 2nd hands ones are not changing hands.

Otherwise T56 or Tremec conversion. More money. More money.

A lot of money, seems like iv got a money pit on my hands lol.. 

So even real low boost it’ll still eat through my gearbox you reckon? 
How long Roughly do you reckon it would last my gearbox with the turbo ? 

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On 06/02/2022 at 4:01 PM, JohnnyR31Silo said:

A lot of money, seems like iv got a money pit on my hands lol.. 

So even real low boost it’ll still eat through my gearbox you reckon? 
How long Roughly do you reckon it would last my gearbox with the turbo ? 

Possibly the 1st time you lay into it, possibly the 50th time

Anyone can make big power bolting a turbo on a car, making it reliable is the hard, and expensive part

If you don't have $20-30k to drop on the engine and drivetrain then just do a nice NA build

If you want a fast car, buy one that someone has already spent the money on making it fast and reliable 

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On 2/6/2022 at 4:01 PM, JohnnyR31Silo said:

A lot of money, seems like iv got a money pit on my hands lol.. 

So even real low boost it’ll still eat through my gearbox you reckon? 
How long Roughly do you reckon it would last my gearbox with the turbo ? 

The thing is, all the cars you see that work well, are money pits. Same as the ones that don't go well.

I could say random comments like "If I sold mine for 70k, I'd have lost money on it" and this is when it was a 10k buy for the base car, back in the day.

The reason its bad is because it is a 30 year old used engine that was not designed for boost. It's infront of a 30 year used gearbox that was not designed for boost.

All in a car that has everything else, not designed for boost. Not really anyway, at the levels that people on the internet hold as an entry point for cool factor. Do you think the driveshafts, bushings, bearings, subframes are also not 30 year old items, not designed for boost?

Do you have a $100,000 budget for this? Answer honestly. Because if you don't, and this is your first foray into cars and modifying, you will need that much, if you truly want it to do everything 'well' and look the part.

If sentences like that make you think "oh jesus f**k no, agggh that is more than I bargained for" then what you really should do is

a) Enjoy the car for what it is, an old cool retro ride that isn't really fast but isn't pretending to be
b) Sell this to a collector or passion project guy who will do the above
c) Take your $40,000 budget and consult a Subaru/BRZ dealer and buy the new GR86.

It will kick the shit out of this project for livability, reliability, sanity, and will absolutely be a great platform to learn to wrench on cars going forward. You will love it equally as much as your R31.

The truth is I cannot imagine any stock Skyline build in February 2022 that comes out cheaper than a brand new GR86 from a dealership, with a warranty!

Any modified skyline project that you buy that has already been modified well also costs more than aforementioned new GR86/BRZ, with a warranty!

Sorry, don't have a $40,000 budget at all? There's plenty of hot hatches out there that do a damn good job nowadays and for any road use make a damn lot more sense tbh, which is why you see so damn many of them.

I am not having a go at a young guy who is excited by the world of car mods. We are all those at some point. This is sincere advice.

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On 06/02/2022 at 5:33 PM, mlr said:

Possibly the 1st time you lay into it, possibly the 50th time

Anyone can make big power bolting a turbo on a car, making it reliable is the hard, and expensive part

If you don't have $20-30k to drop on the engine and drivetrain then just do a nice NA build

If you want a fast car, buy one that someone has already spent the money on making it fast and reliable 

I’ll have to think about what I’m gonna do weigh out the pros and cons and what not and the money that it will cost 

I appreciate the advice though

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On 07/02/2022 at 11:28 PM, Kinkstaah said:

The thing is, all the cars you see that work well, are money pits. Same as the ones that don't go well.

I could say random comments like "If I sold mine for 70k, I'd have lost money on it" and this is when it was a 10k buy for the base car, back in the day.

The reason its bad is because it is a 30 year old used engine that was not designed for boost. It's infront of a 30 year used gearbox that was not designed for boost.

All in a car that has everything else, not designed for boost. Not really anyway, at the levels that people on the internet hold as an entry point for cool factor. Do you think the driveshafts, bushings, bearings, subframes are also not 30 year old items, not designed for boost?

Do you have a $100,000 budget for this? Answer honestly. Because if you don't, and this is your first foray into cars and modifying, you will need that much, if you truly want it to do everything 'well' and look the part.

If sentences like that make you think "oh jesus f**k no, agggh that is more than I bargained for" then what you really should do is

a) Enjoy the car for what it is, an old cool retro ride that isn't really fast but isn't pretending to be
b) Sell this to a collector or passion project guy who will do the above
c) Take your $40,000 budget and consult a Subaru/BRZ dealer and buy the new GR86.

It will kick the shit out of this project for livability, reliability, sanity, and will absolutely be a great platform to learn to wrench on cars going forward. You will love it equally as much as your R31.

The truth is I cannot imagine any stock Skyline build in February 2022 that comes out cheaper than a brand new GR86 from a dealership, with a warranty!

Any modified skyline project that you buy that has already been modified well also costs more than aforementioned new GR86/BRZ, with a warranty!

Sorry, don't have a $40,000 budget at all? There's plenty of hot hatches out there that do a damn good job nowadays and for any road use make a damn lot more sense tbh, which is why you see so damn many of them.

I am not having a go at a young guy who is excited by the world of car mods. We are all those at some point. This is sincere advice.

I don’t have that type of money to drop, even just thinking about what @mlr said 20-30k even thats abit of a stretch for me I will have to have have a good think about what I’m doing, especially before putting a turbo in because like as everyone has said will need the rb25 gearbox and drive train and the rebuild on the motor will be very hefty so I will be thinking more into so I do appreciate the advice 

I’m going to be spending 700 tomorrow to get an alarm on the car with central locking because it is an old car which I do like an i do intend on keeping it, so maybe I’ll just stick to the smaller things an go from there and make a decision if I really want to go that far and throwing in a turbo 

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