Pediigru

I've spent the last few weeks trying to strip the shell down as much as possible to find any hidden rust and to have the car sent off to the panel beaters. It will be good having all the rust cut out and being painted professionally, Even though i would have liked to do it myself.



For the most part, It's just a rolling shell now. There is still the glass in, although I have to get the windscreen removed as it's damaged now unfortunately. There is a massive crack on the passenger side of the window.



I picked up these Recaro fishnet seats awhile back and have been considering getting them re-upholstered with the rest of the interior. Still on the fence about it. I'll do an update on the interior at a later date as currently it's all inside the car in boxes.
 

I managed to get in touch with one of the previous owners and they sent me some pictures of how this car used to look.




Looks like this car has had a hard life before it ended up in my hands.

I figured i'd just throw this in for comparison,

This is a picture of the new turbo.



This is a picture of the old turbo, next to the new one.

Now that I can work on this again, I thought I'd start with the engine, considering it was already out.

I'm planning to stick with the L20ET that came with the car, From my understand it has some good old mystery cam in it, and a flogged turbo.


I picked up a new wastegate for the steel wheel 25det turbo i picked up awhile back. But here's a photo of before i started to clean up the engine, and below was afterwards.



I'm planning to go with a Speeduino engine management system, So I'll be able to get rid of that massive AFM box in front of the turbo. I'm still waiting on getting a new fuel rail as the OEM one is a mess. Looks like the 25det manifold may need some slight adjusting aswell as it looks like it'll hit the transmission. I've also got an SR20 throttle body i haven't put on yet as well.



I'm pretty happy with how the engine is looking now. It's far from done though. I need to replace a handful more gaskets, Paint the valve cover, Get the new fuel rail and injectors, and some more manifold studs for the turbo, attach the throttle body and finish running the lines for the turbo.

Well it's been awhile since I've posted an update in here. I've finally moved house and had time to move the R30 over to the new place. She wasn't looking the best as I'd started stripping it down again. Put some wheels on her, took out all the loose shit and flat towed her home.



The grind continues. 

It was Andrews before it was Wilson's but yep. It's coming along.

So now that I have the engine and transmission out, I can start cleaning and degreasing everything in preparation to clean up the engine bay and engine itself. I've got to get the strut tower rust in the engine bay fixed up so I've been focusing more on getting the engine and trans cleaned up and what I'm going to have to replace in it.



The trans itself cleaned up pretty well. I'm not sure if I should paint it or not yet. I want to ditch the blue and go black or dark grey instead. And either paint the gearbox black or dark grey to match. Otherwise I could probably just clean up the trans and leave it with that metal cast look. I'll pull it apart and check the condition of the internals before I put it back in, Are L20ET Gearboxes supposed to be this small though. Seems tiny compared to the RB or SR boxes I've dealt with in the past.



It looks like the head on the L20ET has been rebuilt somewhat recently although I don't have photos of that. I'm still in the process of cleaning everything up but as i'm now moving this week, I had to put some of the engine back together so I wouldn't loose anything during transport. Test fitting how the cleaned up intake manifold will look, (Although it's not %100 done yet. It's still pretty dirty and i still have a few block off plates to make.)



Here is me test fitting the new rb25det turbo along with moving the AFM (still have to make heatshield and work out the best rotation.). The 25det turbo looks like it'll work well. I'll have to modify the dump pipe for everything to work with the L20ET and the R30 Chassis but I planned on redoing most of the exhaust anyway. I also have an SR20 throttle body that plan on putting on the intake and that will remove the (in my opinion) horrible factory throttle setup. 



I'm going to either find or make a better 90 degree bend pipe for the turbo as this sticks out a bit much for my liking. Trying to keep everything clean and tidy in the bay whilst keeping the L20ET not looking too obvious. The main engine thing i am looking for now is either NICS 20DET Injectors or VG30ET Injectors and then most likely a billet fuel rail or something that looks neater than the factory setup. 

I'm currently on the fence about getting the exhaust manifold and rear housing ceramic coated. But I'll probably come back to that in the future.

The next update should be in the new place with more space to work in and not on the ground hopefully aswell.

13 hours ago, kyteler said:

Good time to fix your almost certain LHS strut tower rust and potential RHS strut tower rust. 

Yep LHS is through the firewall side but not the wheel arch side and the RHS has cracked on the engine bay side. The firewall looks good so its just the strut towers.

On 21/10/2020 at 10:50, kyteler said:

Nice FL coupe.  PFL guard? 

Turbo or NA? 

@Brdflu bought my old one and tidied it up a bunch. His efforts are definitely inspirational. 

I think there's a thread on here somewhere. 

 

I think it's actually a PFL coupe with FL bumpers. I'm not sure. She's a manual l20et. Yeah i had a look at that thread. Definitely motivating going through that thread..

15 hours ago, kyteler said:

Nice. 

I hope you've still got that rear spoiler to put back on? 

It's definitely worthwhile.  Keep at it. 

Definitely. The ends of the wing will need a little love and repair but I'm planning to put it back on afterwards. I also have some R31 endcaps that look the part and fit pretty well so they'll go on as well after I've painted everything.

14 hours ago, DriveBy said:

That turbo. Looks like someone chucked a handful of bolts into it at full noise. Love the project good luck.

When I pulled of the intake piping, I found pieces of metal wiring all through the turbo and intake, then on the pressurized side before the intercooler i found this jammed in the side. I have no idea how or when this got in there but it must have been before i got the car. Explains why it would boost at around 4500 though I'm surprised it boosted at all. The turbo sounded like a hair drier when it was on boost and that explains why. 
 

So throughout owning this car, I've been trying heaps of little things to get it running better on the engine side of things. I've replaced the sparkplugs, coil, distributor, ECU, rewired a bunch of the loom and although i got it running and boosting, it just felt.. off.. I was blowing oil out the back of the valve cover due no a dodgy gasket as well which wasn't helping my cause. Cold starts are rough. It will idle like shit and then suddenly  come to life. So I decided fuck it and started to take the entire engine out. 



I checked the valves and timing to make sure nothing was wrong there when I replaced the gasket and everything seemed in good working order to me at least. The engine bay is not a pretty sight. I also picked up this steel wheel 25det turbo to put on and some thermo fans from a Primera, Just have to make them fit with a new radiator.



Doesn't look too complicated but it will be the first engine i would have pulled out but i guess we have to start somewhere.

So this is how she's been sitting for awhile. I lost motivation to work on the R30 over winter and didn't get much done. I got a set of KYB shocks for the back but they're a laughing stock over the Monroes it had in it, So i just gave the Monroes some good old one way Makita treatments until I order the new TSD shocks. I already have the whole front end conversion waiting to be put in when I take the engine out. She was drivable but barely so it was mainly for just rolling it around the driveway.



As you can see, I've had to sand down a lot of areas and bog in a few dents. to get everything flat but it's coming along well. the rear wheels fit nicely but i may put a higher profile tire on later down the line.

Once the weather improves I'll start prepping for final paint as well as removing the old exhaust, gearbox and engine for some TLC Over-all though it's looking a lot better than when it came off the trailer and it actually drives now. Although I have no power steering.

The next update will be up to date and how it stands to this day (21/10/2020)

So we decided to tackle some of the interior pieces whilst we had everything out and apart. Even though I'm going to have to put it in and take it out again later it was wort hit for the pics alone. This was before we found the paintbrush under the carpet and when we were still taking everything out and apart. Thankfully no rust on the inside anywhere that we could find.



The carpet and interior wasn't in terrible condition, The front dash is going to have to be pule out and repainted as it must be a replacement. Someone had cut a plate for gauges which was horrible and I have plans to replace. The next photo was after I had cleaned everything up and put in the floor mats and placed the seats back in. I gave the door cards a clean and put in an R31 center console lid as it fits with minimal modification. I also managed to get the passenger side windows working. Turns out the loom under the driversseat has a dodgy ground connection which stops the windows from working.



Testing paint on some of the plastic interior pieces to see how they would turn out. I think they look pretty good so I'll do them all later down the line.



The bottom half of the rear seats is horrible and worn as you can probably see in the first photo of this update. I got curious to see if I could make the R31 Passage seats fit and it turns out they do! It will take a little modification but they fit and look pretty good so I will have to get some in the future when i revisit the interior. The red seats that i got in the car are pretty worn so I'm planning to replace them with some Recaro fishnets for the time being.



As you can see, The R31 floormats and bottom half rear seat fit pretty well and look the part too. I've put some of the interior back together for photos and to have less stuff in the shed. 
Next update I'll begin prepping the car for paint or at least primer and a basecoat to seal it from the weather as I'm in the process of looking for a lockup. The interior should clean up pretty well when I can come back to it and redo everything properly.

I'm going to post a few of these older updates just to get the ball rolling. 

My partner and I started stripping down the panels to see what was hiding underneath all the interior, bumpers and panels. I was actually surprised to see that under the front panels wasn't too bad. Someone has clearly been in here before me though.

 

The sills and doors seem okay surprisingly but there is a few patches that will have to be sanded down and repainted and resealed.
The entire floor inside the car has been painted black probably with rust kill with a paintbrush. They left the paintbrush in the car.




The fuel tank is missing bolts which makes me wonder if it's been off recently. The back is also pretty nasty but there only seems to be one hole which i can patch up.
The entire back half of the car is a nightmare, All underneath the trim is rusting and ugly and underneath the boot seal is a bunch of surface rust and flakey metal. Again though, Nothing that can't be fixed.



Next steps will be getting that rust cleaned up and seeing how some of the interior pieces clean up with a polish and repaint. You can also peep the planned wheels that are currently sitting in the boot waiting to go on. Although I'm going to put s13 front hubs in and rebuild the back end first. Spot the cat, She likes to help as well. There is so much fish oil and rust kill on this car. At least the tail lights look good!
 

Project:

Discuss.

Have I really taken on more than I can chew with this damned rust bucket? 

Name (first is sweet): Tim

Location: Wellington

Cars you own: 83 KHR30 skyline, 86 Passage GT Skyline, '91 GX81 and like 3 other cars

Mods to them (can be brief or detailed): all stock but restoring the KHR30

Pictures (Either attach the files here or use an image hosting website):

How you found out about oldschool: Looking for inspiration to get the coupe finished.

Anything else you want to add: Currently slaving away at restoring the coupe.