vegie

paintstripper is the new black. Turns out there was primer, red, purple, gold and black on these centres. Im really liking the unpainted look now, so may leave them or do them silver i think.

Thanks mate, bit more motivating to look at than the turbos! Now to stop spending on accessories and actually finish the thing.

Dragged the car out to try on the new wheels. Scored a set of SSR MK2's in 15 x 7 0 offset, and 15 x 8.5" -6 offset. Tyte sizes are not final though, the 195 60's on the back are way too tall. Also not too keen on the black centres, buy will leave them as is for the moment. Pretty happy with the look so far...

So i noticed a bit of a bubbling in the paint in front of the rear wheel arch. What fell out wasn't ideal...hrmph. So i had a bit of a scratch around. At least its only surface rust underneath, no holes. looks like the last owner just bogged over a dent rather than try to fix it.

What exactly are the ASCD sensors your after? are these for the shock control settings?

Not very good video (from my phone jammed in the headrest), but here's one of the DYO against azzuro's Fiat 125. Only just pipped him at the line...

Ok, so i completed fitting the turbo, and got it running. FAIL. No matter what i tried, it was getting really bad compressor surge in top gear at high load and low revs. So i pulled it all out again, and refitted the original setup to get it running for drag day. I did swap the exhaust housing with my spare, as i found a tiny crack in the one i was using. For some reason this supposedly identical part seems to be boosting and running better than it did before!? Ah well. ran it on drag day, and overall pretty happy with the results. Run 12 passes all day, and the difference between my slowest pass and fastest pass were a mere 0.27 of a second. Also managed to win the DYO competition again this year too. Best run was 14.26s @ 102 MPH which bettered last years attempt at 14.4s. I guess lesson learnt, if it aint broke, dont fuck with it!

Turbo is all in now, and started it up to bleed the air out of coolant last night. All seems to berunning ok, but not sure what boost the new actuator will run at yet. Small hiccup, the turbo intake piping no longer fits. need to find some 3" pipe to make a new one...

Sorted a few more bits out. drilled and tapped a fitting for the actuator boost feed into the turbo front cover as this turbo never had one. New water line fittings arrived for the turbo today. These ones are 90 degree and seem to clear everything in the way... I've had to use push lock 1/2 inch hose. I was planning on hard piping or braided hose, but have run out of time cos drag day. It will have to do in the meantime until i can sort it properly. I'm going to have run the lines in front of the rocker cover as there's too much stuff in the way elsewhere. I'll make up some support brackets for the lines soon. and lastly i still need to connect into these two lines under the thermostat housing. Not really an ideal spot, but i have no other option for now. Still a PITA to get to, with the distributor, manifold and power steering pump in the way.

So after a lot of trying to figure what thread this turbo core has, i got these heinous looking things... -8AN M16 X 1.5mm to 1/2 inch hose fittings. Unfortunately i got the straight ones (at about a quarter of the cost) of the 90 degree elbow ones. As i found out, they aint gonna fit... So it looks like i've to got to fork out for the 90 degree ones. At least they are available in black anodized finish. Also got new gaskets to mount it, but still got to modify the actuator to suit the TO4 inlet bolt spacing.

and no driveshaft off the front of the crank like that one.

needs more of this?

http://www.claimshelp.co.nz/insurance-and-savings-ombudsman contact the insurance ombudsman service (free i believe?). that will probably put the shits up state. they were cunts to my mate, who's car was stolen/recovered and refused to pay out until they disposed of it at auction. for a grand total of $1500, and took 3 months to sort out.

well at least it looks like you've got a settlement. hopefully you save the old girl.

been a while since an update... For no better reason than I already have it, I've decided to fit a bigger turbo. It was built up for years ago, using a water cooled core as the early garrett/air-research nissan turbo's weren't. It's basically a T03 exhaust wheel (upgraded and cant remember the trim now) and 0.63 T03 housing, and a T04 inlet with a larger trim wheel. By today's standards its probably an old slug, but surely better than the original 30+ year old factory one i'm running now. original turbo is on the left, new on the right: and after removing the old turbo, trial fitting the new one. its sits extremely close to the engine mount bracket, but just clears it luckily. now i'll have to source some water feed lines to supply it with. i have somewhere to tap it into the engine, but i need to find a M14 X 1.5 mm banjo type fitting to connect to the turbo with.

and a new fossil for my collection... its a L18 SSS engine and box from a repowered 710sss coupe. i got it for the twin SU carbs, extractors, and dogleg 5 speed, and sump mostly. its pretty clean inside for an engine that hasn't run for over a decade. looks like all new timing gear, and has a Wade 733a grind cam too. so between this, and the L20B bottom end i have, i should be able to build a good 2.0L high comp motor.

im going, not sure if i'll make it to greenlane meeting point though...

kinda glad its not!

got the top hose issue sorted by running a new hose under the intake pipe. no more temperature issues! after avoiding it for so long, decided to have a too-too with the tune in the computer. i got myself an innovate MTX wideband to monitor the exhaust (which i rate highly BTW), and installed using only the best quality insulation tape. i initially did a seat of the pants tune, using the hand set to set what "felt" best. the results were far from ideal, and i ended up with a flatspot in the load map once i hooked the laptop up so did it again, and smoothed the curve out. i ended up dialling quite a lot of fuel out right through the range, especially under vacuum. the vacuum AFR's are all now around 13.5 where they should be, but ive left the boost AFR's at around 11.5. they should be around 12. still a bit nervous about leaning it out under boost! the change was amazing, smoother, crisper and faster too. no more black spark plugs either... here's how it ended up after a weekend stuffing around getting it right. doesnt look much, but took a looong time to get right! so all in all, its running heaps better, and i still need to go through the ignition timing yet too. and to prove its not just a garage ornament, i took it to Caffeine and Classics on sunday too.

the saga continues... had a lot of issues with the engine not getting above 70 deg C. simple replace the thermostat. in doing so, found that the antifreeze i used seems to have "gone off". leaving what looks like green corrosion in spots, mainly the thermostat area. also it blocked up the fitting from the rad to the overflow bottle too. got all that cleaned up, and put a new genuine thermostat in, but still getting odd temperature readings. below is a pic showing the levels of the radiator/hose/ and sensors. looks like it may be getting an airlock in the top hose, around the EFI coolant sensor (the blue one beside the rocker cover) which is giving it false reading and probably way the antifreeze went all nasty too. i'll try relocating it first to see if this helps the issue first. the gauge sensor just below it seems to be working fine. looks like i'm going to have to redesign the top hose again...

thanks mate. yes S12's are getting fairly rare now. haven't seen more than a few in the last 5 years up here. its still a bit scruffy, so i still have a bit of work to do yet!

so i got one of these... all legal again now, wofed and reged. mucked around a bit with the microtech, and got it running and idling better but still needs to see some dyno time. p.s. big thanks to Cletus for the cert. would highly recommend him to anyone (that doesnt have cut springs)

ah ok, i always assumed the 4 X 1 r31 and z31 were the same. apparently not! i'd be interested to know how many splines the r31 4 X1 drive cups are, sound like they are the same as dr30/r30 skyline.

another pictureless update. had to modify my spare rear crossmember to allow me to reduce the rear camber a bit. who would have though 4.5 degrees negative was excessive!? went and got cert inspection done. managed to get the camber back to a reasonable figure for cert purposes. and an alignment made a world of difference to how it drives. my eye-ometer must be broken. waiting on the cert plate to arrive (or the men in white coats to take me away)...