Spencer

I had to look because I doubt the vitz has a 7.5" crown wheel like the Altezza? Interestingly the vitz LSD number matches the ones listed for AW11, AE92 etc

Have you printed some headers yet?

Surely OS has a friendly wizard who will make you a header for some small change, that TRD one is pretty simple.

That 7.4kw is before we bin the cat and fit a 3" zaust! 10KW gainz. On a serious note though the cam phasing will work better again once you open up the exhaust side somehow, especially the headers. Oh and offer that guy $100 for that TRD manifold.

This is so good. Probably another 5-10hp+ in some headers and zaust, buy a box of bends and make spaghetti/mess

Well done. After seeing your thread on wanting one of these I had seen a couple pre-facelifts in a mall car park on the same day. I since went to find any for sale just out of curiosity and they are very thin on the ground here, like one four door advertised in the whole country pretty much.

Yup spot on, its so hard to see in the garage how thick/thin your 2K clear is going on so you need some experience to see the subtle differences in how you are applying it. Good thing is you can just cheese it on with a shit gun and still get a nice result by sanding and polish.

Yeah epoxy primer holds out to heat better than anything else, really want a top coat on it though. As above basically modern normal car paint (2 part epoxy and urethane) works better than any of the old school engine enamels etc. I had the fancy KBS engine enamel on a few things and oil leaks eat it and peel it off, it takes the heat fine but not engine bay fluids.

Yup you are hearing different thing because there is different systems and methods. For the home DIY guy using 2k urethane primer, you would have done all your block work and happy with it. Then a thin coat of primer on that and let it dry, wait to dry then sand back wet with say 6/800 clean it all down and you are good to top coat. Other systems are wet coat, you done the bog and block work and you bang a "sealer" coat of primer on and then once it flashes you paint the top coat. You have to be good enough to lay the primer on nice and flat though for wet coating IMO but its a big time saver in some body shop scenarios. Then there are others where the primer has a window to coat it without sanding, the primer stays chemically "sticky" for say 24 hours where you have a window to coat it without sanding. Option 1 for most of us though, sand before top coat we are not in the business of speed and production efficiency. Wet coating works great for engine bays, under the car, interior and all that shit where a bit of peel or dust in the finish doesn't matter.

The dream is you do metal repairs and go straight to primer and done, not many of us have those kind of skills

Mate which evercoat did you use? there are 20 types budget version through to mega fancy, was it Rage 3D gold? haha. (used 3M and upol also great) But yes the moral is go to a paint shop for all your gear not a parts store, otherwise you are using silverline brake pads (or worse) basically.

Don’t use parts store filler either get some evercoat.

The market and information is all fucked up for the hobbyist car painter. The professional grade manufacturers really don't want you using their shit, you will most likely use it wrong and its kind of a dangerous good. The parts stores can't really fork out 2 part paint to every retard so they sell cans of paint technology from years ago, there is no system, no real data sheets its crap. Add all that up and you have a toilet of information. Go watch what a body restoration guy will use, all 2 part products that we mention on old school twice a week. You can do everything with 2 part epoxy primer, seal metal, seal your bog (under and over) , you can wet coat it, you can brush it on, it doesn't sand very well but you can block out for a top coat on it if you wish. It doesn't have isocyanates like Urethane paint so its not deadly. It is the staple tool in doing any body work on a car. Etch primer is old as fuck, it doesn't seal anything, you do not bog on it. throw it in the bin.

Two part filler will react with single stage etch primer and it will fall off in the future, trust me.

You can bog over 2 part epoxy just fine, if you are buying a modern filler like evercoat etc it does not trap moisture and the data sheets say its fine to use on bare metal. Just epoxy prime it after you have done the work don't drag it out and leave metal and filler open to the world for ages. Either filler on bare metal or over epoxy primer, then seal it up with epoxy. If you use any single stage paints I will stab you, rattle cans go in the bin.

DO NOT USE ETCH PRIMER

Yeah lots of that is just that the stock K20 inlets works real well out of the box. There is like 8 different designs/lengths that move the power around for each application (heavy car gets long runners, type-R gets shorter etc). The aftermarket follows along with so called improvements and makes similar intakes that slam dunk into the factory position so its a easy bolt on type swap. It doesn't mean that is the optimal design, just works well for road cars and you can upgrade manifolds without changing everything else (drive by wire etc etc). The hard core race car or drag stuff still end up with ITB's which end up with a big carbon box feeding air from the front of the car. People do get gains from larger throttle bodies as they mod K20/4's which are on the end of the plenum so the plenum opening does become a restriction at some point. There is also the RSP manifold off the FN2 type R which has a larger plenum. From what I have seen it still just moves the power around due to the runner lengths like the others. (hard to find a good photo but I think below someone has polished and fitting thermal gaskets)

Bunch of motogp bikes have variable inlet runners from a quick google if thats it? looks pretty much exactly like the old F1 ones before it was canned. As we said somewhere they have small rev range and high rpm so don't have to move far. (pic is road bike promo version I think, the might be just two step to lazy to look)

Nothing worse than a oversized and old holley carb, throw it in the bin. Ask Bort about opportunity cost and sunk cost fallacy.

Yeah never buy any body work gear from the auto chain stores, they just sell you crap and don't give a fuck. Go see you local auto paint shop get something like evercoat (lite-weight or rage) its the shit. With the good stuff you should get basically zero shrinking, sands like a dream and no pin holes.

Go watch old hotrod garage, Boyd had some high class paint guys in there at different points in time and they skim bog whole show cars to get them perfect lol.

Hammer and shrinking first if you can. Then bog it up, then high build only for blocking to make it super slick not to fix problems. Bog is pretty fancy these days and isn’t the devil.

I used others before PPG and Spies, just costs twice as much and for the hobbyist I don't think you gain much going to the baller stuff. Ask the guy at the counter? they wont fuck you around. Whats are you doing? going over epoxy to block for top coat? pretty sure you want this one if you actually need the high build side of things. Its super thick shit, they have another carmaster one that is thinner. https://www.protec.com.au/images/uploads/tech_data_sheets/CP-6120_CARMASTER_2_PACK_HI_BUILD_PRIMER_FILLER_Carmaster_Primer_16-05-16.pdf

Pretty much get everything from protec? I used their high build urethane a bunch of times for blocking, you can mix it as high build or as a regular thin coat. They are basically the cheap brand but still sell legit automotive paint systems.

Pressure while driving is nothing to do with it really, pretty much everything has fine pressure off idle unless the pump has exploded. I thought the bottom end had been built. So its just a ghetto rebuild with no resizing or measuring how round it is? the low pressure will just be that pretty much. I mean I hope you find something simple like the pump bleeding pressure somewhere or whatever. But I have never had any success with new bearing shells on old bottom ends.