sheepers buys a 4wd Datsun.

[sheepers]

Dyno day is 4 days away.  So I've been tidying shit up and trying to get it to behave a bit better. 

I made a balance pipe between the two inlet pipes to replicate how the BOV plumb back would have been and it made a big difference to the turbo shuffle. 

It's way better,  it's still there but way less. 

I'm going to leave it like this and see what happens on the dyno. 

 

Other things are that I got the oil temperature gauge working from an output from the ecu.

And i also put the oil breather tank back in and plumbed it in.

[sheepers]

And then the 4WD warning light came on. 

With only a few days to go until dyno day. 

I was shitting broken glass when the warning light came on because many parts of the attesa system had to be fixed/ fucked with by me to get it back to functioning. 

The ecu outputs a synthetic TPS signal that I set up and calibrated myself so many things could be,  and probably would be wrong. 

I did the BNR32 inter-boot gymnastics and read the codes off the attesa ECU  to find out what cacophony of destruction i had to deal with.

Code 18.

Thank fuck for that,  it's only the pressure switch which is known to fuck out. 

Except,

Changing the switch is far,  far from easy. You can't but a nissan one and the only one I found came from some jokers in brisbane (two day shipping from brisbane was a fucking miracle tbh) and required a wiring patch in. 

 

Had to drop the subframe to get at it,  and even then it was a fucking nightmare. 

I did manage to explode ATF all over my face and hair without getting a drop in my eye so that was nice.

New switch is in and wired. Tomorrow night I'll put the subframe back in and button everything up. 

Fuck,  

[sheepers]

It's time for some life advice from me to you. 

 

If you own an r32 coupe you've probably looked at the rubber trim insert around the back window and said to yourself

"fuck that looks like shit,  it's all faded and shrunken and it's pulling away in the corners and it looks terrible, i wonder if i can buy a new one?"

Well friend,  the answer is yes, yes you can. 

However,  I'm here to tell you that you do not want to buy a new piece. 

Because if you buy a new one it means you have to remove the old one.

And that's where the problems start. 

I am convinced that the car was welded together around the outside of this piece of trim.

I have been battling with this piece of bullshit for 2 weeks.  It was so bad I got tendinitis in my hands from the death grip I had on the various scrapers, picks and probes I've been using to get the old one out. 

I have NEVER struggled so much to get something apart as this. 

And one of the bonus side effects is that the part that's supposed to stay behind to hold the new trim inevitably gets damaged so it doesn't work very well. 

What a fucking mission. 

I may still have to glue this trim in but we shall see,  it's the for now and time will tell if it auto ejects or not. 

 

So in summary , 

No, do not.

[sheepers]

last job on the pre dyno to do list was replace the water in the radiator with coolant and give it a flush.

the water circuit is full of oil.

the engines fucked. 

[sheepers]

Nick the sparky came over yesterday and gave me a hand and we pulled the head off the thing.

No obvious issues with the headgasket and the block isn't cracked so that leaves the head. 

I'll take it to Hytech and pressure test it and see what happens. 

 

[sheepers]

Cylinder head is not cracked, and it's extremely unlikely that the block is either.

The plot thickens. 

 

Or doesn't,  whatever. 

[sheepers]

Sooooo I guess I'll put it back together?

Can't find where the oil water tango happened. 

It was probably in the turbos somehow (remember how I said the water in the turbos boiled every time I shut the car off,  we'll it was probably something to do with that) but i can't test them properly to know for sure.

Either way the old turbos aren't going back on. 

A Garrett G30-770 is though. 

I got it the other day. Fucking disappointing to see the state of the exhaust housing. Fucks sake garrett, on what fucking planet is this ok? I have the exact same turbo on my blue car and it did not look like this when i got it,  it was also 1500$ cheaper for the exact same thing about 5 years ago too so cheers garrett you bunch of cunts. 

 

Anywho i had to polish all the fucking gouges out of the housing to make it look not shit.

[sheepers]

After a bit of fucking around tidying up some wiring and whatnot is time to put it back together. 

Spent hours, 5 cans of brakeleen and 10 litres of petrol trying to get the oil residue out of the block.  It's fairly clean but I'm going to have to flush it heaps to get it all out. 

Cleaned the head then or it back in. 

 

[sheepers]

Story time.

I'm putting the cams back in,  big whoop.

However,

Nissan thought it would be a good idea to not put any numbering on the cam caps. so unless you mark them you have no idea what goes where. 

Luckily someone had already marked the caps so all good to go. 

 

Except,

whoever marked the caps did it all while standing on the exhaust side of the engine,  so all the numbers read correctly on the exhaust caps but the numbers are upside down on the inlet side. 

Good (toyota) engines number the caps from factory. So anyone who's used to working on good engines would put the numbers so they read correctly from wherever side of the engine you are standing on.

The person who numbered the caps realised their mistake after they did it,  so to be helpful the engraved an unintelligible scrawl that is probably supposed to be an arrow but is so small and so deformed that I didn't even notice it at first. 

Luckily I took a  photo before I took it apart and i could see that the numbers are upside down. 

Fucking

Lucky

Catch

As you can clearly see in the picture there is an arrow to help you. 

[sheepers]

This water pipe was fucked so I got rid of it and tapped some threads. 

To easy. 

[sheepers]

i can really be an idiot sometimes (all the time)

so that pipe i replaced up there^^^^^ was full of rust when i pulled it out of the housing, like FULL.

blocked,

you know,

 so water wouldn't get through.

i never even thought about it at the time because i was like"well im replacing it anyway so good thing i found this blockage"

it wasn't until hours later that it dawned on me, that's the outlet pipe for the turbo water feed.

so if its blocked no water would be getting through the turbos,

you know,

 the turbos that would boil every time i shut the engine off,

you know, those turbos.

 

so, its entirely possible that that blocked pipe was the cause of all this fuckery.

probably.

 

well, i guess without that blocked pipe we wouldn't have a Garrett G30 so every cloud ..........

[sheepers]

more.

this water pipe was also fucked so out it came.

it turns out that this is no longer required so i looped it into the heater return so it wouldn't dead head in the balance tube.

i also painted the balance tube because you cant see it when the engines assembled. 

in my stash of junk i found two AN fittings to feed water and oil to the new turbo that fit the two holes in the block, so that was nice.

i gotta make a blank off plate for the rear oil return and we should be golden.

[sheepers]

does anyone have a cam cover screw i could obtain?

i lost one and its lost.

 

 

[sheepers]

Cheers @fletch for sending me some screws to replace the one i stupidly lost.

 

Also I painted the inlet hole black. 

 

[sheepers]

Hey GC @fletch the screws arrived. 

Cheers man!!!

[sheepers]

thursday.

made a blanking plug for the rigy BOV  pipe plumbing

bolted all the front inner guards back together using M6 bolts and decent washers etc

welded turbosmart BOV mount into intercooler pipe and painted (badly) with black wrinkle paint. 

[sheepers]

Afore mentioned badly painted pipe with new bit welded on. 

[sheepers]

Really not a fan of this logo on the catch can. 

That's a no from me

[sheepers]

However,  i found the perfect sticker, that I didn't know i had, to cover it with. 

 

[sheepers]

zorst manny.

Made by Sinco customs in hamilton. Mike made the manny on my blue car about 10 years ago and it still looks like new, its fucking superb and i cant recommend Mike enough.

if you need a pipe work thing go see Mike, fucking top excellent most great welding yes. 

now i need to make oil drain, zorst dump, wastegate dump, oil feeds, water feeds, water return, and probably some other stuff as well.

 

money shot of it just sitting there before the real work begins.