Pete K

NICE!!!!

WOW that sure is one very tidy setup, i wish under my hood looked like that, its so hard to find a tidy skyline. Part of this prep work im doing is involving removing everthing i can from the motor, degressing it, painting it, cleaning the engine bay and putting it all back together. but my baby has markes and holes cut in her everywhere.

Thanks for the input , i know manufacturers only build for just outside the warranty period, not because they dont give a crap or can do no better but because in order to remain competitive they must reduce costs and ensure there brands future. Longevity is a really hard balance for manufacturers, last to long and it wont be replaced and wont be affordable, or make it really cost effective and end up with a bad reputation due to reliability issues. this issue is what has made it so hard for Australian manufacturing trying to compete with low overseas wages. My understanding is most modern cars run electric thermos as it is a far more controllable way to manage the engines running temperatures. Like you said emissions are such an issue that they need the cars to run as hot as possible and within a very tight temp band. having said that, the r33 thermo i believe is a 76.5 deg c. is this when it starts to open or when its fully open? and at what temp should i try to keep the car. ive herd people running around with temps ranging from 75 to 110. Surly there is a recommended temp if i put an 85 degC thermo switch in the bottom of the radiator i guess the block temp will be well over 90deg leaving the motor before the fan decides to start. if that makes sense

im going to have a vented bonnet and i want to lift the rear of the bonnet near the windscreen about 15mm to let the heat out, as it may not always be practical to leave the bonnet open, track days for sure it will be left up. the thermo fan will blow a face washer off the standard throttle body with the bonnet open so im sure there is some benifit on having it on if the air has some where to go once stopped did you put a manual bypass in your system? cheers

Yeh, i really dont want it constantly turn on and off, every time it moves 1 degC

Im hoping the fan should do ok, it will suck an A4 paper against the intercooler when its 400mm in front of the intercooler, i have some wide sticky foiled bituman flashing i was going to fully seal it up with but it sucks so strong i dont want it to be sucked in, so i just made an aluminium shroud on the top heres a few pictures,

Hi All, I had a bit of a look around and it seems there is allot of debate about electric thermo's so i dont really want to open a can of worms but im after some advice. Seeings as im preparing my car as a dual purpose machine, as a daily and for the track i have recently installed a new 40mm ally radiator, and changed the thermostat to the highflow version. when the other day I noticed that the fan was always on high speed even at start up, i had a close look at the clutch and it looked to be a sealed unit but noticed some cracks in the fan blades, and that it was out of balance due to someone before me cutting the blades for the fmic piping. So i decided to do an electric thermo fan conversion for 2 reasons, the new fans worked cheaper then the clutch assembly and more importantly i wanted the fans to continue to run on after i shut the car down to aid heat soak and aid with the waters thermo cycling to help protect the turbo. Im just wondering what others have used to cycle the fan on and off. im thinking of a temperature switch. i can buy one like i read on the forum thats on at 85degc and off at 80 deg c, but it looks like the only place to put it would be where the temp switch is to put on the ac thermo on in the lower drivers side of the radiator. I have an ally pipe fitting that will be going in my top radiator hose for my temp gauge sender but im unsure of the correct placement of my fan temperature switch. What have others found works best for fan control? i like the simplicity of the basic temp switch. Has anyone used the PowerFC to control the fan as this would be ideal. I cant figure out how to do this and im not even sure if its possible What makes this hard is im unsure of my cars normal operating temperatures, and if it constantly wants to sit on 85deg i dont want the fans running all the way along the free way, By the way i couldn’t fit the au dual fans in due to the power steering lines, but i managed to fit a bf-fg single fan in there. Ive only run it with my little prawing battery that was running at 11.3v and the fan was unbelievable, cant wait to see it at 13.5v any advice would be great, Cheers Pete

ill be buying an ATR43ss1PU with a .86 turbine and an 18psi actuator, im told this should be good for the 300-350hp im chasing and should be ok on the track and skid pan.

My tuner is fine, he said right from the start that he really had his doubts about the turbo, but seeing as im on a limited budget we were just trying to make what i had reliable. the problem is every time the car starts to perform we had these issues. New turbo should arrive in the next week or so and we can see what happens

Well had a good day today, removed the existing turbo which was good timing as all the hoses connecting it were about to fail, water line split and drained the radiator for me which was fun, one down side for having your own hoist is you can stand under stuff as it leaks , I spent a fair bit of time talking to Stao today from hypergear, he is very confident my issues are from a shit turbo where the exhaust housing is to small for the compressor, he recommended high flowing my turbo or getting another. After telling him what i wanted he advised me to go for an ATR43ss1PU with a .86 turbine and an 18psi actuator and i wont be using any boost control. im exited by the prospect of getting the turbo but im really nervous about running 18psi in a car that has had constant issues running 14 and 16psi. im worried with an 18psi actuator i wont be able to wind the boost down to reduce detonation. Stao is confident that i can manage this by reducing the timing to allow for the extra boost, I dont doubt what he is say is doable but i have not though of or heard of this before, Is this a common way to tune,

the motor sounds really good and does run along nice which is why i bought it, ill ring hypergear today and see what we can do about another turbo, i can always transplant it after all if the motor dies

I have no issues buying another turbo, but am a little concerned if it doesnt fix the issues i then need perhaps a head rebuild, or somthing more significant. 225k+ on a motor that im guessing has had a hard life, im thinking everything may be worn out and rather then a costly complete rebuild a low mileage motor might do the trick,

Im currently running 0.7 or .8 i think just the standard gap not the 1.1's, i just the cheap copper ones. i cant remember the number at the moment, how does one prove its valve float? and whats involved in correcting it? Im wondering if its worth buying a low km used engine or just working with what ive got. but i guess there is no real way of knowing the next motor would be any better

No thats fine mate thanks for your honesty, i just didnt want to be guessing, as you can tell im very green

Thanks for that, as the car will be used for track work... would it be possible to achieve 320-350hp below 6500rpm? im just a little concerned about extended high revving as my mechanic has a few rbs in the workshop that have lost the oil pump from prolonged high rpm, I would love to short shift a little if i can get away with it. Cheers

looks like i have a lot to learn about the way a turbo functions, i keep thinkings of turbos like a conventional compressor ie as long as supply of air is = > then the air required to drive the tool, the tool usually will perform as intended. what should i do? should i send the turbo away to be tested, buy a stock turbo for a small amount of money so i can ensure its not the motor or just bite the bullet and buy a new turbo?

Will do cheers

Ohh really? I would of thought that given the same air pressure and density would mean the same volume of air each time it fires and so reguardless what type of turbos pushing the air it would make the same hp, But i admit im very green in the turbo world, and im usually wrong

it used to have issues with the actuator, it was poorly aligned and used to fully open and then could not close, but we have spent a fair bit of time getting it to function properly. i dont think it creeps , the boost tap appear to work as it should, it over shoots by 2psi then drops back and holds steady all the way to red line. if it was boost creeping would it slowly just keep increasing psi?

I know its a cheap copy and there is a real good chance its the issue,but if it spools fast to 15psi and sits there to red line, shouldnt a healthy motor produce more power then what i am making? I have checked the intake plumbling and it appears to remain cool, so i dont think intake charge is overy hot, Im prepared to spend $1500 to replace the turbo but i can afford to replace the turbo only to find it has nothing to do with my issues, cheers

very constructive, what makes you think its shit?

7 psi actuator is all there is, factory control was removed before i bought the car cheers

Hi All, Im having some issues with my r33 and after days of reading im just a little stumped. I bought the s2 R33 nearly a year ago and have been working slowly toward making it reliable as a daily driver and a weekend track car. Im Just not making the power i was expecting, I have a good tuner who has worked on many hi horsepower machines and is willing to do what ever i want but im on a budget and cant just shell out money willy nilly trying to find an issue. The first time we tuned the car it had a fmic and powerspirit turbo and a powerfc ( these came with the car ) i have no details on the turbo other then it looks cheap but appears to work not to bad under moderate driving conditions, unfortunately our tuning was cut short as the car started to run lean over 6000rpm and about 260hp as it could not supply the fuel required, the car had 225000k’s on it so i assumed it may be the fuel pump and decided as im chasing 320-350wrhp id bite the bullet and do a few upgrades before we tuned again. So i replaced the front mount as i found 2 small splits in it, and also replaced all intake silicone hoses and hose clamps, then i replaced the fuel pump with a genuine walbro 255 high flow pump, tubosmart manual boost Tap, nismo 555cc injectors, apexi pod filter, z32 AFM, blitz nur spec exhaust, new bellmouth dump and front pipe and a catco hi flow cat from just jap. I then took it to be retuned again, this time no lean issues at all and turbo seemed to spool nice and quick, but we started having issues as the horsepower climbed during the tune, we managed to get 296rwhp 6400rpm with 16psi. I feel this is a little low but im not to crazy on the numbers as long as its safe. But the biggest concern we had was the power began to oscillate quite violently once we reach full power, this could be seen and felt, we noticed as we turned the boost down the oscillation smoothed out. We ended up leaving with 279hp@14psi. I left the dyno and the car was magic, but once on the highway everytime the car hit full boost it started to flash the check engine light due to detonation we were reaching about 60-80 knock.- I went back the next day and we tried to retune again this time with a slow ramp rate to try and simulate normal road loading, my mechanic wasn’t happy he said as the car is going to be track driven he really doesn’t want to see anything over 10 or 12 knock. We pulled some timing and played with fueling and I left that day with 254hp @5000rpm and 15ps @11.9afr The car was defiantly down on power compared to the first time but the power was so smooth the car felt like it was NA, no big spike just very smooth predictable horsepower from 2500rpm( perfect for the track ) just low on power. The car ran fine for a few days no knock at all but one day i put the AC on and had 3 people in the car and the check engine light flashed again, and i have since found that any time the car is loaded it up be it a steep hill or full of people with the ac on when at WOT and have full boost this happens again, the knock light is set to a 30 count and i measure any where from 36-50. I have drained the fuel a few times now and have noticed best results from bp premium We just cant seem to pin point what the issue is, 254hp @15psi is not to good, but the turbo appears to be performing perfect and its making 15psi with out any hesitation, for this reason i don’t just want to replace it, although i don’t know what its specs are , the fins look great and there is no shaft play. The motor uses no oil at all during services every 3000ks, it blows no smoke other then the little puff of black smoke momentarily when a WOT, the car doesn’t get hot at all or use water, and their is no evidence of water in the oil to suggest a head gasket is gone. I recently installed a catch can from the 2 rocker breathers and recirculated it to the intake and after 2000ks of reasonably hard driving it has no residue in it at all. Hope fully i have checked / done all the obvious things and im hoping some of the knowledgeable people on here can shed some light as to what the problem may be, Ive just bought a compression tester and leakdown tester that ill get late this week, im not to confident it will tell me to much, as there are no other symptoms i can associate with worn valves or rings, thanks in advance for you help guys Cheer Pete

Thanks very much for that Don Data, ill fix it before i leave,