admS15

You've had some decent suggestions above now, I'm just going to suggest the obvious. Change girlfriend, problem solved. Other random unpredictable problems may present themselves. Your experience may vary...

I would call it shit hot. Swap ya

OEM++++

I think you spelt RB30 wrong.. I dunno, I think I'd rather just rebuild what I've got if possible.

I'm just going to keep driving the f*kker as is with a little bit of mechanical sympathy. I still want to set better times, turning the power down isn't really an option, maybe a little bit. Bought some new street tyres on an eBay special yesterday $143 each incl post, got delivered today. Had these on the rs265 Megane. Went alright for what they where. Zestino 07A 265/35/18 Should grip better than 7 year old rock hard ad08r and leave me with more leftover $ for proper track tyres.

Make with the pics. @GTSBoy ^you have an admirer

Dose ❤️ VAG

Golf R wagon out of all those. I know a couple of people who have and really rate them as excellent all rounders with plenty of room. Or SQ5, just a little bias.

Great minds think alike, lol

You could stick an inspection camera/borescope down a plug hole and check if you can see anything but if you've got air escaping in your leak down test, I feel you're going to have to pull the head anyway.

That motor took a hell of a beating. Surprised it lasted so long. Edward Lees provided you with a good one.

Could of bent them after reinstalling the head.

Did someone say Samsonas.

You can bang on as much as you like. Getting this sort of info from people who actually race is always welcome and that's a great point about the brakes.

Good advice @ActionDan I think this is how I will go. It's what I used to do when I first took the 33 to the track. It handled that quite easily and eventually I would do a warm up lap, then go flat out for the rest of a 10 minute session. As @Duncansaid, we shouldn't have any problems going flat out for 20 minutes. I did this quite a few times but would do 1 cool down half way through as the tyres AR1 would go a bit greasy. Some of my PB's came towards the end of a session weirdly. Coolant temp wouldn't really move and oil was maxing around 120-125c with an eBay spec oil cooler and rad. Brakes where also fine with race pads and fluid, I did cook some caliper seals a couple of times on the standard rears. Did back to back 20 minute sessions once, the car didn't like that much. The only time it ever pushed coolant to the OF bottle, lol. Obviously I'm now not as confident in the engine as much as before. When the car first hit the track, comp was around 170 psi even. Now it's more like 150-160, so there is some definite wear that's occured. If I don't track the 33, then there's not much point in owning it. So I will but to not put it under too much pressure, will do cool downs, reduce the rev limit to 7k, maybe lower boost and timing a touch too. In saying all this, the aim is to improve times and there is a couple of big things that can help here. Tyres, either Z221 or A050 and possibly some driver training. Both of those are not cheap. It's one of those gotta pay to play type situations. @soviet_merlin yes people do that, I use to do a warm up, 2 hot, cool and 1 or 2 if I could fit in hot again. Worked well. Later on I wanted to get as many hot laps as I could, so would not worry about cool down on a 10 minute session. At Phillip island cool downs where a no no as you'd only get 2 hot laps on a 10 minute session. @KinkstaahGreg, you are a unique case who should just expect the unexpected as a given, lol. As far as tyres lasting a 20 minute session. I don't think we can expect that if we're trying to do time attack laps 1 after the other. I mean look at what SVG does in V8 supercars to manage his tyres. He drives as straight as possible without wheel spinning or shock loading. Backs off on attacking or trying to pass to keep the tyres in the right temp window. Somehow he still manages to be 99% as quick and gets better tyre life than anyone else. We all need to focus on that a bit and hopefully our shitty r specs will last 20 minutes on our shitty Nissans.

Fair enough, if I saw that I wouldn't of went any further either.

Good point but where's the fun in that, lol. Out of curiosity, do you remember what the bearings in your first motor looked liked when it let go?

I think my lack of motivation partly comes from being lazy and CBF prepping properly and putting the effort in for a track day. As you guys know, you get out about as much as you put in. If I go, I don't want to be half arsed. Will also need new semis, reinstall cage, race seat, track pads and maybe replace rotors too. I'm tired just thinking about it, lol. The other part that worries me, is the possibility of killing the engine. It's not getting any younger and it's done quite a bit of track duties over the years. $800 dollar RB's are ancient history. I guess if it happens, 7-10K will hopefully get me a refreshed forged bottom end. Oh well, suppose I'll just have to YOLO it.

Nice cambers. Probably is the upper knuckle bushes, chuck some of those adjustable Whiteline/Superpro ones in next time you go for an alignment. Doubt you'll feel a difference or would even know if you hadn't seen the numbers. Where was said harness bar sourced from?

Dunno but should run the 3mm unbrakable piston rings too. Mi cousin's sisters brothers daughter reckons their sweet as yah no.

Still waiting for engine mounts for the SQ5. Skyline got a bit of love last week. Was back at chequered tuning for a check up after the turbo rebuild. All went well, was making power slightly earlier, with less boost and made more torque. Possibly due to the turbo being in better shape. Overall power was down by a couple of kw but pretty much the same. Didn't bother getting a graph, looked identical anyway. Also got him to look at a few things as I was getting a slight lean out on light acceleration and I'd noticed the ecu map sensor was not matching what my android dash was showing. In the past these values aligned. Turns out the ecu map sensor had gone out of calibration. Trent recalibrated it and that was fine. The slight lean out was also sorted, can't remember exactly what the cause was, he played with a heap of different stuff. Possibly a combination of the throttle cut and TPS calibration with a bit of adaptronic predictive map Async pump shenanigans. Either way drives nicer now. Also did a diff lockup check on the dyno and it passed with flying colours. There is a slight variance between wheels but as soon as a load is applied, locks up almost instantly with 0 variance. I asked for that check as I have traction issues. I guess the nearly 7 year old ado8r are very past their used by date now. Just about ready for a track day again but for some reason the driver can't find any motivation.

FYP

Can you run without it, yes. Should you, probably not. My car runs 1 as it's flex tuned. I run e85 all the time, may run 98 once a year just to purge the system out. In Victoria, the ethanol content from United pump e85 seems very consistent, my sensor reads it as 78-79%, have seen 80-81% a couple of times. I haven't verified how accurate my sensor is but wouldn't be too far off. This is over 5 years, never been under or over those figures. On another note, you could get one of those portable ethanol test kits but you would need to take a sample each time. Since you already have the sensor, why not just use it. In future you may decide to run flex and it would be 1 less thing required.

You might need to make your own version of this

Yeah, there is a fair bit to do but there would be for just about any car with 150k on it, except of course 90's Nissan's, coz they're the best. To be honest, I just want to get this stuff done and then just enjoy driving it, knowing it's in the best shape it could possibly be in. I watched that video in the thread you linked, that's exactly how mine launches without any silly launch control procedure. Just put it in S, ESC off, left foot hard on brake, mash accelerator and stall up on converter, release brake and hold on. They do get out of the hole very well, even without stalling it up.