joshuaho96

I've been told RBs snap cams and spin bearings if you look at them wrong so any day now I'm preparing for a big engine build.

Sure, but at some point I'm going to be in the market for a block regardless and stuff like that will be a dealbreaker regardless of whether I spend 10k or 50k or 80k on the whole package.

Yeah I'm not leaving a car idling for 12 minutes before driving it, even if I did that regularly I would want the option to be able to count 10 seconds and put it in gear. I would be afraid to forget and immediately trash my engine in the process.

AFAIK that's not called an AAC valve but rather an "intake air regulator". In Nissan's defense Toyota loved putting similar weird things on a lot of their cars, they just stopped doing it sooner than Nissan it seems.

You clearly have never seen Japanese mechanics in action then, they use RTV anywhere and everywhere. I hate using RTV because it requires more than zero skill to prep and apply it.

I could've waited months for everything to set, I just figured thread sealant didn't make sense because it wouldn't provide resistance/structure like teflon tape. Presumably I could've used thread sealant by just tightening to the same number of turns but it genuinely felt loose so I was worried it would work itself loose even if the thread sealant had set. Another person I saw working on this engine used RTV instead so clearly I was not the only person concerned about this fitting working itself loose, I just hate the idea of using something that would almost certainly make it incredibly annoying to remove in the future.

@R3N3 Not sure why I can't quote your post but I'm pretty sure the way it works is you need a resistor there to not have a dead short to ground if it grounds through the SRS ECU instead of the LED. That and you don't want to have the LED burn out from excessive current. The logic is probably that the SRS control unit needs to indicate at all times that the system is functioning to keep the malfunction light off. So presumably yes +12V needs to have a resistor in series with both the LED and SRS CU. Keep in mind I'm a mediocre electrical engineer at best so take with appropriate skepticism.

You guys sure you aren’t just agreeing on basically the same thing? Stock tune, stock engine within reason the Nissan tunes seem pretty safe. The RB26 out here runs ok on 91 AKI which is 95-96 RON. It’s when you run a Mines tune or whatever made for 100 RON super premium that you start seeing engines blow up. Personally I’m probably going to run wastegate boost and roughly stock timing forever on 91 AKI E10. It’s just terrible fuel and RBs are expensive to rebuild. I might play a bit with boost enrichment thresholds but that’s it. Any additional timing and boost I’d probably want at least E30.

You really need a diagnostic cable and logging of core ECU parameters to get to the bottom of this.

-4 psi sounds low for idle no? I'm used to seeing something like -9 psi. Obviously snapping the throttle shut coasting at 3000 RPM will pull it pretty close to full vacuum.

Dodge Demon owners and people who have tuned their engine around 100 octane and don’t want to keep 100 gallon drums in their garage. It’s not a big market but they can charge a decent markup on it. Substantially more expensive than 100LL by a long shot.

In my area it's something like 2.60 USD per liter for 100 octane street-legal race gas. E85 is substantially easier to find and often 30% cheaper than premium unleaded pump gas so if you can afford to convert to flex fuel instead it is much, much cheaper to run than proper 100 AKI. You can also adjust your ethanol mix to find the minimum ethanol percentage needed to balance between range and octane.

AFAIK you can get around some of the Haltech vendor lock-in but you have to be willing to put in work to reverse engineer things. I did this recently for the AMP Superseal 1.0 connectors. If there's interest I can post up all the little things I learn along the way. If you want "modern -5s" AFAIK the GTX2860R gen 2 is available in bolt-on form for the RB26. Speed Academy ran them but I'm not sure the results are all that impressive. A lot of this is probably because the factory piping is just restrictive.

I think your idea of "not huge power" vs my idea of "not huge power" is very different. 2867s are big turbos and arguably too big for the factory twin turbo setup. If you want to stay with factory twin turbo to reduce the amount of unknowns in your build I wouldn't go larger than 2860s. Especially if reliability is a concern at all.

It isn’t absolute no but I wouldn’t want to install one that indicates excessive shock. And I’m not sure a used one is a good idea anyways, the springs and pots in there have probably aged significantly. Modern MEMS like the Do-Luck or Midori Seibi sensor are the way to go IMO.

They don't explode, the indicator just releases dye when damaged by excessive force. Probably most sellers don't know you need to pack that particular sensor like you're shipping an egg. The AWD cars have pinouts that look like this: I would see if power and ground are on the same pins. If it is then more likely than not it will work, when I check the R33 wiring diagrams I see that the AWD CU uses the same pins as the RWD A-LSD ABS/A-LSD CU for the same things. It actually seems to me that you might be able to leave the other part of the harness disconnected altogether. Only issue I can foresee is potential fitment issues if the brackets are different.

Check the Nissan parts catalog, no idea what your precise chassis code is but it might be 28932-JK000.

The lack of keying the crank hub to the crank is a cost cutting measure. Getting everything to be perfectly clocked on the crank and keyed correctly takes more time in production and assembly. Modern engines use nickel-diamond one time use washers that generate incredible amounts of static friction when torqued to spec. All of that can work as long as you do the math correctly. Obviously the problem is when you look at stuff like the BMW N54/N55 they don't do the math correctly and there's not a sufficient factor of safety to avoid spinning the crank hub when people use the DCT kickdown too often. You don't hear about Mazda's MZR/L-series engines/Duratecs spinning crank hubs and losing time en masse even though they are built the exact same way. Also let's not forget that people absolutely mangle crank keyways on RBs so it's entirely possible for the timing gear even on traditional designs to be held on purely by crank bolt torque. Belt in oil is not the same as a traditional dry timing belt where oil causes it to fail rapidly. The belt is built for engine oil, although like timing chains if you stretch oil change intervals too far it will cause the belt to age faster. The design logic behind using those is first and foremost about fuel efficiency. Belt in oil has less friction than a timing chain. This alone is enough for most manufacturers to go for it when fleet average fuel economy drives so much at these OEMs. On top of this though belts don't transmit crank harmonics as strongly to the cams as a traditional timing chain. The belt can be narrower than a timing chain which means the whole engine can be smaller to cram more electronics in the engine bay or whatever else is fighting for space. Unlike a dry belt you don't have a bunch of oil seals on the front of the engine to separate the timing components which is another win for production time, part count, and cost. Those belts are also designed to last something like 150k mile change intervals which is about when the whole front of the engine has to be taken apart anyways. Anything that doesn't use hydraulic lash adjustment will also need a valve adjustment at the same time so either way you're doing a pretty major overhaul. RTVed front timing covers are usually also leaking pretty nicely by that point regardless, especially when engine mounts are attached to them for transverse FWD commuter cars. Personally I think when assessing what engine/car is worth buying boiling it down to simple spec sheet comparisons like "belt in oil" vs "timing chain" vs "dry timing belt" is really not a good idea. I can show you timing chains that need service at frankly incredible intervals like the BMW N20/N26 engines that frequently self destructed themselves at 60-80k miles from timing belt stretch. I have seen RBs turn their timing belts to shreds well under 60-80k miles because of unexpected interactions like overboost fuel cut causing the belt to catch the crank trigger wheel. I can show you GDI engines like the BMW N63 that are an absolute nightmare to service or something like a Toyota M20A which is comparatively hilariously easy. It is tempting to boil the world down into "after x feature all engines suck" but it's really not that simple.

No, but Ohlins themselves mention this and I've seen anecdotal reports that specifically R&T coilovers really don't last that long, Aki Itoh's blog mentions it too: https://forum.miata.net/vb/showthread.php?t=562848

Maybe some coilovers are less finicky than others but supposedly the Ohlins get noticeably worse with not a lot of mileage on them. If you drive on crappy roads like what we get in CA that will cause noticeable changes sooner than later. Personally the stock VSpec setup is stiff enough for me, it's a little soft up front but the rear feels more than stiff enough.

Why not just run stock then? OEM shock absorbers usually are the most durable even if they aren't the best performing. AFAIK stuff like Ohlins requires frequent rebuilds, like every 40k km.

Loose bolt that adjusts the unlock/lock rods. After futzing with the adjustments to try and get it to the “right position” it shouldn’t rattle anymore. Like any project with this car that I expect to only take a day though this has immediately turned into a week or longer because the factory vapor barrier is ripped up and some clips are missing so I want to fix all of that and get it absolutely perfect before putting it back together. Of course between mail ordering parts and the right sealant for the vapor barrier only being sold by mail it’s going to be a solid 5 days before any of that appears.

I figured it out. It was actually comical. After pulling out the cylinder I realized it turns both ways. When I put it back in suddenly it was fouling on something. Looked carefully and realized the lock cylinder arm was facing the wrong direction. Checked the cylinder on the driver side and realized it has an L on the arm. Pulled off the passenger side door card and removed the lock cylinder and put the “driver side” lock cylinder into the passenger side door. Now it works in both directions. So anyone with a similar issue where the key can only unlock the door but you have to lock it from the inside should check first that their lock cylinders weren’t mistakenly swapped at some point. If the lock cylinder arm is facing the front of the car instead of towards the trunk this is the warning sign.

I finally mustered the willpower to take apart the door on the driver side to figure out why it was rattling in there and also why my door locks can only be unlocked with the key but not locked from the outside. Now with the door card removed and the actuator arm unhooked from the door lock barrel I see that if I turn the lever it acts on the lock and unlock function works in both directions. Any advice for figuring out why my door locks are unhappy to lock but are seemingly fine with unlocking?

One cylinder being down is proof positive you need to pull it and rebuild. Even if an engine compression tests ok you still want to leakdown test it ideally to verify everything is healthy.