Unzipped Composites

Man I need a proper intercooler, you can just see the quality difference. I'm thinking of buying a Hypertune core and making some carbon end tanks, but my wallet is really arguing against it. I feel like I should just give up on ever completing my build this year and buy everything that tickles me ?

Can attest to the shittness of turbo timers, I had one in the Skyline as a young pup. Caused all sorts of issues from not starting, to not switching off when the countdown reached 0, to being a parasitic drain on the battery, etc. Even after pulling it out, the loom has been hacked into, there's no making that reliable again. Its one of the reasons I undertook a complete rewire of my car. Stupid things. Feel embarrassed to have had one. As GTSBoy says, try to think of the last time you boosted your car hard and then switched the engine off. It just doesn't happen, there is always 1 or 2 minutes of sedate driving before you park up that is far more effective than 30 seconds of idling. Superbly ricer modification.

Haha yeh wow. Genuinely had to check if this post was from 2003 ? OP, if your car already has those mods then just get the car tuned and be happy with where it ends up knowing that there is plenty of money to be wasted in the future chasing more.

The reason everyone uses copper plugs in RB25's is because the Iridiums and Platinums don't last as long as they are quoted in a modified engine. So you would still have to do frequent plug changes - you will just pay more for them.

Fusion 360 will show you a simulation of the machined/printed part in the CAM workspace just by default. I haven't used Solidworks, but I imagine it will be the same.

I've seen a couple of these dashes in person, all with the same very poor quality. Laine @bcozican will know.... This is not how a 3D printed part should look though. A properly 3D printed part will look good. These guys either have absolutely no idea what they are doing, or they are using a very poor quality printer. To me, I think they are using way too high a stepover in order to save time on each print. Which tells me their printer isn't up to the task of the production environment they are going for. Also the edges not being straight indicates the prints are warping, which again points to either a rushed print or cheap materials. There is serious refinement needed before these things are ready for production.

G4 is old, theyre up to the G4X now. Personally nothing about the G4X really blows the G4+ out of the water, so I might still consider a Thunder if youre planning to go wire-in. Otherwise if you want a plug-in, the G4X plug-in will do everything youre wanting, those are all quite standard features.

Yeh the Android (Link) vs Apple (Haltech) is a good comparison. Haltechs are a bit 'dumbed down' and quite restrictive, they let you do some very specific things and outside of that you just can't do it, while the Link can let you be a bit more creative about the way you set something up. Thats a bit harsh on Haltech though, they are very capable. At the end of the day, if you don't have a specific job in mind that you need the ECU to do then they are both going to do the same job because your tuner will likely set them up in the same way. Personally, I like Link a lot. I have a Thunder in my car, and I had a G4 plug-in before that. They are very good ECU's and I would always get another one before I got a Haltech. That's personal choice. I do know Haltech have superb customer support (providing you are using their products in an application they are familiar with, otherwise they aren't too keen to know about it), as do Link. They're both top ECU's and you can't go wrong either way.

Just to contribute to the derailing - if the car is not a track car why do you want a Motec M150? Don't get me wrong, I think Motecs are LEAGUES ahead of anything else on the market, BUT - all for reasons that would not get used on a street car. Especially the M150's, their power really comes from the ability to do anything you want, rather than being dumbed down to make it more user friendly. When you need the ability to use GPS position based boost/traction control, or traction control based on individual tyre temperature and steering angle, or crazy data analysis - that is where an M150 is the best ECU on the market. If you just want a modern ECU with finer resolution and better engine protection, Haltech (wouldnt be my choice, but they are perfectly capable) or a Link will do the exact same job as the Motec at virtually half the price. Then put the remainder towards a Motec C1212 with the Display Creator software - that is a proper game changer that you would get significant enjoyment/benefit from. On topic - looks like a fun setup, especially once you get the supporting mods to really make it come alive. Totally understand the decision to draw a line on how much you spend and how much needs to be done NOW. I think on forums we get used to people dropping 50-60k in one succinct post and forget the reality that for most of us building a car the way you really want can spread over decades. 34R with a 2.8L VCam RB? Stuff of dreams, so enjoy it!

If it's a good job, you shouldn't 'need' it. But it makes a hell of a difference. Most clear coats will dull off a little bit as they cure compared to the full wet gloss appearance they give while they are wet. A compound (ideally a wet-sand and then compound) can bring the gloss back to a full gloss. Most people are happy with the off-the-gun job. You don't need a polish to get the colours to match - that is the spray painters job.

Yeh it will. Your biggest challenge will be making sure the flange extensions are 100% air tight. It shouldn't be too hard, but chasing leaks on a mould this size will result in hair pulling and cursing a plenty.

Nah there's really nothing you can do with the current mould other than the way you've just done it. Resurfacing the mould won't work, biggest issue being that you lose the dimensional accuracy of the mould as you're building up a 1-2mm thick layer which you won't get even no matter how hard you try. Gelcoat doesn't lay down flat, even sprayed through a G100 gun it will give you a pretty horrific surface finish and varying thicknesses. And ontop of all that - gelcoat is air inhibited, so won't cure properly. You can use wax-in-styrene to make it cure hard, but then that will affect your bond. So it's all over just impossible, you would really have to remake the mould. Which you would probably want to do anyway, considering you would really want to be going for resin infusion which means you need 5" wide flanges.

Yeh I did a bit of reading before attempting it and pretty much everything I read everyone said they used about 5-6kg to do their whole car. They must all be driving Austin Mini's because there's no way in hell they did anything bigger or newer than that with 5kg ? It isn't cheap though, that's for sure. Certainly didn't factor in spending the best part of $500 just getting the sound deadening out. I thought about just getting in there with a hammer and chisel, but then the $500 starts to sound more appealing haha. I don't know, I'll leave it for a little bit now and do something else. Engine bay needs a good clean while the engine is out. Have a bonnet to make from scratch. Etc.

But, I have always wanted a GTR front bumper and bonnet. So I pulled the bonnet and mould out of storage on the weekend. The bonnet is as f**ked as I remembered it to be. Not even an option to repair it and go again, because it would just happen again. Shit materials don't improve with time. Next option was to buy another bonnet and use that. But do you trust another Chinese bonnet to not do the same? I did not. So the only option for me: make it all myself. Decided to use the f**ked mould to make an outer skin, using decent quality materials. Nice quality fibreglass infused with vinyl ester resin. Not the best of the best, but still better quality than any Chinese bonnet will use, and resin I know will take up to 110c so more than enough to survive the mould making process. Used a 3D PET core to keep it light while making it rigid enough to not need an inner skin. Skipped a gelcoat to keep it cheap, knowing it was going to need a lot of reworking to get it straight again anyway. Out it came, dents and all: Doesn't look too bad, but with primer on and blocked down you can see the dents a bit better (the greyish spots are the low spots): 4kg of bodyfiller later, and it's sort of getting there: About ready for another coat of primer now, but before I do that, I decided the car is a race car now and needs a functional NACA duct not just a cosmetic out-of-spec one. The depth to width to length ratio on this one is way off, and the radiused corners cause flow separation, all of which mean it won't function properly and will cause a lot of drag/lift: So half an hour drawing one up to proper NACA specs with correct aspect ratio, a curved ramp, and most importantly sharp radii; and I sent the CNC to work while I went back to flatting the bonnet down some more: So now I just need to bang out a new duct off that mould, cut out the old one and integrate this one. Then I can reprime the whole bonnet and see how much more work I've got to do before it is straight again.

Well, spent a bit of time working on things over the weekend. Got 10kg of dry ice to get the sound deadening out: Huge fail. Managed to get the back seat sections out easily, but it didn't touch the rest of it. Melted much faster than I expected it to, despite only being 14 degrees when I did it. So basically paid $100 to remove half a kg of sound deadening from the back seat = not great value. I suspect I just didn't buy enough, so it covered well in the back seat area where it is sort of 'cupped', but it didn't cover very well on the large flat areas and didn't get cold enough. Will get another 20kg at some point and try again, but my motivation for that has gone to 0. Remembered there's a reason I stopped working on my car, so I decided to spend some time doing what I'm good at. I've had a Chinese fibreglass Nur Spec style bonnet and front bumper for a good 7 years that I've always intended to make in carbon and haven't had a chance yet. Or more accurately, I had a chance 3 years ago and spent $300 in bodyfiller getting the bonnet flat, 2 days painting it and wet-sanding/polishing it, $900 in materials and 4 days to make the mould............... Only for the giant globs of HORRIFIC quality Chinese adhesive they used to bond the inner and outer skins together to shrink drastically from the heat of the mould curing (only 60c) and leave me with both a badly dented fibreglass bonnet that looked like it had been in a hail storm, and a destroyed mould. Ready to mould: f**ked (these dents are literally all over the bonnet and mould) : So yes, this project went straight back into storage and deleted from my memory.

It would be more useful if you knew what other oil control that engine had in place. Is it a case of 30 minutes of drifting, filled catch can, decided to pull engine out and fit sump vents and oil restrictors, or did they just fit those splash plates? By the way it's written, you would hope they have just fit the splash plates and it's a straight back to back. But who knows. End of the day, it probably all helps. But the big ones are all in the oil control thread, and I don't believe these splash plates are a solution on their own. You don't fix 30 years of inherent oil control problems with some $80 bolt-ons.

It will vary sensor to sensor. For accuracy you need to measure it yourself, and then work out what size resistor you need to convert it from a resistance signal to a 0-5V signal that the dash can use. It's all easy to do and there are lots of how-to's on the Google.

Thanks mate. Its actually another thing I've decided to change again haha. Now I have no need for the heavy stock instrument cluster, I'll be making a new mount for the AIM dash to go there and the GTR MFD surround will become another switch panel.

Can't really comment man, you'll need whatever fittings suit the way you are routing the lines. It all sounds like it will work. I think I used a banjo fitting into the block when I did mine, but I can't remember why. I imagine a straight or angled metric to AN adapter will work just fine too.

Go with Teflon. Closer to a heat source, the Teflon will cope better. The critical bit is that you get the appropriate fittings to suit the hose you use, ie. for Speedflow you would use 100 series hose with 100 series fittings, 200 series hose needs 200 series fittings. Teflon hose has a hard plastic inner, it's fittings use an olive that crimps between the fitting shell and the hose body to seal. The 'cutter' style fittings are for a rubber inner so the fittings cut into that rubber hose to seal. If you try to use 100 series fittings with 200 series hose then they won't seal and you'll be able to pull them off by hand, and if you try to use 200 series fittings with 100 series hose then it just won't fit.

Forgot the first part of your post - I am no where near Kalgoorlie! Haha. I'm quite near Perth, Kal is about 7 hours from here.

10mm probably won't matter too much. Just remember that when you're going around a corner and you're in yaw, the car is essentially moving through the air sideways. So having it protrude out will not only cause drag, but it will limit the amount of airflow actually going into the duct.

Me myself and I.

Maybe after you get over here to do one of our courses eh? ?? Out of interest, are you planning on leaving the front rad duct as a box like that? Or trimming it off at the bumper? I feel like in its current configuration, it will be hurting your aero under yaw?

Well done Ryan ? So when are you doing it again in carbon? ?