R32 TT

Hi Guys, Just about to rebuild the engine in my R32. Am putting together a shopping list and wanted some help. Since I have a '93 GTR, from what I've read there is an issue with the crank to oil pump collar mating surface, and that there is a mod to fix this. Again, from what I've read this mod seems to be about $500 by the time its all done and dusted. A quick look around, and it seems I can buy a brand new R33 Crank from UAS for just on $1000 though. Does this seem like a better idea? Obviously a little more expensive.. but replacing a 12year old crank with a new one and not having to stuff around with it sounds good? Does anyone know of other crank alternatives/prices? And lastly, if I got a new crank, what preparation would people recommend? For example, any toughening processes or other. (I was considering having the crank knife edged as well - recommended?). Just for interest, my other bits on the shopping list are: N1 Water Pump N1 Oil Pump Tomei Oil Restictor JE Pistons - Totalseal rings Crower Rods Bearings (suggestions?) Tomei Sump baffle (other suggestions?) Lightened Clutch/Flywheel setup - not sure what yet, want to keep a good street pedal feel if possible. Head work at this stage was just going to be limited to a general service and probably put 260 Poncams in. The car will see circuit track, street, the occasional drags night, Hill Climbs and that sort of thing. Is has Motec ECU, Motec CDI, R34 N1 Turbos and pipework to match. Hoping for a solid and relaible 500hp at the flywheel, but with a responsive engine. I figure the stock crank should be good for it? Especially when running the lighter pistons/rods and so on? Any other suggestions with regard to oil control might be helpful too, as I've heard this appears to be the weak link and not sure if the above list covers all bases. This is my first experience with a RB26, so any "look out for this" type help would be very much appreciated!

Ha! Really? Obviously you know the previous owner?

Hi all, I have a Veilside Front bar painted silver on my R32 GTR at the moment. Would like to put the car back to stock/original looks. So is anyone interested in swapping their GTR front bar for this one? Silver would obviously be preferred but not necessary.

G'day there Lucien, Its all not going too well mate actually. Got the car back together, had a few issues trying to tune it using MAP sensor only and so it was run well on the rich side to be 'safe'. Had it on the road just a couple of days and went down the Collie racetrack. Did only a handful of laps and boom.. blue smoke out the back and loss of power... It would appear after a compression test that I have lost cylinder number 2. Interestingly, since I broke the front stock turbo (which is what started this whole damn thing), and number 2 is directly in-line with it (ie the middle cylinder of the front 3), it will be interesting to get the motor apart and see if ceramic has made its way into the engine at all... So, looks like I am off the road for quite some time. The bills getting it this far have been high enough. Doing an engine rebuild is just not affordable at the moment...

Well - actually that's kind of good to hear. At least it wasn't something I could have "easily" prevented. Cheers, guess its reuild time.

Yup. Well. Now she's had a compression test and it looks like I've all but lost number 2. The question on my mind now is if I had have had a catch can, might this have been avoided?

hmm.. I don't think I like where that question is heading... I refuse to answer that on grounds that it sounds expensive... ...ok, I'll answer. Don't know true km's, but it had 150 across all six when we did a compression check a couple of months back. Haven't done a leak down test though. Might do another test to see if anything has changed. And it was running about 1.2bar Now I have had time to think about it - I think its almost certainly oil past the turbo seals since there is oil in pipe coming off the compressor side of the turbo (ie in the piping marked 'twin turbo') . It can't have got in there any other way can it? And if this is the problem, then the question is: what oil pressure "should" the turbo oil line be restricted to? Has anyone got an actual figure? (that way I can put a gauge on it rather than just picking a size of oil restrictor out of the hat)

Hi Pete, yeah I had hoped it was this too. We checked the inside of the pipes from the back rocker cover. They were both 'reasonably dry' although the one on intake side did have a little oil in it. The thing which made us go to turbo seals was that we popped off the silicon pipe leading off the compressor side of the turbos (the bit that says "twin turbo") and that had oil in it. (quite a bit). So figured this must be it? Does that sound right? in answer to your questions though: Yes the engine was up to temp. I can only 'assume' the stock internals and oil pump are standard, but can not be sure of what work was done prior (I think its a stock internal job though) And I am running the 2560r, the -7 though, not the -5 like you. I didn't fit restrictors because most felt they already had them and Turbotech said I wouldn't need them.. but er.. they might be wrong?

Hey there guys, its seems appropriate to re-open this thread now since I have just taken my car down to the Collie track and guess what? I think I may have pushed oil past the Turbo seals... Car went great for just a handful of laps then suddenly lost power.. looked in the rear view mirror to see a large cloud of blue smoke. This morning, there is a small pool of oil leaking from my BOV's... Motor seems to run alright though, so hopefully no damage done.. What are people's experiences when this has happened? Just clean out all the intercooler and piping? Fit a restrictor to the turbos and she'll be right? Do the turbo's need to be taken off and looked at? Or is there something darker awaiting me... --as a side note-- Oh! I should mention this also. When I got my turbos (they are ball bearing) and spun the compressor wheel on them, they didn't spin for more than about a second. I figured they just needed some oil. Once fitted to the car and they had done some dyno work - I would take the car home and switch it off. If I listened very closely, I could ~just~ hear them spinning down. Since coming back from the track, you can ~easily~ hear them spinning down - they are MUCH louder.. although my mechanic listened to it and said all the noise just appears to be 'suction' at the pods.. Doesn't sound like bearing noise or anything... Do these things "loosen" up? I am a little worried by the 'change' as I would have thought ball-bearings would be free'd up from day one...

Hmm. Well I had it flat out at 7500rpm (so the turbo is fully spooled making maximum boost) and I change gear and mash it again. The tacho falls back around 5000rpm.. and then it 'winds up' again.. I would yhave thought at those rpms and air-flow it should be straight on boost again? Ok, this I am not sure. The boost gauge and boost controller got taken out when I fitted Motec, so don't know exactly what RPM full boost arrives, but I would think well before the 5000rpm that I am falling back to when changing gears yeah? I'll be refitting the gauge and checking out the Motec logging to see. But don't have that data yet... yup!

Yup, and I agree that they may take a little longer to spool up first try, but then the opposite is true too once they are spinning. Since they are a little heavier they have inertia and so should take just as long to spin down as they did to spin up shouldn't they? And given that nothing is 'applying the brakes' to them they shouldn't fall off that quickly I wouldn't have thought..? There has to be something wrong somewhere. Maybe I need a smaller intercooler.

Cheers for all those answers guys, I'll have to look at the HKS Bov's to see if they have some sort of adjustment and then have a play to see what results I get. I guess its true, my question is a little bit like "how long is a piece of string". Everyone has different ideas about what is and what is not 'acceptable' lag. I can do ultra fast gear changes though, and yes this alleviates it a bit, but on the track, to be 'nice' I probably do something like a half-second to maybe 1 second gear change? Not super fast... And it falls back to about 5000rpm and then seems to start building boost again. Since my turbos are still small (GT-SS size) I would have thought that will still have them on song...? I am wondering if it is filling the intercooler again.. perhaps I have TOO much BOV? Could that be the case? Hey there Lucien, Yup! I'll have to PM you all the details! Hows the Thesis coming along? Yeah I agree, but since they are "already spun up" and I am just changing gears, wouldn't they more or less keep going? I mean, these things are ball-bearing and going at 150000rpm.. how come they slow down in a half second gear change? How does someone figure out if you have too much BOV (emptying the Intercooler), or not enough BOV (stalling the turbo) ? Hmm... I think I really need to suss out these HKS SSQ's on the car first and see if there is a problem first.. Cheers guys, if I find the 'issue' I'll post it up for sure.

Hey guys, I have just got the car back on the road. Had standard turbos before, and now have Garrett ball bearings that are about the equiv of N1's. Additionally I have Mines dump pipes on there - where before I just had the stock items. One thing that hasn't changed, which I had hoped would - is that there is noticeable lag between changing gears, even when changing up around 7000rpm. I have HKS SSQ bovs which were already on the car when I got it. Is this normal? I would have thought that once a pair of ball bearing turbos had the RPM up, that they would have reasonable inertia to keep going? Or is it because when the bov's fire, I have to 'refill' the Intercooler? The Intercooler is an Apexi Hybrid and is a bit bigger than standard (not sure 'how much' bigger)

Yeah see that is what I figured.. I guess it doens't matter so long as I keep tuning and comparing on the same dyno. My 60ft was 1.9secs on worn out street tyres. Guess I'll have to get down again now and see what the new power figure produces! Might take it to another dyno too where they run 'shootout mode' and see what it says there... just for interest.

Thanks NXTIME, Well, I didn't put the figure because I've read some mighty large figures on this forum and the dyno this is on, is known to read a bit low. So not sure if I am 'comparing properly'. But, before I did mods I got 250hp at the rear using 1.1bar on the std turbos. In that trim it did a 12.3 @ 110mph. Now I have added Motec, CDI and Garrett turbos (about N1 equiv) I am getting 320hp at the rear on same dyno with 1.2bar.. we still have tuning to do so it might go up to 330-340, not sure. The cars seems much better in the torque department though. To put the figures in perspective, a dead stock 250kW Clubsport got 240hp at the rears and a 300kW GTS got 290 on this same dyno... so it sounds like I have about 330kW at Flywheel? Not big compared to what else is on here, but a 25% improvement in what I had so... should be scraping a flat 12 or late,late 11 perhaps? The drive on the road will be the test. I'm hoping she's pretty responsive.

Isn't it just typical... 3 or 4 nights of scratching heads and wondering what the hell is going on and then, when I think "hmm, I'll put the question up on the forums to see if anyone knows" ....and BAM! We found it... So just for future reference: The Motec CDI was being triggered to 'On' by the Motec ECU via one of its auxillary outputs. Our best guess is that this was inducing noise back up to the Motec ECU, or possibly drawing too much current down the trigger wire, and shutting the CDI down. In any case, we ran the trigger wire to 12volts from the ignition circuit and problem solved.. the CDI zoomed through to 9000rpm without a glitch. ....and here we were looking at sensors and readings and all the other stuff...! Thanks to anyone who at least read the message and gave it some thought.

If I need this done to my R32, and the engine is in the car. How much do you think it would cost to get done? Is it a complete engine removal to do? (I assume it is..) This is all a bit of a worry. I have heard of stock oil pumps failing, needing this collar fitted, having to fit a Tomei oil restrictor and a baffled sump. Sounds like any R32 making 350-450 hp at the fly more or less needs to be pulled apart and these things done before you can be 'safe' yeah? Assuming you want to drive it at the 'occasional' track day? I guess the question is - "how often do these things fail?" Am I better off just driving it and only pulling it out after a failure?

Just a question to anyone who has fitted Motec to an R32 GTR. The "quick question" is: Is there any problem sharing the signal from the Ref/Sync with both the factory ECU and Motec? The "long version" of the question is: I'll give you as much background as I can think of, I have a Motec M800 and Motec CDI-4 running wasted spark on specific CDI coils. This has all only recently been fitted along with new turbos, injectors and so on... The other day, the car ran up on a 2-wheel dyno without any issues and got a good horsepower result at 1.2bar There was however an issue with voltage to the Motec - it was reading 17volts (I'm not sure how or why) - and so wiring was changed to make sure it had a good discrete power feed and it now get more like the 13.8 volts it should. This in turn changed the state of tune, and so it had to be mapped again. (although I am surprised at this as I would have thought Motec would have compensated for this?) Anyway, it seemed to behave a lot better now that the electrical gremlin was gone. And this is where a NEW problem begins: My tuner is experiencing an issue where the engine is cutting out at higher revs and with higher boost. It sounds and acts like an ignition problem as cylinder pressures rise and we increase boost the problem seems more prevalent. But, we never had this issue before, and we doubt the CDI is incapable of lighting the spark. Even so we tried closing the gaps. It was a little hard to be certain because the RPM at which cut out occurs tends to move around a little and we haven't established a pattern... but the problem still exists. The next symptom is that when the cutout happens, the Diagnostic LED on the side of the Motec CDI suddenly goes out. This diagnostic LED represents triggers to fire the coils and comes from the Motec ECU. To be sure that the CDI is working correctly, we pulled two spark plugs and ran the Diagnostics from the Motec software and basically ran the CDI up to 8000rpm and watched the spark plugs happily firing away.. (ie the engine is not running, we are simply driving the CDI from the Motec ECU, via the laptop diags) And so this shows that the Motec ECU trigger is working, and that the CDI is happily sparking away at 8000rpm. Now the LED on the CDI flashes each time it has a trigger - so when it goes out, its implying that the Motec ECU did not trigger it. (the LED will flash whether or not we have 'enough' spark in the cylinder as the CDI does not know or care if the spark actually took place or not)... So !! (finally) Why is the Motec not triggering the CDI, and why does it appear to be at revs/boost etc? The Motec is not showing any real errors - although it does pop up the occassional Ref/Sync error which might happen at any time and does not necessarily cut out the motor. MY tuner says its not unusual to see the odd ref/sync error here and there though.. CDI has discrete feed from 12v. Motec has discrete feed from 12v. We have tried swapping in another Motec M800 in to see. We have tried swapping another ref/sync unit from another Skyline in to see. And the only sensor 'shared' with the standard ECU is the Ref/Sync sensor so I am wondering if this would pull the current down enough to cause an issue..? And perhaps when the Motec had 17v to it, it was enough to perhaps pull up any low sensor inputs?? (or something like that) Tonight, we are putting in an M800 with full logging to see if anything shows up, but the tuner is perplexed that it is not throwing any errors up. Any thoughts from you guys that I can take to the workshop tonight wouldn't hurt! The tuner has been a Motec dealer for years and has run a V8 Supercar race team a few years back so is no idiot, but has not done a lot with Skylines and so it may be something simple. And er, I just drive the car, so I am no expert either... Your confusedly, Matt.

yeah! Me too! (my bet is they're all the same)

Since the turbos are bolted in - and it may be hard to get to now - is it ok to put a 0.8mm restrictor inline somewhere else? I assume a 0.8mm that then goes to a 1.2mm will still be the equiv of replacing the 1.2mm will it? (or will they kind of sum and result in lower pressure still?) What's the damage likely if I "try it" with just the 1.2mm.. ie is it ok to try and then fit a 0.8mm inline if I have the symptoms? Or have I 'stuffed it' if they get too much pressure?

Cheers for that Pete, Hmm. Ian from Turbotech was in the workshop just yesterday and said there was no need to add restrictors - that the Turbo already had sufficient ones. But he made no mention of whether they were 0.8mm, or 1.2mm. Just said not to worry. Who were you talking to at Turbotech - do you know? I ended up going for the -7 in the end because it more or less matches the specs on the HKS GT-SS, and from what I have read they seem to come on a fair bit earlier than the HKS2530 (or -5 equiv).. I understand they won't make quite the same top end, but its street response and circuit racing I am interested in - not drags or dyno. Unfortunately I haven't been able to 'try' each one - so I had to make a best guess based on all the reading and advice. Hopefully I've made the right choice for my application.. will see soon eh!

Hey there Lucien, yeah - I thought maybe it was a bit over the top. My mechanic thought about it for a bit, and then just decided to go genuine. He doesn't do Skyline's much (more of a V8 background) and perhaps just didn't want the stuff around of getting/finding the right parts? But he did say to me that he had seen some aftermarket ones fail and that given the labour to replace - felt it was better to go genuine in this case. Are they any different really?? I don't know. But oh boy the price was an unwelcome surprise... I can't wait until this fiasco is over. My Credit Card has taken a hiding...

Hmm.. well that is interesting. The 707160-7 has more or less the same specs as the HKS GT-SS turbos. So do you think the R34 VSpec II has the equiv of GT-SS turbos? Possible I suppose? I just hope they go well... are these the equiv to N1's? (or are all these the same even??)

Cheers - I think I'll follow that advice and give them a ring.. do the pictures in the link I posted above show you at all? (ie is this the part I am supposed to be looking at?) I would have thought that as they are a specific turbo to GTR's then they should already have the correct one fitted?

Better still! I just remembered I took some photos. Do either of these show what we are looking for? http://dsl-202-72-159-143.wa.westnet.com.a...4%20(Large).jpg or close up: http://dsl-202-72-159-143.wa.westnet.com.a...3%20(Large).jpg Cheers!