screamin'

It's a 4.9 and it's out of a mighty Nissan Serena van! Should be perfect to gear the car down a bit. Cheers

I have found an R200 diff with a 4.9 ratio, which is ideal for what I need for the rallycar. It currently runs a 4.3 diff as far as I can tell. Problem is, the 4.9 I've found is an open diff... What I want to know is, could I swap the crownwheel and pinion from the open diff into my R200 lsd?

Just stumbled across this so I thought I'd put in 2c. $7k budget is small, but it really depands on the cost of cars over there (I'm in NZ) and how much you can do yourself. For me, I picked up an RB20DE R32 cheap ($1000) as it was damaged but still rego'ed etc. I stripped it, fixed it, put a cage in it and had it on the startline of my first event for NZ$4,500. Sure, it was basically a stock lightened car, but I was there and racing legally. The car has developed a lot since then, but that is beside the point. What I would do is pick up an S13 'ish with an SR20DE. Well ballanced car and a better N/A power plant than an RB20DE, should be a good starting point. For brake upgrades I'd be looking to other Nissan items, like turbo S13 brakes etc. I'm running R33 2.5 N/A front brakes with Lucas pads in the front of the rallycar ($180 + $80 for pads) and have never had brake fade on the track or in rallysprints. And the car does pull up really well. Remember the car will most likely be lighter than stock so big dollar brakes are not important at this stage.

Don't have figures for the torques or ponies, wasn't too fussed about that and at the end of the day numbers don't mean much on gravel. It has great midrange torque for a 2ltr and this makes the car far more drivable and controlable through the corners, when compared to the same events last year. Why would itb's be illegal, unless you guys have some emission controls or something over there, which means in that case my SS is illegal too. After the first event the engine bay is now really dusty, so it didn't look that good for long!

I've done a few events with the ITB setup now and I have been very impressed with the results. The car pulls much stronger in the mid-range, which is where I need it and it still rev's out easily to 8k. The throttle responce mid corner is instant and I am able to use more control when I'm looking for grip and there are no flatspots anywhere in the rev range from 3500rpm on. The video below is of a steep hill we ran up a couple of weeks back. Compared to last year, I found it far more driveable and easier to keep momentium. http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=pjSTmw_WWqs Still more tuning to be done, so hopefully with a few adjustments I'll have a wider powerband to play with.

Just a quick update. No pic's/vid's at the mo, haven't got time. The car is up and running. Has much more torque, good throttle responce and sounds awsome! Ran the car at two gravel hillclimbs on the weekend and found the extra torque very usable off the turns. My mate is currently making some longer trumpets based off the info from the dyno run. This will mean we can dial in a wider power band from the cams and complete the tune. In the meantime I'm jut getting on with racing the thing again.

42mm. The tune on Thursday will just be a temporary measure, so that I am able to run the car at a test day on Monday to find all the problems before going to the final tune and dialing up the cams fully. Just want to be able to turn the wheels again, been a long couple of months.

Getting tuned on Thursday, so hopefully it'll do more than just idle.

Fired it up this morning. (typical crap sound quality due to engine noise) It's all untuned and just running on the start-up mode, hence the big lumpy idle. It wont take throttle yet, but at least it runs under it's own steam.

WRC cars run up to 16in wheels on gravel and they have some pretty awsome brakes, I would say far superior to factory GTR ones. You don't need hugh disks to have good brakes. Cost of running any rallycar ( or motorsport in general) on gravelis expensive! I don't beleive that WRX's have fantastic steering lock either, generally in a 4WD rallycar you are not that crossed up, straight is fast. RWD is a different story! A heavy car can be a good thing, we have a lot of old VR4's out here rallying quite competitively, and their weight makes them very stable. But yeah, the big cast irom block foward of the front wheels causes most of the issues. You need a well ballanced car for gravel, but a lot of this can be overcome with carefull suspension setups, crutial in 4WD's.

Hey!!! Just a GTS, geez! I've wondered about the GTR on gravel thing. I know a guy down south ran a GTS4 (ours are turboed) as a rallycar. Never really saw any results tho. I would beleive that a GTR or GTS4 wouldn't be very competitive next to Evo/WRX's due to the heavy RB. Plus, the other two cars have had over a decade of development in this form of motorsport, so if your Evo doesn't do something right, there is a stack of info of how to sort it. For a Skyline there is pretty much none.

Good to see another N/A build going on. For me I've always wanted to build an N/A RB and now I have the challenge of building it to a capacity limit of 2000cc. I'm very keen to see how you get on with the extra cubes. As far as the induction goes, fuel injection will make it more driveable than side draughts, but for outright power there is nothing wrong with three Webbers. Webbers are quite costly now and that is the main reason I went injected. Whats the car going to be used for? Weekend driver or weekend racer?

9 or 10 row with no thermostat should be fine Rach. Much bigger and you will struggle to get the oil up to operating temp during sedate driving. That'll be why some of the larger kits will have the thermosts on them. On the rallycar I'm just going to do a remote filter mount (eventually) and not worry about a cooler at this stage. My motor will be doing a lot more hard and also free revving on the loose stuff than yours will on the seal, so I wouldn't say it's a must, but a cooler is good piece of mind tho.

Yeah we're getting there slowly. We're all too busy to spend much time on it. The engine bay has been cleaned and painted, I've re-plumbed the powersteering and removed the redundant HICAS pipes also. I've prepped the block and should be fitting the head this week.

By day it's a service workshop for mine vehicles and the general public... By night it's our rallycar workshop!

Now that the ITB's are built and the dummy fitment has been carried out, we can get stuck in and remove all the stuff we no longer need, to make way for what we want. Flicked out the radiator and took the stock head off the other afternoon. Now we can look into all the plumbing adjustments and flick some paint on the red bits. My G4 Link ECU has turned up now too, so most of the bits I need to make it run are here.

The tandems we've been towing with lately have been really poor and are overly heavy for the weight of the car we are towing. My Skyline weighs a bit over 1100kg. The other car that will be towed on it weighs 900kg. With good quality new tyres with sturdy sidewalls there is no issue with the single axle. We've had a few single axles in the past and they have towed great. Key thing is, keep up with the maintainance, tyre pressures and conditions; and build the trailer to suit what it tows. Plus tandems suck when you have to park in grass padocks with a 2WD 350hp V8 tow wagon! For stockcars and other heavy machinery I would go tandem any day.

One of the first events I did once getting the car up and running. Must find a vid of a motorkhana I've done lately and see the improvement!

We're currently in the market for a trailer for the rallycar. The plan is to build one similar to this: It will be built to fit my Skyline, with the following requirements. Single axle is a must for manoverability, low centre of gravity and low wheel arches so you can open the doors on the car when it is loaded. Adjustable axle too, so that the correct weight balance can be acheived.

Also... 5 out of 6 fit! Link ECU will be here in a day or two and the car is getting shipped back to the workshop where we can start: Building the head Re-plumb the coolant lines from the head. Re-plumb the clutch master cylinder (that's why #6 don't fit) Remove HICAS servo thingy Wire in Toyota TPS Plumb in MAP sensor Move battery Make new throttle cable radiator fan... Oh god that's getting depressing!

http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/jswright/Launch.mp3 You mean something that sounds like this?

Could possibly do it in place, but you risk getting metal shavings into the system. The intake is really too hard to take off. Take the top section off first, then it'll be easier to get at the bolts that hold the lower section to the head.

Wow, that's not good. Would say you engine hasn't been running any inhibitor in the coolant system. This stops corrosion of the metal and alloy parts throughout the system. Make sure you put some in once you've fix this up. I would say the the steel tube will need to be cut out of the aluminium intake maifold and a new pipe pressed into place. I would recomend an engineering workshop or competent mechanic.

My R32 rallycar weighs 1240kg and has seen a lot of track use in the time I have owned it. I run semi-slick track tyres and due to the 'challenged' top speed of the N/A I'm usually the last of the late brakers in the turns. So basically I give the brakes Sh#*. First most important thing is good quality, fresh brake fluid. I run dot 5.1 and I ensure that the fluid is pretty new before track events. My front brakes are R33 GTS25 2 pot calipers & disks. (NZ$180) Straight bolt on, just remove the stone guards to clear the slightly bigger disks. Pads are Lucas. (NZ $70) Rears are stock R32 GTS with the same pads. I have never had any brake fade from these and find them good for all competion use.

Hmm, got a small problem with the itb's. The Toyota factory spacing is too different to the head ports on the RB. I was just going to take up the difference by using the intake runners to line them up but now we've got it in bits I don't have enough length to do so. So now the linkages between the itb's need to be modified and a new flange made to suit. No biggy, we'll get there... Here's a pic of the smelly old head and ports. Will be good to see a nice shiney head in it's place.