QWK32

i'm not disagreeing with the fact that a FMIC will help maintain a more consistent performance well after the stock side mount has succumb to heat soak. but that isn't an increase in power, its the normal expected power being maintained, were as with the stock side mount you may experience a decrease in power on those particularly hot days, after a bit of spirited driving, or have reached the limits of the stock setup. one thing that does happen, and i have heard/seen plenty of comments about it, is that after installing a front mount an increase in standard boost by a couple of PSI can occur. that could be playing a part in some people's experience of more power after installing FMIC, especially if your not running an aftermarket boost gauge and can see the increase in turbo pressure.

i wouldn't go jumping to conclusions just yet, even with the video you posted every reply you get is still going to be only a guess. best way would be to take it into a mechanic and get them to have a listen, its much easier to figure out the source of a noise when your there in person.

pfffffftttt.... i noticed SFA difference when adding a front mount intercooler. the only thing that happened after i installed it was i then had piece of mind that i could safely turn the boost up or upgrade my turbo. i've had 3 RB powered turbo cars now and done the FMIC upgrade on each of them and on each occasion there was no noticeable difference, no increase in lag, no increase in mid range or overall power, no decrease in response. though, if i kept telling my self there was a noticeable difference i'm sure i would start to believe it. after all, nobody wants to say that they spent $600-$1000 on a mod that has no noticeable effect. a FMIC is in the same group of mods as bigger injectors and Z32 AFM's, while they don't add any power to your setup they support the ability to achieve more power with more boost, or a bigger/hiflow turbo.

Bearing noise of some kind, have you had your timing belt and idler bearings replaced yet? Could be a noisy idler bearing. Another common source of noise I've found is the Air Conditioning pump, this one is easy to rule out / confirm, just remove the belt to the AC pump and see If the noise stops.

I got mine through a import car yard, Motovation Imports I think it was, down on the GC. there weren't many options when getting mine, for a series 2 it was either personal import or import car yard. The only ones for private sale were series 1's. Also out of the 20 or so S2's for sale in the whole of Australia only 1-2 of them were manual and at almost 6-7 grand more than the auto version. M35's were only just starting to show there faces in australia and they were up around $30k from a car yard.

thats a S2 Auto stagea ecu. mine is the same part number. also the reason why your rev limit is lower than expected, the Stagea's rev limit is 6600rpm compared to a manual R34's of 6900rpm (values from a standard rom). As wolverine said it wont be a problem if your planning on installing nistune, they are both type 4 boards, the only thing you wont have is traction control. you could ask Matt if its possible to load a R34 base image to the nistuned stagea ecu and have everything work as normal.

Ignore this, the stock bov does not release air pressure above 7psi, if you run 11psi the engine see's 11psi. The only issue with the stock bov is that it's getting old, I had mine let go at 14-15psi where as others have no problems holding 18psi. What Wolverine said is correct, on a bov in perfect working order the equal pressure will hold it shut. The stock bov is old, the seals are worn/shrunken/deteriorating and may pass air causing the bov to release under load. In the end run whatever setup you want, atmo bov isn't that big of a deal if you can put up with occasional stalling, and pops and black smoke out the exhaust when backing off. IMO fuel economy is hardly effected dispite what some people will try and argue. And again IMO a little reversion (flutter) isn't a big deal either, It won't effecting the stock turbo's response to a point where it's noticeable. And to anyone who says it will damage to turbo and Nissan put a bov there for a reason, the RB20 out of the cefiro does not run a bov at all.

The greddy unit will actively monitor the boost level and make adjustments to the solenoids duty cycle to try and maintain a set boost pressure. The jaycar unit does not, it is simply a 2D map of load vs duty cycle. So for a certain load point the solenoid will operate at the set duty cycle. Load point is taken from an injector output from the ecu, so as injector duty cycle rises so does the jaycar units load. I found the jaycar unit to be quite good at it's job while I was still running the stock turbo, not so good once i changed to a larger one.

I didnt have to move mine to fit the front mount in, mind you I did have to cut a little bit out of the back of the dayz front bar. I also wanted to keep that spot to thr side for my engine oil cooler. There are a few people who have moved the tranny cooler to the side and I think you find you have to reposition the washer bottle.

This method also works on ugly chicks....... The plastic bag trick never worked for me, I still always ended up with oil all over the place. Oil filter relIcation kit makes it so much easier and cleaner.

You didn't put PTFE tape on the JIC fittings did you? If you do it can stop the fitting from sealing correctly.

The valve hanging off the back of the stock manifold has two functions, its the idle control valve and cold start valve. Probably not a good idea to get rid of the idle control function of it. If you get a neo specific aftermarket manifold it should have a place you can bolt it to, other wise you will either have to make up an adapter plate or get an R33 RB25 idle control valve. The older RB25's have separate idle and cold start valves. You may get away without having the coldstart function, I had to block mine off once before and it had no I'll effect, mind you this wasn't in the middle of winter and I'm in queensland.

do you have plans to lower your car? when you lower it the wheels will pull in a bit and wont stick out as far.

i've been running BC's for just over a year now and i'm happy with them, i haven't had any issue's. the guys at justjap recommended them to me and said they had a few customers running them in their stagea's and had only good reports about them. from memory the springs are only a bit stiffer than stock, something like 8kg front and 6kg rear. i only have the dampers set to half way and the ride is good. i do a few road trips a year, sometimes with the car fully loaded, and with the exception of a few bumps that would be harsh on any suspension, the ride is comfortable. i've taken the stagea on a couple of twisty mountain runs too and it handled really well.

i understand what turbo reversion is, i ran may car for 6 months or so with it after my turbo upgrade. however i experienced the complete opposite to running rich and stalling. i could have worded it better than saying it stalled the maf completely, my maf output voltage would become very unstable and lower than normal idle time output voltage (so to me thats as good as a stalled meter) and the wideband O2 readout would lean out causing an engine stall. thats just my experience and hence why i wrote it. i personally haven't seen an engine run rich during reversion, running an atmo bov i have though. i guess afm placement would have an impact on it and could give a different result, my afm/intake setup is very similar to stock in shape and distance from turbo. anyway in either case it will cause the same result and i regards to the OP's original question the answer is still yes, it is a bad idea to run without a recirculating BOV.

15 degrees BTDC

there is no such thing as cold start / warm boost levels on the C34 stagea's, and for the RS4-S there is only one setting, 7psi (it does lift a little more after a fmic and exhaust is fitted). the auto's have the 2 stagea boost switching from 5 - 7psi. i'd say the solenoid is working perfectly fine considering your getting high boost, and that something is triggering it to turn off giving only safe low boost, my bet is with what Chris_Beli said, you are getting some knock causing the knock maps and low boost settings to kick in. turning the car off for a bit resets this. Shaun, assuming your only running the stock boost control setup, first thing i'd be checking is the base timing with a timing light. it is possible that it has been set a little bit too high, therefore adding a few degrees to the stock timing maps and causing it to knock on load. is the apexi air filter you have a pod filter, if so do you have a heat shield around it? if not sucking in hot engine bay air wont be helping. running the car with no recirculating BOV and stock ecu in most cases is a real pain in the ass because nissan uses a mass air flow meter to calculate load. with no BOV, when you back off your essentially stalling the airflow meter, no airflow across it means no fuel injected, which leads to constant engine stalling. thats just the main issue, there are others associated with it, do a search of SAU and you'll find tonnes of threads about it.

I did this a while ago, thought I got all the pieces out, then after a few weeks of driving I notice some little bits of yellow glass still in there lol

Hmmmmmm............ i think i agree........ as cause down for it is around blue........... Hi Tom Rick, i do a 400km trip quite a few times a year (in my auto S2) and have never had an issue like you describe, i haven't had any real issues with my auto. i'm sure the auto has a safe mode where it locks into 3rd and wont shift when it goes out on a fault/error code. when you get the auto serviced do they put a scan tool on to check for any fault codes on the auto? you can check the error codes yourself, there was a thread in the stagea section on how to do it, may be worth a try.

definitely replace the exhaust manifold gasket, the last thing you want to do is have to pull it all back off to change it down the track. easier to do at the same time as the studs. it will be hard to do with the turbo still on, you will struggle to get onto some of the nuts around the turbo area. my advice would be to remove the turbo to make it a lot easier to work on the manifold. change your manifold studs and gasket. also change the T3 turbo gasket while its off (you can reuse them but they are cheap to replace), and another one to keep in mind is the turbo dump gasket, it is a steel one like the T3 gasket so you can reuse it but again, it is cheap enough to replace. you can get all those gaskets of ebay but i'd recommend using someone like kudosmotorsport or justjap (site sponsors) atleast you know your getting the right ones, make sure you double check your stud thread size and pitch before ordering anything. it would suck to remove it all and have the wrong studs. i would be leaving the 4 turbo mounting studs alone, unless they are damaged or get damaged during removal they are probably more trouble than its worth to replace. they are hardened steel and if you break one, unless you have access to some good metal working tools, you will struggle to get them out, normal HSS drill bits wont touch them, i had to use a tungsten carbide cutting tool to remove one of mine that snapped off. i've done a few turbo gasket changes and stock turbo swaps and just left them alone, never had any troubles down the track. the only reason i swapped them out on the stagea was to fit longer studs to fit a spacer place and bigger turbo to the stock manifold. you never know, you may be lucky and they come out easy, 3 of mine came out easy using the method you posted earlier, there was just one that had to ruin my day

i've finished everything bar the endurance races. and looking at them, i don't really feel that inclined to do them. 24 hours around nurburgring isn't really that appealing. i like the seasonal events though, gives me something to keep going on.

those ones are no good for a RB head, you need a fine thread, M10x1.25 and the studs are about 50mm long.

welding a spring onto the actuator is just a little bit too backyard for most people, that on top of unpredictable results, fragile stock turbo, and the option of a $30 manual boost tee that comes highly recommended, why would you risk it.

Yep, that's how you remove the studs. Only problem is if the studs break off when removing the nut, or removing the stud. If that happens you in for some fun trying to get them out. The studs that bolt into the head are easier to remove than the 4 turbo mounting studs if you snap them off as they aren't hardened. I didn't have any trouble with the exhaust manifold -> head studs, in fact some of them were already loose!! It was the turbo mounting studs that caused me issues.

Definitely start with spark plugs, if the car is a fresh import or being serviced by a mechanic with little experience on turbo imports it will probably have the wrong plugs in it as most parts places will list iridiums with a 1.1mm gap and a heat range of 5. You need to get some plugs in there with a 0.8mm gap and at least a heat range of 6, copper or iridium is up to you, I'd recommend coppers though. Failing that check your coilpacks, they have an internal ignitor so no external one (like the earlier RB25's in R33's) that can cause issues. Coilpack faults are hard to pinpoint especially where it has a miss under load only, sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and shell out for a new set, but at $600+ for a new set of splitfires, it's a big bullet to bite.