GTRPSI

I loved those old cars, i remember learning from my old man how to rebuild a manual gearbox and change a clutch for the first time, it was on his mates FC Holden, 3 on the tree, was so easy to rebuild and put back together again. Needed to change the rusted out rear welsh plug on the FC's motor? Remove the vinal floor covering and cut a 6" X 6" hole in the fire wall from inside the cabin to access the rear of the engine so you didnt need to pull the engine out, a simple sheet metal plate and some self tapper screws covered the hole again. My relative bought a old EK wagon as his first car, he brought it over to me beacuse he reconded it had lifter noise and thought the engine needed to be striped to get to them, nah, just remove the rocker cover and side cover, job done in no time, he was amaized how simple they were to be worked on. Those days life was a lot simpler than today......

Come on, your sounding like old guys back in the late 70's complaining about "modern engines and polution control. (I was one of them) I remember when polution control was first released, just 1 or 2 sensors and 2 vacuum hoses extra and everyone thought the sky was falling, many almost collapsed when vacuum operated warm air exhaust manifold air intakes were released, looking back its pretty funny shit compared to what we deal with today. Eventually you get your head around it. You see there lies the problem, as you stated, cheque book racing, its what most people do today, just look on here, page after page of it, brand names, quite often not needed, quite often the stock part worked or could be made better to do the job with a dye grinder or welder if you knew what to do. Its not the most of us, its actually the few of us that make the most of what we have, those without the cash know how to pull a multimeter out and test a sensor or trace a fault, those with $ just source another one and test, fail and write another cheque for another part or just tow the car to a workshop. The average person has no idea, they see a fast car they like, buy it and start handing out fist fulls of cash to keep it working. Reminds me of the GTR saying, anyone can afford to buy one, very few can afford to keep it. Having said all that (crap), modern engines are not THAT bad to work on, sure on GTR's your hands end up looking like they just got pulled out of a bag containing some feral cats due to a lack of space (especially after replacing the intake manifold gaskets or turbos in car), however thats the price you pay for the latest whiz bang technology, who would have dreamed that 10-15 years later that a car so technically advanced would have ever been produced for the general public and affordably now in the hands of teenagers. It was a jump so far forward in Technology that it brought to the normal person (Us) something that was only avaliable to the super rich in terms of performance a few years earlier in Porshe's and Ferrari's. Part of the old school fun (and now modern fun) is solving the problem without laying out big $ or paying a workshop to solve it. Sure you need a backup car as a daily........ Yes you need to understand the principals (both wiring and plumbing) but those who are technically minded can get on top of them with a simple workshop manual. (and some home made bent spanners, for like undoing the starter motors on GTR's) Funny thing, quite often when looking into a old school engine bay these days, half of my amazement is how much room there was to perform work, you forget what you had back then, my usual thoughts are you could climb into the engine bay, there is so much room, its like being in fantasy land, i just want to hug the car. Anyway, im just looking down at the scabs and wounds on my hands while i type this......its a show of the times with tight engine bays to get the most of a modern engine. Thanks for reminding me why i loved those old cars and engines so much, but remember even back then, getting power out of a NA without real knowhow was a black art only in the hands of the devoted, much of what you have today came from us old timers searching for more out of a race engine, manifold runner sizes changing engine charaterisics, combustion chamber mods, bearing clearances formulas are all at the press of a button today, in our time it was all held very close to our chest just to keep our engines a few feet infront of others cars......

I own both a R32 GTR and a S2000. I can assure you, the S2000 will always out brake you and have a higher mid corner speed, stock for stock. Mod for mod, same again. Your only saving grace will be the ability to get on the power quicker and pull away on the straight sections. Then watch the S2000 start pulling you in on the corners and twisties. If it upsets you, stick to tracks with long straight sections, minimal corners or wet days......

Let me whack you one with my walking stick young fella. We did what we did because there were no off the shelf piarts to affordably do anything. The best we could do to our rods was to massage them by hand and buy some ARP rods, convert the gudgon pins and pistons to full floating and resize the big ends. We needed more oil pump pressure, no aftermarket pumps, shim the sucker up. We needed a big cam so we bought the biggest hydralic one and ran it with solid lifters (poor mans solid race cam) There was no internet, there was no google to research with, working it out meant speaking to someone kind enough to share some hard earned knowleage, going to the track and sussing things out or plain old suck it up, try it and see. Believe you me i blew up more than 1 oil filters due to too much oil pump shimming.....engine out again, try again....out in, out in, out in, finally nailed it for those bearing clearances. The suspension arms use to buckle under load during launch, you worked out that cutting some steam pipe and welding into the C channel of the rear arms did the job to strengthen them. Nothing was handed to you on a plate, your were left up to your own ingenuity, no google with pages of results or images to study. Now with modern engines, yes much of the work is done, shit, you guys got Alloy heads and overhead cams that already flowed pretty good, we got push rods and iron heads, hell you got Electronic spark running from a ECU that you could alter as needed, we got weights and springs hanging inside a distributor that we needed to play with weights and spring tensions, christ you even got EFI and O2 sensors and exhaust temp sensors, we got carbs, jets, a screwdriver and a sparkplug socket to work it all out. And the list of what modern engine have to make better power and vehicle advancements with less know how goes on....Drum brake rears, home made water injection, want to save weight, use a 12V hair dryer motor as a window demister, weld the diff because you didnt have LSD's for your model..... Today its either aready capable or you just open a catalog on line and its all there. Ok i need to go and take my old fart afternoon nap and diper change now, you have tired me out making me think.

Get a 12-18" length of garden hose, (my parents use to crack it when they saw me hacking theirs), while engine is running start putting one end of the hose into the intake runner entry of each throttle bore and listen with your ear to the other end of the hose. Move from port to port, making note of the diffrences in noise. Adjust throttle stop for each one till they are all to as near as to identical as possible. Point being any throttle thats open more or closed more will sound different, old school way of balancing the carbs throttle positions. From there read plugs and adjust jets, also go back and re listen to the sounds if any need a tweak. Back in my day vacuum gauges were hard to find and big $, i learnt that from a old time race engineer back in the late 70's who was adjusting and balancing side draughts in the pits, he was kind enough to show me when i was a teenager because i took interest in what he was doing and ive been doing them that way ever since he showed me.

Nice vid of the first start up, brings back memories seeing that black smoke and miss fire till the side drafts are jetted right and balanced. Now that was a black art for those who never tried, or those that did and failed..... So are you going to tune them with the garden hose stethascope method and reading plugs like i use to or are you going to go fancy modern on us and use a vaccum gauge? Many of those old motors were underestimated, thats where true modding for power was learnt. The other day i was sitting with a young group of my sons mates and we got onto talking power, they all said turbo is the way if you want to get into the 11 second bracket, i looked up and mentioned we were doing mid 10's NA easily in the mid 80's, they all looked bambozaled at me. Ah the crank up the boost and buy brand names generation......mention deburring and shot peeing a stock rod because you didnt have better that you could afford and they think your from Fredie Flintsons time.

Would have, should have, could have, we all have those stories, if only we could turn back time. 3 Things that stick in my mind about those engines in the good ol days. The first was some mates with a Eh that tried to kill a motor for shits and giggles, they drained the oil and use to beat the crap out of it to kill it for a few days after school, took them 2 or 3 days of thrashing it around before the parents got home from work before is seized. Another mate had a rusted up cooling system, drained the water, replaced it with beer, ran it for a week, drained it, replaced the coolant and no more rust (but wasted good VB) The last one was a built motor running a Holley 350 with a blocked jet, swap some leads around to create a nice intake backfire and problem solved, jet clear. Ah the good old days when engines were simple to work on....

Bleeding should have been done during the warm up and intitial run in phase, before the vehicle was handed over. Yes if they forgot to open the heater tap, theres your problem, however i doubt a workshop that builds lots of engines and installs them would overlook this, but remember, people are human and shit sometimes happens, this can happen to even the best of them. For all we know it could be a weak radiator cap..... Some oil can show up in the water as XKLABA stated, if its a small amount, its nothing, if its heaps its a issue and could point to something more sinsiter. If you go get someone else to inspect it, ONLY do it with CRD's written instructions, get them to email it. Otherwise dont touch a thing, its CRD's build, therefore their responsibility to look into. The moment others start tampering without their permission, your opening a can of worms...... The only time you get someone else to look at it is once things have turned sour, and even then its for a professional report to find the failure for your lawyers record if its serious. Just remember, it could simply be nothing....dony start to panic yet, give CRD a fair opertunity to do their thing first.

Just take it back in and ask whats gone wrong, dont touch a thing. Im sure a professional workshop like CRD would look into the cause of the failure and report back what went wrong. Surely there is some sort of warranty with their work..... Sorry to hear for your engine problems. Unfortunately when dealing with modified engines, sometimes things can go wrong, dont panic and dont jump to conclusions till its been professionally inspected by the engine builder. One question though, did they use head bolts or studs, and if studs did they stay standard RB25 size or go up to GTR or 1/2" studs?

I totally agree with that, up here in the northern Suburbs we have a new workshop opening every 3-4 months specializing in Skylines and Supras and as many closing. Most are opened up by people who worked for another workshop or fixed cars at home and thought they knew it all till they started in their own. Some of the things i see when dropping off parts to them is a joke, because somebody can bolt on a brand name manifold in their garage does not mean they know how to put a Euro car into service mode before making a repair. Just last week i saw 1 do this, a simple repair ended up costing a pretty penny because of the person behind the tools being a so called pro. The day before that one workshop purchased a "good" second hand gearbox as a replacement for a blown one, after they put it in they realized they had bought another blown one, they didnt even test it by putting it into each gear and rotating the input shaft. You would think they would know what to look for and test before parting with cash, i guess the guy who sold it is laughing now. Today we had mechanic call us for us for brake pads, mechanic couldnt fathom that the model of van had 3 caliper versions, one with no pad wear sensors, one with a cut out for 1 sensor, and another with a cut out for 2 sensors, and asked us to send the one with no sensors because it was cheaper, when asked how he would get a sensor working on it if it had sensors, he replied he would disconnect them and throw them away, he was too lazy to pull off a wheel and look. Go figure, and this guys working on brakes! At least my days are entertaining with these idiots (sorry proffesionals), never a dull moment, myself, the Mrs and son are constantly on the floor laughing at the lastest stories. Eventually they realize its not a easy game, there is a lot of competition, and others who have more experiance.

OK so in a nut shell, your question relates to the shocker setup in rear wheel drive drag setup, right? 90/10 front shocks, 50/50 rear shockers. It allows the front to lift to transfer weight to the rear and resists the front coming down quickly. Simples.

All i remember my son telling me was its was modded and ready to bolt onto a freshly rebuilt dog box we purchased from them when he was there picking it up. Sort of made me stop for a second and weigh up the work for me to mod it Vs the price it was offered to him for. Unsure if it was all newly rebuilt and unused, for the price it was offered for i highly doubt it. (it was that cheap)

Racepace offered us one already done for considerably less than that, id suggest picking up the phone and talking with them......(unsure if it was a one off built one ready to go that they wanted out the door though)

40 thou may not be enough. Firstly when checking with modeling clay, remember your pushing the piston over (rocking it over) with the clay, where as you really should be rocking it the other way into the squirter for the true minimum possible. Then allow for bore and piston wear which will let it rock over further. Id be aiming for a minimum of 80 thou (2mm) +. You also have the option of putting washers under the squirters should you need a little more if its already assembled.......not too much as remember they are positioned by the pin holes. Just remember more clearance is better than less. From memory stock pistons have quite a large cutout to clear the squirters so dont be scared to take out more than you need.

Jump from cyl to cly, its rare that they are all so built up that you cannot read any of them. Valve relief cutouts in the pistons are also a dead give away that they are not stock. (if the pistons used has them)

And I might add they are a bitch to change while on the car.

Still looks a bit shallow to the eye but it cannot be judged from a picture. Did you take a measurement of the gap to the squiters? How much room did you allow? More than 1.5mm-2mm?

Just dont stress the engine, the moment a rod bolt goes through a few high stress cycles it will weaken and fail eventually. This can be seen in motorsport, prostockers throw out rods after so many runs, track engines getting new fresh rods every season or 2, F1 engines detunned to survive just a few races. Its all based on metal fatiuge which is why most people stay away from second hand pistons and rods. Id only use second hand parts or stock parts in a stock build, where the parts are working within their designed conditions and parameters.

Mercury ran 850hp at all 4 (630Kw) in their R34 GTR on 43 PSI with a stock bottom end from what i remember. They too wanted to find the limit and were expecting failure. Finding the limit is sort of like playing Russian roulet, one engine lets go at 450Kw, another at 650Kw, so whats the real known limit? There is no magical number. There is only toss a coin and take a gamble. But remember one thing, rod bolts are a stressed item, when new they can take more stretch and pounding, once cycled too many times they become fatigued. Guess what happens next? ......

Years ago (back in the 70's and early 80's) when aftermarket rods were really expensive, we would spends days preping stock rods to be a "little" better than the stock items. Today looking back at it, its pointless to try this, the labor cost of shot peeing, resizing and balancing the rods is much higher today compared to what labor costs were back then VS new aftermarket rod costs of today, its simply no longer economical to mod stock rods. I simply wouldnt throw out stockers and put some aftermarket ones in, and then sleep at night knowing i had something even stronger than the modded stockies.

Everythings in bits now. Sump is the cast Hi Octane 8.5-9L extension. http://www.hioctanedirect.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=67_74&products_id=1193 2 breathers on the diff side. Tomei oil pump. Some vauge pics of whats been done.... http://www.sau.com.au/forums/gallery/album/5537-engine-build/

Now you made me put the die grinder down and take some pics of today...first day i got back into it in months.... As she sits tonight....(thats a RB30 bottom end next to her) Todays job is a couple of heads to be done (and the next few week ends as i get time) Exhaust port Before.... Exhaust port 80% there...(pics not dead square to the port)

Im waiting for the threads that are about to follow this one. Like the how many Kw can the stock pistons and rings, or rods or bearings take. Better still lets start a how long is a piece of string, thread.......

Good luck proving the limit of the factory rod bolts......lets say its the factory red line and be done with the shit fight thats about to break out.

Yeh, trap doored sumps must be fitted from under with the block the right way around. Bet you quite a few people have fitted them with the block upside down and had the doors stick open on the pickup.... and probably never known it was like that the whole time.