zoomzoom

If your skyline has that tiny single-loop-of-pipe trans cooler then yes, I think in an australian climate its an important upgrade, even on a stock vehicle.

You cant be riding that GSXR1000 like its meant to be at that fuel usage I have a CBR1100xx and 6.5-7L/100km is my average street usage.

I dont know how you guys tolerate fuel usage around 20L/100km. I would expect that from a luxury behemoth Mercedes SUV around town but not a family oriented vehicle.

It may be worth taking off the intake piping and intercooler, and cleaning out the sludge that has built up if you havent so far. The throttle body would need a clean as well. This ensures at low throttle openings that the intake is flowing the amount of air that the engine and gearbox expects from a stock vehicle, so the shift points and behaviour of the gearbox is optimal. This may help fuel economy but dont expect too much. Then again with around town driving, it may just help. A new O2 sensor is probably needed. As for the difference between half and full throttle, it sounds normal to me. On every turbo car I have owned, the power output wasnt a linear relationship with the throttle opening.

Not to be a smart ass, but for 6km trips Id be recommending a pushbike, or something like a sachs madass or postie bike if you have a bike license. Thats a lot of heating and cooling cycles for a big car, and I doubt it really gives the car a full chance to warm up.

Whistling sounds are fine. When you hear a turbo that sounds like an air raid siren you know you have issues LOL.

My experience with 4WS cars is that while they are good for carparks, they dont contribute anything beneficial to on-road handling - and yes, another expensive component to break.

Need more info. Does the engine stall when idling in neutral or in drive when stationary? What happens to the engine rpm when the power cuts out? Check the TPS to see if its working properly.

That guy will be sorry when he comes down off his crack & LSD rush.

Oh geez, just when I am trying to be happy with my ye olde original 96 stagea, you guys have to fill my head with upgrade ideas. Damn you, damn you to hell!

Stock ECU, see the attached graph for the rpm over 15 seconds of idle. This is info Ive collected with a consult cable.

Upon reviewing my data those big peaks are throttle blips, so disregard them, but I am still curious about the constantly changing timing. I can hear the idle wavering, whereas I expected the timing to be roughly constant around 15 deg BTDC Looking at the O2 sensor reading for the corresponding time, the voltage is all over the place going up and down with hardly any regular pattern. Does it affect the timing?

If youre spending 23 grand then the M35 would be the way to go for a daily practical car. My money would be on the 3.5 litre N/A versions just to simplify maintenance. AWD if you can get it, naturally.....

Heres a graph of my idle timing when warmed up. The graph is over 20 seconds and the timing is on the Y axis. From what I am seeing theres a whole lot of WTF going on here. Any thoughts?

Just to bump this again, is the rocker cover to turbo inlet vent pipe enough to relieve pressure? If so then why would nissan even bother to fit the rocker cover to manifold pipe? Does it significantly lower the pressure in the engine to stop oil being pulled into the cylinders when under light load? I ask only because my idle wavers with the RC to manifold pipe functioning, whereas the idle is perfect with the pipe blocked. I put a 3mm restrictor in the pipe to reduce the amount of air the manifold is pulling in under vacuum. It did help, but it seems easier now just to get rid of the whole pipe. Alas, nissan is full of engineers and I am not, so I am hestitant to block it.

Probably late notice in the thread but boosting on a cold engine and warming an engine by idling for many minutes is bad bad bad bad bad. However I have noticed the car ran much better on cold after cleaning the AAC.

Yes thats exactly what I made. Ok now everything makes much more sense. So ideally I will have to make another filter/catch can for the PCV hose.

I dont understand sorry. Ill elaborate: If I leave the rocker cover to manifold pipe on, then my oil catch can on the exhaust side seems useless since the manifold will be sucking in oil mist under vacuum?

After cleaning my intake of oily sludge, I installed a catch can filter and my setup is as follows: The exhaust side rocker cover pipe goes into the catch can, then the catch can feeds back into the pre-turbo inlet pipe. The rocker cover to intake manifold pipe is now blocked. Am I correct in thinking when pressure is created in the rocker cover it will flow through out the rocker cover, into the catch can, and back into the intake? On futher thinking, on a stock setup does gas flow both ways through the turbo inlet PCV pipe? If the manifold is under vacuum then does it draw air through the turbo inlet, through the rocker cover then into the manifold? I just want to check if there is any problems with my setup.

In regards to the blocking of the Rocker cover to intake manifold PCV, is that illegal even if there is no venting to atmosphere?

I wonder how hot it gets in the head where the intake valves are? Im curious whether I have a small puddle of melted plastic in there. Would it be hot enough to burn? But if that were so wouldnt it be hot enough to ignite the air/fuel mixture? Or would the soft plastic eventually be fed into the cylinder? Maybe ignorace is bliss.

So just a little tale of my days work - and a warning to those doing the seafoam-esque treatment.... I had just finished cleaning out my whole intake system of sludge and gunk, including the throttle body and AAC valve. The car idled perfectly again this morning and the engines throttle response was much better. Rather proud with myself, I decided to give a go at using some subaru upper engine cleaner to clean out the intake manifold where I couldnt reach. All was going well as I sprayed the stuff through some intake lines. I then proceeded to spray it into a vac line on the manifold. All of a sudden the nozzle on the can disappeared into the manifold. Realising what happened I shut the car off straight away. Naturally, I began tearing off intake piping in a frenzy. After removing all the piping and throttle body, I poked around with a small mirror and eventually found that 15cm long son-of-a-bitch in the intake runner 3rd from the back of the engine bay. Phew - massive relief, it hasnt gone into the engine. It was lodged in the bend where the upper and lower manifold meet. So I pulled out my flexible grabbing tool, carefully carefully trying to grab it, dont knock it, almost there, yep tha... FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU Down it goes, further down the intake. Long story short after using tools ranging from a vacuum cleaner to swear words, converting to several religions to enlist the help of multiple deities, it was definitely stuck. After I reassured myself with calm words of "youve f-ing f-ed it", I tried to unbolt the upper manifold, only to realise that the bolt locations on this was designed by the bride of satan. Seriously those bolts underneath? Whats with that? I gave up. By now many hours had passed and my patience had worn. After much thought and deliberation I concluded that an Italian tune up was the best method. Soft plastic that was hot could not damage a valve. So after 30 mins of flogging the car around I can only assume that it has met a fiery turbocharged high rpm demise. The engine is running perfectly. Ironically the last time I used carb cleaner around the intake I taped it to the can precisely for this reason. Learn from your mistakes - or better yet learn from mine!

well i picked up one with dimensions 30cm X 19cm X 2cm, so hopefully thats a decent upgrade over stock. next size up is for light trucks i think so i dont think theres enough room up front for it

you can pick up decent sized (4+ litre engines) coolers even from supercheap auto. is there any reason to go with a nissan specific one? the other thing is the fitment issue. im not that knowledgeable with auto tranmissions, if i undo the pipes going to the cooler, is it going to spill fluid, is it under any pressure, is gravity going to make all the trans fluid pour out? i dont know these kinds of things

After doing a few long trips lately in almost 40 degree heat, i noticed a few aromatic smells coming from a well and truly heat soaked engine not burning smells of course, but enough to give me the impression the transmission obviously had put up with a lot more heat than it normally does. it got me thinking, the stagea seems to be built for snow conditions, so is the transmission cooler up to the australian summer? its a series 1 stag, and only has the small (pathetic really) trans cooler. would it be a worthwhile investment putting a larger one on for reliability sake, even though im not pushing any more power out of the engine?