Hanaldo

Hey all, Didn't want to whore the Hypergear thread again, so just a quick one. Have been driving my car around again since Thursday when I finished off some work I was doing to it, the only performance modification being the HKS exhaust cam gear and dialling in the cams. Nothing else has changed. Since then, I have noticed the car runs abnormally cool. I have taken it for 2 or 3 long drives, ie. over an hour and a half each. And normally the water and oil temps would be up to around 80-85 degrees within 10 minutes of driving. Now they take about 10 minutes to get to 65, before eventually getting to around 75 where they then sit pretty steady. I'm aware operating temp of the Neo engine is about 83 degrees, so I'm a bit puzzled as to why it is now running cooler than that. First I thought my gauges might be wrong, but I'm getting the same reading on all three of my temperature gauges, and even the stock gauge is sitting a little lower than it normally does. It is also running a tad richer, normally the AEM wideband reads between 14.5-15.5 on cruise, now it's between 13-14. So I'm pretty confident it is actually running cooler. My first guess would be the thermostat sticking open? I'm just a little surprised that it still holds 75 rock solid once it gets there, it's no different sitting in traffic or cruising at 110. This has also coincided with some pretty cold weather over here, however today was 22 and it was still the same story. The car gets tuned on Tuesday, I just wanted to check before it goes on the dyno if this might be an issue? Cheers, Martin.

Haha yeh I thought you meant last week! I miiiiight make this week, car gets tuned on Tuesday.

By the way, I've got my wastegate mounted on my housing as well. Unfortunately it's not welded on as well as the one Scotty did, mine is at 90 degrees to the exhaust flow. It still holds boost in a perfectly flat line though, no creep. Will upload a graph on Tuesday/Wednesday when it is hopefully holding ~23psi dead flat

Is ceramic coating that thick?

How...

Haha he's not drifting the thing, don't need a diff that tightens under deceleration 1 way diff would be the go.

So, car is finally all finished. Spent today wiring the bi-xenons and then tucking the headlight wiring to neaten things up, 4 HID ballast gets pretty messy! Looks much better now. Also decided to remove the eyelids. Anyway, some photos: First, another one of the front bar: Another thing I fixed up while I was at it, some of you might remember this damage I picked up at Powercruise last year: Fixed and sprayed: And blended in: Then, here is the final product with my headlights: Also took the car for a drive for the first time since I started. Drives totally fine, can't tell that I've touched the cam timing. Of course I'm not boosting at all, so will need to wait until Tuesday to see how the car goes on the dyno. Only mayyyybe issue is that I drove 46 km's tonight and the car stayed very cool, never reaching normal operating temp. Water temps only just reached 70 degrees by the end of my trip and the oil temps never went over 60 degrees. They are normally both up around 80-85 within 10 minutes of driving. So I'm thinking perhaps my thermostat is stuck open. I'll check that out.

Bah, I've had silicon hoses on my car for 3 years and they haven't leaked or weeped a drop. Seen a few track days in that time, and I've cut the top hose to fit a water temp adapter, which would make it a bit weaker. If you can get Nissan OEM hoses for a decent price then do that, but if they want to charge you a packet for them then don't be afraid of silicon.

Oh shit. Poor thing got molested good to see you got it back and you're carrying on with the build mate, good stuff!

Front bar all prepped: And sprayed:

Unfortunate timing this week, bad storm here tonight/tomorrow Hope the weather clears up for ya and they don't cancel the drags!

Doooon't you lie to me, that turbo was maxed last time! You've done something

Well they are done and ready to go on the car. But I've just finished spraying my front bar and some other bits, so the car is currently covered up. Don't want to risk putting dust in the air by moving anything, so I won't do any more tonight. But everything should be done in the next couple of days!

Results are one thing, I want to know what you've done! The keeping everyone waiting is my thing! !

Nah that was the one thing I definitely wanted to do differently to the way yours were done. I like that little bit of chrome, stops the high beam reflector standing out too much.

Pics:

Puts me off doing the conversion... That looks pretty average in my opinion. The fitment of the front end is awful, I've got better fitment with my cheap copy fibreglass bumper

Sprayed them satin black last night, takes the chrome edge off them, makes them look a bit more factory I think. I like them. With any luck I should get them finished today or tomorrow.

Spot on with the projectors, but the shrouds are extended BMW E46-R 's.

Paulie, any chance you've got some before and after photos of your headlights? Or at least some afters? I'm thinking about taking my headlights here, but they aren't in terrible condition. Just a bit pitted and scratched, not a lot of oxidisation. Would be interested to see how yours turned out.

That's almost more aggressive than red! Haha. Does look awesome though. I think I'll just leave them clear for now and see how it all looks put together. If I don't like it I can paint it, but if I paint it and don't like it then I'm pretty screwed. Shinobi how's are your headlights going? Does the paint cope with the heat ok? Do you get any bits of light coming out from the side reflector next to the projector? I sorta suspect these projectors will leak a bit of light out the sides, trying to figure out how to seal them. Might chat to Steve again.

But wait, there's more! This project was a bit of fun really, but something I have wanted to do for a long time. Standard GT non-xenon headlights, extra condensation: Place in oven at 100 degrees for 8 minutes or until crispy and golden! All disassembled: Will give this a good polish while it's off! Now for the main course. I want to take this: And fit it inside the stock reflector, like so: Which will require a bit of this: But first! I need to do this: Bit of dremel work gives me this! Rinse and repeat That is as far as I have gotten with those. Undecided how I'm going to finish them, but I think I will paint the stock reflector and E46-R shroud satin black. I was going to paint the cut-off shield behind the projector red to give it a very aggressive look, like this (credit for this work goes to EvoXenon) but I don't think I will do that. I wanted a classier look, not necessarily a more aggressive look. I don't think the red would suit my car very well.

Now, I also have some cosmetic updates as well. Neither of these projects are actually completed yet, but I will post photos of where they are up to. First of all, I decided to respray my front bar. 2 years of being about 30mm off the ground had taken their toll, and I also wanted to modify it a little bit. First up, I cleared around the damaged areas with an angle grinder to give the new fibreglass something to grip to: Doing this actually revealed how poor quality these cheap copy front bars actually are. This one is actually so full of bog rather than fibreglass, it really is very poor. Time to make it a bit better! I actually wanted to build a lip up around the inside of the bottom of the bar, simply to give me something to screw into so I can install a front diffuser later on. So first I wet up where I wanted to build the lip: I then layed up 5 layers of 6oz fibreglass cloth. This is it after curing: Also patched up the damaged bits in the process I then cleaned it all up a bit using a rotary tool And then these mounting tabs on top of the bar had actually giving me quite a lot of trouble in the past, being very flimsy they were always snapping off. Enter 4 layers of carbon fibre Like to see ya snap off now ya jerks I am now in the process of smoothing it all out more and getting it ready for paint. This is where it was at after the first coat of filler-primer last night:

I don't actually have a bov at the moment, I haven't got round to getting it welded on since I did the plenum. But yes, it usually has a standard GTR bov on it. If you were using an atmospheric bov you would need to block it off before testing.

I had sort of suspected that my cam timing was an issue based on the behaviour of the car, ie. last dyno results, performance (or lack of) at the drags, compressor surge in 2nd at about 60% throttle when going up hills, etc. So, I got myself a dial indicator with a magnetic stand, a degree wheel, and made a piston stop from an old spark plug; then parked the car up in my old mans garage. Time to get dialling! Basically the same procedure as replacing the timing belt, gotta take all the aux belts off as well as the fan, radiator, etc. Also have to remove the spark plugs in order to turn the engine by hand easily. I then installed my new HKS exhaust cam gear: And seeing as I was doing that, I decided to start on the exhaust side. So, first had to set up the dial indicator (this is actually the hardest part of the whole dialling in process): Due to the cam on bucket setup of RB's, I also needed to make an extension rod for the actuator of the dial indicator, and then position it on the lifter so that the gauge was preloaded - otherwise there wouldn't be any change when I turned the engine. After about 20 minutes of messing around making sure the actuator was straight and parallel with the valve stem, I then installed my piston stop to find true TDC. Pretty simple, turn the crank by hand until the piston contacts the piston stop (GENTLY!), note down the value on the degree wheel. Then because I was using a degree wheel that only went up to 180, I turned the engine the other way until again the piston meets the stop, and noted that degree value. The true TDC lies in the exact middle of these two values. In my case, I got 95 degrees BTDC (positive) and 67.1 degrees ATDC (negative). 95-67.1 = 27.9, divide that by 2 to find TDC = 13.95. So what I SHOULD have done was rotate my degree wheel to sit at 0 where TDC was, you'll see why in a minute. Finally ready to find the cam lobe centre. To do this, I picked a reference value on my dial indicator, eg. 5.4mm. and noted the value on the degree wheel. -159.0 degrees. Then turned the engine FORWARD until the dial indicator got back to my reference value of 5.4mm, and took the degree value. 66.2 degrees. Time for some simple arithmetic: -159.0 + 66.2 = -92.8. -92.8/2 = -46.4. Add 180 to get to the other side of the degree wheel = 133.6 degrees. This is why I should have rotated my degree wheel. Normally you would now have the angle of your cam lobe centreline. Tomei specified that on mine, this should be 115 degrees BTDC. But, my degree wheel was 14 degrees out. So 115 + 14 = 129. 133.6-129 = 4.6. So my exhaust cam was 4.6 degrees out. Way out! I reset my degree wheel to read 0 at TDC, then checked this several times using different reference values on the dial indicator. Always 4.6 degrees advanced. So I then retarded the exhaust cam gear by 4.6 degrees, which took a bit of fiddling. Exhaust side done! Now for the intake side. Apart from this time looking for the value ATDC, the procedure is the same on this side so I'll spare you maths. On this side I ended up with 112.8 degrees ATDC. Checked and rechecked. Nope, inlet cam was 7.8 degrees retarded. And I thought 4.6 degrees was way out! So I needed to advance the inlet cam by 7.8 degrees. For anyone that hasn't seen the VCT gear, this is what it looks like inside: Under those bolts are slide notches much like the HKS gear, but these are inside and there are no timing marks to help move it! So it's a fair bit harder to adjust. I used some vernier calipers to measure a tooth and then worked out how many degrees were in each mm of the gear. Adjusted it and put it all back together, remeasured. To cut a long story short, all this extra work actually distracted me and I completely messed up my arithmetic.Took me 2 days to work out what I had done wrong, so if you are thinking of doing this yourself my advice is "buy the adapter plates to make the VCT gear adjustable from the front and PAY ATTENTION!!" After 2 days of skipping teeth and adjusting the gear, I had managed to get the inlet cam to 60 degrees 60 degrees retarded from where it needed to be! Lucky I didn't hit any valves, though I knew I had to be out so was being very careful of this. Took me a couple more tries to get it there, but I eventually got it to spot on 120 degrees! I then rechecked TDC to make sure it was right, then rechecked both my inlet and exhaust cams. 120.0 ATDC and 115.0 BTDC respectively. Exactly where they needed to be! This is about it for the performance side of things. I had actually intended to port match my JJR dump pipe to the gasket, however after pulling off the dump pipe I found that the turbo's flange was actually far more restrictive than the dump pipe: Stao must have changed his flange since this turbo was made. Anyway, the car is booked in for a retune on the 14th, so 10 days! Looking forward to seeing how it goes.