GTSBoy

@Dose Pipe Sutututu I would argue that >300rwkW inevitably comes only with a raised boost threshold that makes it more likely to get beaten by the family SUV with a 95 speed auto transmission and TD torque. Ditto the traction problems when it finally does come on boost. I used to love my stock turbo. A little flex of the ankle and it made a sweet little whistle and you had torque immediately. It wasn't fast fast, but it was more likely to win the "squirt to make the gap" type races that actually matter for a street car. I think >300 rwkW requires more capacity than an RB25 can offer (again, for street driving). I have enough experience with driving 2JZs in that space to know that they are much easier to pedal around in than a 25. I keep thinking Greg did the right thing putting a V8 is his car. I can't see myself not having a turbo - but I'd really like a big engine torque curve.

That's the one I have in my R32. There isn't a bigger battery that will fit an R32.

https://www.supercheapauto.com.au/p/century-century-ultra-hi-performance-4wd-battery-ns70x-mf/602477.html MF for Muthaf*kka

Hmm. Pretty sure the real GTR skirts don't work on my car (GTSt). That's sad because those are lovely**. Would love to think that the GTR pods would fit without gaps. Wouldn't love to take the risk. **That whole car looks like a lovely example.

Done

Yeah, um. I know this is all kinda my fault. But I'm swimming in a lake of liquid poo at the moment and haven't even gone on to do what I said I intended to do wrt SydneyKid posts, let alone anyone else's, let alone think too hard about the tagging aspect of this. The list of roadblock projects at home is actually worse than the list here at work. I'll try to get some mind space to look at it at some point.

I have always resisted the urge to go silly. 8" wide wheels and street friendly spring rates? Check. (Let's not talk about the steadily increasing spread of spherical joints across my suspension!!) Stock turbo, run at 12 psi? Check. Lasted for~?10 years before it died. Highflow put on rather than seizing the opportunity to go G45. You don't need 300 rwkW, let alone the more massive numbers that seem to be essential these days, to have a car that is already way too powerful and fast for a streeter. ~250rwkW is fine. I've never exceeded 200, although I will sneak up above it if and when I manage to get my finger out and do what needs to be done to use the highflow's capacity. You don't need $10k worth of CF bits glued onto the outside. You don't need razor sharp ankle cutting front splitters. You don't need the car to be 2" off the ground. You don't need flawless paint, mirror finished wheels, brand new indicator lenses, etc etc. All these things just make the car impractical and will cause you pain when they get damaged, which is inevitable for a street car. A few nice additions are good. Good seats are good. A nice stereo is good. A/C is good! (46° on the road yesterday and my A/C is degassed again. Was moderately traumatic driving home!) The main reason I stick with a mildly modified old Skyline is that I have had it for >25 years, the mods are the rolling result of 25 years of things dying and being upgraded opportunistically, coupled with a few "just 'coz" ones. And I hate almost all modern cars. If I was a young buck starting out now.... I wouldn't bother. Cars have a few years left where there is any possibility of interest or fun. Thereafter there will be no such thing allowed or possible. Any time, money and effort spent now on a project would just be a waste.

Yeah, I think that's why neither Dose nor myself said anything further on the matter.

What you talking about Willis? That's it right there!

Very likely this. Unplug them one at a time and try to start it. A faulty one will be quickly revealed. Yeah, we know that. But calling it the gas pedal was always daft. America deciding that the fuel was to be called gasoline, instead of petrol was...maybe fair enough. There's nothing too special about the word petroleum to make it necessarily better than the alternative. But the pedal never, not once in the history of the 4-stroke spark ignition internal combustion engine, ever controlled the fuel. It controlled the air. It was the pedal that actuated the throttle. It still is the pedal that actuates the throttle.

The silver one is reasonable value.

I'm firmly on the "zero compliance is good compliance" for FUCAs. I'd be looking to solid metal joints even if the primary reason for having them is because they facilitate the twist in the arm. I have never been more happy with the way the front suspension behaves than I have since I got rid of the FUCA bushes. Even the thin little (short lived) poly bushes in the Whiteline adjustables have too much compliance for my liking. It probably won't be long before I have sphericals nearly everywhere, probably including both top and bottom arms in the rear, and I'll start complaining about the increased costs for dental work. But I will be enjoying the driving more, I'm sure.

Plus, you'll get great experience in bedding in pads!

Does not mean what you think it means. The continual rising coefficient is the coefficient of friction that continues to rise with increasing temperature. Not "rising during a single stop", except inasmuch as the brakes should get hotter during a single stop. The RR would not be the best choice for a streeter. Yeah....no it's not. JAX would rummage around in the "shit pads we use for all shitboxen that come in here" and install those.

This is actually 2 whole different trains of thought that need to be addressed separately. No, as Matt says above, "Engineer" is not a directly protected title. A lot of guys who just do mechanical design via CAD, with or without even some sort of associate diploma in engineering, often have the job title of "Design Engineer". A train driver can probably still describe themselves as an engineer. But, to usefully get employment with anyone as a proper engineer, you're going to have to have at least the necessary and relevant degree qualification. You're not going to get a job as an electrical engineer if you have a chem eng degree, unless you can demonstrate x number of years of working in that capacity, sufficient knowledge, etc. Having the degree is at least in indication that you've seen the relevant text books, even if you haven't read them (like pretty much the last 10 years of graduates!). To be a self employed engineer.....you could get away with quite a lot pretending that you're suitably qualified, without actually being a proper engineer. But, you will find yourself unable to work for a large section of the client space because a lot demand CVs and capability statements when considering contracting for any engineering work these days. Insurances too. If you're not a proper engineer, it will be much harder to obtain proper PI insurance. Insurance companies have gotten hip to that. The "Professional Engineer" thing is a thing in Australia. If you have the right qualifications and experience you can apply to the relevant engineering top level body (mostly Engineers Australia, the less said about whom, the better), to be assessed and approved as a Chartered Professional Engineer, CPE. There are high bars to get over and a requirement for CPD to maintain it. The RPEQ thing is similar-ish, in that you have to demonstrate and maintain, but the bars are a little lower. It is required to be RPEQ in order to sign off as an engineer on any engineering design in Queensland. The other states haven't fully followed suit yet. There's "engineering" and there's "engineering". Being an engineer that signs off on timber (or even steel) frames for housing projects, council creek crossing bridges, etc, is a flavour of civil engineering that barely warrants the name, description and degree. That would be soul crushing work anyway. Being an automotive engineer working in the space where you have to sign off on modifications to cars and trucks would also be similarly soul crushing. At least partly because of the level of clientelle, their expecations, depths of bank balance, etc. And that brings us to your second question. No, we do not have professional engineers "do vehicle inspections". Well, not the regular roadworthies, etc etc. That's done by mechanics. There might be some vehicle standards engineers at the various state govco inspection stations where cars go to get defects cleared and so on, but that's because they (the cars) are there specifically for defect inspection and clearance and so the stakes are a little higher than on an annual lights and brakes working check. But, if you modify a vehicle in Australia, you have to get it engineered. A suitably qualified (and effectively licensed, which I will get back to) automotive engineer will have to go over the application, advise on what would be required to make the mods legal, supervise some parts of the work, inspect and test the results, and sign off. The "licensed" aspect comes from there being a list of approved engineers to do these things in each state. They have to jump through hoops set up by the govco vehicle standards divisions that mean only the suitably qualified can offer to and approve such mods.

Meh, it's only got to last another 10 years or so until you'll be forbidden to drive it. Keep it dry and forget about it.

The ECU doesn't care if the solenoid isn't there. There's no sensing/feedback from the solenoid. The ECU just gives it power, or not. Make sure that you Nistune tuner knows damn well how to tune a Neo. They suck. You have to take a lot of care to override bullshit to do with the boost sensor and a few other things to stop them being a dick.

The stock boost solenoid is just a valve. Power it and it is open. Unpowered, it is closed. When it is closed, there is no boost bleed out through the solenoid back to the inlet. The wastegate sees all the boost pressure, thus you get the wastegate's spring pressure as your boost pressure. 5 psi. When it is open, it lets some boost escape. This causes the static (boost) pressure in the line to the wastegate to be lower than the pressure in the intercooler pipe. There is probably a small restrictor in the solenoid or one of its lines to limit the flow rate of the escaping air, which limits how far the static pressure can fall, which limits the extra boost. The boost has to climb above the original/wastegate setpoint until the wastegate sees 5 psi. You get 7 psi in the intercooler pipework. A manual boost controller is exactly the same setup, just without the ability to change it on-off. It's always set to whatever you set it to. There is a small leak from the boost controller. The more you screw the adjuster in, the more it leaks, the lower the pressure seen at the wastegate and the higher the boost will be. So, yes, your diagrams are correct.

Initial/early bite is a feature of.....generic pads. Things that work cold. Just put Bendix Ultimate in it. If you don't like them, it's only $3.50 wasted and an hour to change them. I've been using Intima SR, and they seem to be a good performance pad. Street friendly and able to take at least a little beating.

I swear at my GKTech ones every time I have to take them apart and replace a spherical. But I wouldn't swap them for anything else. They absolutely slay every other option, at least in terms of how they actually work. You sure you don't want to live with bearings? I mean, they don't have "ball bearings". They are rod ends and sphericals throughout. Tough as nuts, even though I have found more than one way to wear them out.

Yeah - but it's not actually that easy. There are limits for HC, CO, NOx and particulates. Particulates shouldn't be a concern in any petrol engine unless trying to comply to the very latest Euro standard. But getting a tune right so that all the others stay within limits AT THE SAME TIME is not a trivial exercise. You couldn't possibly get it right by just guessing at the tuner's dyno, unless he had a 4 gas analyser up the pipe, which is not often the case these days. It used to be. Every decent shop that did "tune ups" (as opposed to tuning) would have a 4 gas analsyer. Perhaps there's still quite a few of them around these days. But most "tuners" are only watching O2 and power readings.

f**k. I charge that per hour.

Can we see a scan of the original quote? The problem with engineers (and by this, I mean, all engineers across all engineering industries) is that there are "engineers" and there are "engineers" (you'll have to imagine the two different vocal emphases on those two versions of the same word. Engineering is a mindset - your farm kid who spent his life rebuilding the tractor will likely make a good engineer. The farm kid who spent his life taking photos of butterflies.. perhaps not. But on top of that mindset, the modern engineer has to learn how to write so that there is absolutely no way of being misunderstood. Proposals/budget estimates/quotations are one place where this is absolutely vital. You have to delineate your scope of supply with extremely hard boundaries, and anywhere where there is any possibility of not being able to have such a hard boundary, you need to write language that will cover you from scope creep, cost overruns, the inevitable interference of the client or their "engineer", etc etc. Now, if your clients are the BHPs and the Rio Tintos of the world, and similar, then you get good at this. If you are an automotive engineer, pitching work to the great unwashed masses, your skills in this area might not be well developed, because you're only dealing with knuckle draggers trying to get a big block legal in a Torana. And when I say "might not"....I'd suggest there's a better than even chance that any such skills might be completely absent. So, we might be able to look at your quote and see what the opportunities are for rebuttal.

Oh, yes. If you connected it to the manifold your first drive would be very eventful. Very shit. Very interesting. Perhaps take a video if you feel the need to see. Terminating the breather at the top of the bellhousing is normal/stock. Some gearbox lubes (hello Redline Shockproof) like to foam up a bit and require the breather to be extended up higher, so you don't get spots of smurf jizz staining the floor under your car. Mine is thus right up behind the head. Make sure you fit a u-bend at the top so it points back downward so that dirt and schmutz has a harder time getting into it.

Only in a market where OBD was a thing. The rest of the world was quite happy to let the US EPA only affect US cars for quite a while. The* problem with datalogs is that unless you are very familiar with what every trace should look like, on their own and as an ensemble, you can and will see weird shit that can and will lead you astray, not realising that what you are seeing is the normal consequence of various transient inputs. *Really, "a" problem, as there are of course many other problems too. Look, these cars are so bloody simple that if it is missing or stumbling, the obvious thing is to break out the old mental diagnostic list and just go do all the things that you know you should. After proving that the plugs are clean and sound, ditto the coil stalks, coils, loom connectors, etc, and then making sure that there is fuel pressure at about the right numbers (while driving!, not while sitting in the garage free blipping it), then maybe you go looking at AFM voltages, manually testing the igniter, putting a scope on the CAS, etc. Then you're into pulling the injectors for a spray pattern look-see and perhaps a clean, squirting carby cleaner around the inlet manifold looking for leaks, and all the more annoying and esoteric, but still common as muck faults that these things have. I wouldn't ever bother looking at the trims, as they are usually bullshit on these old clunkers anyway.