proengines

RB cranks are nitrided from the factory, don't bother having it redone unless the crank is ground undersize.

Chris, I have a 2JZGTE here at the moment that has shim over tappets and I did one in December that had the same but we converted it to the shimless buckets from the very late 2JZ/1ZZ engines. There may be one that is shim under but I haven't worked on one that is. The shim over toyota shims are the same diameter and thickness range as the RB25 neo. Have you had the buckets out of the engines you worked on and seem shims or are they shimless buckets, they are pretty common on later Toyotas.

A cheaper way out of a solid lifter conversion would be to use the RB25 neo exhaust buckets. They have a longer foot inside them to take up the distance that a hydraulic lifter normally would. They are made of aluminium and use a shim over setup, toyota 2jz etc shims will fit them to adjust the tappet clearance. They might not be super dear from Nissan and should definately be cheaper than the Tomei etc buckets. They will work fine with most cams, only with very fast lifting cams you may run into problems with the shim diameter, that would be over 12mm lift though. The shim over setup will be slightly heavier than a shim under but I think the aluminium bucket makes up for the weight so it shouldn't be a problem. It works fine on the NEO.

That caused some serious hair pulling. If you have the car on the dyno have a good listen around the intake manifold, Nik's car made the slightest little whistle and it was only #6 injector that was leaking but caused a really bad miss. It's well worth a look.

The shims are 12.3mm diameter. The exhaust valve is nominal 7mm on the stem but is reduced down to 6mm from just below the collet area to the tip of the valve, so the caps and collets are the same on inlet and exhaust. It's around 1.9mm from the top of the collets to the tip of the valve. Depending on the thickness of shim and bucket you require you could run a toyota solid bucket, as fitted to the late 2jz and 1zz engines. You can buy them in increments, I dont have the minimum or maximum thickness here though. They are the same diameter as a 26 bucket and you dont have to worry about shims at all. They are a little fiddly to set but once they are done you dont have to worry about them any more.

Wiseco make an off the shelf 87.5mm piston. HKS makes them in 88mm. There is plenty of thickness in the bores of an RB26 so going to these oversizes isn't a problem. As for the Nikasil, you can buy Nikasil coated sleeves but they are very, very expensive and you need to machine the block to fit them, you also need diamond honing equpment to hone them succesfuly, some of the Nextel cup teams run them in cast iron V8 blocks. As far as I know, no one coats cast iron bores. You could sleeve your block back to standard for around $800 using regular cast iron sleeves. Ninasil coating is only .002-.003" thick so you need a very straight, round bore before it is applied as there isn't much there to hone out to true the bore up.

I was doing some surfing around the net and came across this on the high energy website. The sump looks good, still plenty of ground clearance but some extra volume plus trapdoors. It might be worth a look http://www.highenergy.com.au

We use Nulon assembly lube on every engine we assemble. I couldn't recommend it highly enough. We don't use it on pistons or rings but all bearings, valves, cams etc get a coat of it. We've never had a problem with an engine having bearing or cam damage on start up, it's cheap insurance when someone else will be starting the engine and you don't know if they will crank the engine to get oil pressure before it starts. You would be suprised to know how many mechanics don't do this. The oil should be changed withing the first few hundred km anyway and then you can rely on the oil you use. I don't use any oil additives once the engine is up and running, I think the oil manufacturers know more about oil than I do and they know what to put in it. Who is to know if the additive will work properly with the other additives that are put in the oil when it is made. You may reduce the effectiveness of the oil you are using by using additives.

The details to fit the collars are below, it's a not a big job but the crank needs to be out of the engine.

Blueprinting is probably a bit of an over used word. We use it do differentiate between a standard assembly job and one where some more time is needed. Basically it involves dummy assembly to check deck heights, end float, clearances between internal components etc. Ring gaps are all filed to the right gap, piston to valve clearances, bearing clearances, bearing crush in the housings, calculate compression, check rod lengths and equalise them and quite a few other small but important jobs (not necessarily in that order). It really adds a day to assembling an engine, you dummy up, measure and correct any problems one day and then assemble it the next day (or night) I usually assemble engines at night or really early in the morning when the phone doesn't ring or people drop in, it's too easy to forget something if you keep stopping and starting.

The pump on the engine was fine, we just fitted the collar so it had a larger drive area. Acl make race series bearings for the 26 now, we've used quite a few sets so far with no problems. They have the extra feed holes in the mains and are a proper performance bearing.

RB20's are different to SR/RB25> bearings. They run smaller journals both main and big end. I've only ever been able to buy them in NDC, who make Nissans standard bearings.

An engine will always be cheaper if you can do a lot of the work yourself. If you are paying someone to do the total job and it was done properly, you would be looking at $6-7000 for the engine plus approx $1500 to remove and refit it. I've attached a screenshot below of what a nice solid RB26 is worth to build. Keep in mind that the engine is standard but stronger. I'm not trying to chase up work, I just thought it would save some guessing. This is from a customers actual bill.

Sounds nice and safe until a kangaroos hops out in front of you at the last second and you realise that the car behaves a little differently when you swerve at 150km/h than it does at 60. My first car was scarily quick, it had nitrous etc.. which was great fun but looking back now I'm probably lucky to be alive. Why not spend a few dollars on an advanced driving course first, it's amazing how much you don't know you don't know!

You'll find if you check the exhaust guides with a 7mm valve seat cutting pilot they will more than likely be ok. They do feel like they are pretty rooted (technical term) if you check them with the valve.

Brake horsepower is the flywheel power measured at the brake on a an engine dyno. Brake horsepower was an SAE standard until 1971 or so. It measured flywheel horsepower of an engine without running any accessories. From 1972 onwards, SAE net horsepower was used, this was measured at the flywheel running all the engine accessories and through a full exhaust system and produces a slightly lower figure. This was still called BHP and is the current SAE standard. Many horsepower figures now are rear wheel horsepower which takes into account losses through the drivetrain and is measured at the brake on the chassis dyno. You typically lose around 20ish% of BHP on a chassis dyno, it varies quite a bit depending on the type of drivetrain. There are a few different standards for measuring power and unless you are racing dynos it doesnt really matter. As long as you can measure changes on the same dyno it doesnt really matter if it reads in buckets of fish. Basically, 1 HP is the amount of energy required to lift 550 pounds one foot in one second. SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) BHP is the power of an engine measured at the flywheel on an engine dyno.

Did putting spark plugs in it make any difference? Sorry Adam, we always leave them out so it can be cranked easily to bring up oil pressure. I just bolted the coils back in so they wouldn't get damaged in freight (maybe that was a lucky thing). I'll fix you up for the plugs, we always throw them out when we do an engine, we've had too many problems with people reusing the old plugs and having a miss or hard starting problem.

Merry Christmas guys. Thanks to everyone who has put faith in us this year with their engines, I hope you're happy with what you got. It's so much more enjoyable doing work for people who are passionate about their cars and interested in what is being done, there's a real sense of satisfaction when you finally bolt the tappet covers on an engine that you know someone will really enjoy and look after. It beats doing a reco for Fred Bloggs for his camira that he has blown up and doesn't really want to fix but has to. Drive VERY safely and enjoy the break, I hope you and your families have a great time and Santa brings you what you want! (how many sets of forged pistons and Power FC's can you fit in a santa sack?). PS: Richard, I'll leave some chrissy cake and a glass of milk out for the old silver thing downstairs.

That plug looks like the one that should be in the block under where the oil filter/cooler adapter bolts on. There is the spigot that pokes out of the block and a hole on each side of it. the hole at the rear side of the spigot is plugged. I still think the squish areas should stay, theres some very interesting reading on the endyne website regarding piston and chamber design. Their rollerwave piston design makes a lot of sense. These guys run Honda engines with very high compression turboed without detonation problems. If someone told me that I wouldn't believe it but they have the numbers on the board to show that it works. Have a look at the chambers of F1 engines, they still run a quench area at each side of the chamber. Looking at a head yesterday, I think it would be pretty easy to set it up in the mill and use a form cutter to radius the edges of the quench area, kind of what you do with a router on the edge of a piece of wood.

The top ring is the shiny one, second ring is black. Install them with the letter on the ring facing upwards. The top ring is steel, thats why it looks different.

get a leak down test done on the engine. It sounds like you have a fair bit of crankcase pressure if it's blowing oil out the breathers. Once you have some results it's easier to diagnose what is wrong. Porting the head wont make a difference to the oil consumption if everything was done properly.

I'm not 100% sure about removing the quench area, it seems to work on Jun's engines with the power they are making but it will be quite a big difference in compression between what you have now and what you'll have if you remove the pads. We smooth them off and radius the edges and that's about it, I haven't wanted to chop out a customers head just as an experiment. The nice thing about having the pads there is that if the piston runs close enough to the head (.75-1mm) you get a good shockwave that forces the mixture in towards the spark plug where it can burn properly. It's the old open chamber vs closed chamber argument. At the same compression and timing the open chamber will detonate first. If it was my choice, to drop the compression I would run a flat top piston (or a lower dome) and leave the pads there, just with the sharp edges removed. What sort of compression are you aiming for?

Looks like it's all going very nicely! One question, in the photos of the head the quench areas are still there, were they removed after the photo was taken?

Thanks guys to everyone who came along, we hope you all had an enjoyable afternoon! We raised $480, half of which will go to Wildcare and half to the Salvos Christmas appeal. I'd have to say the highlight of the day was the Pro Engines work ute which pumped out an earth shattering 137.3rwKw!

Very, very nice stuff! If you need custom shims call Chris at Precision Shims in Melbourne, he can make whatever you need at a very reasonable cost.