Shoota_77

Nice looking car, piping setup into the Trust turbos (and engine bay in general) looks horn. Good luck with the sale.

Looks awesome Glenn, glad to see you're getting stuck into it again! I'll have to drop around for a look soon. The Torana hatch is definitely a shape that can be made look very nice. Big arse flares are certainly a good start to that!

Phew! My ATI is the 1000HP version so fingers crossed it's all good. I'll be at the point of putting on thebalancer fairly soon so I'll soon know! Thanks for the heads up.

Uh oh.... Where does it hit do you know? I did notice the snout looks pretty short with the extra space taken up by the trigger wheel.

ATI. What were you running?

Thanks Pete, it must be easy to read due to my basic grasp of the English language! Yeah you're probably right, I have spent a fair whack on this car now. Not that I've seen any joy out of those many $$$ yet! Actually that's not true, I absolutely love this part of the whole process. I'm learning heaps as I go which is all part of the fun! Thank God for this extra long Christmas break, it's been awesome actually getting to spend some time on it while I'm motivated. Yeah I love my shed, still running all power through an extension lead to the house though which is a pain in the arse! I haven't painted the CF bonnet yet but most likely will,it's only a cheaply made CF over fibreglass bonnet but I like the style of it so will probably go with it or get an unmolested original alloy bonnet. With the height issue the Skylines are actually bloody forgiving for a tall freak show like me, I feel very comfortable in it. Hopefully a few more updates later.

Also had a chance later tonight to cut out the window in the oil pump dust shield (or whatever the hell it's supposed to be!) for the Hi-Octane crank trigger kit- Mounted the oil pump and timing gear so I could set the air gap for the GT101-

Torqued up the big ends today so the fundamentals of the engine are done. Oil pump, rear main, etc etc next. Also decided to clean up and paint a set of RB20 finned cam covers I had. Not 100% sure if I'll use them but they sure do look nice! A little bit of the process- Stripping the old paint off- Cleaned and masked ready for paint. First coats of Wrinkle Black. Cooking process. Finished painting. Decided to go with the part raw look on the top of the fins. Not entirely happy with the finish, it was a bit tricky to get it looking nice but it'll do!

Cheers Dan, I'm glad it made for good breakfast reading. Peter- well spotted! I had a blond moment there for a bit! I put 4 in and then realised I'm a dipshit and had to pull them out again. Suffice to say I was pretty happy with myself at that point... It was about 11pm 6 beers in so I'll forgive myself for now..

Made some progress again which unfortunately only gets me back to where I was 18 months ago! Got the bottom end re-assembled. Hopefully this time I can keep enough momentum up to get it back in the car this time! It was a long slow road to re-motivate myself. The first step was to roll the old girl out of the shed so she saw sunlight for the first time in 18 months and give her a bath. Next was actually putting away every tool in the shed that has been used over the last 6 months and never put away.... Then the shed got a full sweep out followed by a vacuuming and then the last step was to mop the floor so everything was ready to rock. It seems to have worked, I'm quietly motivated this time which I'm hopeful is a good thing. I really want to get it finished now. One decent sized kick in the balls though and I reckon it'll be all over again so fingers crossed everything goes to plan!

The "woodruff key" hasn't sheared off has it? Wouldn't be the first time. There are two, one for the cam pulley one for the balancer. Obviously the engine still runs so it's not entirely sheared off. But then again the belt gear can weld itself to the shaft sometimes so will still turn the belt/cam without the key. Definitely make sure the balancer is correctly torqued up. Number one way to destroy your oil pump if it's not.

Just manually set the tension, make sure it's not too tight though as makes a few funky noises and damages bearings, etc.

Ross have them in stock, About $80 from memory.

You need to also open up the main oil returns which aren't the drilled passages, they're the openings at each end of the block.

Spend a few hours enlarging all of the oil returns in the head. They can be opened up massively to aid oil return to the sump.

SOLD

The pipe that goes over the cam cover looks cheap.

I presumed I'd like it but I don't....

SOLD.

I hate to be captain pessimist but there is a bloody good chance your oil pump is on it's way out too. On RB's loose balancer bolt quite often leads to shattered oil pump. Happened to me and a few others I've about.

Go genuine, call a Skyline wrecker plenty of cars being wrecked if you go looking.

You can adjust the pressure, not the flow. You should ideally only put a high flowing pump on an engine that is properly set up for the extra flow. Enlarged oil returns and restrictors at the absolute minimum.

Doesn't matter what the ambient temperature is! That's what the heat gun is for... Spray, heat evenly for a few minutes, spray, heat evenly for a few minutes, spray and then heat till it wrinkles up beautifully. Done. That's all there is to it. Keep your paint thickness and heating method consistent and you'll pull off a nice finish every time. Too much paint (runs mainly) and you start getting getting inconsistencies in your wrinkles. Just a nice even coat each time and it'll come up nice.

Hard to beat the Haltech Elite ECU in terms of features and they're quite affordable. Long term fuel mapping is a nice touch for a daily driven car. Probably less useful on a race car though.

I must admit I bought a full silicone kit but then thought stuff that, I can't see the silicone lasting 20 odd years so I'll stick with genuine. Cost a f'ing bomb for a whole set of genuine hoses but hopefully it was worth it.