Rb26 - How Not To Kill It

[JiN_MaN]

None of these post really give me much hope too still have a motor still in 6 months.

Oil Cooler will also be fitted, forgot to add that and I wont be upping the power from what its currently set at, est 250-280rwkw.

[nizmo_freek]

  JiN_MaN said:

None of these post really give me much hope too still have a motor still in 6 months.

Oil Cooler will also be fitted, forgot to add that and I wont be upping the power from what its currently set at, est 250-280rwkw.

In my opinion you should be fine with just overfilling your sump by 1litre, depending on the present condition of the motor ofcourse, everyone else in aussie seems to do it without any problems, its only when you start using semis and a decent suspension setup (higher cornering/braking g etc etc) that problems start occuring from what ive read.

Maybe just stick to street tyres for track untill you get the oil control problems sorted, even just some oil restrictors (remove head, install restrictors, new headgasket, labour etc, wouldnt be too exspensive, could be done with the motor in the car too) and overfilling the sump would be a decent idea for moderate track use.

[lcy]

The last time i put extra 1 litre of engine oil in my engine, it was blowing white smoke and run like shit. (or are you guys talking about the oil for the oil cooler?)

Not sure why but after releasing some oil it ran fine.

Maybe a bit too much?

[PM-R33]

Nah not oil cooler, the sump they are talking about. I wouldn't be over filling it for continous street driving though, only on the track.

[padey]

  JiN_MaN said:

None of these post really give me much hope too still have a motor still in 6 months.

Oil Cooler will also be fitted, forgot to add that and I wont be upping the power from what its currently set at, est 250-280rwkw.

I've had my car for a couple of years with infrequent track days. No engine mods, with 265kw and a oil cooler. So far i've had no problems.

Just change your oil as often as possible, and don't flog the guts out of it every driving moment. And plan for an engine rebuild/engine swap at some stage.

[MrStabby]

  nizmo_freek said:

In my opinion you should be fine with just overfilling your sump by 1litre, depending on the present condition of the motor ofcourse, everyone else in aussie seems to do it without any problems, its only when you start using semis and a decent suspension setup (higher cornering/braking g etc etc) that problems start occuring from what ive read.

+1. But with high cornering/braking forces, i'd also add high revs.

For 250-280kw you should be fine if the tune is conservative.

[MrStabby]

  lcy said:

The last time i put extra 1 litre of engine oil in my engine, it was blowing white smoke and run like shit. (or are you guys talking about the oil for the oil cooler?)

Not sure why but after releasing some oil it ran fine.

Maybe a bit too much?

The sump and oil cooler run the same oil - not sure why you've made a distinction between them. We're talking about RB26 here, maybe RB25 is more sensitive to high oil level. Might be worth finding a good level on the dipstick (eg the bottom of the top 'bump') if 1 litre is too much.

[JiN_MaN]

Well you guys, pretty much scared the crap out of me and now Im certain I/dad will break it and I just cant justify $2,000-$3,000 on a rebuild when/if it goes bang.

FOR SALE AD: http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/Ra...14#entry4262614

[Cubes]

bah.. keep rev's capped to 7k absolutely max 7.5k and the motor will be fine. Over rev stretch it to 8k and you'll start breaking that old motor.

Run good oil and change every 5k.

Make sure there's no detonation and it will be fine.

2-3k freshen up is bugger all. I'm sure the old man would shell out the $$ once he gets a taste of racing it.

[Shaun]

  JiN_MaN said:

Well you guys, pretty much scared the crap out of me and now Im certain I/dad will break it and I just cant justify $2,000-$3,000 on a rebuild when/if it goes bang.

FOR SALE AD: http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/Ra...14#entry4262614

$2-$3000 on a rebuild! Honestly man, triple that and you're getting into the ballpark with an RB26, especially if oil starvation caused the failure. Modifying the Rb26 is an expensive proposition. Thats why many of our cars have been off the road for months or years.

If i were you, i'd ditch the GTR and buy a house!

Cubes is right though^^^^^^^^

Edited November 15, 2008 by Shaun

[waldoforce]

  padey said:

I've had my car for a couple of years with infrequent track days. No engine mods, with 265kw and a oil cooler. So far i've had no problems.

Just change your oil as often as possible, and don't flog the guts out of it every driving moment. And plan for an engine rebuild/engine swap at some stage.

I agree with you 100%. I have my R32 rb26 motor in a S14 silvia for a year now. I too change my oil as often as possible. The motor is still stock (stock pistons, rods head gasket etc.). I have a set of Tomie cams and a turbo upgrade with stand alone. The car has been dynoed at 606whp. The car races about twice a month on a regular.

Things not to do is over rev it or repeatedly bounce off the rev limiter. I am speaking from experience here. Those two things will definitely kill the motor. I rev mine to 8100 rpms

Its a good idea to invest in a ATI damper pulley too.

[R31Nismoid]

450rwkw through a stock GTR bottom end, thats raced...

what turbo are you using exactly?

[Penfold]

  JiN_MaN said:

Well you guys, pretty much scared the crap out of me and now Im certain I/dad will break it and I just cant justify $2,000-$3,000 on a rebuild when/if it goes bang.

Dude, your looking at $8000 for a fairly basic rebuild. With a R32 GTR its getting near 20 years old - so stuff is going to break.

[waldoforce]

  R31Nismoid said:

450rwkw through a stock GTR bottom end, thats raced...

what turbo are you using exactly?

Its a garrett T04z turbo at 26 psi.

[Cubes]

Penfold,

8k... Not if he simply freshens up the bottom end and is able to remove/install the motor him self.

A basic performance freshen up is around 3k. But who only ever does a basic freshen up.

------

Waldoforce,

So you are using an ATI balancer as well?

[Beer Baron]

I will tell you how to keep it alive. listen to me.

- fit a good oil cooler (greddy is a good option, get the brake duct mounted kit, not the radiator mounted one)

- keep the revs under 7,500 max, 7,200 is even better and wont cost you much time at your power level (this is really important, revs kills Old RB26s and there is no need to be doing 8,000rpm)

- fit a power FC and get it tuned properly with the AFR on the conservative side (12:1 or so), with a little extra fuel in around the rev limiter and above 7,000 just for a little extra safety up top.

- keep a good eye on the knock readings

- get an EBC to give good, reliable, stable boost control, and keep it fairly conservative, 1 bar/15psi is ok for your stock engine and N1 turbos. Trust Profec B are good and cheap, and easy to fit and tune.

- get your injectors cleaned and tested and make sure your fuel pump is ok, 32 GTR pumps do often fail when old, if you can just replace it with a nsimo pump before your tune, good piece of mind

- Use good oil and change it a lot. Motul Chrono 300V is the way to go here. full synthetic ester. expensive but cheaper than rebuilding your engine

- buy a proper aftermarket oil pressure gauge with adjustable warning and if possible recording feature (so you can do a few laps with it recording, go to the pits and play back to see if pressure is dropping in corners - oil surge. preferably get an oil temp gauge too. high oil temps is also not a friend of your GTR engines long life. defi gauges are great for this and easy and neat to install and they make it easy to add more gauges in the future if needed.

- fit a good catch tank, vented to atmosphere, 3l in size is a good idea

- fit some mines cam cover baffles (easy to fit and cheap)

- i'm not a big fan of overfilling your engine with oil, i can make things worse, you don't want the crank basically submerged in oil. Overfill a little maybe a few hundred ml but 1 litre is too much in my eyes and not necessary

put some redline lightweight shockproof in the gearbox, and the appropriate redline oil in the diffs. yeah it's a little expensive but it won't need to be changed again for a long time. do the attessa fluid bleed too and replace the attesa fluid with the stuff from nissan.

yes, enlarging oil returns, fitting external oil drain, fitting oil feed restrictor, fitting crank collar, fitting enlarged and baffled sump, getting megabuck oil pump and super-duper balancer are all top ideas. but none can be done with the engine in the car, and most require the head off too (which means new head gasket at a few hundred). so in my eyes none are worth doing on a stock engine. your stock second hand engine is worth about $4K complete. those mods alone would cost way more than that. so I would only be doing all that stuff on a built motor (and I did on my built motor).

with the above mods my engine ran (and still does) happily for around 3 years with plenty of track days and running 276rwkw without missing a beat. these things are good sense, and more preventative maintenance.

plus all this stuff wont break the bank, and can be done piece by pice. also, all of these bits will be usefull no matter what you ultimately do with the car, and none will be really made obsolete even if you do more upgrades and big engine etc down the track.

[nizmo_freek]

  Beer Baron said:

I will tell you how to keep it alive. listen to me.

- fit a good oil cooler (greddy is a good option, get the brake duct mounted kit, not the radiator mounted one)

- keep the revs under 7,500 max, 7,200 is even better and wont cost you much time at your power level (this is really important, revs kills Old RB26s and there is no need to be doing 8,000rpm)

- fit a power FC and get it tuned properly with the AFR on the conservative side (12:1 or so), with a little extra fuel in around the rev limiter and above 7,000 just for a little extra safety up top.

- keep a good eye on the knock readings

- get an EBC to give good, reliable, stable boost control, and keep it fairly conservative, 1 bar/15psi is ok for your stock engine and N1 turbos. Trust Profec B are good and cheap, and easy to fit and tune.

- get your injectors cleaned and tested and make sure your fuel pump is ok, 32 GTR pumps do often fail when old, if you can just replace it with a nsimo pump before your tune, good piece of mind

- Use good oil and change it a lot. Motul Chrono 300V is the way to go here. full synthetic ester. expensive but cheaper than rebuilding your engine

- buy a proper aftermarket oil pressure gauge with adjustable warning and if possible recording feature (so you can do a few laps with it recording, go to the pits and play back to see if pressure is dropping in corners - oil surge. preferably get an oil temp gauge too. high oil temps is also not a friend of your GTR engines long life. defi gauges are great for this and easy and neat to install and they make it easy to add more gauges in the future if needed.

- fit a good catch tank, vented to atmosphere, 3l in size is a good idea

- fit some mines cam cover baffles (easy to fit and cheap)

- i'm not a big fan of overfilling your engine with oil, i can make things worse, you don't want the crank basically submerged in oil. Overfill a little maybe a few hundred ml but 1 litre is too much in my eyes and not necessary

put some redline lightweight shockproof in the gearbox, and the appropriate redline oil in the diffs. yeah it's a little expensive but it won't need to be changed again for a long time. do the attessa fluid bleed too and replace the attesa fluid with the stuff from nissan.

yes, enlarging oil returns, fitting external oil drain, fitting oil feed restrictor, fitting crank collar, fitting enlarged and baffled sump, getting megabuck oil pump and super-duper balancer are all top ideas. but none can be done with the engine in the car, and most require the head off too (which means new head gasket at a few hundred). so in my eyes none are worth doing on a stock engine. your stock second hand engine is worth about $4K complete. those mods alone would cost way more than that. so I would only be doing all that stuff on a built motor (and I did on my built motor).

with the above mods my engine ran (and still does) happily for around 3 years with plenty of track days and running 276rwkw without missing a beat. these things are good sense, and more preventative maintenance.

plus all this stuff wont break the bank, and can be done piece by pice. also, all of these bits will be usefull no matter what you ultimately do with the car, and none will be really made obsolete even if you do more upgrades and big engine etc down the track.

Good advice right there ,and you have proof that it works, that is pretty much what i will be planning to do when i track my gtr, i need to buy one 1st though hehe

[waldoforce]

  Cubes said:

Penfold,

8k... Not if he simply freshens up the bottom end and is able to remove/install the motor him self.

A basic performance freshen up is around 3k. But who only ever does a basic freshen up.

------

Waldoforce,

So you are using an ATI balancer as well?

Yes I am, the ATI damper give that extra proctection that is so much needed.

[waldoforce]

  Beer Baron said:

I will tell you how to keep it alive. listen to me.

- fit a good oil cooler (greddy is a good option, get the brake duct mounted kit, not the radiator mounted one)

- keep the revs under 7,500 max, 7,200 is even better and wont cost you much time at your power level (this is really important, revs kills Old RB26s and there is no need to be doing 8,000rpm)

- fit a power FC and get it tuned properly with the AFR on the conservative side (12:1 or so), with a little extra fuel in around the rev limiter and above 7,000 just for a little extra safety up top.

- keep a good eye on the knock readings

- get an EBC to give good, reliable, stable boost control, and keep it fairly conservative, 1 bar/15psi is ok for your stock engine and N1 turbos. Trust Profec B are good and cheap, and easy to fit and tune.

- get your injectors cleaned and tested and make sure your fuel pump is ok, 32 GTR pumps do often fail when old, if you can just replace it with a nsimo pump before your tune, good piece of mind

- Use good oil and change it a lot. Motul Chrono 300V is the way to go here. full synthetic ester. expensive but cheaper than rebuilding your engine

- buy a proper aftermarket oil pressure gauge with adjustable warning and if possible recording feature (so you can do a few laps with it recording, go to the pits and play back to see if pressure is dropping in corners - oil surge. preferably get an oil temp gauge too. high oil temps is also not a friend of your GTR engines long life. defi gauges are great for this and easy and neat to install and they make it easy to add more gauges in the future if needed.

- fit a good catch tank, vented to atmosphere, 3l in size is a good idea

- fit some mines cam cover baffles (easy to fit and cheap)

- i'm not a big fan of overfilling your engine with oil, i can make things worse, you don't want the crank basically submerged in oil. Overfill a little maybe a few hundred ml but 1 litre is too much in my eyes and not necessary

put some redline lightweight shockproof in the gearbox, and the appropriate redline oil in the diffs. yeah it's a little expensive but it won't need to be changed again for a long time. do the attessa fluid bleed too and replace the attesa fluid with the stuff from nissan.

yes, enlarging oil returns, fitting external oil drain, fitting oil feed restrictor, fitting crank collar, fitting enlarged and baffled sump, getting megabuck oil pump and super-duper balancer are all top ideas. but none can be done with the engine in the car, and most require the head off too (which means new head gasket at a few hundred). so in my eyes none are worth doing on a stock engine. your stock second hand engine is worth about $4K complete. those mods alone would cost way more than that. so I would only be doing all that stuff on a built motor (and I did on my built motor).

with the above mods my engine ran (and still does) happily for around 3 years with plenty of track days and running 276rwkw without missing a beat. these things are good sense, and more preventative maintenance.

plus all this stuff wont break the bank, and can be done piece by pice. also, all of these bits will be usefull no matter what you ultimately do with the car, and none will be really made obsolete even if you do more upgrades and big engine etc down the track.

I agree with everthing here except "enlarging oil returns, fitting external oil drain, fitting oil feed restrictor, fitting crank collar, fitting enlarged and baffled sump, getting megabuck oil pump and super-duper balancer are all top ideas. but none can be done with the engine in the car". The damper pulley can be installed with the engine in the car. But you are right about every thing else . I recommend the damper pulley to anyone who has a R32 rb26 even if you dont plan to race it. It will help lenghten the life of the old motor. Its a good investment .

[Phatboy]

  waldoforce said:

I have my R32 rb26 motor in a S14 silvia for a year now. The motor is still stock (stock pistons, rods head gasket etc.). I have a set of Tomie cams and a turbo upgrade with stand alone. The car has been dynoed at 606whp. The car races about twice a month on a regular. I rev mine to 8100 rpms.

I thought stock internals can only handle at most around high 300 wkws, around 500whp?