Adam's R33 Skyrine

[Run-It-Hard]

haha cheers dude.

[Run-It-Hard]

Doing my weekly search on Ebay, I came across this interesting looking exhaust, which was something similar to what I wanted to create for the new setup.

Seeing that it was going for cheap, I put a bid in for it and soon enough it was mine for one and a half benjimans. Little did I, or the seller know that this exhaust is actually a discontinued Trust item (what’s with me and Trust/Greddy lately?). Called the DD, it seems to be quite a sought after exhaust.

It’s a little beat up as most second hand exhausts are, but after a little bit of TLC I think it’ll come up pretty sweet. Hopefully it won’t need too much modifying either.

Here’s a clip I managed to find on Youtube.

Sounds pretty rad, huh?

[Run-It-Hard]

With the engine still awaiting parts to be complete, and being the indecisive clown that I am, I came up with the great idea of giving the engine bay a fresh coat of paint. The hardest part was choosing what colour to paint it though.

Originally I was thinking a lighter blue to the body colour, but then remembered John painting his engine cover in this bright, candy like colour. So I asked John and Nick for some assistance and we went for it!

We unbolted every part we could, and all the bits that weren’t so easy we masked up. Whoever painted the bay before didn’t bother to remove the brake master, or wiper motor as you can see.

After sanding down the paint, we did some more masking and then it was time to lay down the base coat.

A nice silver metallic, wouldn’t of mind leaving the bay this colour, it looks nice. But we all wanted to see the final product.

Bamn,bright purple! there are a few spots that came out a little rough, which was expected. I should be able to touch these up when the car is back home, and when I paint the front section after it gets tubbed.

As Alister put it “it turned out pretty good for being painted in a dusty, old workshop with people working on cars right next to you”.

Not bad for a days work, cheers to John and Nick for the helping hands.

A splash of paint

[Run-It-Hard]

If you’ve had the “opportunity” to get your RB rebuilt, chances are you’ve been through the RB Oil control thread on Skylines Australia. If you haven’t, count yourself lucky (getting your engine rebuilt I mean)!

In a nut shell, the RB series engine tends to have problems pumping too much oil into the head, and not draining it quick enough to lubricate the bottom end thoroughly. This is further exaggerated with a higher flowing oil pump, like Nitto, Nissan N1 or HKS items for example.

Reading the whole 40 pages of the thread, makes you more confused than what you were before reading it. There is quite a lot of conflicting info, but it’s good to see other people have done to combat oil control before deciding what route you are going to take.

As stated in the thread, there are uniform steps to combat these problems. These include:

1. Block off one oil feed in the block (RB26’s have this standard).

2.Fit an appropriately sized restrictor to the other feed. The size of the oil pump is one of the determines for the size of the restrictor, IE; a high flow, high pressure pump needs a smaller restrictor. Constant higher RPM needs a smaller restrictor etc.

3. Fit an external oil return from the rear of the cylinder head to the sump.

4. Drill out the oil return galleries in the head and block.

5. Machine around the oil return galleries to facilitate access for the oil.

There’s also a chart on what oil restrictors to run for what application within the thread, which is a great help. But it gets a little tricky if you have disabled VCT (like we have on the new engine). So instead of going for one oil restrictor, I went for two.

I’ve also purchased an oil head drain kit for good measure. Many stress that this does nothing (in terms of draining) but I see it as cheap insurance. If we have time, I might also enlarge the oil return galleries for good measure.

My oil drain kit of choice was from Lewis Engines in SA. As they use a braided line rather then the push lock hose that the Spool kit contains (I just don’t trust those hoses).

The oil restrictors also came from Lewis, I opted for two 1.2mm restrictors, which have a little more flow than a single 1.5mm restrictor.

In theory I shouldn’t have too many issues with oil control anyway, as the Nismo pump has the same flow rate of an OEM item. But it’s better to be safe than sorry.

If you are planning a rebuild in the near future or have had your engine let go on you, go grab a beer, coffee … whatever, and have a read through the RB oil control thread on SAU.

RB Oil Control

Edited January 18, 2012 by Run-It-Hard

[Run-It-Hard]

I don’t think anything more really needs to be said after looking at this picture I took today. But we might at as well touch on it, I couldn’t leave everyone in the dark now could I?

As you can see, the new mystery wheels have arrived. Compared to an OEM wheel they are double the width, do the maths … Yep, 13 inches wide!

These Melbers were up on eBay for months, and after a set of wheels falling through in Japan. I started doing the measurements, toying with the idea of fitting these monsters on my R33 Skyline.

Think about it, wheels in common sizes cost a shitload as everyone can run them. Considering I’m set on going wide-body I figured I might as well get proper, bullshit massive wheels too. You’d be quite surprised on how much they actually costed me.

At first I thought the face design was a bit hows it going, but after mounting them on a R33 I think they suit it pretty damn well.

So after these babies of mine arrived, I wanted to test fit them on an R33 pronto! the curiosity of knowing whether my measurements were correct, got the better of me.

We popped into Dahtone on the weekend to pick up Julies S14 and a friend of ours happened to have his R33 there. So we did the deed and my curiosity was settled.

Everything cleared, the LCA cleared by roughly 5mm, and the coilover about 40mm. Perfect! The wheel protruding out of the guard in the other hand …

Was 90mm with 0 camber. With the wide-body, stretched tyre and a degree or two of negative camber (depending on shock to inner wheel clearance), it should fit nice and snug.

Steam-roller

[pistol-pete]

f**k. yes.

[popinr33]

Size really does matter.

[DJBarnstar]

Now I've made the decision of starting fresh, I was stuck on whether to run the same turbo setup or not. I've never owned a car with gate, and as we all know, bitches love gate.

I advertised my current tubro on SAU at a price I'd be happy with and a deposit was put down the day after. Nice! looks like I'm changing setups after all.

The old setup was a Garret GT3071R, standard manifold, split dump pipe and a 4 inch intake.

The new setup is the following:

Garret GT3076R

.82 rear housing

Tial wastegate

V band dump pipe

High mount manifold

The manifold of choice is actually off Ebay, yeah we've all heard horror stories of cheap shit manifolds from EBay cracking, like Yuan's manifold on his 180SX. But this doesn't look like a bad bit of gear. Being mild steel I guess it'll be easier to fix too.

The JPP R33 skyline has been running the same manifold for a couple of months now with no issues at all (pumping out over 450hp with it too).

I know it's only been a few weeks, but I can't wait to drive this car again!

Hey Adam,

You will be pleased to know the 3071 is now on the 4Door and making 262RWKW with a ViPEC. Pulls well and makes 16PSI dropping off to 14PSi at 7000Rpm.

Cheers,

James

[jamie curran]

lookin good man

[boostn0199]

Ahahah your crazy 13 inches going to be a mean widebody once done. What size tyres would you run on them?

[Run-It-Hard]

Hey Adam,

You will be pleased to know the 3071 is now on the 4Door and making 262RWKW with a ViPEC. Pulls well and makes 16PSI dropping off to 14PSi at 7000Rpm.

Cheers,

James

Hey James, that's awesome news!

You didn't waste any time getting it on hahah good work!

Edited January 25, 2012 by Run-It-Hard

[Run-It-Hard]

lookin good man

Thanks buddy!

Ahahah your crazy 13 inches going to be a mean widebody once done. What size tyres would you run on them?

Haha cheers, should look the part once its all sorted (hopefully).

Originally I was going to run a 295 but now I'm thinking of a 275 as I can get tyres in that size as cheap as chips. There's a banged up set of 275's I'll prob guy for "research" purposes lol.

In other news, the engine might be in the car tonight, pending headgasket arrival.

Edited January 25, 2012 by Run-It-Hard

[DJBarnstar]

Hey James, that's awesome news!

You didn't waste any time getting it on hahah good work!

Yeah it went from 161 RWKW to 262 RWKW so I'm pretty stoked. The little 3071 is out of puff at that power now though but with an old engine I think thats as far as I'll push the friendship.

[Run-It-Hard]

Yeah it went from 161 RWKW to 262 RWKW so I'm pretty stoked. The little 3071 is out of puff at that power now though but with an old engine I think thats as far as I'll push the friendship.

That's good to hear man, I'm glad you're happy with it.

How hard does it go when boost kicks in, just pulls and pulls hahaha.

nothing much happening with the car. But I did win these last night.

[Run-It-Hard]

haha cheers guys! But wait, there's more!

Well, I’m happy to say I have my wheels sorted for now. The Work Miesters will be the front runners while the Melbers will be doing the talk at the back.

The Miesters are actually Benny’s old wheels. He’s decided that he’s going to leave his R33 as is. I have been always hassling him to palm the wheels off to me, but he was adamant that he would never sell them. So you could imagine how surprised I was when he sent me a text saying they were mine.

But I just couldn’t help myself, so I just bought another pair of wheels! The Lehrmiester’s are 18 x 12.5 with offset in the negative teens. So they are slightly more agressive than the Melbers, but I’ll have more inner clearance to get them under the guards too.

They need a bit of a freshen up, as do the miesters which is fine by me as I was planning on painting the centres anyway.

Can we just forward to having these on the car now?!

Wheel Whore

[Rbsongate]

what offsets are the meisters? looks very good kudos on the thread.

[Run-It-Hard]

We’re now into the final stages of getting the fresh RB25 finished off! after a long wait for the Cometic head gasket from the States, it did a no show! So Ali and Jo sourced another locally to get the ball rolling.

It’s been a joy watching Ali assemble the motor, he doesn’t leave anything to chance and has great attention to detail. Everything has been cleaned thoroughly and given a coat of paint.

The engine covers are now Power Play’s signature Silver, as seen on Biggie’s 180sx. Ali has a thing were he will change the engine cover colours if it’s a rebuilt engine, for good-luck and all.

ETA on the engine going into the car is only a few days, then it’s off to Matt’s house to get some tubs done.

It’s still got quite a while to go until it’s out on the track again, but we’ll get there.

Fresh!

[Run-It-Hard]

This weekend the R33 was destined to leave Powerplay, with Ali having the motor assembled and in the car, there wasn’t much left for it to be on it’s way.

Ali did an outstanding job on it all, and it’s such a shame that Powerplay will soon be no more.

Sunday was the day. Biggie came out with his trailer and we drove up to our next stop, Freshie’s crib. Come at me tubs!

Moving along

[Run-It-Hard]

While the R33 was at Powerplay for it’s last few days. I test fitted the Work Miesters on the front, just to see what I’m dealing with.

One of my main concerns was that they wouldn’t clear the caliper due to the disk style. Thankfully they do by quite a bit. I’ve decided to keep the extended LCAS with this wheel combination for maximum inner clearance.

Once it’s all up and running (and I’ve got some cash again!), I might convert the front end to S14, then I’ll really have no problems getting some stupid amount of lock.

If I’m lucky, I might be able to get away with running the current guards. Ideally I’d love some GT-R guards, fibreglass front guards suck balls! We’ll see what happens though.

I’m quite fond of the white and blue theme going on, along with the polished lips I think it’s a good combo. Help me out here guys, what wheel colour do you think would suit the Baysideish blue body colour?

CLICK THIS LINK TO PUT IN YOUR VOTE!

[boostn0199]

Why you need to convert front end to s14 to get heaps of lock?