What Not To Do To Your Ecr33

[HtwCHACtkh]

Build will commence on the 17th of December 2011 (End of exams)

Abstract:

A young scientist with an ECR33 Skyline probably going to report a whole heap of failures.

Introduction:

While my projects goals are not very ambitious, hard to attain or unique my ECR33 is now my science experiment which makes this build a little more unique than others. My R33 will feel the brunt of all the ideas which come into my head out of curiousity or plain boredom. My style will be very unconventional and probably will get a lot of "why's?" the answer for all those people thinking of asking that question is "I want to see what happens". Infact this build is probably more about educating than anything else. Think of it as R&D without too much of the D.

I will be doing strict quantitative analysis of my modifications where possible rather than simply piling on the modifications. Power modifications will be tested using Street Dyno. Aerodynamic modifications will be tested using pressure gauges. Handling modifications will be tested by putting the car under load of itself while on stands.

Expect many photographs.

Oh yes! I also have very little money and will be doing this work in my Mum's garage just to make it interesting.

Goals/Wishlist + Few ideas:

• Power/Engine: 220 < 'x' < 300 kW at the wheels
  • Largest area under the curve possible.
  • Lots of torque, High efficiency.
  • Attention to thermodynamic details.
  • Highly responsive - Full boost at < 2500 RPM
  • Ceramic coating

• Aerodynamics: Slippery, exploiting pressure differentials
  • Lowest drag possible - reduced wake.
  • Positive pressure cold air intake.
  • Improved down force .
  • Tweaked under bonnet air flow.
  • Exploit the ground effect.

• Cosmetics: Mild - avoid attention, make everything straight again
  
  • Clean engine bay with desired scheme.
  • Braided lines where possible.
  • Paint brake callipers

• Interior:
  • Black and double red stitching leather seating.
  • Recondition interior pieces.

• Handling: Lots of grip, very little load and a lot of safety.
  • Custom Road Legal Roll cage!?!
  • Front and rear strut brace and adjustable sway bars.
  • Wheel alignment for performance.
  • Slotted brake rotors and high performance brake pads.

• Electronics: To satisfy the mind.
  • Improved alarm system.
  • Wolf ECU!
  • K-Type Thermocouple sensors.
  • Control panel

• Audio: To satisfy the ears and not to weigh down the car
  • Relocate amplifier to boot false floor.
  • Install an infinite baffle subwoofer in the boot standing vertically perhaps.

Method:

I have some ideas written down on how I wish to achieve all the above but it really looks like a wish list more than anything else. I do not have the funds to be able to structure this build such that I have a set method from the begining so alternatively I will be updating section as I go. Keep in mind, this car is also my daily drive along with my motorcycle.

1. Improve handling with chassis stiffening: Ladder bars and Strut Braces
2. Improve power with better boost control: Jaycar IEBC
3. Improve power with a better intake: Cold air box + RAM Air intake!
4. Improve everything with weight reduction: Start a ******* diet.

Results:

None yet

Analysis:

Nothing to analyse yet.

Conclusion:

Don't let me near your car.

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Pictures:

The car when I bought it in 2008 for my Birthday, totally stock at this stage.

Since then, I haven't really done much to it other than tack on stuff - I want to change this with this build ideally. This is somewhat what the engine bay looks like now. As you can see, FMIC but the hot air intake is a problem.

I have a 3" 5zigen exhaust and high flow cat installed already. I also have Bilstein shocks and King Springs and 17" Drifteks with good federal rubber.

My motorcycle I will be riding around when the car is out of business. (Honda MC22 CBR250RR)

This is the strut brace and ladder bar I intend to install soon and do testing, I also have an adjustable rear strut brace.

Jaycar IEBC, this one I made a while ago and it failed. I have a working one now:

I will attach more pictures when/if this build gets approved.

[BOZ22N]

Great post, gave me lots of lols

Good luck and don't forget your assignment is due hehe

[93WIZ]

i hope your mums garage is pimpin with tools.

[HtwCHACtkh]

Cheers for the replies guys, one exam down.. 3 more to go.. Two scary ones tomorrow and finally an even scarier one after that.

93WIZ: Mum's garage really isn't pimping with tools at all other than my set of small tools ($10 socket set, $20 screwdrivers, $20 jack, $15 soldering iron, $170 multimeter, $100 dremel, other random stuff + my dad's power tools) so there will be a lot of buying/making of tools and experimenting with them as well. I will buy a tool and fabricate something myself if it is economically more viable in the long term. This is my first build and I am a young fellow and I really want to give this a "fair shake of the sauce bottle" and maybe gain some useful skills for the future too.

[W0rp3D]

Is that cat a ceramic xforce? if so dont waste your time putting it in, mine hit a wall at 250rwkw and apparently my tuner has seen plenty of other cars with them hit the same wall, if your aiming at 230-300 then its going to be a restriction from the word go!

[HtwCHACtkh]

Is that cat a ceramic xforce? if so dont waste your time putting it in, mine hit a wall at 250rwkw and apparently my tuner has seen plenty of other cars with them hit the same wall, if your aiming at 230-300 then its going to be a restriction from the word go!

I don't even remember, the exhaust has been in the car for a while. I'll worry (i.e. gut) the cat when I get there.

However, good news! I've finished all my exams now and holidays have started. So the fun begins.

[HtwCHACtkh]

I couldn't wait till tomorrow and I started today, so today you all get what I promised. Analysis and A LOT of failure!

Without further ado.

Captains Log: Entry 1 - 16/12/2011

Today I set on task of installing a rear strut brace and testing its effectiveness in stiffing up the car against torsion. Since I was at the boot, I did a few things there too. In chronological order..

I began with some weight reduction: Out with the jack and tools... I also weighed myself clothed at 74.3kg and then weighed myself clothed holding the spare and read 89.3kg. I removed the spare. Total saving so far 18.4kg


I started looking around, exploring the car to see what's around everywhere. I found a thick clear tube behind the LHS rear panel that I have no idea what it is for there's also a few boxes on the LHS near where the jack mount was that I'm not sure what they are. On the RHS, there's a little plastic thing that has a flap that opens up to the outside world!! I took a picture of it from outside the car.


I assume that this little vent here is to allow for the air to be displaced while closing the boot. I'm not sure if the plastic thing there is really necessary or if it can be removed safely for weight reduction. Anyone able to shed light on this?

By the way, I have Billstein Shocks and King Springs - I don't remember if I mentioned this.


A picture of Mum's Garage and my Skyline at this current day. Notice the differences to the earlier pictures when I just got the car seen in the first post.


Because I don't have many tools, I decided to look inside the toolkit that came with my car which I hadn't looked at yet. (Hence why I thought it were reasonable to remove it. There's the usual jack and the thingo you use to open up the nuts on the wheels and also this cool little thing used to stop your tyre from rolling back when jacked. Cute..


So I decided to jack up the car, I don't know why... But my hydraulic jack didn't lift the car high enough for me to put the stands I have underneath it - so I had to improvise like so...


Which was a FAIL... I caused this damage here:

I will need to determine a new way to jack up the car...

Now, I thought to myself after I did that damage.. why am I jacking up the car? Because I didn't need to.. So I got to the idea of installing the adjustable rear strut brace I picked up second hand for $55 with no bolts.


To test the effectiveness:
In order to test the effectiveness I measured the height from the ground to the top of the side skirt with my measuring tape flush along the edge closest to wheel. I did this unloaded, loaded with no strut brace, loaded with strut brace on soft, loaded with strut brace tight. Uncertainty was chosen due to parallax and the slight gradient on the side skirt.

Results Unloaded:

• RHS: 417.0 ± 0.5 mm
• LHS: 400.5 ± 0.5 mm

Results Loaded with no strut brace:

• RHS: 432.5 ± 0.5 mm
• LHS 405.0 ± 0.5 mm

Here's a picture of it installed set to as soft as my hands used to be before I started this project. I only had two bolts that fit though:


Results Loaded with strut brace on soft:

• RHS: 431.5 ± 0.5 mm
• LHS: 405.5 ± 0.5 mm

I then tightened it up as tight as she could go.. A consequence of having two bolts though is that the metal around the bolts bent... I put the bolts on the inside now instead of the outside to hopefully try bend it back but no avail. This should not effect the results as they were installed extremely tight. Picture of FAIL NUMBER 2:




Results Loaded with strut brace on hard:

• RHS: 432.0 ± 0.5 mm
• LHS 405.0 ± 0.5 mm

Conclusion:

No measurable difference in torsion was observed at all under these loads. This goes against what I expected since it seems to be such a popular little modification for people to do and the GTR's seem to come with one. Some possible explainations I have is:

• That this load is too little for the strut brace to be of any measurable benefit.
• The strut brace is not installed correctly
• Rear strut braces are a waste of weight in the ECR33.

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Also, I removed my old little active subwoofer that was at the back of the car and front indicators (installed indicators in the parkers, they're LED's and the relay is going fast I will fix that later) a little while ago... Weight reduction saving 4.8kg brings the total to 23.2kg. Not too shabby. By the way, I know I forgot to weigh the strut brace before I put it in...







Cheers

[r33_racer]

I applaud you on the amount of effort you are going to test everything. Its something alot of people dont really do properly.

Kudos to you sir!

[AAARGH 33]

This thread is going to be an interesting read.It's good to see something different.

That thick clear hose coming from the LHS panel is actually connected to the aerial unit.I think it's something to do with water drainage as the aerial stem moves up and down.

[HtwCHACtkh]

Thank you all for the kind words. It's reassuring to hear that what I'm doing is not stupid.

Captains Log: Entry 2 - 17/12/2011

I didn't get much time to spend on the car today due to life and stuff... I however did get to spend 30 minutes or so doing some more testing on the rear strut brace because I was very unhappy with the results.

I measured the mass of the rear strut brace and the lift on either side under more load.

Results:

Mass of strut brace: 1.1kg

Results Unloaded:

• RHS: 417.0 ± 0.5 mm
• LHS: 400.5 ± 0.5 mm

Results Loaded with no strut brace:

• LHS: 432.0, 482.5, 522.5 ± 0.5 mm
• RHS: 405.0, 419.0, 428.0 ± 0.5 mm

Results Loaded with strut brace on hard:

• LHS: 432.0, 483.0, 523.0 ± 0.5 mm
• RHS: 405.0 421.0, 430.0 ± 0.5 mm

Positive results! I was ecstatic to see these results - it answers almost all of my previous theories of the conclusion I made yesterday. I made a small plot of the two series of data to get a good idea of what's going on and regressed them linearly. Note: Linear regression against data of this sort is not the most accurate and I really did it for a quick comparison sake with a reasonable approximation.





Conclusion

Comparing the gradients of the two regressions having the strut brace in place makes the rear approximately 8% stiffer. This is at a consequence of adding 1.1kg of mass evenly across the rear of the car. I believe the approximately 8% increase in stiffness is a good upgrade for 1.1kg of mass and $55.
Also, I have observed some structural damage to the strut brace from being tightened too tightly with only two bolts instead of four (seeable in the pictures in Entry 1) I would like to repair this before installing once again.

Cheers


EDIT: Added in the two "Unloaded" data points in the series for a bit more accuracy.

Edited May 30, 2015 by Revhead

[ndxxx]

This thread is the Lola! Keep up the good work mate

[Marlin]

WTF are you for real!?!?!?!?!

[HtwCHACtkh]

WTF are you for real!?!?!?!?!

Not sure what you're questioning but everything I've said so far is quite real.

I got more stuff to upload from todays work and fails... I did my "hot air intake" today and got some good results. Writing it up now.

[Marlin]

Great. I look forward to it with much anticipation!

[HtwCHACtkh]

Captains Log: Entry 3 - 18/12/2011

Today I had about half a day to spend on the car, tomorrow I will be spending none on the car. I intended to test front strut brace effectiveness which turned into a fail.. So I fixed my "hot air intake".

Once again, I'll do this in chronological order. Before taking a start on the front strut brace I took some photographs of the current front end of the car.




The rocker covers I began sanding down while on the engine when I was still in semester to test the concept and will be completed hopefully these holidays. The front bar had someone back into me also during semester also hopefully to be fixed these holidays.

I began the work on the strut brace by taking some measurements of the fronts regidity without the front strut brace anagolous to the method of testing the rear. Pictures of the front strut brace can be found in the very first post.

Results:

Unloaded:

• RHS: 357.0 ± 0.5 mm
• LHS: 355.0 ± 0.5 mm

No strut brace - Loaded:

• RHS: 383.3, 411.0, 445.0 ± 0.5 mm
• LHS: 362.5, 371.0, 382.5 ± 0.5 mm

So with that done, I began on the task of installing the front strut brace. I didn't believe it could be hard, 4 bolts... Except that the bolts I swear have never been taken off in the cars life and were extremely tight!! So I soaked them in RP7 and managed to get the inner bolt undone on the RHS strut tower. The outter bolt was being quite stubbon then this happened:




I had just been driving the car so I thought it might be very hot and the metal had expanded, so I put some ice on it to attempt to cool it down to make it easier to take off.




But that didn't help and I could feel my cheap tools wanting to break soon too, in the end this happened: Yet another fail to add to the list, I told you I would report a lot of failures.




Now I swearing to myself quite loudly inside my head, luckily no mind readers were around to hear me because they would get quite a shock! Now I need to source a new set of these bolts, does anyone know where I can get these?


To get my mind off the epic fail of rounding the bolt I decided to instead work on my "hot air intake" today seen here:




During the mid semester break I made this heat shield from 5mm thick acrlyic from Bunnings. The curve took a lot of fiddly work to do but it fits snug, I heated it up using Mum's BBQ and her oven mitts to hold the thing and bend it - it's really quite hard to do. However I'm not really that happy with the way it turned out in the end and it doesn't fit too well.






So instead I decided to cut the top off the damn thing, keep the curve and side bit and measure up and cut up a new top and glue the two things together to make a shield. After sanding to make them fit nicely..






I used a high heat hot glue gun to glue the two things together. There was another fail between these two points where I had the garage door open when I was trying to glue the two pieces together and the glue cooled too quickly.. I used turpentine and sanded down the glue I couldn't really pull off too easily. This stuff holds quite hard, I'm very impressed.

This new setup fits a lot better, I like a lot better - it's really much much easier to do to; I highly suggest anyone making a heat shield to follow this method.




If this was any other build thread, I would skip to the finished product all put together and all and say something like "feels more responsive, feels cooler to the touch" but this thread is different. Back on with the old setup and take some measurements!

Results - No heat shield:


Measurements were taken before going on a drive with the car off and then right after a drive around the same circuit at similar velocities and accelerations if possible unless mentioned otherwise.

ATMOSPHERIC TEMPERATURE: 22 degrees


No heatshield before:




No heatshield - idling for a very short while before going on a drive and temperature was rising:




No heatshield - after a 4 minute drive around the block max speed 60km/h minimum stops



The results were shocking - and when I opened the bonnet after the drive it was no where near as hot as what it normally is after a thirty minute drive down the freeway. Regardless, I carried on. Assembly of the my new heatshield and pictures of yet another fail, that brings it three today only two of the screws line up to hold it all together - which isn't so bad because I only had three screws to begin with.










A picture of the reasonbly snug fit around the curve.



Note: I actually did want this to be a fully enclosed air box but I quickly realised the amount of extra design time that would take and instead decided to test this as a proof on concept.


Results - Heatshield:

The test drive was the same as the first one except I got stuck in very heavy stop start traffic as I decided to drive through a street with beautiful Christmas lights the first time through which got really busy around this time.


Heatshield - Just before the drive:




Heatshield - Just after a 6 minute drive max speed 60km/h quite heavy start/stop traffic for one quarter of the drive.






The results truly do speak for themselves but I still had some energy in me so I didn't want to stop there - I remember I had an old air guiding pipe that I used to use in my computer overclocking days way back and since I have a turbocharged car and now have a FMIC without return hosing I have a 2.5" hold right under where the air filter is - I've always been told that this was too small to be of any benefit as a cold air intake - I decided to put that to the test and one of the reasons I took out my indicators on the front bar and relocated them to the parkers is because this is the highest pressure part of the car and is absolutely ideal for a cold air intake. This isn't not necessarily a permanent modification but rather a proof of concept.


A picture of the lil pipe:




Installed inside the car:




Held in place with a zip tie at the front of the car:



Results - Heatshield + CAI:

Once again, I went on the same circuit path this time there was moderate start stop. I was able to position the heatshield to provide more isolation from the rest of the engine bay too.


CAI + Heatshield - Just before drive:




CAI + Heatshield - Just after 5 minute drive max speed 60km/h with moderate start/stop traffic for one quarter of the drive.






The results speak of themselves.


I also took some more measurements, while my car was meant to be "cooling down" with the turbo timer running the temperature actually increased:




Also, the ambient temperature under the bonnet at this time:







Conclusion:

I think the results really speak for themselves, I don't really have much to say here.


One interesting thing to notice is the increase of intake temperature when idling with the turbo timer which suggests that it is true that driving your car softly for the last 30 seconds - 1 minute before pulling up is more effective than using a turbo timer!

[DJBarnstar]

This thread is full of win!

Keep it up. Subscribed.

[zebra]

So you didnt measure actual IAT's, just the temperature of the pod filter?

Also, please explain how you measured the torsional rigidity of the car? with a tape measure after hopefully jacking the car up in the same spot?

[HtwCHACtkh]

So you didnt measure actual IAT's, just the temperature of the pod filter?

Also, please explain how you measured the torsional rigidity of the car? with a tape measure after hopefully jacking the car up in the same spot?

Yes and Yes to both things.

I measured the temperature the pod filter because I didn't want to bring in other variables like effectiveness of the intercooler.

I was only wanting to test the temperature of the air being sucked in - if you find there's a fault in my method please let me know where it is - I'm interested in finding the truth.

EDIT: I'll keep my multimeter with me and do a long distance (30 minute 25 km drive or so) temperature test tomorrow involving some inner street traffic, main road traffic and freeway driving. I will measure at a 30 second interval and log it to my laptop - unfortunately I don't have time for anything else tomorrow.

Edited December 18, 2011 by aeqel

[ylwgtr2]

a turbo timer is used for cooling down the core of the turbo charger so when you switch the car off,the oil inside has less chance of coking up and blocking the bearing feeds.....

[Marlin]

I think you're actually serious? I was beginning to think that maybe you were just taking the piss but you really are serious! lmfao!

Having said that, someone needs to pull you up. I for one don't want you to see you ruin your car.

Completely PHUCKING your car by winding out the strut braces is solid gold.

You do realise adjusting nuts aren't there to spread your car apart like a pair of forcips opening up a chest for open heart surgery, they're there simply to allow slight adjustments in the length of the bar to fit the particular car, as not all cars are made identically.

Seriously, everybody needs to start somewhere, but I think you'd serve yourself much better if you back away from your R33, turn, and walk away, before you do some serious damage to it, or God forbid, other road users.

Maybe go and buy a Tonka toy or some Lego?