Hanaldo's R34 Gt(T) Skyline Build

[Hanaldo]

I purchased a brand new alloy JJ airbox for $100 of SAU which was a score and then all i needed was a few little bits and pieces so all up maybe $110 and its already satin black so for me it was a bargain... You will most likely want a shiny one though

Carbon

[34GeeTeeTee]

Mmmm that would be nice... The JJ ones are $249 though -

AND with the amount of mods i had to do to make the alloy one sit nicely on the body, i wouldn't be overly happy doing that to a Carbon one

BUT would really suit you build....... LOL

A mate just purchased some Vacuum Forming doo-dad that can be used to make Carbon Fibre moulds etc.... Shame your on the other side of the work though

[Hanaldo]

Right, yesterdays progress:

Bolted IAC valve to the new plenum:

And finally bolted the plenum on. This part was a right pig I must add, I've got so many cuts on my arm its not funny, but it's mostly on now. Just the very front bolt that is proving to be impossible, no idea how I'm going to get that one on.

Needs less high mount wastegate and more high mount turbo

Then made the long trip to MTQ to pick up some silicon joiners to get started on the intercooler piping; saw this while I was there and thought it was funny

Back to business, measured up the piping and it doesn't look like it's going to be as hard as first thought. Need to find someone who can weld alloy so I can weld the IAC fitting on though, that will be the hard part With that done there isn't a lot more that we could do without a drop saw, so moved onto trying to fit the throttle cable. More frustration, it doesn't fkn fit. Plazmaman have put the mounting bracket for it about 10mm too far forward, even with it fully adjusted there is too much play in the cable:

Gives me about an inch of free play in the throttle and means I can't open the throttle fully, it only opens about 90% with the accelerator to the floor. Very pissed off about that as how hard would it be for Plazmaman to put the bracket 10mm further back and then there would be no problems at all, it would fit perfectly.

Anyway, after deciding playing around with that anymore was a waste of time, I finally got round to finishing off the washer bottle relocation:

And that's pretty much it. Tried to start plumbing in the IAC valve again but didn't have the right size hose, so will pick some up tomorrow. Can then start plugging sensors back in and trying to figure out vacuum lines etc. I also messed around with the catch can some more, as Brad told me if I can mark the can where it fouls on the piping then there are no restrictions as to how it can be modified. So hopefully that won't affect the catch cans ability too much.

[masTers]

Try Tom at Racing Dynamics for Ally welding. They have just moved to Malaga too

[NA_Goodness]

Those CAT turbos are f*cking heavy!! I had to move them all around and repack them, not an easy job! Is James still there? I need to go visit them sometime, haven't been back since I left.

[Hanaldo]

Those CAT turbos are f*cking heavy!! I had to move them all around and repack them, not an easy job! Is James still there? I need to go visit them sometime, haven't been back since I left.

Ah yes, I forgot. James remembered me and gave me a discount, dude is a legend I told him you said hey and he said to tell you "the ranga has left, it's safe to come back" haha.

[Aggroman]

Just thinking out loud here martin but have you checked you cant also adjust the throttle length by the actual pedal also?

I dont have my car on me to check but worth the 2 min look under the dash to see. Also put the throttle cable around the strut tower properly unless u already have.

[Hanaldo]

Just thinking out loud here martin but have you checked you cant also adjust the throttle length by the actual pedal also?

I dont have my car on me to check but worth the 2 min look under the dash to see. Also put the throttle cable around the strut tower properly unless u already have.

Thinking out loud is very welcome in this thread mate Thanks for the suggestion, I'll have a look when I get back to it.

It didn't make much difference to the fitment where I ran the throttle cable. I have it going around the strut tower properly, but I even tried tucking it under the brake master cylinder, etc. Doesn't make a difference because the adjuster is screwed all the way out, that's where it has to sit. The bracket is quite simply too far forward, it needs to be about 10-15mm further back. how Plazmaman haven't sorted that out I have no idea, but it's wrong. You can see in that photo that if Plazmaman had simply positioned the bracket a little bit further back then it would fit perfectly.

[34GeeTeeTee]

UPDATES!!!

LOL

[dori34]

i had the same issue with my throttle cable on my CPC plenum, had to get the throttle cable bracket modded, luckily it was off the car at the time.

just a few minor speed bumps, you'll get there eventually mate

[34GeeTeeTee]

i had the same issue with my throttle cable on my CPC plenum, had to get the throttle cable bracket modded, luckily it was off the car at the time.

just a few minor speed bumps, you'll get there eventually mate

The thing that is strange is that our two setups look like they are in the same position yet his cable is slack and mine isn't... Still gotta do some measurements

[75coupe]

that is a bit weird, but his is originally a non-turbo model isnt it...?

[34GeeTeeTee]

that is a bit weird, but his is originally a non-turbo model isnt it...?

Yep, but the cable looks to be the same in most ways... So not sure if they would be slightly different but i would doubt it as it would just cost more to produce for no advantage?

PS - Do some work!

[Hanaldo]

UPDATES!!!

LOL

Lol sorry, car is too far away to work on during the week Closest I have to an update is I just went and bought $100 worth of hose, hose clamps, and y-pieces so I can get everything plumbed back in Money really doesn't go far these days haha...

i had the same issue with my throttle cable on my CPC plenum, had to get the throttle cable bracket modded, luckily it was off the car at the time.

just a few minor speed bumps, you'll get there eventually mate

How does everyone feel about say, 50 washers back to back to space the bracket out?

The thing that is strange is that our two setups look like they are in the same position yet his cable is slack and mine isn't... Still gotta do some measurements

Yeh this is confusing. Are you sure your cable hasn't been modified? Or that it is actually tight? Have you checked to see if you have any additional movement in the butterfly with your foot flat on the accelerator??

Mine is very very loose though, it's easily noticeable.

that is a bit weird, but his is originally a non-turbo model isnt it...?

I don't know how much of a difference this would make though. I mean the engine bays are the same, no difference there. Even if the workshop used the stock GT throttle cable instead of using the one from the GTT, the GT and GTT plenums are similar at least position wise, and the cable used to fit perfectly on the stock plenum. After a bit of research, it turns out I'm not the only R34 owner having this problem with a Plazmaman plenum: http://www.skyline-owners-club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33374&page=4&highlight=Turbob12

So I'm quite sure that it's just an oversight on Plazmaman's behalf.

[75coupe]

get plasmaman to send you a 25mm long 4mm walled alloy tube to use as a spacer, easiest solution

[Hanaldo]

get plasmaman to send you a 25mm long 4mm walled alloy tube to use as a spacer, easiest solution

Yehhh just means more waiting, and it really isn't a good solution anyway. I'll just have to get it sorted.

Plazmaman's sale team are muppets anyway, they don't know what they are talking about. I'm sure they would just tell me that the stock throttle cable fits and I must be doing something wrong.

[34GeeTeeTee]

Wow that guys engine bay looks Teh Ghey! Not enough Black

Pretty sure mine is sweet mate, checked it ages ago when it first went on and i still have a little adjustment left too....

[75coupe]

ok so proper solution get someone to tig weld it in a bit further up...

do you know someone who tig welds...? if not it'll take longer to get done than asking plasmaman for an adapter of sorts

[NA_Goodness]

Ah yes, I forgot. James remembered me and gave me a discount, dude is a legend I told him you said hey and he said to tell you "the ranga has left, it's safe to come back" haha.

Yeah, James is an awesome bloke! Nick's gone? Hopefully I can get my job back then

[Hanaldo]

Right, time for some more updates. Got through a lot of work this weekend after a couple weeks without much progress, and I'm happy to say the car is very close to being finished! If it hadn't been for the setbacks with the brake booster check valve and the throttle cable not fitting, it mayyy have been possible to get it finished yesterday, but too bad Aiming to have it ready to start next week, and then I'll play around with the NIStune to see if I can get it to idle ok with the new injectors so we can see if it has any leaks or other issues. Will book it in for a tune once I know I can get all the issues sorted out this week, so with any luck it may be getting tuned either next week or the week after

Anyway, this is where we are at:

First things first, we wanted to get the intercooler piping sorted out, as we thought it would be the hardest job on the list. As it turned out, it was actually one of the easiest jobs. It was as simple as buying a 3" to 2.5" 90 degree reducer, a 2.5" 90 degree bend, a few trial fitments to see where we needed it to sit, modifying the existing cold side piping from the FMIC, and then trimming down the 2.5" 90 degree bend. I didn't get any pictures of the existing cooler piping before we cut it, but it's your standard FMIC crossover-type piping (you can see it in some of my earlier photos if you're interested):

(for those on the ball, you'll notice I decided to respray the one hard pipe while I had it off as it was somewhat dinged up as you can see in the above picture)

The small metal bend is a piece of the original cooler piping. It was luckily the exact shape that we needed, and in the exact right place where we needed to cut the hard pipe. So finally something went our way. With that all measured and cut, this is how it sits:

It fits perfectly. The small metal bend even has enough space to weld a fitting for the IAC valve on:

More winning! Yes, I'm aware of how tacky it all looks, but it will do for now. I just needed something to get it together so I could get the car on the dyno and tuned, then I can drive it to my fabricator so he can make me some nice stainless steel piping with a -12 Speedflow fitting for the IAC valve. So it will look much better in a few weeks, but this will do for now. I will also be flaring the ends of the piping that I cut so the silicon joiners have some assistance in holding 20+psi.

With that done, time to do the rest of the plumbing and wiring. Starting with the IAC valve, I plumbed it all up so it would be as neat as possible:

Unfortunately with so many hoses in one place, it is very difficult to get it looking nice. But I did the best I could, and all up those three hoses required about 2.5-3 meters for me to run it neatly haha. I still need to get the missing vacuum hose you can see there for the IAC valve, but as we needed to get the fitting welded on first I haven't bothered with that yet.

While I was at it, I also plumbed up the PCV valve, which I'm going to leave functional; and I plumbed in the rest of the vacuum hoses. So far I've gone through about 7 meters of 3/16 fuel hose, 5 meters of 5/16 fuel hose, 3 meters of 11/32 VL brake booster hose, and a couple of other lengths of various size hoses. I also bought brand new hose clamps to put on them all as I thought I may as well replace the standard 'pinch-type' ones while I was at it. Add in the various t-pieces, y-pieces, conduit, electrical connectors, and other various small pieces, and this is where costs start to spiral out of control. The hose and clamps alone have cost me about $160 so far, not including the braided line and EFI hose I used for the fuel system. Admittedly I have forked out a bit more so that I could replace things that didn't necessarily need replacing, but that's how my whole build has gone so far so no point stopping now I feel the output is worth the gain as well, as everything is looking very neat and shiny with so much being replaced.

Moving on, we then got stuck into the wiring. Starting with the TPS:

We managed to run all the looms and plugs so that the only plug that needed extending was the IAC valve. I forgot to take any close up pictures of that, but if you have a look at the earlier pictures of the IAC then you can juuust see it there. I'm quite happy with how neatly we did that, especially as I used it as an opportunity to teach my mates younger brother (who is infatuated with my car more than I am haha ) how to solder. I figured any mistakes he made would be easy enough to fix up, and it meant the world to him so I'm quietly confident of my passage into heaven when the time comes Anyway, he did a very good job and I didn't have to change anything, so I got him to heat shrink it up and then put it all into some conduit for neatness.

Speaking of conduit, we decided to do the same with all the visible wiring looms such as the TPS, the injector harness, etc. etc.

The injector harness looks neater, but bulkier, which ruins it a bit. I think it still looks better than the old factory tape, so I'm going to leave it. Thoughts??

For the rest of the wiring, the original plan was to hide it all underneath the plenum. After trialing that idea, we decided that whilst it looked ok from the top, it was very very messy underneath the plenum and would have made it incredibly hard to get to anything under there, let alone diagnose and locate any problems. So we scrapped that idea and pulled it all out again. What we ended up doing was making a bracket for some of the sensors, and then bunching most of the wiring together in the top left hand corner of the engine bay under my alarm box, near the grommet where the throttle cable and other things run back into the cabin:

While I'm not exactly thrilled with how 'cop-friendly' it is or the way it looks, it still looks fine just looking at the engine bay unless you go poking your head into that corner. There were quite a few hoses and wires running back through that grommet there anyway, so we decided that considering it didn't make it look a lot messier, the ease of access aspect of it made it the best option. Of course we could have extended all the wiring and hidden it better, but I decided against that as anyone with a bit of electrical knowledge would know that joins in wiring are asking for trouble. So instead of risking countless electrical problems, I decided on the 'slightly messier but still ok' hiding spot for everything

Then it was just a case of a few finishing touches, like replacing the stock clamps on the radiator hoses that are notorious for cutting into the hose, and replacing and rerouting the hoses on my charcoal canister:

It's amazing how much of a difference something so simple can make, but just those hose clamps on the radiator hose neatened up the whole setup a massive amount. I'm also very happy with the hoses on the charcoal canister, as we managed to run them in such a way that what you can see in that photo is all you can see in real life too, it's all very well hidden. So with all that done, this is essentially how things are looking now (plus the intercooler piping which I had already removed again before these photos):

The only things left to do now are weld up the fitting for the IAC valve, source a replacement check valve for the brake booster hose, and figure out what the hell I'm going to do about the damn throttle cable. I had a look at the other end of the throttle cable to see if it could be adjusted in-cabin, but I can't see any easy way of doing it in there either. So still not sure what I'm going to do there. The other issue is the whole catch can situation. I'll be restoring the breathers to the factory setup for now, and I'll have to jam the factory overflow bottle back in there as well. Haven't heard back from Brad about how to sort it out, so it will have to be ditched for now. I'm tempted to just cut my losses and sell it and get someone local to fabricate something for me, but Brad is the best in the business so I'm reluctant to do so. Time shall tell, for now I'm just focusing on getting the car back on the road.

Edited April 8, 2012 by Hanaldo