Shoota's R33 GT-R RB30/26

[Shoota_77]

Ok, I dont know that what I'm doing on my car deserves a build page but at the very least it can be a diary of work done for when I possibly ever sell the car'!

Ok, so I bought the car about 10 months ago while on holidays on the Goldy. I hired a car and drove 3 hours down into NSW to take a look, decided I was happy so bought it and had it shipped back to Vic.

This is a few pics of the car as I got it (apologies for poor quality)-

Body is in very good condition but front and rear bumpers have copped a fair hiding over the years.

The first thing I decided to play with was a quick repair on the front bar-

Make up a backing plate to glass onto to retain the shape-

Cut out the worst part-

And glassed in the new section-

It was at this (very early!) point that I decided I was over body already and determined to get stuck into the engine. I'll get back to the body a long, long way down the track...

The car was currently making 292kw at the wheels so ok but not exhillerating!

The first round of mods were-

1000cc Injector Dynamics squirters

Nismo fuel pump

Apexi Super Suction kit

High flow cat

New radiator (52mm from memory)

Adjustable cam pulleys

Blitz SBC ID Spec R boost controller

Plus tidying up a few things (rocker breather and vacuum lines).

After these mods I limped the car to Racepace to see Chris for a tune.

At the time, it was presumed the car had -7 turbos on it as they were on it before I got it so I didn't know for sure. It now turns out they're -5's so http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/#EMO_DIR#/smile.png is now a little more http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/#EMO_DIR#/sad.png.

Anyway, that will be rectified in the future.....

So, the car ended up making 322Kw at the rears backed back to 315Kw for a safe tune-

Drove home, relatively happy with the results, albeit a little nervous as it was pissing down rain!

Next day, drove to work, all good. Took one of the guys for a spin at lunch, all good. Got back to the carpark and gave it one, solitary, 8000rpm rev and nek minnit, oil light on! I'm thinking "surely it's just a sticky pressure switch or something" so I idled it for a few secs but I could just start to hear the valve train rattling a tiny bit due to having no oil so engine off, RACV on the phone and my one day old freshly tuned car makes it's way home to the garage.

The first job was to pull off the oil pressure unit and confirm it was definately oil pressure. Once removed I super quickly started the car and not one drop of oil came out.

Verdict- one shattered oil pump. Now the fun begins.....

I'm doing it all from home in the garage with fairly limited tools and extremely limited time so bear with me if you will!

[Shoota_77]

Ok, jumping back half a stage, here are some crappy Iphone pics of how the engine bay looked the day before she went boom-

So, jump forward to about 6 or 8 weeks ago and it was pretty much a no brainer that I would be doing it all myself at home. If you read the title about the tightarsed bit, that's me in a nutshell. I just can't justify the additional outlay of paying people to do stuff to my car. This will no doubt cause me grief at some point along the way but that's the price I'll pay!

In my past life I was a qualified mechanic but it's been 10 years since I had tools in my hand so this feels all a bit new again!

I pretty much got straight into it and ripped it all apart with reckless abandon! I did take a few photos along the way to help with the re-assembly as I've learnt in the past, when I pull shit apart, it's sometimes a VERY long time again before it goes back together!

Here's a few pics of the process-

Can I just say, gee I wish I knew about removing the release arm pivot pin!! I read a few different things about removing the engine before I got stuck into it but I must've just read R32 stuff with a push clutch.

In an admission of stupidity, it took me ages to work out what was going on and why I couldn't get the engine out. I was getting pretty cranky by that stage! Once the pin was removed it all came out piece of piss.

God damn it's a heavy engine though! My engine stand is supposedly 1500kg but it's straining under the weight of the big RB. It's a bastard to try to roll over! Ideally a ratchetting style engine crane would make life a lot easier for rotating the engine around.

[Shoota_77]

On the stand-

Ripped the sump off and found it to be pretty grubby. The car was running mega rich when I first got it so I think the oil was just frequently fuel soaked.

[JDM33]

Unlucky bud! Keep up the good work though

[Pezhead]

Seems to be some gremlin running around taking out RB's lately. I just completed a massive job on mine only to have a cam break on the track.

Unlucky that your oil pump let go. Good to see you doing it yourself though. It is a BIG job!

[Shoota_77]

One thing of concern and a possible reason for why my oil pump went was that the main balancer bolt was loose. Now I don't mean it wasn't torqued to the right tightness, I mean I went to put the socket on the head of the bolt and it turned by hand! It was probably half a turn off seated against the balancer.....

Not sure if that happened over time or whether it's never been tight?

Dismantled the front and took off the oil pump and no surprises really-

Even the housing was cracked from the expolsion-

Í tossed up for weeks what was going to do for an oil pump! My tightarse nature was preventing me lashing out on a top end pump, although I knew it would be a better option. I've been tossing up building an RB30/26 or a 2.8L stroker so didn't want to spend too much on this engine until I worked out what I was doing.

I still haven't decided but it's looking unlikely at the moment due to "other committments". In the end I bought an N1 pump and a set of Reimax gears for it.

[R33RWKW]

" Í tossed up for weeks what was going to do for an oil pump! My tightarse nature was preventing me lashing out on a top end pump, although I knew it would be a better option. I've been tossing up building an RB30/26 or a 2.8L stroker so didn't want to spend too much on this engine until I worked out what I was doing."

If you decide on a 2.8lt, RacePace are doing their own now - based on the HKS 2.8lt.

I Had a chat with Chris a while ago and they sound like a good investment.

In my opinion this would be a better option than going a RB30/26.

Good Luck with the build.

[SimonR32]

Nice job on the oil pump, well and truly f**ked!

I also just put in a set of Reimax gears, have only heard good things... Might be worth replacing the backing plate screws with ones with allen key heads and using loctitie when installing them. It's a common problem for them to come loose and back out (dropping oil pressure)

[Shoota_77]

Thanks for the commiserations! As much as I hate not driving it, I must admit that a big part of my enjoyment of owning cars is actually working on them. I probably wouldn't drive it a whole lot more than I do now anyway. The saddest fact is that the bit that I enjoy even more than anything else is buying shit fot it! Half of it won't even end up on the car but I love buying it anyway! I'm sure there are a few other people in the same boat...

Chris- Yeah (the other) Chris mentioned they were working on one. I'm not sure if they're going to release it as a kit though or just an in house job they'll do? Be awesome if they did provided it's priced right. Racepace are very good but can charge.... I can understand an extra charge for the development costs but in reality it could be done for $3000-$4000 I'd have thought. The Tomie, HKS, Brian Crower, etc are adding extra for their name which is understandable.

SimonR32- Thanks heaps for that, I'll definately do that with the cap screws, it'll be a lot easier to torque them up using allen heads rather than the shitty phillips head. Even on the brand new pump it was still a bitch getting some of the screws undone even with an impact driver.

Ok, a bit more work I've done-

Cleaned up intake tracts a tiny bit.

From-

To-

Not sure if it will make a scrap of difference but it looks prettier!

Had to replace both the block coolant fitting as they were corroded pretty bad. Meant having to take off the inlet manifold which I wasn't intending on doing.

[Shoota_77]

Decided to have a bit of a go at some polishing-

Thinking possibly wrinkle black for rockers, turbo pipe and intake manifold and polished coil pack cover.

Still tossing it up though.

Clutch was pretty much gone on the leading edge so tossed up for weeks trying to find a cheap option (!!) but ended up lashing out on a Nismo Coppermix Cpmpetition twin plate. Can't wait to actually use it, some point in the future hopefully!

Can I just say the Nismo clutch is one sexy piece of machinery! It seems such a shane to bolt a tranny over the top of it, man it's hot!

[Shoota_77]

Bought a new boot lid and spoiler last week to give the car a slightly more factory look. I'll keep both at this point so I can mix it up every now and then. The big carbon wing is a bit ricer but I still like it.

Rolled the old girl out of the garage for the first time in a few months for a bit of a wash-

Tightarse paint touch up-

One of my other babies-

[Shoota_77]

Bought a carbon bonnet because A) a part of me likes the look of them, B) I don't like my current bonnet with the scoop poorly cut out of it and C) it was cheap!

It looks pretty sexy as a contrast to the white paint. It has a bit of a bubble under it in one small spot but for the price it was a good buy.

I disregarded the negativity of putting cams into a relatively mild engine and ordered a set of Tomei Poncam Type B's. Hopefully put a little bit more poke into the lower/mid range. Not fussed about top end particularly. I don't know how to use the bottom end properly let alone worrying about what it'll do full noise!

[AngryRB]

Bought a carbon bonnet because A) a part of me likes the look of them, B) I don't like my current bonnet with the scoop poorly cut out of it and C) it was cheap!

It looks pretty sexy as a contrast to the white paint. It has a bit of a bubble under it in one small spot but for the price it was a good buy.

I disregarded the negativity of putting cams into a relatively mild engine and ordered a set of Tomei Poncam Type B's. Hopefully put a little bit more poke into the lower/mid range. Not fussed about top end particularly. I don't know how to use the bottom end properly let alone worrying about what it'll do full noise!

Enjoying this thread, alot of nice bits in that buy, GTR dash, wheels, engine, would of been very exciting to pick up, hard to not spend more on it..

[Shoota_77]

Enjoying this thread, alot of nice bits in that buy, GTR dash, wheels, engine, would of been very exciting to pick up, hard to not spend more on it..

Are you trying to offend me??? It IS a GTR!! Nismo dash? But yes, I remember being pretty bloody excited rocking up to the freight depot to pick it up. I drove it from the depot straight to the tyre shop and whacked a set of Nitto NT05 tyres on it. It had a set of rubbish Kumho semi slicks on it which were like constantly driving on tram tracks.

Another thing I forgot to mention adding was a set of Tein Super Street coilovers which give it a nice low stance without being stupid low.

Picked up my new (used) exhaust today courtesty of another forum member. It's massive overkill for my current setup but I'll just have to make the engine catch up to the exhaust! It's twin 3" stainless from front pipes to tips. It came off a race car so only has two mufflers but no cats so I'll rectify that before I hit the road. It needs modifying anyway as the front pipes are a lot different to my setup. I'm hoping just cats and mufflers will be enough to keep it quiet.

[Shoota_77]

Soon to be dirty 30/26.....

Someone bought themselves a Chrissy present.

If my wife knew I'd be a dead man!!!

Aiming for around 375-400atw wheels with my -5's. Am I dreaming with these numbers?

Should be nice and responsive with a reasonable top end but nothing too crazy.

I've pulled the head off my spare engine so will need to get that machined, crack tested etc.

I've just received in the mail a set of Tomei Poncam Type B's and a set of Brian Crower valve springs with titanium retainers. They're both very pretty! I'll put them once the head is all sorted. I'll do a bit of a head tidy up as well.

Things have just got out of hand.

[Miguelone]

You wouldn't happen to work at Bayfords in Coburg would you? Datto looks very familiar...

[Shoota_77]

I did yes. Still work for Bayford but now at Camberwell Volkswagen.

Do you work for the group as well?

[Shoota_77]

Top End

Last week I pulled the head off my spare RB26 to prep to go onto my impending RB30 bottom end.

The thing is a bit of a pig so hopefully comes up ok after a good cleanup-

Plans for the head are cleaning up the ports, crack test, pressure test, reface head, regrind valves (3 angle seats) and general tidy up of oil returns, etc.

I'll be putting in my Tomei Poncam Type B's and Brian Crower valve springs/titanium retainers.

[Shoota_77]

Bottom End

Now, this is where shit went bad,

I purchased a previously built RB30 bottom end that had done minimal work. Sounded like an awesome setup that I could quickly check bearing clearances and ring gaps, whack on the head and off we go! No, wrong!

As soon as I took delivery of the engine I eagerly peeled off the tape covering the deck of the block and saw what appeared to be slightly more than near new. I pushed on one of the pistons that was at TDC and it had MASSIVE clearance. Thought uh oh!

I won't bore you with all the details but the pictures can do most of the talking. (Now this story does have a good ending due to an amazingly decent bloke (who I bought the bottom end off) but I'll get to that later-

The first attempt at drilling the tensioner hole went straight into one of the front headstud holes! It caved in a big chunk of the thread, rendering that head stud pretty useless for clamping force. A bolt was then screwed into the hole and cut off then a new hole drilled (crooked of course!)-

Sorry to cut this short but I'll have to get the other disaster photos off my phone to post up the evidence..

[Touge Kyousou]

Enjoying this thread, gorgeous cars too btw.

Man, i actually remember seeing this car for sale on carsales couple of years ago sorta thought about seeing/buying it!

Keep up the work, looking good.