Our R32

[Bushy]

Wow, nice work on the inlet manifold! Be interesting too see how it performs for you, but thumbs up for DIY

Thanks mate, we're not really expecting any big power gains but a bit of a gain in response would be nice

[AngryRB]

Nice build mate, the fabrication of the intake manifold and the FMIC size and pipe routing looks top notch!

[discoPumpkin]

did the guy have insurance when he smashed into you?

Yeah tell me about it! If we had our time over again we would have just waited until a registered car came up for sale with a blown engine. Oh well, its been a good learning experience so far.

THIS. U can pick up cheap complete skyrines off ebay and gumtree these days that r complete and just either have an auto gearbox or blown motor.

[Bushy]

Nice build mate, the fabrication of the intake manifold and the FMIC size and pipe routing looks top notch!

Thanks mate, yeah very happy with how it turned out

did the guy have insurance when he smashed into you?

THIS. U can pick up cheap complete skyrines off ebay and gumtree these days that r complete and just either have an auto gearbox or blown motor.

Nah no vehicle insurance on the track, both cars had road insurance but that doesn't cover it on the track.

Yeah true, although building it has been generally quite fun and given us a lot of experience, just took a lot longer than we were expecting, which is probably a bit naive on our part considering we had never done a full build like this before.

[Bushy]

Alright so I want to get this thread up to date, so I’m just going to rattle off the list of bolt-ons/other mods with pictures. If you want more detail on anything in particular let me know.

ProFlow air filter. As you can see we've dummied up an airbox out of plywood that will be made out of alloy once its running/we have time.

Turbosmart Kompact plumb back BOV

Polyurethane gearbox mount. Don’t think I’ve mentioned that we’re using the standard RB20 5 speed

Aluminium subframe collars

GKtech fan and SR to RB adapter

Also have GKtech castor rods and offset end inserts but not fitted yet

25mm Whiteline front sway bar

In the previous car there was a lot of lateral movement of the front sway bar when cornering hard (only noticed this at the track) which made a loud clunk and was a little unnerving. When looking at options for lock collars I came across a DIY alternative so I decided to give it a go. It cost me $3 in clamps vs. $30+ for a purpose made item.

GTR rear sway bar. GTR is 25mm vs. 16mm stock GTST.

JJR screamer and 3" stainless front pipe. The screamer had to be modified slightly as the outlet was pointed straight at the firewall and almost touching. We cut it about 2” from the end and rotated it so now it points downwards.

The screamer and front pipe are mated to an XForce 3" stainless cat back exhaust that was on the old car, it has a fairly large centre muffler so hopefully it will be quiet off boost.

OMP fixed back seat and Velo Magnum 4 point harness

Saas oil pressure and water temp gauges, and unknown boost gauge. Mounted on custom race spec dash (the stereo/climate control surround is damaged, plus I just couldn’t be bothered wiring up the stereo yet haha)

Velo tow strap

Saikou Michi oil catch can (bit scratched up from the crash, needs repainting)

R31 powersteering pump and bracket. We had to make a spacer between the block and the bracket for the top front bolt hole but apart from that everything lines up fine. Also have to use an R31 3 ribbed belt, R32 pump pulley uses 4 ribbed belt. Hopefully won’t have problems with the belt jumping ribs on the harmonic balancer end.

S13 powersteering reservoir. As I think I mentioned we cut the bracket off the standard R32 reservoir and welded it to the S13 one to retain the stock mounting position. Reason for going to all this effort was because the S13 one has only one return and a smaller feed to suit the R31 pump.

Battery relocated to boot in box

We’ve put in all fluids and we should be taking the car to an auto electrician on Thursday this week to get it all wired up. I rolled the car out of the garage for the first time in months yesterday and washed off the layer of dust that had accumulated, it also gave me a chance to stand back and look at it properly as our garage isn’t particularly big. It still needs a lot of work cosmetically but we’re mainly concerned with getting it running and drivable.

Cheers,

Michael

[White GTS-T]

Good hustle.

[Bushy]

Good hustle.

Cheers buddy! Hadn't heard that one before, good old urban dictionary helped me out haha

Me and the brother loaded the car onto a trailer today and took it to the auto electrician. Bit nervous as I'm a little apprehensive as to whether he will be able to stay within the quote, I tried to be as explicit as possible with what needs to be done so hopefully he understood and quoted accordingly. Regardless, we will be stoked to hear it fire up for the first time.

[Bushy]

Small update. Car is still with the auto electrician, he's made a bit of progress but we had a bit of a setback when he found that we had the wrong gauge cluster. Turns out there is a difference between the series 1 and 2 pin arrangement for the plugs. Managed to find the correct cluster (thanks to Damo - DJDrift) and have given it to the auto sparky.

Also a mate hooked us up big time with an Innovate Motorsports wideband sensor/gauge kit, probably wouldn't have bothered with this but he almost gave it to us so couldn't say no (thanks Jimmy!).

And grabbed some GKTech offset rack spacers, and 50mm open ended wheel nuts. Not sure if the wheel nuts will go with the current wheels but I have an idea of the look/wheels we want and they should suit it perfectly, that will be a little way off though.

Hopefully won't be long before I'm putting up a first start/drive video!

[Kane_R32]

Love the fab work.

I think you'll dislike the internal gate & screamer set-up...

[Bushy]

Love the fab work.

I think you'll dislike the internal gate & screamer set-up...

Thanks champ!

Yeah I'm not expecting it to sound like an external gate, but we'll see. We've got a bell mouth dump we can put back on if we hate it.

[Bushy]

And she starts!! Very excited to say the least. The auto electrician still have a few things to finish off but here is the very first startup:

[Kane_R32]

Got to be happy when it starts first go!

[Bushy]

Got to be happy when it starts first go!

Yeah we're definitely relieved about that! One less thing to worry about

[Bushy]

We got the car back middle of last week, very appropriate timing as it was the start of my mid-semester break.

Have to say a huge thanks to Bruce Davis at Davtech Automotive for all the hours of work he put in to wire it up, turned out to be a lot more work than he was expecting but he didn't cut corners and still stuck within the quote. Its so good to have a car now that starts and can be driven at the turn of the key.

There were a few things that needed sorting, starting with setting TPS, idle speed and ignition timing. We've had a bit of confusion with setting the timing as we marked the 15 deg. mark with some white-out and it was showing up twice under the timing light, the 2nd mark was 10 deg. advanced to the 1st mark however the CAS maxes out before you can reach the 1st mark so we're thinking it has to be the 2nd mark (not really something we want to assume though!). We've made sure that the car is properly warm and TPS unplugged when checking the ignition timing. See picture below for what I mean.

If anyone can shed some light on the situation that would be great!

Also found that the speedo drive was missing the small square end piece that goes into the back of the cluster, so swapped the whole thing out with a spare we had. And welded another O2 bung into the exhaust for the wideband sensor/gauge. Even with the different intake setup it hasn't seemed to effect AFRs too much which is good.

And fitted up the old 18s we had!

[Bushy]

I sorted out the ignition timing issue. After ensuring the cam timing was right, it turned out to be just the timing light getting a bad signal when connecting it to the wire straight off the coilpack plug, when I put an ignition lead between the spark plug and coilpack and connected the timing light to that I no longer got a double reading. So its ready for a floggin!

Also had an issue where the JJR screamer we purchased caused significant boost spike due to poor port matching around the internal gate, so that was a massive waste of money! Thinking of trying to port it out at some point but really can't be bothered at the moment. Put the X-force bellmouth dump back on for now.

The gasket is a pretty good representation of the rear housing.

How the car sits at the moment

We're aiming to get the car to the track in just over a weeks time for a bit of a test session to see how it goes, can't wait!

[Kane_R32]

Just weld in a external gate, weld up the internal and boost away!

[Bushy]

Just weld in a external gate, weld up the internal and boost away!

Yeah maybe at some point, can't really be bothered with it at the moment though. Plus might just wait till we get a better turbo.

I'd like to go with a setup like this one at some point (credit to Tasmanian Mobile Mechanics for the work/pictures!):

[Kane_R32]

/\ looks like that rear housing came like that

[Bushy]

Had a hectic week working on the car, all leading up to our first track outing and proper drive tomorrow at Baskerville! I can't even remember what work we did on the car most of it was just tidying things up/maintenance, lucky I made a list...

We bought a new sender for the water temp gauge and installed it on the hot side of the radiator (other one was installed on the cold side in a blonde moment).

Flushed engine with coolant.

Fitted front strut brace.

Fitted Gktech adjustable castor arms.

Got wheel alignment, thanks to Beaurepaires Kingston for the hookup!

Bled brakes.

Re-fitted Velo harness.

Put in passenger seatbelt.

Drank beers.

Fitted standard exhaust manifold heat shield.

Straightened bent exhaust so it lines up with hole in rear bar.

Fitted rear bar.

Spent most of today fixing coolant leaks from a number of hose clamps under the inlet manifold, and replacing a split hose (should have just used all new hoses when we put the engine in!).

Spent ages troubleshooting a boost hesitation issue which turned out to be partially resolved by moving actuator vac line from the compressor housing elbow back to the inlet manifold. We had moved it to the elbow when troubleshooting the boost spike issue. However, it still doesn't seem right, won't get 10psi (spring pressure, no boost controller) until nearly limiter, however the boost seems to increase in a more linear fashion than it used to, possible leaking internal gate?

There's still a few more minor issues that need addressing but it should be easier to do this at the track when we can actually drive it properly, not 2nd gear pulls up our street lol. I'll upload some pics after tomorrow. I'm so excited to drive it, hopefully all goes well!

[Bushy]

So the track day last weekend didn't go as well as we'd hoped. We got about three laps in then came into the pits for a check over and found a fair bit of oil on the front sway bar and sump. It was coming from the lower timing belt cover, so we took the top cover off but couldn't see anything up high so figured it had to be either front main seal or oil pump gasket, neither of which could be fixed at the track, so that was our day over. Still had fun going for rides with mates and helping them out though.

The Gktech adjustable castor arms. Got castor set at 7 deg. when wheel alignment was done.

New (2nd hand) strut brace

Our car with a few mates at Baskerville

In action on our short stint!

So after pulling off the lower timing belt cover, along with all the shit in the way! we found it was the oil pump gasket that hadn't sealed properly, it hasn't obviously blown out anywhere so not sure why or how it happened. We did shim the oil pump when we had the engine apart, which increased oil pressure to 100psi at its peak, but I've been told this on its own shouldn't have caused the leak, hopefully we'll have an answer when we take the pump off. I've started pulling off cooler piping, exhaust etc. so we can lift the engine up to get the sump off then oil pump off, bit of a pain in arse but has to be done! (unless someone knows an easier/quicker way?). Going to get a genuine Nissan gasket, put a smear of Grey Max on and torque it all down a bit more than standard just to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Apart from the oil leak the car felt good. Still want to sort out the boost so it comes on a bit harder (like it used to), I've been told putting the bleed valve boost controller back in might help with this. Can't wait to get back out there once its back together and try and put down some quick laps!