Lp's Track Pulsar

[Leroy Peterson]

Have a tendency to ramble on, so will try to keep it simple and lots of pics.

Bought a 1998 N15 SSS with extensive mods in May 2012

Quick list of mods I bought it with:

GTiR motor with CP 9:1 pistons

Modified GTiR Turbo by ATP Turbo (disco potato)

ID1000cc Injectors

SARD Fuel Rressure Regulator

3.5'' Dump Pipe into a 3'' straight-through Exhaust

Power FC

Race Radiators Custom Alloy 50mm Radiator w/ Twin 10 inch Spal Fans

Nismo Thermostat

Race Radiators Custom Front Mount Intercooler

Oil Cooler with Remote Oil Filter

PAR Straight Cut Gearset, 1st to 5th Gears

PAR Billet Crownwheel and Pinion with 4.43 ratio

Nismo 1.5 Way Mechanical LSD

Whitline Rear Sway Bar

VZR Pulsar Front Strut Brace

Carbing Rear Strut Brace

Tein Flex Coilovers

R32 GTR Four Piston Callipers (front)

DBA 4000 Series Front Rotors

Goodridge Braided Brake Lines

QFM A1RM Brake Pads

From a DECA last year

[krzysztof]

is this Vesh's old car?

[Leroy Peterson]

Alpine Mechless headunit with alpine X splits in the front with matching tweeters. Rear speakers, amps, capacitor and unnecessary wiring was removed

Mounted a Sparco seat on cutom fixed rails to try and keep it low

First track day at Phillip Island and the clutch cooked during the 2nd session. Managed to drive it home and eventually got an Xtreme 4-puck 900kg clamp load clutch and moly flywheel tipping the scales at just over 5kg.

Got some cutome pedals made up using the 350Z design and an extra lip added to the accel

Bought some OZ racing wheels with RE002's for the street. Heavy, but strong and suit the car a bit more than the TE37s, which are used as track tyres. Currently they have RSRs on them, but will get osme decent semis once they wear out.

Wasn't too happy with the Flex coilovers, being dual tube and limited tunability. So got some Mis-matched BC ER series coilovers fitted. Off the shelf coilovers with independent compression and rebound adjustment are expensive and timely to get made, so fairly extensive fabrications were required to fit Evo 3 to the rear beam and S14's to the front.

Springs werent too firm, but setup was finely tuned by Centreline Suspension. At the moment its -3.5 camber at the front, -1 in the rear (cant recall the other settings off the top of my head)

As it sits on road duties. Car grips so much. The rear is pretty firm from stiff swaybar settings and I upgraded the tie end connections with solid whiteline ones from an STI. Its tail happy with any slight loss of grip at speed, but im getting used to it.

Got it re-tuned at Chequered Tuning (high and low boost settings)

[Leroy Peterson]

is this Vesh's old car?

It is.

Run into him occasionally, he likes to check up on it haha

As it sits ready for track. Will eventually get around to removing the sound deadening. Have also fitted another sparco seat to the passenger side.

[colourclassic]

That's a cool car, love the Delfi gauge setup. Did you do any further reinforcing of the lower coilover perches though? Looks kind of flimsy as is. (At least I think that's what i'm looking at haha)

[34GeeTeeTee]

Awesome... Good to see another pocket rocket between this one and Timmys there is some serious quality!!

[gtr jet]

What an awesome car! How quick did she end up going at Phillip island?

[blah_blah]

Good work Leroy

Looking forward to racing you over the coming months!

[Leroy Peterson]

Did you do any further reinforcing of the lower coilover perches though? Looks kind of flimsy as is. (At least I think that's what i'm looking at haha)

I didnt get any good photos of it, but the whole bracket was welded together on the inside before being welded on right round the beam.

How quick did she end up going at Phillip island?

was my first track day and with no clutch the times were well over 2mins, but cant complain with hitting +230kmh so much fun.

Been to Winton once and got around 1:50 with the RSRs

Best so far for Sandown is 1:29 with RSRs and running low boost (196kw) but loosing a lot of traction on corner exits. Hoping that with better braking, high boost and less front neg camber should crack a few more seconds off that time.

During a cool down lap at Sandown the motor spun a bearing So engine is out and currently being rebuilt.

Bottom end bearing disintegrated leaving the rod to bounce around

Cams were shaved quite a bit and most of the springs had broken

Will bump up compression to 9.5:1 using Mahle pistons

New H-beam rods, new crank, lightened underiven pulleys, oil pump from an SR16VE, new block, new springs, head ported, new ACL bearings, ARP studs where there werent already, and a 2nd adjustable cam gear to match the 1 that was in there.

Not aiming for much more power, want to keep it strong and reliable without destroying gears. Am happy with turbo size and spool but when it gets tuned we'll see what kind of boost to keep it at.

[LANDSCRIBBLE]

Bad luck about the spun bearing. On the other hand, nice car and cant wait to see how it goes when its all fixed.

[TimmyMA70]

Nice build thread man

Unlucky about the spun bearing and broken valve springs. How hard do you rev the GTiR engine?

[Leroy Peterson]

How hard do you rev the GTiR engine?

At that particular track day, I was trying to keep it in the torque curve, so shifting at 6krpm. I did possibly over-rev it on one lap when I was focused on traffic, probably when the springs went. The head was pretty noisy before the track day, was recommended to get the cam shims replaced so the cams may have been stuffed before the track day. But at the end of the day, starvation may have just tipped the whole package over the edge.

Thoughts on tackling oil issues are:

Custom baffled sump

Accusump

Proper monitoring of oil pressure

Better oil pump and breather configuration.

Will tackle at least the last two. The oil cooler setup should make accusump a pretty easy install, will see how much cash is leftover once the engine is done.

Thanks for the kind words guys, im trying to be optimistic about the engine rebuild. Pretty excited too.

[TimmyMA70]

Oh wow, that's crazy low RPM.

I'd go for a set of BC double valve springs and titanium retainers, that's all I have and they are good for 9,000 RPM.

Your's look like OEM GTiR ones.

[krzysztof]

ah shiieeet

[Leroy Peterson]

Build is progressing: pistons and rods have arrived, sourced a crank, head has been ported and polished, removed the turbo and taken to ATP to be stripped and checked. Head will be machined once the new oil pump has arrived, unsure of how much can be shaved off but we'll see.

Weighed the rod + piston and was previously 1.122kg per cylinder. With new rods and pistons its down to 0.948 so a 700g saving on internals. Add on the weight saving of the pulleys (I think the billet crank pulley alone is less than half the weight of the stock one) and we might have some noticeable difference.

[Leroy Peterson]

Your's look like OEM GTiR ones.

The workshop measured the pressure for comparison and it was the same as the BC double springs. So defs aftermarket, just not sure what brand or material.

[Leroy Peterson]

Nothing major to update unfortunately, main rotating assembly is put together and looking good. custom steel oil squirters have been made, stronger than the alloy ones, made on a different angle for extra piston and rod clearance and larger flow capacity. The previous motors compression was measured at 8.8:1. So pistons were the 9:1 as expected and then back it off because GTiR larger combustion chamber. Unfortunately the Mahle pistons are a forged replacement of stock with valve relief so compression will be lower. Will have to bump up the boost a little.

Made a few purchases over the last month or so.

new oil pump and lightened pulleys

After an issue with my aluminum Rays nuts, I wanted something stronger and that could take longer wheel studs.

As Tim is sadly parting out his VE pulsar, I snapped up his brand new rotors and the badass headlight replacement he made up. The rotors will need to be re-drilled and machined for clearance to suit the R32 GTR non-vspec calipers at the front.

Dropped off the turbo at ATP: repair/rebuild kit, drain gasket and then VSR balanced. Nice and clean too, its a weight off my mind knowing its been checked.

[Leroy Peterson]

small update:
we finally decided on a camshaft

Was originally thinking about going through http://www.wadecams.com/ who have their own GTiR grind but was very lazy (probably for bolt-ons) and their billets/machinery couldnt do a very high lift.

After much research and discussion and learning about camshaft theory (yay) we decided to go for a higher duration but lesser lift. So hopefully going to revive the low-mid end, compliment the turbo and get the most out of the cam before 7500rpm. But of course without any comparison or spec cards its all guess work really. Only one brand had reasonable lifts for the GTiR so choice was pretty limited.

Just ordered some JUNage:
Intake 272 degree, 11mm lift
Exhaust 272 degree, 12mm lift

While the 280's were tempting, they were the top end of the scale and I didnt really want to risk getting something that was doing more harm than good, so backed it down to 272. The JUN's are made to order, so its going to be a 3 week wait + delivery. Once they arrive, we'll dial them in and hopefully have some room to play for the tune.

272 is still an aggressive ramp, so reducing weight on the valvetrain cant do any harm. JUN and Tomei springs/retainers cost an arm and a leg, so bit the bullet at got BC dual springs and Ti retainers for $350US + delivery (wew). After street tune, bedding in the engine (1000kms, 2 oil changes) and final tunes we'll probably inspect the head to see how its coming along. Maybe after a few track days we'll do it again and if the springs are looking cactus or somethings not right we might mix up the cams and/or springs.

Also got the head powder coated, but the bastards sand blasted underneath it too so a quick wash isnt enough. the tacks will be grinded off to remove the baffling and make sure its all out, then screwed back on and sealed.

[Leroy Peterson]

so just over 3 weeks later the cams arrived from Japan. during that time had the fun job of hunting for some GTiR (mechanical/solid lift) rockers that have long been discontinued by Nissan. Most of mine were damaged from the busted springs and damaged cams.Found 4 brand-new in the UK but that was all, really. Didnt want to spend big bucks on a set of NAPREC aftermarket ones, with no one who can vouch for them or even a picture of the final product. The workshop was able to re-ground and salvage 4 of the original rockers and use those to make up the 8.

Dummied up. the rockers are held down with a springclip, unfortunately the standard SR20 doesnt have enough meat on the end to grind a slot into it.

BC dual springs and retainers arrived. Old ones on the right, I think they were from Super Pro or super-something.

with new cams dummied up.

bit of effort now checking clearances. shims have been waiting on the cams to be made to size (need 0.15mm clearance)

bought a new OEM waterpump, ACL gasket kit and a 1.1mm Cosworth head gasket which should bringing compression just under 9:1 (more than we anticipated)

so things are getting closer.

[Leroy Peterson]

So with the head assembled just a recap of work done...

Ported and port matched

JUN 272 degree 11mm intake, 12mm exhaust

BC dual valve springs

BC Ti retainers

Tomei Adjustable Cam Gears

Cosworth 1.1mm metal head gasket (87mm bore)

New OEM timing chain and guide

New OEM rockers x4

Rocker stoppers

Bottom end:

New OEM water pump

New OEM crank

New block

SR16VE oil pump

ACL bottom-end bearings (19mm)

Gspec billet aluminium crank & underdriven water pump pulley

Eagle H-beam rods
Mahle forged Pistons

Custom made steel oil squirters
ARP studs/bolts throughout

all the beads left in the baffling of the rocker cover tsk tsk