Duncan's Race Car - The Most Overdue Build Thread On Sau

[Duncan]

Also replaced the stripped upper arm bolt (thought it would be hard since it was m12x1.25, but Lee Bros at Parramatta re-opened today and had them in stock.  And pulled out the starter motor wiring, adjusted, re-wrapped and got it back in with the right lengths (very hard to get the wiring looms right on the floor rather than in the car. And finally adjusted the lower and upper splines on the steering rack and got it all bolted up OK.

From there I finished up pretty much all the mechanical stuff under the car including torquing everything up. Rear is all done including brakes but not all wiring. and the exhaust is still on the floor.

Also finished off all of the front mechanicals and suspension excluding the brakes. The silver subframes and arms have come up well, and make it easy to spot the obligatory GTR  fluid leaks too

Speaking of fluids, the car was 100% dry with all the work done. I've put in

Gearbox - redline lightweight / smurf's blood

xfer case - castrol transmax z

front diff - castrol 85w140 mineral oil. I've never run it before but have taken Terry from Award's advice on this, he says all the synthetic oils are too slippery and lead to glazing on the gears (and he raised the issue after looking at my old diffs). Will see how this goes, I'll change it more often because I'm worried about mineral oils and racing/hot oil lifetime. Will also use this in the rear diff but forgot to do it before putting the diff in (yes Neil...)

engine - I'm running nulon 5w40 synthetic

will still need to put in coolant, power steer, attessa, brake, clutch....so many fluids required to make this thing work!

[Duncan]

also sorted out the final fuel system stuff with new braided lines at the front to the fuel rail, and from the regulator to a Y piece then back to the rear, with the other arm going to the fuel sampler required for targa and production car racing

So a good day overall, back to wiring tomorrow.....

[fatz]

f**k yea booked into any events yet

[Duncan]

lol not until I work out which year the ETA is....

[MBS206]

Before 2020 hopefully, that's when the supposed next armageddon will occur and you don't want to miss getting to take it for a spin one last time.

[Duncan]

Armageddon again? I hope it's zombies this time, I'm ready....

[Duncan]

Anyway, only one job today, but it was a good one.

All the wiring for the switch panel is done and tested

Everything is working OK, I did initially have 2 switch wires the wrong way around for the fuel pump.

Wiring at the rear was a pain but should be reliable and trouble free now

[BOZ22N]

Looks good.
Very colourful too.

[djr81]

  On 03/01/2017 at 10:47 AM, Duncan said:

 

 

 

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Looks purty.  Are we allowed to ask what spring rates & sway bars youa re running?

[Duncan]

I run standard sway bars (rules...), 350 rear and 450 front springs with Gary modified bilsteins. I've always been happy how it handles and the times have been good considering the lack of power so I'm not looking to change anything there at the moment.

And apart from adjustable bushes the only trick is the front LCA inner mount is about 20mm outward which is allowed under production car rules to get desired camber

[Duncan]

Oh and no real pics of progress today, it ended up a bit frustrating anyway.  I've wired in the car side of the dash, and every wire I need is now in place (I hope.....) Only the smartwire, ECU and I/O expander plugs were remaining (so I thought), until I decided to take the dash loom out to make the final plugs easier (since there are about a billion pins to do).  Which is when I realised in about 5 different places I'd hard wired too much together (eg front, rear and dash looms) without plugs to remove them.

So tomorrow is starting with adding 3 more plugs to allow everything to come apart, then hopefully getting the last pins done. 

[Duncan]

Well I sorted out the loom problems this morning and then finally got the smartwire finished this afternoon

Basically the smartwire replaces all the relays and fuses in the car with a programmable system. There are only 3 relays (4wd, ignition, high beam flash) and 7 fuses (main fusable links under the bonnet) left in the car.

Instead the smartwire has both CAN input from the ECU, and additional switched where required (thus the custom switch panel). You then set each of about 40 outputs to turn on or off depending on any of the ECU or switch inputs. This also covers all of the race/rally additional circuits like cool suit, rally safe, intercom, radio, camera etc etc as well all in one place. 

Hopefully I'll get the Haltech ECU and I/O expander wired up tomorrow and also the main battery power which is the main thing left before testing it all....

[Duncan]

You can define up to 12 pins with your own switches, either ground = 0 (which I've done for convenience) or 12v = on.

You then define the logic for each output to turn on. This is how the fuel pump is defined:

Due to wiring on the switch panel, when the ignition is on you can either choose ECU controlled fuel pump (primes when ignition is first turned on, and stops if the engine stops as required by CAMS safety regs) or fuel pump always on for things like draining the tank. When either set of conditions are met the outputs turn on, up to 40A output (for both lift and main pumps). If the 40A is exceeded the dash will show the issue and it will reset a defined number of times until it shuts down, all configurable.

This is a pic of all the outputs from my initial testing, at that stage there were no switches attached so only the always on outputs are on.

[tweety bird]

Am I the only one that just wants to see this finished so Duncan can move on to the March superturbo?

[Duncan]

lol what March Super Turbo? That is one project too many! You should see what is about to leave the docks

[Duncan]

Finished the last of the wiring today with the ECU and I/O expander inputs all sorted. Annoyingly the labeller ran out so I'll have to pull them apart later to label them up properly.

So once that was done and the looms tidied (a little), I've put everything back in the car and got everything connected (apart from number plate and reverse lights because the bar is off, and 3 senders because of little things I need to clean up.

Just in time really, because today was the last day of the working on the race car marathon, back to work (and normal race car work pace) on Monday. I figured it needs half a day to finalise some stuff for the test, then check all the circuits work as expected. Hopefully next weekend while I can remember everything.

Then pull all the looms out again with some notes on where I need to adjust the wrapping for proper fitment...what works on the floor seems to be just far enough off to be impossible once it's back in the car. While that's all out again I'll get the interior painted and exterior straightened and clean up in a few place.  Then chuck everything back in and maybe go to an event one day!

[tweety bird]

  On 07/01/2017 at 10:12 AM, Duncan said:

lol what March Super Turbo? That is one project too many! You should see what is about to leave the docks [emoji4]

You sold it?

[BOZ22N]

Looks good bud.
Any reason why all the wires are white?

[Duncan]

no it's not sold but it is kind of like the red-headed step child, I just don't have time or patience to get to it.  It's with the same mechanic it has been (for years) but it will be sold as soon as its running....either the MCM guys want it back or someone else who appreciates some of nissan's most unique engineering....

ryan all the wires are white because I've used Raychem wire everywhere, it's light, strong and has nice thin insulation. But the practical issue is that if you want different colours you'd have to know how much of each colour you need, so instead most race cars just run white and put labels on each wire, I picked up this awesome K-SUN BEE3+ label printer which prints straight onto heatshrink http://www.meter.com.au/labellingproducts/ksunlabelprinters/bee3plusheatshrinktubeindustriallabelprinter/. It's not super clear  but in the smartwire pic above you can see every wire has a yellow heatshrink label on it

[Duncan]

actually here's a cropped original res pic of the wires, you still can't really read it (phone pic...) but you get the idea. I'm not near the car at the moment to get a better pic but they are very readable