Cheers from across the big water

[propeine]

Hello from the USA.  I recently picked up a 1990 GTST with an RB26 swap. Turns out there isn't much of a skyline community in the states so everywhere seems to lead here or to British sites in my searches. Figure I may as well introduce myself. I'm not new to boosted cars having a long history with Stations, Eclipses and Subarus but this is my first Nissan.

 

About the car

1990 Black Gtst

Rb26 swapped seemingly stock aside from HKS pod filters

Nismo dash cluster reading 23000km

FRP gtr bumper (ewww)

Carbon fiber hood

Recaro seats in pretty good shape.

ECU either was or is chipped but not with a nistune board. It has a socket on it though.

Coilovers (forget the brand but gold and i'm in bed. Name brand not knock off)

Car runs great, revs out fine, spins tires once spooled through 2nd, driver seat could stand some upholstery.

 

Intent 

Get Wideband and Nistune to be able to see what is going on. Drive it for 6mo or so to make sure everything is in good working order.

After that we will see. I have a minor chubby for holset turbos and would likely look to move that route to clean up the insane amount of plumbing/wires. I made 519hp in the eclipse with an HX35 and meth injection. That seems like a reasonable end game goal again with 1/3 more displacement.

[PLYNX]

Welcome to SAU and that looks like a pretty clean unit.

If you can post up a few more pics so we can get a better idea of the conversion.

Do you know any history of the car ?

Conversion done in the US ?

 

[propeine]

Conversion was done in Japan prior to import.  Came in through texas.   No real history other than what I have from the importing documents.  Below is the original auction not where I bought it from.

https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1990-nissan-r32-skyline-non-gtr/

HICAS setup in the engine bay is still there despite being no need.  Charcoal canister etc still there.  Upper Cam cover was missing although it has Tomei cam gears set at +2 on the intake side.  The FRP bumper doesn't fit so well due to having GTS-T fenders.

 

It only had 2,700km on the Japanese registration in 2006 and 22,000km on it in 2012 so I know the Nismo dash has been in there for quite a while at a minimum.

Edited October 16, 2019 by propeine

[Steve85]

Welcome to SAU. That's a good looking car. A 26 into one of these is a good start...  That said, there is a fan club of the RB20. Supposedly a pretty tough engine. 

I like seeing what Americans do with their cars, I feel like even though we like JDM, Americans do things I've never seen before. It's cool and interesting (to me anyways). 
If you have questions we'd love to answer them (not me though, i'm a professional at "have you turned it off and on again guy) and maybe give some thought to a build thread. I feel like you might need it!

[propeine]

The 26 was a bonus as far as I was concerned.  I was more than happy to pick up one with a 20DET in it but this came along for $13,250 USD which is around 4k less than what GTS-T are going for here stateside and I jumped on it.

 

I will most certainly need ALL the help with the build thread.  Just last night I spent 20 minutes searching for what the silver box on the LH strut tower was (it turned out to be a resistor pack).

 

I opted not to register/insure the car for the winter here to have 4 months to go through everything without being legally allowed to drive it.  Not like it was going to be worth a shit in the snow anyways. 

• First step is going through hoses, wires etc and checking for boost leaks. 
• Second step is getting some semblance of engine management and proper gauging (Wideband, boost, oil pressure etc).  NISTUNE, Link G4+, or others are on the table.  I'm pretty much on my own for tuning anyways which is fine but we don't exactly have renowned RB tuners here stateside.

[nouveau_poor]

Hello from a fellow American

You mentioned gold coilovers, so they might be one of the HKS Hipermax IV series. Solid and quality units!

[propeine]

9 hours ago, nouveau_poor said:

Hello from a fellow American

You mentioned gold coilovers, so they might be one of the HKS Hipermax IV series. Solid and quality units!

Thank you and DC is only 5 hours from me!  I actually got the car down near DC.

 

I learned something new today....my car once had HICAS (I thought only GTR had it) but now has a lock bar and the rest of the stuff wasn't removed.  If I don't get all wheel steering, the rest the bits will have to go.

 

Additionally I have a Remax equal length front pipe (apparently good?) , and some unknown temperature sensor sticking out the bottom of the car about halfway back through what looks like a factory grommet.

Edited October 17, 2019 by propeine

[djr81]

Unknown sensor is for exhaust temperature - it is supposed to plug into the catalytic converter which you may not have.

The resistors may relate to the type of injector you are running but usually they are on the drivers side (RHS) - sorry passengers side (RHS) of the engine. Um, near the engine.

Anyway you may need to have a look for a couple things:
A decent air temperature sender unit.

A set of injectors and the resistor bypass thingo.  As you mention Link ecu's have a read of this:

https://www.nzefi.com/product/link-g4-plug-in-nissan-skyline-r32-r34-gtr/

[GTSBoy]

RB26 uses low impedance injectors, but the ECU actually likes high impedance, so the RB26 ended up with an injector resistor pack to make them work.

The big silver resistor is not it. Google for images of what the injector resistor pack looks like.

And bypassed HICAS is superior to working HICAS in every single way. The only thing better than bypassed HICAS is completely deleted HICAS. You can do what I did (swap in a non-HICAS subframe) or you can buy HICAS delete kits which are like lockbars on steroids. They get rid of the tie rods and tie rod ends that are one of the major annoyances of HICAS. The other major annoyance of HICAS is that it just sucks in general. Once HICAS is bypassed or deleted, it is trivial to pull out all the plumbing and solenoid valves for it, and use the rear stage of the power steering pump to drive PS fluid through a small oil cooler behind the bumper to vastly improve the life and performance of the steering system, especially if you thrash it on the track.

[propeine]

 

10 hours ago, djr81 said:

Unknown sensor is for exhaust temperature - it is supposed to plug into the catalytic converter which you may not have.

The resistors may relate to the type of injector you are running but usually they are on the drivers side (RHS) - sorry passengers side (RHS) of the engine. Um, near the engine.

Anyway you may need to have a look for a couple things:
A decent air temperature sender unit.

A set of injectors and the resistor bypass thingo.  As you mention Link ecu's have a read of this:

https://www.nzefi.com/product/link-g4-plug-in-nissan-skyline-r32-r34-gtr/

Intake air temp unit?  The Link unit seems like an excellent value despite being 3 times the cost of a Nistune.  I much prefer speed density to MAF based units personally.  I can tune with either but SD eliminates more plumbing and is more intuitive even if it is slightly less flexible to parts changes.  Boost leaks are less dangerous as well and it plays nicely with meth injection.

 

7 hours ago, GTSBoy said:

RB26 uses low impedance injectors, but the ECU actually likes high impedance, so the RB26 ended up with an injector resistor pack to make them work.

The big silver resistor is not it. Google for images of what the injector resistor pack looks like.

And bypassed HICAS is superior to working HICAS in every single way. The only thing better than bypassed HICAS is completely deleted HICAS. You can do what I did (swap in a non-HICAS subframe) or you can buy HICAS delete kits which are like lockbars on steroids. They get rid of the tie rods and tie rod ends that are one of the major annoyances of HICAS. The other major annoyance of HICAS is that it just sucks in general. Once HICAS is bypassed or deleted, it is trivial to pull out all the plumbing and solenoid valves for it, and use the rear stage of the power steering pump to drive PS fluid through a small oil cooler behind the bumper to vastly improve the life and performance of the steering system, especially if you thrash it on the track.

This doohickey?  Was on the passenger side of the engine bay on the strut tower which is why I couldn't figure out what it was.  Quite far from any injectors.  Says JICAS on it and the A16-000XXX numbers.  Injectors will need changed eventually anyways so at that time I just get high impedance injectors and call it a day?

 

As for the actual HICAS (not the spanish pronounced JICAS) thats an excellent tip about plumbing in an oil cooler where the rear lines would have gone before.  The rest of the parts will definitely be getting out of the engine bay considering its already cluttered enough.  I'll have to look for a proper delete kit as I do have the spindly little tie rods on there still which gives me the shudders.

[GTSBoy]

10 hours ago, propeine said:

This doohickey?

Actually, yes, that one is the standard injector resistor pack. I take it that it is not connected? In which case, the injectors can't be standard, or something else is changed. Because the stock ECU won't like running low impedance injectors.

[djr81]

12 hours ago, propeine said:

As for the actual HICAS (not the spanish pronounced JICAS) thats an excellent tip about plumbing in an oil cooler where the rear lines would have gone before.  The rest of the parts will definitely be getting out of the engine bay considering its already cluttered enough.  I'll have to look for a proper delete kit as I do have the spindly little tie rods on there still which gives me the shudders.

There is an oil cooler for that circuit standard.  You can replace it with something a little larger (Its just a finned tube) if you want.

[propeine]

4 hours ago, GTSBoy said:

Actually, yes, that one is the standard injector resistor pack. I take it that it is not connected? In which case, the injectors can't be standard, or something else is changed. Because the stock ECU won't like running low impedance injectors.

It's connected to the loom still. There are two large plugs there and I have what appear to be standard yellowtop injectors.  It was mounted to the strut tower. In an effort to begin considering cleaning up some of the wiring mess I moved it towards the fender. Gotta figure out how everything will fit but I take it that's not the standard location?

 

3 hours ago, djr81 said:

There is an oil cooler for that circuit standard.  You can replace it with something a little larger (Its just a finned tube) if you want.

Ya I did some looking tonight. Seems relatively straightforward to trace out the lines and get it looped back although access may be an issue to some of it. I'll read some writeups and see what I can sort out.

[djr81]

https://www.nengun.com/oem/group/MjU5MDI1IC0gTWZDZm1vQllNX0NmbTdCTmRrTm1iVzlDV1UxZlEyWnRiMFpNVEZSUk5VNTVNSGROUkUwIC0gUG93ZXItc3RlZXJpbmcgUGlwaW5nIDxjaGFzc2lzPg==

[KiwiRS4T]

Holsets are quite popular here in NZ for a good bang for buck budget build but you probably should read the threads below about the likes of Borg Warner and Precision...

[propeine]

On 10/24/2019 at 7:29 AM, KiwiRS4T said:

Holsets are quite popular here in NZ for a good bang for buck budget build but you probably should read the threads below about the likes of Borg Warner and Precision...

Any specific posts?

 

Holsets with the silencer removed admittedly have a sound that differs from most turbos.  I'm 36yr old engineer and far from ricer but sounds still matter lol.