Mistakes were made, my R34 Story

[Kinkstaah]

I have actually had my car for over 10 years now, so this build thread is retrospective.
It may or may not have been prompted by going through many old photos.
There are many broken things in these photos, and over the years since getting my humble NA+T Auto sedan (without any knowledge of it being NA+t and not a GTT)

It has, in somewhat sequential order.

Replaced the NA+T with a GTT engine.
Exploded that GTT engine on the dyno immediately.
Replaced fuel pump 9 times, some dead pumps, some melty wiring.

Also managed to somehow break a R34 fuel tank multiple times, in the red circled area!

Thanks, Optima!

Replaced the ECU that caused this (TLDR Emanage Blue's are shit, but it was 2008)

Built a forged RB with a 2.9 Stroker kit, proceeding to break everything around the car minus the components of this kit.
By this I mean 3x RB25 DET Neo blocks, and a head. Here's some nice engine building photos, and quite a bit of engine GORE.

This kit seemed to be the most indestructable thing again, as the engine found itself apart more times than together. Each time every component was tested, retested, Xrayed, and it was ready for more. However it seems everything else around it wasn't!

Along the way, Blown up the shift kitted MV auto gearbox, near instantly.
Built a GTT Auto gearbox, complete with aftermarket TCU, which broke Trent's dyno @ Chequered, forcing him to upgrade it.

Had Hypergear, Garrett, GTX3076, Turbos..
.....Drove the car into an enbankment and had to reshell entire car.

 

Re-Wiring the Automatic gearbox into a different/new car was a seamless easy experience, with absolutely no problems whatsoever!

 

GTX3582, and Borg Warner EFR7670's as Turbos after that..

Many dyno sheets of all these setups, over my approximately seventy million trips to chequered tuning.

 

Looks great, doesn't it? Many in progress shots but these turbo setups had their own problems oh boy did they ever!

There was also a 6boost manifold that had to be machined 2mm so it was actually flat... photos.... somewhere.

3-4 different sets of rims over  this time.

Complete with brake upgrade kit, with its own f****king issues!!

Just after the Borg Warner EFR Turbo, the auto found its way exiting my vehicle,, and the car was manually converted, and to quote to the words of JMA's automotive: "Never bring this f**king car here ever again!" so I'm sure the install was smooth, and had absolutely no problems at all in any way.

Somewhere along the line, seats were installed/upgraded/tested:

Drove the car to Adelaide, all was well, all happy with the world, to find out I almost melted the car to the ground 7 different ways from sunday due to how lines, and wiring was packaged.

Delicious.

Hilarious, brief (oh god, so very brief) backstory complete, this all cumulated with ripping apart the entire car and starting again.
I then, replaced every bush in the car, LS Converted the motor, and is now currently Legally engineered in Victoria (incl full EPA/IM240 test passing experience).

Info continued. Previous info can be elaborated on if anyone cares first!

Bonus installation photo of my friend helping me with my Bilsteins (which Bilstein revalved to suit the LS when I got the whole thing weighted when that was done).

 

[PranK]

Totally love this. Its so good to read a story that wasn't perfect. 

[Kinkstaah]

"Wasn't perfect" is an understatement. I probably have another few hundred photos of various things broken and various stories interspersed between it all, but didn't think the website would handle such a post.

There are reasons why my girlfriend painted a picture of this stupid cursed car.. and I haven't even gotten into the whole LS conversion yet.

[admS15]

Ah, the story of the cursed R34, have been hoping you would do a build thread. Subscribed, carry on with the carnage pics fine sir.

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

Edited Post:

should have bought a M4, flashed, change the exhaust with an off the shelf item, upgrade the W2A IC with an off the shelf item and do 100+ laps without anything breaking.

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

20 minutes ago, admS15 said:

Ah, the story of the cursed R34, have been hoping you would do a build thread. Subscribed, carry on with the carnage pics fine sir.

have been waiting for the build thread too!

[Kinkstaah]

I was never planning on making one, but then thought maybe some people would be interested in what was roughly involved in putting a V8 in, legalities, things to watch out for, or realistically, what not to do.

Time has passed enough so some disasters were fun, stories are now funny stories, but make no mistake at the time they are gruelling challenges of the human spirit.

Here's a few more assorted challenges of the human spirit, this time in no rough order.

Me driving into a concrete pillar in old car:

:

 

This was caused by having head bolts in an engine when I paid for studs.

This happened when I got supplied studs, then I went out and bought new studs because I didn't want to re-use them.
Note: Size difference of actual correct studs, at least once I did a smart thing by replacing a non-required-to-replace item.

Fantastic.

Other problems?
 

Whats

That

Misfire?

 

You say?

Check your belts, people:

 

Quality Pod filter selection:

Buying bolt on parts, totally bolt on for my application, no issues here, plenty of room for external gate.. apparently (to be fair this part did get refunded)

 

I say this all the time but if you build your auto, build your flex plate.
Here's my stock one!

And below was the replacement.

Note: This is a modified RB30 one. GL finding one. infact, I hope you have terrible luck, cause just go fkin manual.

Pursuit of a legal looking external gate, courtesy of Scotty's garage, and the man hard at work.

Also this was the demise of the first GTX3076R.
Can you overspin them? Yeah I think you can. I have this comp wheel on my desk at work.

 

My poor mate hard at work, helping me with god remembers what, before he built his garage.

I plasti dipped the weathershields around the window, and because I wasn't confident I could replace them if they came off... it was time to do them in situ, with no training.

ITS FINE.
It actually was fine, has still held up well multiple years later actually.

Another shot of how simple and easy dealing with those brakes are:

Did you know that Attakd/Ksport/D2 changed the diameter of the holes in the hat and the disk between revisions, not noting this down in any place? Now you do!

Here's a photo of my color matched new bumper, with the idea that I'd go to S1 because I want more flow to the intercooler/radiator, etc.

As you can see, absolutely impossible to tell.

My housemate helping me out in one of those Wednesday night breakdowns on the Monash, which are unsuprisingly wiring related.

Did you know the connectors for S1/S2 Halogen/Xenon headlights were different? They sure are, and my lovely gf helped me out because her hands are smaller than mine. Wiring. Also note: Night time. When I needed to be somewhere. With no headlights. This was entirely fine and caused no delays or inconvieniences.

Oh look, oil! Did you ever hear of a R34 VCT gear leaking oil? Go on, search, I know you won't find it, but if you get this... now you know what caused it!

So, I had a haltech wideband, but an Innovate Gauge.

Unfortunately, the scaling for the gauges is off as the Haltech gauge goes from 0-5V for 10-20AFR, and the Innovate uses the same voltage (0-5v) to go from 7.35 to 22.4 AFR.

Oh and haltech don't sell the gauge anymore. So f**k you.

So THIS contraption was born!

Totally normal part of owning a modified car, everything bolts in, direct plugin, no extra work required at all.

Actually Driving your car is ovverrated.
Not pictured, many other additional times, including a 4 hour public transport commute to pick up car, only for it to die 10 minutes after driving for a failed fuel pump, directly outside the barwon prison main entrance. On my birthday. Imagine fielding all those happy birthdays phone calls when I get to reply"

"Yeah I left work early to commute 4 hours on PT to get my car, currently broken down outside Barwon prison"

"Oh uh, yeah, uh happy birthday man! [click]"

 

[Lithium]

4 hours ago, Kinkstaah said:

Jesus, so many ups and downs - hope the journey starts going a bit smoother.   This pic stood out to me, Bilsteins are so diverse in their ability!

Here are mine before they went in my R33, over 10 years ago:

 

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

It was part of Skyline ownership, put in Bilsteins and ground off the OEM boost solenoid lol.

Both of my R33s (current and previous shit box) had Bilsteins!

[KiwiRS4T]

2 hours ago, Kinkstaah said:

I was never planning on making one, but then thought maybe some people would be interested in what was roughly involved in putting a V8 in, legalities, things to watch out for, or realistically, what not to do.

Time has passed enough so some disasters were fun, stories are now funny stories, but make no mistake at the time they are gruelling challenges of the human spirit.

Here's a few more assorted challenges of the human spirit, this time in no rough order.

Me driving into a concrete pillar in old car:

:

 

This was caused by having head bolts in an engine when I paid for studs.

This happened when I got supplied studs, then I went out and bought new studs because I didn't want to re-use them.
Note: Size difference of actual correct studs, at least once I did a smart thing by replacing a non-required-to-replace item.

Fantastic.

Other problems?
 

Whats

That

Misfire?

 

You say?

Check your belts, people:

 

Quality Pod filter selection:

Buying bolt on parts, totally bolt on for my application, no issues here, plenty of room for external gate.. apparently (to be fair this part did get refunded)

 

I say this all the time but if you build your auto, build your flex plate.
Here's my stock one!

And below was the replacement.

Note: This is a modified RB30 one. GL finding one. infact, I hope you have terrible luck, cause just go fkin manual.

Pursuit of a legal looking external gate, courtesy of Scotty's garage, and the man hard at work.

Also this was the demise of the first GTX3076R.
Can you overspin them? Yeah I think you can. I have this comp wheel on my desk at work.

 

My poor mate hard at work, helping me with god remembers what, before he built his garage.

I plasti dipped the weathershields around the window, and because I wasn't confident I could replace them if they came off... it was time to do them in situ, with no training.

ITS FINE.
It actually was fine, has still held up well multiple years later actually.

Another shot of how simple and easy dealing with those brakes are:

Did you know that Attakd/Ksport/D2 changed the diameter of the holes in the hat and the disk between revisions, not noting this down in any place? Now you do!

Here's a photo of my color matched new bumper, with the idea that I'd go to S1 because I want more flow to the intercooler/radiator, etc.

As you can see, absolutely impossible to tell.

My housemate helping me out in one of those Wednesday night breakdowns on the Monash, which are unsuprisingly wiring related.

Did you know the connectors for S1/S2 Halogen/Xenon headlights were different? They sure are, and my lovely gf helped me out because her hands are smaller than mine. Wiring. Also note: Night time. When I needed to be somewhere. With no headlights. This was entirely fine and caused no delays or inconvieniences.

Oh look, oil! Did you ever hear of a R34 VCT gear leaking oil? Go on, search, I know you won't find it, but if you get this... now you know what caused it!

So, I had a haltech wideband, but an Innovate Gauge.

Unfortunately, the scaling for the gauges is off as the Haltech gauge goes from 0-5V for 10-20AFR, and the Innovate uses the same voltage (0-5v) to go from 7.35 to 22.4 AFR.

Oh and haltech don't sell the gauge anymore. So f**k you.

So THIS contraption was born!

Totally normal part of owning a modified car, everything bolts in, direct plugin, no extra work required at all.

Actually Driving your car is ovverrated.
Not pictured, many other additional times, including a 4 hour public transport commute to pick up car, only for it to die 10 minutes after driving for a failed fuel pump, directly outside the barwon prison main entrance. On my birthday. Imagine fielding all those happy birthdays phone calls when I get to reply"

"Yeah I left work early to commute 4 hours on PT to get my car, currently broken down outside Barwon prison"

"Oh uh, yeah, uh happy birthday man! [click]"

 

Surprising that you have the time or money for a girlfriend!! Even more amazing that she helps you wire your car!!

[PranK]

Gotta say .... the SAU sticker looks perfect! 

[Dil-Dog]

Bro... you are the human embodiment of the phrase "bad luck" like legit everything that can go wrong has happened to you... thats crazy! how the hell do you blow up soo much engines?

Edited February 25, 2020 by Dil-Dog

[Duncan]

Great story, although it feels a bit like one of those movies with flash backs and flash forwards and you can never really tell where you are up to in time.

More fail pics!

[Kinkstaah]

Sorry Duncan, the second post was just random photos of broken scenarios in no particular order, and the first one was pretty light on the retelling.

If I went into detail about all of the things in chronological order it would be so much stuff that making it accurate would be pretty rough. I never set out of my way to document any of this, these are literally just photos of random things along the way, and my shaky memory over the past decade.

It will get more chronological (and boring) as it all gets closer to where the car currently actually is.

2 hours ago, Dil-Dog said:

Bro... you are the human embodiment of the phrase "bad luck" like legit everything that can go wrong has happened to you... thats crazy! how the hell do you blow up soo much engines?

This is where my opinions about what the internet says works, and my experience kind of diverge, The truth is nothing ever failed in spectacular fashion (this is a lie, stories below lol).

It was just making huge power and the weak point seemed to be the actual neo blocks, every failure (even going back and checking one of the original blocks that failed) all failed in the same way, internal cracks in the bore caused by suspected wild cylinder pressure. The car kept making power when it got more timing, and E85, it was "happy" to make power and kept on doing so, have a look at the dyno sheets somewhere in the photos above.

"You can just put a gate on the manifold/turbo housing"
"Get the smallest turbo for your power goal"
"Run enough timing until the engine won't make more power"

This is kind... of accurate, but if you really push it you may run into problems. Half of the reason I kept changing turbos (and eventually manifold, and eventually running a lot less timing) were measures to address this, and in the end it was actually running pretty solidly.

[No Crust Racing]

Great thread lol reminds me of my first Skyline, but you did a lot more to yours. 

 

Oh and yes I had Bilsteins

 

Edited February 25, 2020 by ActionDan

[Kinkstaah]

I don't have photos for this, but I spoke to my mate about this thread and we got to reminiscing over other things that broke, but no photos were available, so it's gonna a handful of other scenarios where things may not have gone as planned.

STORY TIME

-----

Back in the day, on the original N/A car had a pretty gnarly diff whine. I mean it was LOUD. Because it was 2007 and we didn't know shit, there was a rumour that you could put a banana in a diff (presumably to thicken up the oil?) to see if this would aid anything and if it did, could give an idea as to what was wrong?

In short, this does nothing. But yes, some hours were spent stuffing bananas into the diff, which actually isn't very easy at all, and you have to ask yourself questions like "Do they mean the skin? Do they ONLY mean the skin? What about the actual... banana part? Both? Only the banana part?"

The internet was silent on this.

-----

My car had a running joke/test where I would only be happy with it if it managed to get to the top of Mt Donna Buang (victoria) without a problem*
A problem being some reason I had to pull over or noticed something was wrong. Realistically this meant boost hoses coming off, breaking, some weird noise, something overheating, etc.

In any case the scorecard was up to 7-0 (in the mountain's favour, including a couple of serious breakages.. one of the tow pics is on the way back), but the very first time the car actually made it up, I was understandably jubilant until there was smoke, I was dismissive, but My lovely girlfriend wasn't, and asked me to pop the bonnet to at least check it out. When I did so, I opened the bonnet to find my turbo blanket literally on fire. So Lexi run to the passenger door, pulled out the fire extinguisher and doused the whole engine bay with a fire extinguisher.

This is a normal thing, totally happens to everyone, all the time with cars, not sure why its worth a mention but someone told me I should mention it. I even sold the gear later as "only been on fire once", because it is REALLY HARD to try and remove fire extinguisher residue!

-----

I mentioned that I had gone through many fuel pumps earlier, and some of these melted due to wiring (aka outside barwon prison) whereas others actually simply died, ground themselves in to dust.

I went through a phase where I was pulling out the pump, cleaning the filter on it outside of the car and putting it back in once every 2 weeks or so, and it was clogged with shit. Every time. And the bizarre thing is it kept happening, even though the fuel tank had cracked and been replaced.. twice!.

When this happened for the third tank we decided to pull the tank out and clean it, which involved us basically filling the tank with kerosene and other caustic liquids, and shaking the tank above our heads for 30 minutes each, alternating with this superbrew of hell inside it in the hopes of breaking things down. When we eventually emptied this we found about 50 leaves in the tank as well as a whole bunch of gunk.

But not being people for half measures, we forcibly flushed kerosene through the fuel lines with a high pressure washer, to really, really, absolutely, clean them out. This actually worked, as the foulness that came out of them was beyond belief. We then eventaully put the car back together, and relaxed feeling happy we had finally solved that one.

Except what we didn't know is how desensitised we'd become to the smell of Kerosene through dealing with it the whole day/weekend. I drove the car to work on Monday in an underground parking lot for work.

Half way through the day the site got evacuated due to property services investigating the horrific smell coming from the car - The kerosense was so strong that you could smell it from a good 30m away from the actual car, enough that you couldn't tell exactly where it was coming from.

So yeah I didn't let anyone smoke near my car for quite some time.

-----

One weekend, work was going on with cars in general, as was the tradition.
Being in Frankston, fish and chip shops are abundant, and a great source of nutrients for hungry guys working on cars until well after they realised they actually needed something to eat.
As said car was finally working, with us finishing whatever it is we were fixing/doing we decided to take the 34.
I let my mate drive, it's not his car (his car could have a whole thread, much cooler than mine!) because hey why not.

3 minutes into the 10 minute trip... the car alarm starts going off, while driving at 60/80kmh in the middle of Seaford/Frankston area.

Horns, sirens, flashing headlights, the lot.

Nothing was said in the cabin.

We calmly pull up to the fish and chip shop, sirens blaring, lights going mental, parked in angle parking right infront of the glass window of the shop. Get out of car, walk to the counter, make our fish and chip order like it was any other Saturday afternoon, car going completely mental 4 meters away.

Nothing was said by the fish and chip shop attendants in the ~10-15 minutes that all fish and chip shops take to make an order, as is tradition. Other customers in the shop, sitting around, flipping through terrible magazines, car going completely mental outside the window, noone says anything.

Collect fish and chip order, return to car, car starts because, I don't know, I guess the immobilizer is also not working, and you can also start the car while the car alarm is actually going off.

Casually driving home, nothing is said. Regular traffic, people going on about their day.

Pull up to a light on Frankston-Dandenong road, alarm still going mental.
Oh look, a police car.
Oh look, a police car, pulling up directly next to us at the lights.

No response. Still nothing said by anyone involved.
Light goes green, police car calmly drives on, we also do the same, our paths diverging naturally after a few minutes, as you do.

Just before we pull up at James' place, he calmly says to me:

"I really hope you know how to disable that"

-----

I am sometimes a forgetful person, and the nature of my forgetfulness is completely random.

Another time, another Saturday afternoon, sitting around on couches, watching shit on TV, having lunch.
Haven't actually done anything with the car this time, been sittng around for hours just talking shit and generally just chilling. Probably been there a good 4-5 hours now.

There's a knock on the door. Strange. Saturday at 3pm? Who's knocking on doors in Frankston. Not my place, so James goes to answer the door.

Sketchy looking dude (Frankson) outside. Maybe homeless.

He's got my car keys in his hand.

"Hey mate do you any of you blokes own the car out the front?"
"These keys were just hanging out the door mate, someone could just come along and nick it especially round these parts!!"
"Thought I'd do the right thing and ask around!"

We ended up giving this guy a burger or two and some drink for his troubles.

The internet would have you believe that these cars are theft and police magnets.
I'm not so sure..

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

43 minutes ago, ActionDan said:

Oh and yes I had Bilsteins
 

@PranK can you give us all Bilstein badges? (for the OG members and whoever has/had Bilsteins in their shitliners?)

[Kinkstaah]

 

Before 

Existed, running larger wires for a single pump (that kept f**king melting) was an issue. You could run the wires, but sealing the lid was another story. 

The rear seats of my car were off limits for most people due to the fumes. But it beat breaking down/lines melting/catching on fire. Just remember, no smoking.

In efforts to make it seal I tried approximately every epoxy known to man to try and seal around the wires running through the lid. All failed, some better than others. Some were good vs Petrol, but died when I put Ethanol in. Some were good against Ethanol, but died under Petrol. It was really quite crazy.

Once I used superglue, and glued my fingers together on one hand, like a claw. I did not own Acetone, so I drove 45 minutes across town to where my gf's lovely bestie had acetone handy to un-glue my hand. 

Unfortunately one of the things I used was superglue.

This isn't a 34, but you can see where this is leading, superglue in this area didn't quite stay where I had hoped, and I managed to get Superglue, a really, really strong, industrial grade super glue in the threads between the black locking cap and the fuel bulkhead. And quite a lot, too.

Eventually it was freed... at 3am.. on a Sunday/Monday morning, where yes of course I needed the car to get home. This music was actually playing on the radio at 3am on PBS.

At this point we were more than happy to embrace any spiritual deity of any nature for any kind of blessing at all, to seal the holy heatshrink.

[PranK]

Holy shit, I'm loving these stories! 

 

[ERO54N]

On 25/02/2020 at 3:00 PM, Lithium said:

Jesus, so many ups and downs - hope the journey starts going a bit smoother.   This pic stood out to me, Bilsteins are so diverse in their ability!

Here are mine before they went in my R33, over 10 years ago:

 

Rock out with your shocks out ?