Mistakes were made, my R34 Story

[soviet_merlin]

On 16/03/2023 at 11:35 PM, Kinkstaah said:

This was the route I took. I had kms in my insured kms saved and knew I would need to do the service after. So I figured I'd just give it a bit ol drive. I've wanted to do the alpine road but doing that in a day is pretty crazy as you have to get up very very early to do it, and really needs to be done over a long weekend/take leave.

I sadly don't know much about the drive from Syd to Canberra. I did the scenic route _once_ to Sydney via the coast, but don't remember enough of it to have any opinion, someone more local may know as above

Thank you! I like your style. I had kms left last year and just felt a bit bummed. Your approach is so much better.

I'm saving this route for future trips. Also thank you for reminding me that the mountains in VIC are nice for driving. I have been around the Snowies before years ago in a Subaru wagon shitbox running on 3 cylinders. It was a mix of worrying about overheating before making it up and toasting the brakes going down. But thinking back on it, the roads were great for the right car. I would feel much better about it now.

No worries about my Canberra drive as it was really just an example of one thing for us coming up. I started using the 'avoid freeways' option in google maps whenever we are going somewhere at a time without traffic. It already makes it much nicer.

[Kinkstaah]

On the subject of drives:

Now that my power steering/steering had been freshly installed/entirely revamped and battery/electrical system entirely redone, post-emergency alignment and utterly f**ked tyres, as my new ones I bought in January couldn't be squeezed in/installed in a day....

….to do a 1200km drive through the long weekend from this route:



There were many photos and a few Instagram posts of people who are not me,

https://www.instagram.com/p/CppXVDDpQu2/

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cp5BoUQJBF2/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y%3D
 

     

I did take this photo though:

All in all everything was amazing. The power steering system actually held up flawlessly under some genuinely hilarious load being put through it, because if you noticed the pictures every other car was a:

Civics
MX5s (with boost!)
MR2 (with a K24)
Modern Fiesta ST
Clio RS

Most on much newer than 5yo Tyres, and a few on R-Comps, in the twistiest, unrelenting roads in Vic. And the old tank of a boat or whatever it is really held up well, and supposedly quite intimidating making big angry V8 noises in the mirrors of cars that it had no right to hang with in such twisties.

The only fatalities was one of the civics did a bottom end in Mitta Mitta (he hired a truck to tow it back the next week) and I melted my exhaust hangers with my exhaust due to the unrelenting RPM and … spiritedness of driving it. The actual metal rods the hangers slide over got so hot they melted through the Poly exhaust hangers that I thought were an upgrade. Perhaps Polyurethane is not the best material for an exhaust hanger.

I did provide this information to where I bought them, and the business refunded me. My retired rubber exhaust mounts have now been re-added, with a hoseclamp around them to reinforce them some - a trick I saw on a similar thread about melted polyurethane exhaust hangers.

While on the subject of Polyurethane, apparently my diff bushes had also left.

These left long before this drive, and were the reason I got a bit of a clunk on any acceleration. Luckily the tyre provider had a set of spare rubber ones from a S15 that was going solid. They have a better design so the part cannot simply exit. The clunk is now gone.

So yes, great times, everyone vowed to do it again soon, and another 3 day booking and $500+ in fuel, everything was great, and I came back to get my previously-purchased-but-not installed tyres, and another alignment to fix my OCD.

Until my alternator appears to have died and let go.



https://speedmaxinnovation.com/blogs/news/almost-all-the-gm-alternator-information-you-could-need?page=2

This very helpful link makes me believe that while I have an American standalone loom for my LS, they didn’t seem to actually put a resistor in (or it isn’t connected to my battery lamp/adapted to it, or I forgot/didn’t care at the time) the one wire the alternator uses.

So the 175A alternator I have my custom pulley on is off for an old school man to look at, to avoid me having to buy another $700+ 215A alternator and move my pulley onto it.

At least with the power steering deleted from the engine bay it is a very simple belt arrangement and very easy to remove the alternator. At least it wasn’t stuck in Mitta Mitta with a broken bottom end.

[Milkmun]

These drives seem amazing, is there a particular group who host such things or more so a bunch of mates. Would love to attend one.

[Kinkstaah]

In this case it was literally a friend who invited me into a Whatsapp group of a bunch of pre-existing guys going for said drive. I think that they generally keep these things small, as you would have noticed, MOST cruises or drives are far shorter and far less spirited, or entirely stuck in a carpark somewhere.

The alternator was fixed by "A guy I know" from my Older Italian Mechanic contact. I have no further details as to what actually failed, but I wired in the needed resistor and reinstalled it and I now have 14.1V and life is good again.

I also finally got new tyres installed, which actually work as well, with another alignment, which actually makes the car drive straight.

I also finally (after 10+ years) figured out how the glovebox is supposed to bolt in, realising I had either being ziptying or ignoring the bottom most hole, thinking something was missing. Turns out there's a metal bracket there, with the same thread as the rest of the screws for the glovebox. So that is also up and running as Mr Nissan intended.

Also hammered the hole in the exhaust shut.

Brakes still get juddery, but it's proably more the fact of the pad not actually fitting the caliper properly. I plan on living with it because... most of the time driving around it is fine. Who really needs a pad to fit into a caliper properly anyway?

[Kinkstaah]

So nothing has happened because nothing needed to happen. I am waiting on parts to arrive for bodykit reasons, and as we all know, this takes a very long time.

But everyone likes some misadventures, so here they are.

I had a mysterious squeak appear from the engine bay. I thought the worst and thought it was cam chirp or something along those lines, but figured I would check the belts first as that's what everyone says to do.

This belt was 2500km old.

I've replaced it with a slightly less-torsioned belt this time. I had heard you needed to be unable to flex a belt more than 45 deg, so now I know it's "About 90" it hopefully will last longer?

I also snapped my key in half opening the boot.

When replacing the serpentine belt, I noticed this windscreen issue too.

Not to worry! The belt is no squealing, I had 5 spare keys, and insurance will cover 1 free glass.

 

 

.... so it became time to call the people responsible for panels and paint very urgently. Good thing Optus wasn't having a nationwide outage that day when I was stuck outside with a car with no windscreen.

Luckily the chain of "I know a guy" found a body repair shop that can clean this out/sort it/paint it/warranty it courtesy of a group of old gents with a bunch of bare metal restored holdens-in-progress at a very very fair price.

So end of next week - may be back on the road with a windscreen and less rust. I did also talk 'Workshop 2' into accepting the car with paint and panels for early next year.

This arrived with my new future front bar for free, which was nice!

I also bought a brake kit on advise from Dose, because I was somewhat tired of trying to find brake pads for my Attakd brake kit (which is not identical to G2/Ksport)

With extreme patience (and paint thinners and a toothbrush) I was able to take these:

 

To this:

No, I did not respray them. Yes it would have been probably more sensible to sandblast them and repaint them. But after awhile I was just happy to be able to do it by removing the later of awful red paint the previous owner had attempted to paint it all with

now if HFM would release their brackets, it'd be great.

[PranK]

Brakes look great! So much nicer.

 

[GTSBoy]

59 minutes ago, Kinkstaah said:

This arrived with my new future front bar for free, which was nice!

Cute.

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

You planning to use the Z1 motorsport adaptors? or just wait for HFM?

I'm thinking of trying to make the Z1 motorsport adaptors work, just one downside, we need to know how thick the mounting tabs are on the R33/34 spindle vs. the 300ZX.

[Kinkstaah]

3 hours ago, Dose Pipe Sutututu said:

You planning to use the Z1 motorsport adaptors? or just wait for HFM?

I'm thinking of trying to make the Z1 motorsport adaptors work, just one downside, we need to know how thick the mounting tabs are on the R33/34 spindle vs. the 300ZX.

I'm waiting for HFM. I still have sets of pads (current road ones which do not fit properly, and the track ones which do) for my Attakd/Stock setup currently. It's entirely possible to be able to get more, but it's definitely not as easy as "Oh I have a 370z, give me pads for 370z".

When I spoke to HFM about it, they advised the Z1 won't be exactly the same as the R34 due to the offsets being slightly different? They also stated that the threads in the Z1 are aluminium, whereas HFM use a stainless steel helicoil insert which I'm a fan of. 

That and they modelled their kit on the R34 specifically, which I have... in Melbourne.. where I am. I was just jumping on this before I have to buy a new set of rings for the front kit, which while they are a bit heat warped, aren't that 'worn'.

But now I have two sets of rotors and 3 sets of brake pads for the 370z Akebonos. So basically I'm set for life in regards to brake consumables now.

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

nice man, I'll see how you go with your setup, if it works well with the HFM kit I will see if R34 GT-t spindles/uprights just bolt up to the R33 shit box.

[Kinkstaah]

Also: This arrived!

(it will now gather dust for many months after being repackaged up)

[Kinkstaah]

So, after some delicate sandblasting I now have a windscreen again. It's funny how new windscreens look different. It has a big shade band and looks a little blue through it.

Lucky for me (rare) the maximum damage of that rust was really just some light pitting.

It's time to just drive/enjoy and wait for the painting man to become available which is supposedly next Jan (at some point)

[Kinkstaah]

Old pacific highway is pretty cool, I think I'll stay awhile.

(Anyone wanna lend me a multimeter or a walbro 460/525 pls :p)

 

[GTSBoy]

At least it's right side up!

Shit time of year for things like this, heh? I'm running on half my house's GPOs, because I have a fault in the wiring on one circuit and the electricians are all on holiday.

Just put a for sale sign on it and walk away? It might be a better outcome.

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

1 hour ago, GTSBoy said:

Just put a for sale sign on it and walk away? It might be a better outcome.

Then get an IS-F

[admS15]

So, did you get it going again or did you become an overnight camper?

[Kinkstaah]

Well, I was stuck on the side of the road for 10 hours, speaking to RACV, NRMA, and Nationwide.

I spent the next few days driving around Sydney in a borrowed car collecting random wiring bits in an attempt to fix it, considering I had no tools whatsoever I suppose Lex and I did pretty decently, and got the whole thing rolling again.

Here's some more gore photos!

The NRMA guy was messing with the ground wire for the pump and it was arcing/moving in the boot.

And as shown, it has been melting the bulkhead fitting and generally creating a pretty shitty connection with regards to grounding. The thought was perhaps the bulkhead under the lid was loose. Being unable to pull the pump out or remove the lock ring (even though I was hitting it with an alloy pipe and a breaker bar over and over) it got towed and I bought the appropriate tool.

Note: It took me and the Sydney tools fellow about ~3 hours to actually locate the tool on the shelf. This is not hyperbole, and it summed up the general cursed plan to go to NSW and try out their driving roads.

After 3 hours, I went with the lock ring tool to remove the pump and investigate further.
 

....

After extreme swearing and quite a fair bit of sobbing, I eventually removed the old hat to find this on the other end.

It was tight and sealed and entirely fine.

This wiring from a decade ago was actually pretty resilient, even including the ziptie shibari keeping those joins apart, holding fast for a decade.

However there were problems that still needed addressing, I needed to find someone who could sell a fuel hat, in Sydney, that wasn't closed over the Christmas break.

I did find Vega Autosports who were opened, and answered my sad phone call, 5 minutes after their close time and agreed to be there the next morning to sell me the part (and lend a drill to drill it for my lines). And sell me a seal. And a new lock ring. I asked for a sticker and got offered a pair of shirts!

Consider helping him out by buying all your random OEM bits for various cars.

Armed with a new fuel hat, emergency surgery happened to get the car going.

However, I only had a set of pliers and no wiring to actually complete these joins. I hurt my hands in an extreme way to get these to somewhat crimp. The above things were collected over a good 8ish trips to shops around Sydney to find things.

Installed in car, put back on relay, and YAY, PRIME!

I tested the car, drove around the block and everything seemed normal again. Hooray!
Then I put the car back together, and no start.

After more sobbing/swearing/rapid disassembly of boot. I couldn't find why, until I realised the main power/ground of the pump wasn't actually the issue. The actual issue was the two wires (or maybe one of them) that was running through the relay to trigger the pump. When plugged directly through the bypass terminal on the relay, everything was fine.

That's not to say that very arcing/melting ground on the power pin of the pump was particuarily 'good', but at least the trigger wires could be repaired at home, given they were out of the loop.

With MOST of the car together (keeping this relay visible) we headed home the next morning, only a day late on Christmas Eve.

 

[Kinkstaah]

However to add onto this, the car lasted about ~5 hours until it died going over speed bumps at Glenrowan BP, about ~5 hours from home, and ~5 hours from Sydney.

When this was investigated, basically every single join in the wiring more or less just fell apart with no force at all, in any way. Eyelets just slipped off, as did female blade terminals on the fuse, which was leaking fuel. At this point I said to Lex that it was really unlikely that the plug at the pump was any better, and pulling it apart was one thing, but making it actually work without a crimper nor any solder was going to make it work.

RACV was called again, and the patrol guy came out and agreed with the situation as you do. However the tow wasn't going to be available until the next day. So we were given an option of potentially staying overnight for NYE in Wangaratta, to which I was not happy with, after waiting for ten hours for a tow a couple of days before.

RACV couldn't get me a hire car to drive home - So they ended up paying for a Taxi to take us both home, and said the car would be delivered the next day to my house. This Taxi ended up costing $850, (usually the limit for RACV is $300 per breakdown tow), and RACV paid the extra. Not to mention how much the actual tow would have cost for the same distance ontop of that.

I'm pretty happy with RACV total care, definitely paid its way for these two events, even if the first one took awhile, which was more of an issue with NRMA and miscommunication than RACV.

The car arrived at my house at about 9am on New Years day (lol when did the guy leave?!) and eventually was pushed into the drive, and later that day I pulled it apart to find that yeah - The wiring to the plugs had become disconnected/fell out just like the others.

So what's next?

Well, I have no idea.

It appears that the wiring had fuel in it due to capillary action, which can be overcome by pretty much having any solder in there which gets between the wires and stops this. So actively soldering the plug in the tank should stop this ending up dripping from the relay inside the boot...

I never used grommets in the past to stop fumes by running wires through the tank lid. I have no idea why I never tried using a damn grommet. I don't like the idea of bulkheads purely because the connections clearly became loose over time, hence the melting. Less joins/less f**kery is my way of thinking, as long as the grommets do a decent job sealing against fumes/explosive fumes.

however, in the past I've:

1) Melted the stock plug - so an upgrade of wiring is needed clearly as the OEM Nissan plug running 12V caused this to melt the lid

2) Wires through the lid always leaked/caused fumes, not ideal with relays and other power sources in the boot with regards to oxygen and fuel vapor (may be solved with grommets)

3) Eyelets/Bulkhead fittings have become loose over time, causing arcing and melting.

So this leads to Deutsch plugs in the lid itself, being secured by physical clips by virtue of clipping in may be the way forward. However all of those plugs are only rated to 10AMP though everyone seems to have no issue using this. I don't like rewiring the fuel level sender to a deutsch plug while sitting in the boot. Feels complicated.

I contacted FPG but when I noticed their products, I have seen their lids:

1) Use wires through the lid like this

2) Use Eyelets

3) Use Deutsch plugs directly like:

4) Use some kind of OEM plug like the R32/S13!

So I'm really not sure which approach is the way to go here. It _implies_ that going through the tank lid with wiring directly worked at least semi-well, or that they trashed this plan and eventually moved to Deutsch plugs.

I summarized most of this and got in touch via FB, though at this point not sure I'll buy the alloy lid, because if the implication is that wires-through-the-tank is fine enough, then I'd rather continue using that instead of paying $1k for something that isn't any better, though I may do it purely because I know that Deutsch plugs will at least stay connected over time by virtue of clipping in.

I still don't know why Walbro put 10AMP max wiring inside the fuel tank for their own plug. Clearly I'm missing something here.

hopefully I can get the car moving reasonably before I ping Mr Paint about taking it out of my driveway for XYZ months to get it painted_.

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

FFG hat, buy better crimpers and please no solder!

[Kinkstaah]

I did not have crimpers in Sydney. I have them here.

Why no solder? It stops wicking, it's strong and stuff. Explain why. FFG wiring is puny. I demand science. I can attest to the previous wiring clearly lasting many years inside a fuel tank, although heatshrink turned into quite an exotic material.