Mistakes were made, my R34 Story

[MBS206]

Forgot to mention.
I love the fact that Greg, Gregged Up, the model of his car, that has so many gregged up stories about its build! I had to have a little laugh. At the same time thinking "That's the sort of thing I'd do to myself!"

[Kinkstaah]

2 hours ago, admS15 said:

She's looking good Greg. Colour suits it perfectly 👍

Twas your car many moons ago that gave me the idea!

[PotatoCake]

No new updates from the op after covid, hopefully everything is ok...

[Kinkstaah]

I feel I have covid right now.

I spent the time between Dec 21 and Jan 31 pretty much working 16 hour days on the car after it got back from paint. It turns out you generate a long list of "things to do" while the car is off the road but functional.

After going to visit my mate for a "Couple of hour job" doing the brakes, 3 full days later I got home

There was more on the list, (it got added to while sleeping on couches) but as everything on the list got enthusiastically crossed out as it happened, I've actually forgotten what they were. From memory there were bushes that had to be pressed in and out, washer jets to fit, etc.

Some Gregging highlights:

1) The panel shop covered up my washer jets and painted over it. Good job, I think. We had to drill the new bonnet to fit new ones, which was understandably extremely scary.
2) My handbrake on the RHS is f**ked. After never adjusting it forever and learning on the fly, this one is still on my to-do list. It tightens when you pull the lever, but at about 10% of the tension that the passenger side does. Thoughts on what causes this would be great.
3) Pouring an entire liter of brake fluid over the reservoir because I forgot how to use my pressure bleeder. DON'T PUT FLUID IN THE RESERVOIR. IT WORKS BY USING PRESSURIZED AIR NOT PRESSURIZED FLUID.
 

 I can confirm the vents work great though.

4) Some of the bodykit fixings were f**king awful. I'm talking screwed in with what was at most a 2mm screw, and could flap the kit around by hand.

Too many others to mention. They came in, went out of my brain forced by other stupid tiny things that came up and "While the car is on the damn hoist we can fix them" which was a mission in and of itself, because the car has skirts and is thus a pain to put on hoists.

Because we had to buff the windscreen to get rid of the overspray, I also had to very gently wash the car.

The "Run 3 wires" task was to re-attempt another gregging thing which was:

The LS1 ECU in Australia does not have oil pressure wiring because the Commodores do not have a 'real' oil pressure switch
The Corvettes in the USA do have oil pressure wiring because Corvettes have a real oil pressure switch.
The ECU is the same physical ECU.

So what I could do is pull the ECU apart, run 3 more pins and run it to the OEM oil pressure ECU, and the ECU should do this. What actually happened is that Greg did this with some not-so-proper-wiring/connectors to the ECU pins which 'might?' be okay put the car back together, and then the fuel pump wouldn't prime.

So you can imagine I immediately undid all this work, put the ECU back into it's original configuration, thought I'd do some more research about what connectors the LS1 Ecu actually uses... and try again later.

Except still no fuel pump prime. After a lot of sadness and checking/double checking it turns out it was the relay in the boot that controls the fuel pump. All I did was switch the trigger wires and it worked fine. I looked at the relay and it was covered in bog dust and was unknown years old. It's since been replaced and working fine.

After I got the actual connectors, and the wires were ran I gathered my strength and repinned the ECU and Voila! I apologize for these MMS 

 And even via ODB2 on the headunit, woo. Now Torque Pro can raise hell on track if it gets too low. It has a wonderful EMERGENCY_DISTRESS_SINGAL style warning if it goes below a certain threshhold.

TLDR: Car great. HFM kit works. So much cleaning. Buy my old stuff. Thanks. 

 

[GTSBoy]

Haha. Good work. I feel some of your pain because I spent a bunch of time under my car over the period too. Probably nowhere near as much as you did. My happiness is similarly improved by obtaining a desired result though.

Those side skirts are.....hecking. Very unfriendly for street and hoist. Sounds to me like you've made a cart that needs to be driven up only planks/blocks at a 2 post hoist, rather than trying to get it up onto a 4 poster.

It's very pretty, by the way. Somewhat reminiscent of Marty's squid ink on SuperGramps - at least in the photos.

[Kinkstaah]

I did a bit of googling, the color MCM used was Galaxy Grey from House of Kolor. This is actually a colour I picked out about ~10+ years ago (or more).

This one is a stock BMW colour, I guess over the years I figured it was smart to get an OEM colour that was pretty common for all of those sensible reasons one can think of..

[thatjawncrazy]

don't know anyone in this thread, but i just found it, read the entire thing in a few hours, realized greg is still posting progress, and just have to say, this is awesome. it looks awesome.

100% right about the Uras kit making it a pain to get on hoists...have the same kit on my 34 and it takes six 2x4s and race ramps to do it without taking parts off.

this reminds me exactly of this thread. https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/build-projects-and-project-cars/r63-amg-the-unicorn-of-my-destruction/110824/page8/