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/

[Kinkstaah]

One of the things that never seemed right was the handbrake.

Put in some nice new Project Mu shoes. We figured the rears were out, so why not. We're right there. My handbrake never worked well anyway.

Well, this is them, 15km later.

Keen eyes would note the difference in this picture too:

 
And this picture:


Also, this was my Tailshaft bolts:

It turns out my suspicions that one side of the handbrake cable was stretched all along were pretty accurate, as was my intuition that I didn't want to drop the tailshaft to swap them on jack stands and wasn't entirely sure about bolt torque.

I have since bought the handbrake cables which have gone in.

I'm very glad that I went to my mechanic friend who owns an alignment machine to get an alignment before the track day, because his eyes spotted these various levels of "WHAT THE f**k IS GOING ON HERE?".

Turns out the alignment wasn't that bad, considering we changed the adjustable castor arms out for un-adjustable castor arms, and messed with the heights.



Car drove pretty good with one side of the handbrake stuck on, unbleedable rear brakes, alignment screwy, and the tailshaft about to go flying and generally being a death trap waiting to happen!

(I did have covid)
(I maintain I adjusted the handbrake correctly, but movement caused shennanigans and/or I dislodged the spring on the problem side somewhat, or god knows what).

G R E G G E D

[The Bogan]

Lucky pick up

Best to find these things before something horrible happened to the yoke flange thingies

I would hate to think what would happen if it dropped the tailshaft 

Hopefully the holes are not flogged out in the yokes and it was just the bolts that got munted 

As for the hand brake.....ouch, look like the disc got rather hot, and I assume smokey, I recall when I had a front caliper seize on the Commodore, there was lots of smoke and the disc was glowing cherry red when I was able to eventually stop and have a look, and stopping a big heavy car, going down a big hill with some rather high RPM down shifts and some hand brake action is something that makes you think hard about life

[Kinkstaah]

I had absolutely no symptoms whatsoever that anything was wrong....

I'm very happy it was all spotto'd and re-bled and re-torqued and aligned though. Will be picking it up tomorrow and undoubtedly be like

"Oh, that clunk is gone"
"Oh, the car really wants to drive straight"
"Oh, that pedal feels better"
"Oh, it feels like I've gained 25hp"
"Oh, the handbrake works now"

It should have been a sign that the new Project Mu shoes had 3mm of pad depth on them out of the box, and the OEM ones from 25 years ago that we took out also had 3mm of pad depth, implying the issue was not, and never was the shoes, but we put that down to it not being adjusted correctly.

It wasn't, but it wasn't even adjustable at all given one side was boned and the T Junction of the cables was on a 45 degree angle, the non-working side being the one on the massive angle.

Obviously when I had adjusted it and reset it and re-tensioned it I had either got it stuck or something along those lines. Oh well. Live and learn and absolutely could have been catastrophically worse so I'm rationalizing it as a win, kinda.

I also got the chance to measure the distance between rear rim and the suspension arm/shocks and found a 30mm rubber block only just doesn't fit there.

Which is great to know before ordering wheels, when I assumed 30mm was easy. The man with the Porsche adapters has rims that use 23.9mm of that space, so it's safe to assume I have between 23.9 and 29.9mm of space there to play with on the inside.

The wheels looked pretty stupidly pokey with the 20mm spacers on the rear, only for me to find that the studs come out another 12mm and the wheel doesn't actually sit flush with the hub because you're supposed to cut your original studs.

The wheels do have cutouts that kinda accomodate it, but not fully. So my 20mm spacer was anywhere between 25mm and 35mm.

~25mm and send it will determine on where the wheels sit with the spacers on. When I put the pads in for the track day I will mess around with spacers (with wheels that do not clear studs properly when mounted to spacers) and do more math, for the last time, for the 7th time.

[Kinkstaah]

WELP.

I went to the track, and I suppose it went okay because any time you can drive home is okay.

You may notice the car is not on the circuit in this picture.

It was about 35C day out in Benalla which means the track was approximately the surface of the sun, probably. Good things, car did not overheat but it _was_ warmer than when I had done track days in similar heat before, I think, I'm not sure - I can't quite remember.

Coolant got to ~105 via the ECU after 20-30 minutes of belting it in said heat. Oil got up to 145C in one instance which is pretty crazy due to oil cooler. Pressures were fine. I seem to remember this not getting quite so high before the vents. More HMMMM'ing to be done.

On the subject of HMMM'ing, can anyone identify the sounds in the video below, you will know which ones I mean:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj3BkI2cbTc

I included some 'normal' sound as a reference for the first minute or so. The microphone in this instance was where the license plate is. It stopped working later in the day which is why my "best example of a lap video (not produced)" had internal audio - Isn't hearable from inside the car.

I don't mean the chirping of the un-bedded/badly bedded track brakes which you can only hear while braking...

Thoughts, brains trust?

[GTSBoy]

Sounds like it is rotational in the driveline. CV? Tailshaft CB?

Also.....didn't you just pay to have that bit painted and put on the car?

[Kinkstaah]

Ah yes, but the part in my hand was actually painted and fitted by me! I knew any front lip was likely to be sacrificial but I've had to fix it twice already... by the time I buy a fibreglass fixing kit, sort out sandpaper blocks, buy some fibreglass filler, body bog, spend the time and effort for a 'Greg' result... a new one being $290 seems like it's the better way to go and spray that with bedliner/raptor coat and we're all pretty again..

Would have preferred it last more than a month though. Them's the breaks I suppose.

[Milkmun]

Ouch.

Out of curiosity, what are your safety parameters for the coolant and oil temp? What would  be considered dangerous?

[The Bogan]

Do some wool fluff testing on the vents

[MBS206]

Noise sounds to me could be either wheel bearing related (have had similar from bearings going) or that tail shaft is still loose. Or something like a heat shield touching the tail shaft.

[The Bogan]

I would like more noise related info for my truly uneducated guess 

Does it do it at idle or when revving, clutch engaged, and disengaged?

Does it only do it when the car is moving?

I've heard "similar" noises from a clutch pack that left the chat room, and CV joints that have chewed themselves out

But as Matt said, how's the yokes, tailshaft and centre bearing going after their last little issue

Fingers crossed it is something simple 

Weird noises make me cringe 

[Kinkstaah]

Strangely I noticed it either disappear later in the day, or not be present. I definitely noticed when I was crawling around that open wheel thingy entering the pits (that part was audible in car).

Driving home and commuting around town for example, I didn't hear it. It's plausible that it was a brake disc or something still slightly in contact. The brakes absolutely felt BAD for the first couple of sessions, huge amounts of shudder and grinding as they got up to temp - And then I actually just forgot about it as the day went on/didn't notice it. The videos were from the morning when this was more present than the afternoon/drive home when it wasn't.

I've asked around and got a variety of responses including handbrake shoe contacting hub, CV joints, CB tailshaft bearing as above, and clutch input bearing. I didn't test if it disappeared when clutch was in. I haven't noticed it in any of the other videos nor did I notice it when driving to that extent.

More or less hoping the microphone at the rear license plate giving some kind of clue of 'something' but it looks like "spin stuff and see if you can notice it" is the way forward here. I could be smart and use the gopro mic and re-mount it to that location to see if the sound is still present at low speed actually. Sounds like a decent test whenver I have the CBF'ness to drive the car again.

Given it's almost 40C for the day of the track day and the next 3 days after, the CBF is high. All I've done since getting home is unpack the car, remove the remnants of the lip and undertray and left it there.

I was surprised how well the PMU Club Racers actually worked. The brake performance on the track was absolutely fantastic, best I've ever personally used, no fade whatsoever and the bitiness was almost too good, I was scrubbing more speed off than I needed to, but I also ended up infield when I started trying to scrape off ... less speed.... so...

[GTSBoy]

Is there a shroud around the tailshaft spline into the back of the box? They can rub and make a horrible noise if they are not on straight/damaged. The heat might have caused it to grow too much in one direction and rub.

[MBS206]

Did the noise appear after your sand trap adventure?

Could be something got dislodged and is playing rub rub. Even a rock wedged somewhere.