Project Purple Heart

[Matty]

J it sucks to hear about this. What are your plans right now for rebuild?
Strange considering how well she ran at the final event of CSCS last year. Car never seemed to miss a beat, ever.

[Phastwon]

I was a little surprised too Matty. The car ran fine all the time I had it, but now that it is apart, little problems are being found everywhere. Just the way it goes I guess.

[cortexx]

To be honest , if you go looking for problems you'll find it in a 15 yr old engine with 100k klm on it. I've taken some engines apart that seemed to be running ok only to find so much bad stuff inside it's a miracle it ran at all.

I remember pulling a citroen engine out of a car because the guy wacked the oil pan and cracked it so we had to replace it . We dropped the pan off to find lots of metal filings and a rod bearing that had been spinning for so long it had virtually disintergrated . The rod jounal was distorted from heat it warped itself and ran with no knock that we noticed.

We pulled a subaru engine out and split the crankcase on lt to have a large chunk of the casting fall off the size of my hand , yet no oil leaked and it gave no signs of a problem lol .

A twin or triple plate clutch will put alot more thrust on the crank that will cause your problem , not really a problem on a full race engine thats in and out of the car all the time . But on an occasional track car that has seen alot of track over a few years it will manifest itself no doubt.

I was a little surprised too Matty. The car ran fine all the time I had it, but now that it is apart, little problems are being found everywhere. Just the way it goes I guess.

[Phastwon]

Mild picture-less updated #5.

Went to check up on the car today after another series of minor disasters. The long search for properly shimmed buckets has been completed. When upgrading to HKS step 2 cams or any cam with over 10mm of lift you will need shims. The largers lift cams are made using an offset ground base circle which brings the cam away from the bucket after machining. Now your 3mm shims will need to be replaced with 3.3mm shims that no one makes. Luckily Supertech makes buckets for the RB26 that are .3mm thicker allowing the bigger cams to be run.

My oil pump and water pump were fragged. The oil pump actually had a hairline crak all the way through the inner gear. Probably had 500-1000km left before it broke apart, so that is some luck I guess. REplaced with N1 oil and water pumps.

Sourcing OEM bottom end parts was a bitch so I have wound up with a slightly healthier OEM rebuild. I have ACL bearings, ARP mainstuds and rod bolts, but OEM piston Rings and head studs. Cost was a factor in this.

I managed to source a perfect wide-collar crank out of a blown 94 R32 motor, which was a blessing in disguise, compared to buying a new crank. I could only find narrow collar R32 motors locally.

Car is ready to go back together now, just waiting on 3 of the main studs to com ein today or tomorrow. It will need maybe 2,000km to break in before it can be really tuned, who is up for a cruise?

[cortexx]

Bah - my car is in the workshop with its drive shafts and brakes hanging on the ground atm

[Phastwon]

Minor Update #6:

Some more small problems have been niggling in the installation of the motor and tranny. Such as the lower rad hose interfering with the remote filter mount on the cross member.



The motor is in though finally.



Radek has put in a lot of hard time on this at RSTuning. He has thought everything out and is taking time to make sure everything is 100% perfect.

Updates since last time when the motor was found to be on its deathbed.

- N1 pumps
-ACL race bearings
- ARP main studs
- ARP head studs
- ARP rod bolts
- ATI race damper
- swapped HKS 550's for Siemens 700's
- 3L surge tank instead of an ATI 10L cell
- replaced front driveshaft boot (torn)

OS Giken was nice and sent the wrong release bearing with my twin disc replacement. Radek swapped it for a 350Z release bearing which is essentially the same.

I thought my car had a pull to push conversion on it. Apparently though it doesn't and at some point in history someone swapped the whole bellhousing to an R32 housing. Maybe they blew the tranny at some point.

Now comes 1000km of break in time before the car can be tuned. For now it has no front driveshaft and the timing cover is off pending power tuning.

[Phastwon]

More pictures when I get a camera that works.

[Goodlucks7even]

I saw your car on the lift when I dropped mine @ RStuning. I was the "next" after you :P

Btw the pics you took gives no justice to this beast. The car is flawless

PS : My car is the gunmetal R32 GTR with the AVS T7 rims :P

[Phastwon]

Oh I have seen your car there the last couple times I was there then. You are doing turbos and stuff to aren't you.

[ColinR33]

Good to see it coming back together, doing it right takes time. I bet t will be tough to baby it during the break-in period!

[cortexx]

putting the remote oil filter under the car was a good idea , going to do something similar myself when i do my major work next winter...

Good to see this car coming back together again J

[ColinR33]

putting the remote oil filter under the car was a good idea , going to do something similar myself when i do my major work next winter...

Yeah, I like that idea too, working on my oil cooler right now, might have to do that...

[Phastwon]

I thought it was pretty smart too. Radek has put a lot of effort into making sure everything is perfect. The motor is probably making massive compression too. He re-cross hatched all the cylinders by hand, hand filed all the rings, and re-assembled the motor twice over using plastiguage. Probably 200psi in each cylinder.

The break in period is going to be hard for sure. I'll try to put a few km's on the car everytime it is nice out and hopefully be done by the end of March and the start of racing season. I want to destroy CSCS again this year and avenge my 2nd place in the 2010 championship.

[Phastwon]

Mild update. The motor is done being broken in and is back at RSTuning for tuning and set-up with the 780cc injectors. One rear coilover was blown and getting it rebuilt was a challenge. Since they were ancient HKS's pre-hipermax I thought it may be better to just replace them. Through Daryl at RightDrive I got a smoking deal on a set of new HSD HT coilovers. They are remote resevoir, and adjustable for low speed bump, high speed bump and rebound indenpendently. So they can definately be screwed up.

http://www.hsdcoils.ca/range.htm

Car should hopefully be back up and running by next weekend so I hope to post all of the completed pictures then.

J

[cortexx]

Very nice , i was looking for someone to rebuild my endless/zeal function coil overs but no luck yet . I might have to follow your lead and replace them at some time with the ones you have - i looked them up and they sound just the job .

BTW i doubt you'll see 200 psi in a 8:5 1 compression rb26 motor , unless that was upped during the last rebuild ..

ALso i would think Radek would have opened up the gap very slightly on the rings knowing what you are going to subject it to . Nothing good about the rings closing to 0 gap on a fast lap at high rpm .