My 1995 GTR project thread.

[archaeic_bloke]

nice! RIPS items are top notch!

[cortexx]

A recent edition to the Pron under the hood was a RIPS special oilcatch / washer fluid tank that came a few weeks ago - the original water bottle was dirty and ugly , it had to go. I also wanted a decent oil catch can that i can plumb back into the oil system so that i dont have to empty it. After a bit of internet reseach i decided that if it was good enough for the rips cars , it was good enough for mine. Not cheap but I only like to do a job once. here is the old bottle -



here is the new tank - notice holes for both original screen washer pumps



and if you look in the top right corner you can see the tank roughed in , i have the fittings and breather lines on order , decided to use russel fittings after getting perforated fingers trying to attach earls ends to stainless braided lines.



one more shot of the oil cooler setup everyone seems to like , you can also see wher i hid the hid ballasts (no pun intended )on the passenger side here .

[cortexx]

The removal of the turbos and associated parts was not a particulary hard job , I have to admit it was a little intimidating because i read so much negative info on the job. I do have years of experience working on small European cars though as a mechanic early on in life so in retrospect this was not a hard job.

At this point i plugged the charcoal cannister lines using rubber nipples from Canadian tire and removed it from the radiator support. I also plugged the line to the fuel tank. In theory this shouldnt need to be open as the car has a vented fuel tank cap , but if it produces strange results when being driven i'll review this mod.

The rubber pipes and other fittings were not really in a satisfactory condition for return to the car so Daryl kindly hooked me up with a trust/Greddy suction kit and a couple of airinx filters. Should work well with the tomei turbos and exhaust components.

I also contacted fireball coatings and took the tomei pipes up to them for ceramic coating , after chatting to the guys there we decided on their ceramic XMC coating on the insides of the pipes and regular ceramic coating on the outside. The tomei kit came with a set of thermal bandage wrap that i hate due to a past failed wrapping job and a melted radiator fan .

3 coats on the inside and 2 coats on the outside will reduce outside temps by as much as 70% and keep the heat in the gases causing an increase in exhaust velocity of around 8-10% which is great for turbo spool . I'l post pics of this stuff when i get the chance. The coating looks amazing.

check out firebals website - http://www.fireballcoatings.com/inde...tpage&Itemid=1

I drilled a hole in my greddy y pipe and migged the bung into it for the wideband sensor and had them coat this too . so everything fromt he header to the cat is ceramic coated (not including the turbo casings). Should also keep more heat in the cat which hopefully helps the car pass emissions easier .

total cost for the coatings was around $600 for 2 headers , 2 dump pipes and a y pipe.

[cortexx]

Thanks for the kind words i'm sure you get to see the car sometime as i plan to come to some of the meets etc.

Turbo removal :-

I have to admit I looked at all the crap the nissan engineers decided to stuff down the passenger side of the engine and though about paying rightdrive to do the work . I called Mike and Daryl and them gave me an amazing quote but I have always tried to work on my own projects becase of the satisfaction it brings knowing i did it myself. You also learn more about your platform by doing this than any website can teach you although I did follow alot of advice given on here and also an aussie skyline forum .

The Turbo removal job looked more daunting than it was , i raised the car on axle stands and wheel ramps to get comfortable work height and also make it easy to get underneath. I spent one evening removing all the junk from the turbos including the cracked flexi intake piece . Only 2 of the water pipe unions gave me a hard time so i carefully torched them and worked them loose. I have all the original water and oil lines in one piece incase i need to reuse them.

My friend Mike came aorund to make some room in the workshop beer fridge and in return volunteered to lie under the car and remove the y-pipe , which along with all the studs and nuts had been treated with antisieze. This made taking it all apart as easy as if it had just been assembled . Even the bolts on the y-pipe to cat came apart easily.

We followed a hint found on another skyline site and dropped the turbos about 3/4 inch off the flange and passed 1/4 inch extensions and uj's through the gap between the manifold flange and the turbo housing to remove the 2 hard to get at exhaust monifold nuts. Not one broken stud. I also read that you should undo the powersteering pump to facilitate removal of the manifold nuts but we did it easily without having to touch the pump at all.

Pulled the turbos out , yanked off the turbo oil drain tubes and dismantled the assemblies on thebench removing dump pipes etc and gave the turbos a good wsh in the tank . The turbos had no endfloat or side to side motion until we washed the oil of the the bearings , then there was some noticable play , to be expected though with no oil in the bearings.

Cleaned them up and sold them on kijiji for someone to rebuild.

Called daryl at right drive and have worked out a price on a set of tomei arms turbos with install kit including all stainless lines, gaskets . Everything to change the turbos and replace all fittings with new These will work well with my Tomei headers and dump pipes that i already have.

[bellis_GTR]

Agreed Very nice write up. I like reading about people's misfortune and seeing the end result, shows you did it your self!

Did you have any problems getting the turbos out? Any snapped studs or cracked coolant lines? Still waiting to pull mine out, but Im scared to do it lol. Also the place its stored in isnt heated!

Loving the thread and cant wait too see more!

ps I wish I got to see the car while you were in London!

PSsss Beautiful picture in the calender!

[cortexx]

Previous to the removal of the above peices , i was required to remove the energizer from the spark plug cover , when i finally pulled the plugs i noticed that the rear socket was in 2 pieces . This was the result of the last person that removed this pulling the plug out without pressing the tab to release it in effect breaking the plastic moulding. They had attempted to glue it back together with superglue and it didn't work too well.

I took a dremel with a fine wire wheel and spent about 15 minutes going crosseyed cleaning all the glue off and cleaned up the broken plastic edges so that they mated together properly .then i reglued it back together with 5 minute apoxy resin to make sure it wouldn't end up in the same state again. I think it looked as good as new after i was done

before the repair -






and after the repair -

[cortexx]

Yeah Ive never been a fan of JRPs pricing but they dont screw around when it comes to in-stock items and speedy ordering.

Did the kit come with that duct?

yes it did come with a bunch of aluminum pieces that i figured out how to make into a duct no thanks to the lack of instructions

So back when i was pulling things apart to work on the motor , I figured id strip the cam covers of their old 15 year flakeing coatings and paint them. After some trial and error i finally settled on this stuff to do the job. I bought it in Walmart of all places but if you intend to do the same job please wear eye protection and some rubber gloves . I ended up with blistered hands and an eyebath attached to an eye for 10 minutes for NOT wearing protection.



This stuff acts so fast you can see the coating lift off the metal and it makes a cool crackling sound if you put your ear to it (and thats how i got in my eye )
After 10 minutes i ended up with this -



and after another 10 minutes in my wash tank i ended up with this -



as you can see the aluminium castings are crap and need a good sanding to remove the imperfections. However after spending some time doing this i noticed that the more material i removed , the more imperfections came to the surface . So after 4 hours with a die grinder and a handfull of different grade buffing pads and polishes it transformed from this -



into this -



once the 3 main pieces were done after around 20 hours of labour , i threw them back on the head to se what it would look like , this was the result -

[Oakville]

Yeah Ive never been a fan of JRPs pricing but they dont screw around when it comes to in-stock items and speedy ordering.

Did the kit come with that duct?

[LuckyGTR]

sick car props midnight purp ftw!

[cortexx]

Where did you get that beautiful oil cooler? That duct that comes with it looks great as well.

That beautiful oil cooler came from HKS Japan Via JRP in oakville , they ordered it for me last year. Pretty expensive though- over $1000 . AND it didnt have the filter relocation unit , i have a trust one which i might fit on the HKS block but not sure if im going to use it yet.

[cschepp]

Where did you get that beautiful oil cooler? That duct that comes with it looks great as well.

[Phastwon]

Good write-up so far Paul. I'll be interested to see the final product.

[326_godzilla]

^ great write up!!!

Looking forward to more updates.

[cortexx]

Nicely done! Why didn't you update with the 97 headlight light though? They come stock with HID.

because the only ones i can find are $2500 on ebay , so 2 hid kits will fit the bill until i finally replace the light units. At the moment there are other mods more important to spend $2500 on

[archaeic_bloke]

that hks cooler is damn nice though....