My 1995 GTR project thread.

[cortexx]

Actually making things like this is relatively easy once you get started. As for my occupation ? I run a computer retail business/service center that specializes in onsite service , corporate networking and security

After leaving my original career I was originally trained for electronics specializing in analogue and digital microprocessor control systems, trained to repair TV's and videos later on then took a complete change of direction and did a 3 apprentiship as an auto technician . After another 3 years i went back into electronics programming and repairing pinball, slot machines, juke boxes, and arcade gaming equipment, then i spent 5 years reclothing snooker tables and pool tables before retraining yet again for computer tech , then i moved to canada 16 years ago and have been repairing and networking computer equipement since.

I have also picked potatoes for farmers , gutted and prepped fish for sale in a fish market, worked in a fish and chip shop, delivered booze to retired military personel , construction labourer and a few others i could go into ...

Basically what ever it takes to make a living - I lived in England and Germany most of my life - moved around a bit because of different deployments and postings .

[steveo1502]

Nice little machine, would be handy to have, and not a bad price compared to the bigger ones. May I ask what u do for a living? You do very nice work,making this stuff yourself is intense, sounds like you have a lot of experience, can wait to see it finished. I'm sure you'll post some nice dyno sheets

[cortexx]

Its a mini lathe, bench top one like this ....

http://littlemachineshop.com/4200

They have to be disassembled , cleaned and reassembled and calibrated when you get it but once set up properly you can turn out some very nive and precise work on it. Practice and experience make a shuge difference.

[cory]

Great job... This car has to be one of...if not already cleanest r33s.

Where did you get access to the lathe? Or it that part of your company

[cortexx]

LOL well , im going to machine them a soon as the material arrives hopefully soon

going to mock up a set in nylon bar first so that i can make a tool to perfectly turn on the inner bearing face that the shaft slides through , i have to make up 2 sandwich plates to seal the ports on the ITB with an air attachment so that i can pressure test them once done , ill compare with old set of seals vs new bushings and see the difference.

The FLourosint is very expensive , well over $100 for a 12 inch piece 1 inch diameter. But if i can get the tolerances right it has the potential to pretty much provide a complete seal AND reduce shaft friction at the same time at high levels of boost

Lubrication of choice for the bushings above is fluidfilm

[SlidingSideways]

soooo fresh sooo clean

it almost a shame that you're going to have to put oil in it when it done and make it all durrty

also, did you end up making those bushings/itb pieces out of that special extraterrestial material/moon rocks?
how'd it go?

[cortexx]

Talking of simplest tasks taking forever , a few pages back I showed a pic of my lathe with a bar of Techtron mounted in the chuck. I finished the parts tonight - took 3 hours of machining to get the pieces i wanted to spec. There are 6 halves of the spring retainer bushings that needed to be replaced.

Measuring the ITB housings i noticed how random the size of the outer casings were. They averaged around 3.4cm +/- .03mm .

I was intending to make a set of bushings to friction fit with a tolerance of .002 mm but i had to widen the gap to make sure they fitted on each casting with no problem. The factory units are a sloppy fit but i wanted to do a better job.

I ended up making 3 sets , the raised lip ended up being around .2mm thicker , and the OD of the main cylinder was around .3mm thicker. The spring seems to sit and rotate on this size alot happier and it stops the spring from distorting sideways when the throttle is activated.

Here is a comparison shot of the old 17 yr old units that are falling apart compared to the new ones...




Here is the ITB with the parts located into position , not finally installed yet because i have yet to replace the seals on the shafts . Thats the next thing to make once the material gets here ..




and another shot just for the hell of it ...



I spent ages trying to find these pieces . No luck from Nissan - or from places like RHD japan etc . You actually have to buy the whole ITB fully assembled . And they arn't cheap ..

The material for this set was around $30 and maybe 3 hours of machine work to make them . It would take alot less time if they were not made of plastic. I had to run the lathe very slowly or the cutting edge heats so quickly that it just melts the piece. Still cheaper than a new set from nissan And the material is far superior .

Maybe I should tool myself up and sell some rebuild kits lol .

The shaft seal replacements are next. I have a 1ft bar of flurosint 500 bar on order ( it's $97 per ft 1 inch diam ) . Its an exotic plastic that is based on PTFE (teflon to the uninitiated of you) that is partially filled (plastic alloyed) with Mica. This makes it less likely to deform under stress , it has excellent heat resistance characteristics and has a very low friction coeficient thanks to it's self lubricating nature. This means I will be able to machine the shaft to bushing clearance of aorund .0001 thou , which will be enough for free rotating movement of the shaft and a small enough gap to stop vaccum leaks altogether . Another great property is that it's thermal expansion rate is nearly identical to aluminium meaning that the close tolerances will remain under normal running conditions.

I am seriously considering buying a tiny cnc mill so that i can cut out some thermal barrier gasket to go between the ITB's and the inlet manifold , these would stop the conduction of heat from the culinder head to the intake assembly and help keep things a bit cooler.

[cortexx]

Thanks Jeurgen

Well one things leads to another and having gone to the effort of buying decent parts i might just as well make sure everything is as good as new as it goes together ... It's funny how some of the simplist tasks take the longest though..

Looking great Paul. You are really going all out on this thing.

[Phastwon]

Looking great Paul. You are really going all out on this thing.

[bellis_GTR]

Bloody awesome craftsmanship!! I feel daft for not coming to see this in person, being so close. I'm sure I'll see in the spring tho!

p.s
Love the detailed pictures!

[cortexx]

With a little discomfort i remove the lock pin on the engine stand and span the assembly 180 degrees to give me access to the bottom end ....




You can see where and how much material was removed from the crank during the balancing process by the machine shop. This is the last look inside before it gets covered forever (or until i blow it up and need to rebuild it again). Here is the best rod bolt in the business




The windage baffle trays degreased , ultrasonic cleaned and installed .....




Incidentally if anyone can tell me what the second row of small holes around the oil pan are for i'll be eternally grateful Although i had the original fasteners for the trays i ditched them in favour of more allen headed bolts instead .

Its worth pricing out prts from Nissan while doing this king of work, this unit was picked up for $28 brand new in box. For the price it was a no brainer if only to avoid using a used one that might have some unseen debris lurking in it somewhere.



Now I looked at the Nissan Fast pages and also the rb26 engine manual. Interestingly one shows a gasket and the other showed an O-ring and i'm not sure why . The gasket kit came with both so i used a gasket for installation but that might change before pan installation with more research .



And this is where i left it ready for the rear crank seal install and pan install ....




You'll also notice the furl rail is now on - here was that assembly :-

HKS 10.5mm fuel rail with a set of 680cc HKS injectors shoehorned into them. (Incidentally the HKS denso 680's are identical to the greddy/trust 720 injectors - wonder who is telling lies on their flow rates ?)



I also noted that once mounted the injectors while tight did not seat firmly on the o-rings in the intake manifold , wondering if this is normal ? or maybe i have to machine the HKS mounting posts to drop the injector into the intake a bit further to seat the oring a little tighter in the manifold - input from you guys would be appreciated

Also replaced the earlier thermostat housing and top rad hose casting pieces i cleaned a while back with ones with less corrosion damage on them . While the originals would more than likely seal I myself would know that they were badley corroded and would regret using sub-par pieces in my build so Vlad came up with some more pieces that were cleaned ultrasonically






30 minutes later in the tank with my new chemicals I got the following results :-









Its the cleanest you can get them without replacing them with new pieces.

Incidentally - we are currently equipping a lab in Brantford that will specialize in Ultrasonic cleaning and will offer this to anyone who needs the service. We will eventually be able to clean rims , engine blocks . A weekly pickup/delivery service will be offered for anyone in the Toronto area .. Ill post the details somewhere else when the time comes..


should have more updates next week - time to sleep off this cold ... caio

[cortexx]

But on with the fun stuff ....

I finally got around to pick up another batch of allen headed bolts for further engine assembly . Had now got the right lengths to mount the intake manifold properly to the head . People ask why do i pprefer them .....

The main reason is that a good set of allen drivers rival a socket for ability to not so easily strip the head. The allen headed driver set i have has a balled shaft meaning that in hard to get at places i have the ability to tilt the drive up to 40 degrees without compromising the integrity or the head or reducing the torque load like i would by using a UJ in on a socket. They also look cleaner and take up slightly less room in tight places.



I then installed the Tomei stainless ITB gaskets and threw on a couple of the ITB's to see what it looked like



Aty this point the ITBS are coming back off to finish being rebuilt . The plastic sheaths that the springs are mounted on near the spindle outputs are old , broken and in need or replacement. They are not available from nissan or from anywhere else for that matter so i decided to make my own .

This is the part i am talking about :-




You can see the missing chunks , these 2 were the best of the 6 that need to be replaced.

I am making them out of Techtron HPV PPS round bar which is a great polymer for this type of usage. I use a lathe to turn the bar down to the flanges you see above ..




I'll post pictures of the finished pieces on my next update , they are not finished yet due to the fact i lost the parting tool i use to slice them off the bar which requires a trip to busy bee when i'm not sick.

[cortexx]

So as i sit here with an endless river of snot dribbling down my upper lip due to some nasty shite i picked up over the last few days i figured it was not a workshop night , but is a thread update night ...

Had a bit of drama last week - was driving home not clothed appropriately for the cooler weather so i had the heating cranked full blast in the GTR for the 60klm drive home . First time I have ever really used the heating, i usually whip along with the windows open no matter what the temp because i love the freshair however .....

I get about 5 klm away from my home and a nasty burning stink made its presence known the same instant the stereo decided to stop playing my Abba's greatest hits cd - after about another 15 seconds i had smoke on the inside of the car so I pulled over , opened the trunk and disconnected the battery. Called CAA and had them pull me the last 5klm home.

I pushed it into the workshop and pulled the center dash cover out to inspect the source of the smoke and found a bunch of wires from the stereo loom with unravelled electrical tape and melted wiring . Being extremely pissed off i went to bed and didn't touch it for a few days until I had calmed down a bit.

As i started to pull things apart it was obvious that the wiring to the stereo loom had been horribly installed . The Nissan plugs had been cut from the loom and the wiring loom for the stereo had been twisted together and wrapped with cheap electrical tape (the shiney stuff - the good stuff is a matt colour) . With 2 years of hot summer days and finally the coup de Grace of me blasting the heating system had softened the glue and the tape had unravelled exposing the wiring which shorted together and melted the wires insulation before blowing 2 fuses.

I removed the now dead stereo and cut back the wiring to remove all the crappy section and then traced 2 wires back to the main loom that had melted. I replaced the fuses to bring the accessories back to life and with the help of my meter determined that the live wires that feed the stereo loom were now not shorting as they held a constant 12v . The problem i had is that these 2 wires were melted all the way up into the loom and i couldn't leave them like this.


I came home the next day early and had the entire dash removed in about 3 hours so that I could get to everything. I cut the binding on the main loom and traced/pulled the 2 offending wires out of the system right back to the fuse box and found to my horror that nissan has a live 12 volt feed directly from the battery circuit unfused WTFARK - fire waiting to happen . BTW you all have this , the wire colour is red with a white stripe and silver coloured bands around it . I removed this wire completely at the fuse box where it originates and then ran a replacement wire from the original fused location through the loom back to the stereo . This time it's fused with a 10 amp blade.


I then ziptied the loom closed in various places and went out and bought a new Kenwood cd player for the dash. This time I soldered all wiring and double heatshrunk it all so it was safe , the excess length was folded and heatshrunk into neat bundles so that it can't get into trouble.

I can't believe someone chopped the original loom for the sake of a $10 conversion loom. And i can't believe I didn't pull it all apart and check it all when i had the dash apart to run my defi gauge loom last year. I knew I should have , next time i'll follow my instincts.

By 2:30 am I had the complete dash all back together and everything functioning again an drove it out of the workshop.

why are there no pictures of this ? Well I was worried about the damaged and was not in the mood to take pictures - rather wanted to know the outcome and just get it repeaired . I( guess this isn't really part of the build but it serves as a warning to others on how not to install a stereo so I decided to cover it here anyway ....

[ColinR33]

Hah! Been doing both the last couple of days.

[cortexx]

Thats because you live in Alberts where it either snows or rains lol