My 1995 GTR project thread.

[cortexx]

Finally the finale is the rear fart can - once last picture of the craftsmanship before install



And once in place it looked like this .




It fits perfectly , there was mention of trimming a mounting bracket on the car but whoever installed the trust/greddy system originally has already done it so i didnt have to chop anything . there is plenty of clearance , nothing rubs , it looks made for this car.


another pic of the tip .





Once it was all hooked up i put the cat sensor back and reattached the heat shields









Here is a better picture showing the clamp and spring assembly . By the way putting on the springs was the hardest job of all (lying on my back trying to stretch them with a pair of pliers ) .





This is a view looking from the back though to the front of the car under the diffuser. The pipe caught the litter tray so i had to dremmel a large piece of it out so things cleared ok . Hard to see here but it looks good .



With everything mounted , checked and double checked , it was 11:30 pm . I decided to go for a quick drive to check it , and see what it sounds like. Its ALOT noisier than the trust system at idle , very imposing , impossible to ignore. let the engine warm up for 3-4 klm and then let it loose a bit . I noticed that the turbos seemed to spool faster ( although it was cold and damp out so hard to be accurate on this statement ). The wideband is running leaner by .2 across the board , still well within the limits of the ECU programming. Stomping the gas and letting it revout to 7500 rpm makes it sound like the end of the world has come. I sounds awesome , very loud - almost like a formula 1 car lol. When cruising it has a loud reverberating drone at around 2500-3000 rpm . However once you get into the 3300+ rpm range the noise decreases ALOT .. I'll probably use the silencer insert for long trips as i dont want to drive everwhere in 3rd gear to make it quiet lol.

I'm not sure how much attention the cops are going to give it , I usually get left well alone but that might change now. You absolutely cannot ignore this coming down the road anymore - a wonderful sound - but disrupting for sure .... video to follow.

[cortexx]

Once 3rd hand was ready it was used to support the first section of pipe





The second piece slots onto the first piece , there is a rubber hanger near the join between these 2 pieces that you must remove - it's not used on this system. The pipe joints are held together with bolt claps , and 2 longitudnal springs . You have to rotate the clamps so that they do not bind on the springs . Not really sure why the springs are there - the clamps are super tight when torqued.
The last piece is the large rear muffler. The instructions say to put the large strap on the muffler before you install it. I elected to actually hang the strap clamp under the car and leave it loose so that i could slide the muffler into it and join it up with the system

[cortexx]

So i picked up my eagerly anticipated Tomei TI exhaust system yesterday - got it home and started pulling things to pieces . The car was soaked underneath because it rained yesterday and as it was late i called it a night and went to be, didn't want to rush it and screw stuff up.

Fell asleep in bed with the tomei instructions

tonight finally got into the workshop at about 8:00 pm and started to get organised.

The parts look awesome , extremely light and very well finished off . All of these systems are hand made - amazing quality .

exhaust pron



Work started by dropping the left side of the Cat litter tray ( formly known as diffuser but now the cat litter tray on account of the amount of gravel and crap it collects) , pain in the ass because all the rust proof anodised fittings i bought had rusted wil be doing something about that soon ) .



I put a jack under the midpoint of the old system and proceeded to free it from the old hanger rubbers . After 15 minutes or cursing and hurting my fingers i sprayed them all with fluid film and used a pipe wrench to force them off . The cat bolts were hard to get off because they were all rusted and i rounded them off , so i hammered on a ring wrench and managed to shift one of them with the wrench and copious amounts of wd40. The other one no chance.

I then decided to remove the exhaust system with the cat on it and deal with it not lying under the car but had a similar expereince with the cat heat sensor (which i finally got out with a brakeline wrench. Once the system was off I dragged it out and weighed it . Without cat it weighed in at 58 lbs . New system weighs about 9 lbs (i think).




Starting at the front I reinstalled the cat , the kit comes with new nuts for the cat studs and plenty of "bolt smooth paste" which is a great antiseize for the parts . I needed a third hand to hold the pipeing as i was installing and no volunteers in the house were forthcoming so i made a third hand

[cschepp]

Is there any update with the tomei exhaust on? . Can't wait for the update

[RABBIT]

lovely set of parts


its true that inconel is an incredible alloy

when i used to work as a machinist for Pratt&Whitney Canada, making aircraft engine parts, i sometimes had to machine some parts out of inconel and everyone hated it because it was so stupidly though to machine
machinability:
-aluminium ~100%
-alloy steel ~ 75%
-stainless steel ~45%
-inconel ~10%

i remember a serie of engine rear cover that needed 36 hours of machining with a new tool every hour,
whereas if it had been made of steel it would have taken 4 hours with only 2 tools

now that i'm in engineering, in the heavy industry, evety time we can't find something tough enough to do the job, we either turn to grade 2 Titanium or Inconel 600

great great alloys, but not cheap

Wow awesome,
thanks for that info never knew.

[frankiman]

lovely set of parts


its true that inconel is an incredible alloy

when i used to work as a machinist for Pratt&Whitney Canada, making aircraft engine parts, i sometimes had to machine some parts out of inconel and everyone hated it because it was so stupidly though to machine
machinability:
-aluminium ~100%
-alloy steel ~ 75%
-stainless steel ~45%
-inconel ~10%

i remember a serie of engine rear cover that needed 36 hours of machining with a new tool every hour,
whereas if it had been made of steel it would have taken 4 hours with only 2 tools

now that i'm in engineering, in the heavy industry, evety time we can't find something tough enough to do the job, we either turn to grade 2 Titanium or Inconel 600

great great alloys, but not cheap

[cortexx]

Stardate 4/24/2012 captains log ......

Made a few firm decisions over the last week and got a new shipment of more parts today . Supertech sent me my oversized inconel exhaust valves and nitrided intake valves . These are some real works of art .

A small piece of useless information I found out from speaking to supertech and doing some research - the inconel alloy comes in a few different flavours (This I didn't know ) , these valves are made from X-750 alloy containing the following elements :-

carbon , titanium , Chromium , aluminium , Niobium , Cobalt , Nickel , manganese , Silicon , Sulfur , Copper and Iron . this mixture in the right combinations makes a super alloy has a tensile strength of 170,000 psi and a yield strengt of over 120,000 psi.

apparently Alloy x-750 Inconel is similar to alloy 600 but is hardenable due to the addition of Ti and Al. In addition to good corrosion and oxidation resistance it also has high tensile strength and creep properties to around 700° C. Its resistance to relaxation makes it suitable for high temperature springs and it is also used in rocket engines, nuclear reactors, aircraft, tooling and pressure vessels.

But the question is - will it be up to the job in my RB26 ?

The Intake valves are Black Nitrided , supertechs website sayes this about them :-

Nitriding is a hardening treatment that even though it is not widely used as the chrome coating, it has several benefits and is becoming very popular, mainly for European and Japanese applications. The microhardness is higher than the stainless steel base material, keeping good ductility beneath the hard nitrided layer (microhardness is 800HV minimum).Surface finish is smoother than with chromed stems, having less friction between stem and guide.
Valve seat surface is harder with the nitrided layer, lasting longer with lead free fuels, alcohols, nitro or other "explosive" mixes. Matches any kind of seats (nodular iron seats, steel powder metal seats, hard aluminum-copper seats or beryllium copper seats).Higher rpm's engines take full advantage of all previous features. The higher the engine speed the bigger the power loss due to internal engine friction! The black nitride layer reduces this power loss due to less valve-guide friction.

The nitrided layer is adhered to the base material at a microscopic level, so does not "flake" or break when the valves bend due to impacts with the pistons.


I also bought a new set of Nissan OEM valve collets as the ones in the head might have been stressed from the heads last interference problem (valves hitting pistons) , and also grabbed respective manganese bronze valve guides from supertech to match the valves.

I spoke to the guys at Brian Crower and ended up ordering a set of titanium valve retainers . They will pefectly complement the HKS step 2 springs that i have .

And the Tomei cam wheels need no introduction - pretty common purchase for rb26 owners these days . I would have prefered the HKS ones but the tomei do the same job and were $100 cheaper .

Here's a pic for those of you that can't read --- or just like part pron

[1989blackskylinegtr]

nice ride. love the color.

[cortexx]

not yet frankie but it passed

[frankiman]

does this mean you have received your Tomei exhaust ?! i wonder..

[cortexx]

Off to get the emmissions test done - wish me luck guys

[frankiman]

i saw yours and chris' messages on Tomei's post on FB, i keep laughing everytime

[cortexx]

Small update to the log :-


Active engines called yesterday and gave me a few updates , the block is ready to go together and the head is stripped . They had it xrayed for cracks and found it was a good casting BUT found 4 cracked valve guides. Funny thing is that the head had been rebuilt at some point and the valves replaced but the builder obviously didnt check it properly enough. The valve seats are brand new . He said the previous engine must have had an interference problem , maybe cam belt broken with pistons hitting valves etc. Will be double checking the cam journals to make sure they are not warped and are aligned ok.

They have calculated that the current compression ratio is around 8.2 to 1 so they will be planeing the head down to make it 8.6 to 1 with a 1mm head gasket.

I finally decided on the supertech valves (inconel exhaust and nitrided inlet) along with a complete set of supertech guides . They are ordered and will be in my hands by the end of the week. The HKS step 2 springs are with the builder and I have to make a decision on ordering a new set of oem retainers and collets , or maybe ditching that idea and going with either a supertech spring / retainer or a brian crower spring and retainer kit. Tried looking on the net for info on the limitations of the OEM retainers and didnt find much .. more research needed !

Got a complete OEM nissan heater hose kit this week ( all the rubber under the plenum basically ) , I am considering doing away with the water,oil heat exchange contraption as im sure the HKS oil cooler more than makes it redundant. Would be nice to simplify things a bit.

Also considering my options with the idle valve assembly too , wondering if the vipec can control idle and off idle enrichment without the need for it. Would be great to lose that too. Vlad was telling me they don't use them on their cars , i'll have to pick his brains again!

Word is the tomei exhaust will be here soon , a few words on the tomei facebook page about the wait time seems to have generated a steady stream of personal update messages which is good - nice to see a company stepping up and keeping the waiting informed . Can't wait to install it - pictures will be forthcoming of course ..

[Nathyne]

Love the thread just read it from page one excellent quality of work you're putting into it!

[Phastwon]

Looks good Paul. I have the same ATI race dampner and it is a nice piece. Keeps things running smooth for sure.