DJZ's DR30 Skyline

[85_Z31]

Inter cooler came up clean !

Nicely done !

[DJZ]

Been doing a couple of jobs on this thing.

Installed the boost controller the other day, it seems to be working but I think I need to run through the setup again, with it set at 0.8 bar is going up to over 1 bar.

I replaced the intercooler pipe after the radiator support. Chopped up a long leg 45 degree bend then welded it back together so I've gotten rid of the 45 degree silicon bend. Also welded on the blow off valve flange, I fitted the fake Tial valve I had, it works but not very well. I'm going to borrow the spring out of the real Tial one possibly tomorrow if I've got time. It's $50 for a genuine Tial spring. Got a little bit more work to do to get the piping perfect, but it's close. I also got a 3" bend to connect the air filter to the air flow meter.

And tonight I made up a pipe to get rid of the cat converter. The front pipe measured about 60mm OD and the rear about 70mm so I got some 2.5" pipe and two new flanges. The cat still had all the guts in it but when I was moving it around bits started falling out. The car sounds a bit better in my opinion, it seems to be a bit more burbly when the revs are dropping but I haven't actually driven it yet, maybe tomorrow.





Yes, it does have wheel nuts at one end. I wasn't planning on finishing it tonight but got most of the way there and thought I'd chuck it on and those are all I could find at work.

[DJZ]

Swapped the BOV springs yesterday and took it for a quick drive, managed to pop one of the intercooler pipes off so I ended up pulling all of them off and ran a couple of little beads around the ends of all of them to help them stop falling off. I made up a mounting bracket for the last piece of piping near the BOV and also remade the pipe on the outlet of the turbo so it's one piece all the way to the intercooler. Made up two mounts for the cooler too so it's pretty solid now.







Took it for a bit of a drive around today, was do some reasonable speed then I heard a bang, couldn't figure out what it was till I got home and found this piece bent completely backwards, I've bent it forwards again for the picture. One of the little plastic mounts at the front had snapped of. It's pretty much rooted so I pulled it off.

[dirtyleppa]

nice work man

[Datto_610]

Dont forget I still have those clips from James to give to you sometime lol. Oh and the R30 is looking mean!

[DJZ]

Sorry man! Keep forgetting about them, we've had to move out of our house for earthquake repairs for another 2 weeks or so, next time I'm over that side of town I'll get in touch.

Had this thing on the dyno today, pretty interesting. Zac and I took it out last night to try and do the learning mode on the boost controller. It didn't go very well and in the end it seemed to be hitting some kind of cut out or the pressure relief valve was opening.

We had a quick look at it this morning, wound the pressure relief valve in, fixed a broken hose going to the factory boost sensor (I really need to replace this hose as it's getting shorter and shorter), moved the pressure source for the boost controller from the inlet manifold to the compressor housing, while trying to do this I had to remove the wastegate actuator and found out the wastegate flapper was stuck half open! I'll probably have to remove the wastegate flapper and hone out the hole that the rod runs through to fix it, I got it moving again but in the first maybe 1/4 of the travel it still felt notchy. I really need to pull the turbo off and swap it for the T3/4.

Anyway, with the boost controller set at 0.8 bar boost was creeping up and it was going dangerously lean so I set the controller down to 0.5 bar, it was still creeping up but we got most of a run out of it, up to about 6300rpm I think it was, final result was 158kW. Time for bigger turbo, bigger injectors and an SR computer swap I think!

[dirtyleppa]

nice man, 158kw is a pretty decent number for an old motor

[DJZ]

Finally back in our house after 5 weeks of "earthquake" repairs.

Pulled the turbo off tonight to try and sort my overboosting/wastegate flapper stupidness. Had a look at fitting the T3/4 that I had on the red top RB and it's actually going to fit pretty much perfectly. I forgot that it's got a watercooler centre section as well, I'm not going to hook them up at the moment but that's something I can do later on.

So to get it on I have to have a look at the wastegate flapper position, Zac and I mucked around with it when we fitted it to the RB, I loosely put the flapper housing on the exhaust housing and with a torch shining into the exhaust inlet I can see a little bit of light so it's not quite sealing up, will put some bearing blue on it tomorrrow and try and figure out whats going on. Other than that it's just clocking the housings to get everything in the right position, make sure the wastegate actuator is going to fit still and find a couple more silicons the right size as the compressor inlet and outlet are bigger than stock. The oil lines bolt up the same as the original turbo and the downpipe will still fit, easy as!

I've been looking at making a stock position thin wall stainless manifold too, I know a lot of people frown upon thin wall manifolds but the Chinese one on the Z has actually been alright since I fixed it and we've got a bender at work than can actually bend it reasonably nicely, I need to get a head flange (about $90 from Autobend), a T3 flange and some more tubing. The tubing is quite cheap, around $20/m for 1.5" diameter 1.5mm wall thickness.

[DJZ]

Hmm something didn't look right when I investigated the wastegate flapper position.





Not too sure what was going on, it looks like the tube piece the wastegate flapper runs it had been pushed into the flapper housing which is the cause of the sticky flapper too, I should have thought about this earlier as I think when Zac and I were dicking around with the last one we found one the tube can move in a out with a little bit of persuasion. I got it pretty much back into the correct position then ported the crap out of it, probably slightly too much as the puck was catching just on the edge of the hole closest to the flapper rod, I managed to get it into a position where it wasn't touching so hopefully it's all good.

Old turbo vs. new turbo, it's a little bit bigger but not much. I ended up swapping the FJ turbo exhaust housing on to the T3/4 as the VG30 exhaust housing didn't have a O2 sensor bung and I don't want to drill the exhaust just yet. Everything is all lined up and ready to be put back together, I need to grind a little bit off the engine mount just to make it easier to get the turbo on and off, it'll fit but it's tight the way it is. Need to find a 2.5" to 3" reducer for the compressor inlet, I think I've got one somewhere from when I had it on the RB.

[DJZ]

Got the turbo on tonight, initial test drive seems good - it's holding boost much better than previously it looks like the actuator is around 0.35 bar which is around 5psi. The boost controller probably needs to be reset as it was set at 0.50 bar but doesn't seem to be trying to get to that.

Car feels like it has a little bit more torque, it's a bit hard to tell. Feels slower due to the lack of boost, I need to install the MTX-L wideband gauge I got from Zac then see about winding it up, I'll have a go at that tomorrow. The MTX-L is pretty cool and it has a narrowband output so I can run that to the computer and it'll be just like having the factory O2 sensor there.