DJZ's DR30 Skyline

[DJZ]

Exciting pictureless update! For the first time since it came into the country this car now has a centre console lid!

It was a pain in the ass and required painting and combining two different lids as it's the most convoluted piece of equipment you have ever seen.

[DJZ]

While I was at Pick'a'part today robbing the gearbox out of a Seat Cordoba to fix my sister's car and top shock mounts from an RVR to fix my mum's car I nabbed one of the PRW2 ignition modules like what John used on the C32, wired it up tonight, the car still runs like crap when it's cold but seems to idle a little bit better. I haven't driven it yet though as it's got no warrant.

Just before the Hanmer cruise I noticed it was starting to make a knocking noise from the left rear suspension, I think the shocks are both rooted as the right hand one is leaking, but while I was having a look I thought I'd have a look at the rear wheel bearing play and it's got what feels like a couple of millimetres play on both sides which I think is probably worn out stub axles, the same problem that I had on the Z. I've got two more sets so I'll pull them out again and put in some more with heaps of retaining compound and hopefully won't have this problem again.

I talked to the guys at HBI about making some new stub axles out of something tough, it's possible, the only issue is they can't do the external spline but once they've got the drawing in the CNC lathe they could whip them up pretty quickly so if I need to replace the ones in the Z again I'll probably get them to make some brand new ones.

[Bartman]

A stub axle would be easy for any decent machinist to turn up. Shouldn't need CNC to do it.
Need to start with a massive billet of steel though to make the size of the wheel flange.
And you can cut splines on a lathe if you have the time and patience.............. (I have neither, but I've seen it done)

[DJZ]

Once it's in the CNC they can make as many as I want at the push of a button (or something like that) their dividing head is apparently rooted, that's why they can't do the splines themselves.

[Bartman]

The old mans lathe has a hydraulic copy head which can copy a pattern easily. It's what they had before they had CNC.

[nzdatman]

Cutting splines is not that straight forward. To do it properly requires expensive specialised machinery/tooling. There are shortcut ways to do it like anything but they won't be as good. The original ones are probably an involute spline that was hobbed.
I was going to respline some axles once but decided to just cut and weld them. If I was going to make new axles I would turn the blanks and send them to a gear cutter to get them done properly.

[Bartman]

That's true. Cut splines will never be as strong as Hobbed on ones.

[DJZ]

I'll just do it with a 1mm disc on the angle grinder bro. If it comes to making some new stub axles I'll get it done by someone with the know how but apparently the last spline HBI had done by someone else cost somewhere around the $500 mark and they cocked it up the first time.

There are already some aftermarket ones made in the States but they're made for 240Zs, I think they'd work in an S130 but the bearing sizes are different.

[DJZ]

Finally got around to doing something on this today and had a nightmare of a time, got the original left hand stub axle out reasonably quickly and can see the wear on the inner bearing surface but then everything went downhill. Looking at the 5 stud hubs from a late (87 - 89) Z31 they were actually slightly different, the older ones have a spacer ring but the later ones don't and they use a weird looking wider bearing with a lip seal built into it.

I wasn't 100% sure they were going to work but the spacer ring fit on and sat in about the same place so I put some bearing retaining compound on both bearing surfaces, got the stub axle in about half way then couldn't get it to budge any further, using a mallet on the front or the rattle gun on the back would only just move it. I got in there in the end but it took ages. After torquing the nut up I went to put the brakes back on and my redrilled rotors wouldn't sit flat on the hub, the studs must be slightly different.

At this point I was getting a bit angry so drilled out the 4 new holes in the rotor so that it would fit and then instantly regretted doing it as now it's really sloppy on the studs. I got a pair of Z31 rear rotors a while back so I thought I'd see if there were the same, turns out they aren't, the DR ones have a taller hat height by about 7 - 8mm for some reason, this is quite annoying as the Z31 rear rotors are common and easy to get while it looks like the DR ones are NLA aftermarket. I've been thinking about just using Z31 rotors and spacing the caliper out to centered over the rotor, that would be the easiest option, the other option would be to get some late Z31 vented rear rotors and calipers but that's a bit further than I want to go at this point.

So after all that I noticed two of the wheel nuts on it are starting to strip (they're aluminium) so I've ordered some new steel ones off Trademe as aluminium wheel nuts are illegal now. Then I noticed that the dust seal on the caliper was half out, so I spent probably an hour trying to put that back in then gave up for the night.

[2 doors]

gutted, im sure you will get it sorted though, your always improving this, its inspiring how much you get done on your cars.