New Zealand Datsun Club

Sup homies,

I know it's not a Datsun, but I thought I'd better post a thread of this car, since it's been a bit slow on the board and I feel like I need to justify the lack of progress on my 1600

This is my 1986 Nissan Laurel Medalist V-Turbo hardtop.

This bad boy has more gizmos than any other car I've ever owned, aside from the usual power mirrors, windows, steering etc it also has such features as:

-Electric AM aerial (only used for AM it seems)
-In-glass FM aerial
-Electric retracting mirrors
-Automatic headlights
-Climate air conditioning (which still works, YES!)
-Auto with "sports" mode

When I bought this last year it was in a real sorry state! Although tidy it had a blown turbo, unbeknownst to me nearly all of the exhaust manifold studs were broken (or about to be), and it was generally running like a total dog. So after the initial disappointment I had the turbo rebuilt, which made it run a lot better since it was making some boost, but still crap. It was obvious that there were a LOT of exhaust leaks. So I just had to bite the bullet and pull the motor out. Here are a few pics as it is now and back when I pulled the motor out, note Brocky doing his best "derp/duck face".

After getting the motor out, I realised that pretty much every exhaust manifold stud was broken off, below the surface of the manifold face no less. After destroying all my ezy-outs Adam (torqued) suggested MIG welding them out, which I initially didn't think was possible. But after a bit of research I gave it a go and bugger me, it DOES work! Although it took me all night! Needless to say, I replaced the studs with new ones from Blacks. Big thanks to Hayden (kartboy) for the use of his MIG to do the job. After fitting all new gaskets (I miss the days when Brocky worked at BNT), making up a sweet de-cat pipe, doing another oil change because it all drained out onto the garage floor out of the turbo oil drain hose (oops....) I refitted the engine. In the process I found a nipple on the throttle body which was completely open to the atmosphere and causing a major boost/vacuum leak. It seemed to go to a little valve thingy which is connected to the charcoal canister, so I refitted it. Man I was glad to find that thing!

The turbo, although rebuilt still whines pretty loudly. I had it done by Fred at 1 stop turbo shop, who a lot of guys have used with great success. It boosts fine though, and it's a huge effort to remove it, so I'm just going to put up with it for now. Here are a couple more pics I took tonight.

Good to see more VGs even if its just a 2.0.
Fred does good work. If you are worried about his workmanship I would go ask him whats up, there might be a deeper under lying issue as to why she whines

Man, VG's are tough to work on! I seem to be chasing this weird stumble at around 3000rpm! I replaced the cylinder head temp sensor and the wiring coming off it (those Nissan plugs are junk, I put one of those nice Bosch ones on) which helped a bit, I also tried a different airflow meter with no change. I thought it might have been leaking injectors, but no. Oh yeah, the injectors... Brock's R30 Vin Diesel wagon alternator was misbehaving, so we used the Laurel to go pick up Lisa from town, and on the way back it started running VERY rough, on 5 or less cylinders and there was a strong odour of petrol. Uh oh. So the Laurel was off the road for about 4 days while I split the intake manifold and removed all the injectors for testing and ordered new injector seals (thanks Scott). This was a mighty pain in the butt. I was rather concerned that the injector bodies themselves might be leaking, so I took them to NZEFI to get the 12 injectors I had (more on that later) tested and cleaned.

I took this opportunity to replace the plugs as well, as it's a lot easier with the manifold in half. I also pulled apart the AAC valve and cleaned over 20 years of soot and other nastiness out of it. Since I removed the EGR system when I had the engine out this hopefully won't be a recurring issue. Oh yeah, it has new NGK leads as well.

As it turns out none of the injectors were leaking, so the pool of fuel must have been coming from one of the many short pieces of EFI hose, or the injector seals in the manifold. Whatever, I ended up refitting the new seals, hoses and the 6 best injectors of the 12 and it started running smoother than it ever did in the past.

In doing this, learnt that if you make the hoses on the injectors even 10mm too long, then you can't refit the top half of the intake manifold. This made me want to kill someone in frustration. I also learnt that it's a total mother@#$%#r to refit all those short pieces of hose, and I never ever want to do it again. Ever.

More updates tomorrow. In the meantime, here's my inspiration pic:


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torqued wrote:Good to see more VGs even if its just a 2.0.
Fred does good work. If you are worried about his workmanship I would go ask him whats up, there might be a deeper under lying issue as to why she whines

Thanks Adam, yeah I was pretty sure it must have been something I did that was causing it to still whine, so I just wanted to eliminate all the other factors first. The engine will be coming out again in a wee while, so I'll have a really good inspection for cracked manifolds or leaking gaskets while it's out. But since this is my daily, I can't really have it off the road at the moment. If the manifolds etc. all look good, then I'll talk to Fred. He was really good to deal with so hopefully he'll be able to come up with a solution for me. He did mention when he did the rebuild that he had to put a new compressor backplate on as he couldn't get a bearing to suit the old type of backplate.

broke wrote:Man, VG's are tough to work on! I seem to be chasing this weird stumble at around 3000rpm!

Haha yea sounds like my ute.
Similar issue, I CBF in the end. Just buried my foot deeper.
Let me know what you find. I will be interested to hear what the issue is.
You'll be quite the expert soon

VG'S are indeed a tough cookie to work on

It's a pretty lush car John, thanks for the ride back at AGM

Also if you ever bugger the Auto i have a spare FREE automatic and TQ converter you can have for nothing/ it appears to have been rebuilt/had a service based on the white ink pen markings on it.

85_Z31 wrote:VG'S are indeed a tough cookie to work on

It's a pretty lush car John, thanks for the ride back at AGM

Also if you ever bugger the Auto i have a spare FREE automatic and TQ converter you can have for nothing/ it appears to have been rebuilt/had a service based on the white ink pen markings on it.

No worries mate It's like driving a couch to work, if it wasn't for the comfort level I probably would have sold it already! Planning on going manual but I'll keep that in the back of my head just in case, I don't think the auto really likes my habit of mashing both pedals at the lights to build up boost before launches, it is funny looking at the expression on the face of the driver next to me when the rear squats and the big Boeing 747 whine starts though

Ok so I'm off work at the moment and things have to get moving if I want this to be ready for Rakaia.

I'm still trying to chase down the weird 3000rpm stumble, James lent me a new CAS to try out, but that didn't turn out to be it. I have also fitted a new dizzy cap with almost no improvement. The turbo whine's still there too, so I removed the turbo and sent it back to Fred, who rung me today to say that he can't see anything wrong with it but he's going to pull it apart again and fit a new compressor wheel and check the balance. I sure hope it doesn't end up costing me anything.

The only reason I left it so long is because I wanted to keep driving it to work. So right now the engine's out of the car, while I get the other stuff sorted. The plan is this:

-Replace timing belt and tensioner
-Get (hopefully fixed) turbo re-fitted
-Manual conversion
-Fit all the goodies off the other car (turbo timer, automatic wipers, trip computer)
-Oil and filter change
-Do a skid

Here's a pic or two of the donor car - I found another C32 V-Turbo hardtop on trademe that was manual and had the aforementioned goodies that mine didn't. It also used to have electric seats, which unfortunately the old owner chucked out when he stripped the interior - I would have loved to have those too! Oh well.

Funny story - Brocky and I were trying for AGES to take out the rear windscreen without breaking it, and just as we were about to get it... BOOM, it exploded all over both of us. Oh well. I actually removed the entire wiring loom from the silver car (and I mean ENTIRE) so if I'm missing any of the wiring in my car to make the extra bits run then I should be able to get it wired in. The plug for the cruise control is still there in my car, which is a bonus! Oh yeah, the silver one had cruise control too. I like gadgets

Since my engine has lower K's than the donor engine (and so many new bits) I decided to keep using the same engine. So I pulled the flywheel off the donor car, had that machined (thanks again Brocky) and spent a huge wad of cash buying all the parts for the swap. I noticed the auto engine had a horrible big bushing sticking out of the back of the crank for the torque converter to engage with that I couldn't remove... until I ran into DJZ at Brocky and Lisa's wedding and he very kindly offered to led me a neat little puller for removing them - thanks Dan! Here it is in action: That pesky bushing was out in less than a minute!

Old rear main seal out, new spigot bushing installed New rear main seal installed. The old one wasn't leaking, but it's all about peace of mind.