Dat73z

Still waiting on parts so tonight I got the rear end mostly back together and adjusted the ride height to my preferred spec. I noticed that some bearing grease was leaking on the outboard side of the stub axles into my disk brakes. I have never seen this before and I've redone the rear end with new bearings twice on this car. But I was also brake boosting and a bunch of other stress test stuff when I was tuning before the car went down. So I'm going to check the torque on the stub axle nuts this weekend, I believe to 200ftlbs or so.

Just a quick pic of my hot side charge piping in case it moves. There is easily 1/4" clearance between everything now before contact. I'd like to do HD weld-in clamps but I didn't like how they were 1-200$ each so maybe someday if I get serious on this car

@Zetsaz it's awesome how many random and interesting people you meet and the stories we get from these cars. Hope we can meet up someday and hang out 👍 Tonight I started back in on this project. I need to organize and clean. After all the travel and funeral stuff to be honest I was pretty down and got heavy into overworking again along with all the other family commitments in life. So I'm going to get back into this, one thing per day until it's done again, starting with cleaning my space. My buddy let me know he ran into some issues with his swap so I won't get my OS Giken clutch tool back until maybe next week. But plenty to do before then.

@Zetsaz np and yeah the suspension was a decision I made like 10yrs back when I built the car for the first time/3 lol. With the options on the market now I'm tempted to get something with a threaded shock body so I can preload the suspension independent of ride height but I also have a few other vehicles so I'm trying not to light too much money on fire with this one. The funny thing is I actually welded up a set of s30 BCs for my buddy not too long ago, the coilovers are pretty nice

@Zetsaz I belive it's 1/16 high temp non-adhesive backed silicone sheet. I don't recall where I got it from but any industrial supplier, amazon, ebay etc. should have some form of it. Yes punch the holes for the screws and cut a small circle in the center to slip over the shifter area. I started to swap over the springs from the eibach to swift along with the pillow ball camber top hats. It seems to be doing what I need the suspension changes to do, providing camber adjustment, more clearance, and also preventing spring pop out at droop.

@rossman yeah I've been doing a bunch of reading since last night. Everyone has opinions everywhere. I think I need to call one of the companies that mass produces them and talk to a materials guy, just to get the final word on what they've seen work on turbo setups. Been busy getting ready to travel today, but my shorter rear springs and helpers came in. I thought I ordered Hyperco springs like they use in Nascar but apparently I got Swift springs. When I get back I'll get them on.

Got all of the trans bolts loosened and everything cleared out. Unfortunately I'm out of time this weekend, so I'll pull the trans next week. It may also be a good time to refabricate the entry for my muffler to clear 245+ tires. I think I have just enough scrap in the cut pile to make that happen.

Thanks @rossman that is what I was thinking as well but I believe the nuts are copper coated for corrosion protection and not fully copper, they are these from atp http://www.atpturbo.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=MIA-FST-031&Category_Code=FST I think I'll order some inconel studs and take a look at which locknuts to use, perhaps the stainless variety you indicated. This morning I'm going to pull the driveshaft and the heat shielding from the turbo. Don't have much time as I need to fly out for a funeral later today but no rush at this point as I'll probably be waiting for parts again for another week. One minor annoyance with my current setup is with the short nose q45 r200, I need to drop the diff xmember to drop the driveshaft.

After some further research, I think I should probably order some inconel m8x1.25 studs since I'll already have this all apart. I don't want to order the same hardware and run into the same issue down the line. I guess I'll sleep on it and decide tomorrow.

Got everything mostly disassembled and came to find my ATP wastegate housing has come loose, likely from the extreme heat cycling but maybe also because my downpipe is not braced. I'll have to disassemble the heat shielding and inspect. I recall I had used nordlock washers, copper locking nuts and studs. 20221202_190416.mp4

Managed to get the trans mostly prepped to pull maybe tonight or tomorrow. Had some people ask me for detail pictures about the 240sx trans swap in the late s30 over time so maybe this may be helpful for someone. For the shifter area if you are redoing your fuel and brake lines and decide to keep it all in the tunnel, you will want to add some bends in the line to clearance for serviceability. Also make a custom shift bezel boot from silicone sheet.

Still trying to keep doing at least one thing per day. This AM I decided to mount in the rest of the hot side charge pipe since it can move a bit without bracing. I'm running out of things to do and it sounds like my buddy who's borrowing my clutch tool is starting his swap today. So later today I'll start dropping the driveline. I think the strategy here will be to get everything apart, cleaned and inspected. Get the flywheel retorqued in at 120 ftlbs per my engine builders recommendation. Then when I get my clutch tool back I can get the clutch pack and the rest of the car back together in a couple hrs if there are no issues.

Had a few minutes over lunch so I profiled and welded out the hot side pipe. The welds aren't great but I'm sure they'll hold. I angled the entry maybe 20 degrees as I measured the intercooler entry to be around 25 degrees below horizontal. The extra 5 degrees is taken up by the weight of the piping. The primary purpose here was to gain clearance for the pipe through the rad support with a horizontal exit as the intercooler inlet is below the hole in the rad support.

Sent you a PM, I have a spare

The first charge pipe modification is to angle the entry into the intercooler. I'm going to do this in the area inside the rad support so the angles and measurements are critical. Although the hot side pipe doesn't touch at rest, it was obviously wearing through with the dynamic motion of the engine. Like most home garage fabricators, I don't have a lot of pro tools at my disposal. I like to mark tubes with my wife's hairbands, and ensure level cuts and welds with Home Depot stir sticks.

Tonight I started prepping for some welding as I'd like to redo some of my charge piping. I mostly cleaned off my welding table and started running some beads on scrap. I tried a few different filler diameters and types from my scrap bin until I found a suitable bead and penetration profile I was happy with. It seems 3/32 purple e3 and 3/32 ER4043 works the best on this 2mm wall pipe of unknown alloy. My AL welding is still pretty terrible but better than coming in cold after a long while away from the torch like I usually do.

Yeah for the price its worthwhile if you go through gaskets a lot. For me I'll go through a gasket every year or two and there is basically no work involved in replacement. Either way it's on so we'll see how it lasts and I'm glad people are still making new parts for our cars. Tonight I finished cleaning and oiling my hot air intake and getting it back on, along with a general inspection of the turbo and lines. The turbo filter is a pita on my car due to how tight everything is, so either the coil or BOV and charge piping need to be pulled or the splash plan and swaybar to service it. It will be even worse with the AC in place. When I do my engine bay vent fans I plan to route cold air to the filter from the rad support, but that is a project for another day. I plan to install the charge piping last, as the engine will probably move a bit when I pull the trans.

@rossman without a doubt it is a superior solution to the disposable valve cover gaskets that fall apart and tear after a few uses. It also doesn't stick to the head on removal and no rtv needed on the head side. Mainly, it is tricky to align and install cleanly whereas for the disposable gaskets you just wipe down the surface and slap it on. It would've been nice if the edges were molded into a U channel or with alignment areas that go into the cast channeled recesses of the VC to take some of that alignment guesswork out of the install. I got mine installed cleanly and really like it so far, but I would've just gone with another disposable had I known how annoying the install was going to be.

This AM I swapped back to 45 pump jets and added a bit more volume. When I put in the 40s I was attemting to tune for the fireball out the exhaust when unloading the motor between shifts which I now suspect was due to losing timing. I suspect 45s are a good size from what I recall earlier this summer but I won't know until I start shaking things down again.

Heard from my friend last night that they'll be done with my clutch tool sometime this week so I figure I'll wait a couple days. This AM I installed a new silicone valve cover gasket. I originally thought it was a slip over gasket but apparently it needed to be rtv'd on. Had I known I wouldn't have used it but its all done now. I didn't have black rtv which would have been ideal so I cleaned and skimmed the cover with gray hondabond. Let it set up with the bolts in place on the gasket then wiped the edges while the rtv was just starting to set to remove the gray edge. Later this week I'll do some welding on the car and pull the driveline again.

Had a few mins after dinner so I vacuum tested and filled the cooling system. I suspect the system isn't full as I know how much I drained out. So I'll need to fill and bleed with a funnel when I heat cycle. Technically at this point if I fill the trans and install the charge piping, the car is ready to drive. But after losing the harmonic balancer I still feel like I should pull the trans and check the flywheel and clutch pack bolts for torque. I don't suspect anything, but you never know. I guess I'll sleep on it and decide tomorrow.

Out of time this AM but I managed to get most of the cooler packaging and a bunch of other misc. items reassembled, along with filling the oil. Even with a partially filled system it still took 8 quarts which is ridiculous. Later today I'll finish filling the fluids and put a wrench on everything again.

Had a few mins after lunch so I installed the oil pump and dist drive. I used a new oe gasket, and torqued everything to factory spec. Then I retimed the 123. I know the spindle position doesn't matter with the 123 but I lined up the dist drive spindle at the OE position anyways. That is the last technical aspect of reassembly, so tonight I am going to wrap up the other pieces so I may start filling fluids tomorrow.

This AM I finished setting mechanical tdc. I suspected the new BHJ damper was clocked slightly different than the last one, which it was. So I rebaselined with the piston stop method, and reset my tdc pointer to 0 on the new damper. When I get a break later today I'm going to install the oil pump/dist drive and retime the 123.

This AM I'm organizing the garage and planning the weekend. I'm on cooking duty today, so I think the objective will be to retime the ignition before the day takes off, and hopefully get all of that wrapped while the bird is in the oven a bit later in the AM. This PM I want to get the radiator back in. Other than that, it's just the charge pipes and fluids. I still want to drop the trans and inspect but I lent my OS Giken clutch install tool to my friend and forgot about that. I'm contemplating getting back on the road this weekend first and inspecting later, but this is a fairly ideal time to do it before filling fluids again.