cheftrd

Too bad your set-up won't be able to run there when you get back. I almost wrecked the Vette the first time I took it out there. That small left turn at the beginning doesn't look bad until you see it sitting in front of a pair of 14X31 Hoosier slicks and behind 700+ hp. The car will only go straight while you're on the gas!! Henza is good, though.

People here are starting to use the 26 trans because the FR 33 one is getting rare. 26 trans' are everywhere; you can't give them away, especially the 32 version. Nissan doesn't make the syncros for this box anymore, so when overhauling, you must upgrade to the 33 syncros and first three gears on the main. $$$

You can remove the driveshaft and you will have to plug the hole. Power feeds directly through the transfer, to the rear wheels. There is a clutch-pack similar to that of an automatic that, when applied, sends power to the front. Otherwise, it's the same as a conventional rwd set-up. You cna even take the guts out of the transfer to eliminate any paracitic losses. You may have trouble with the transfer interfering with the tunnel.

On the RB alternator, S goes to the battery (yellow on the Z harness), or can also take voltage off of the large charge wire going to the battery. It's better to run it to the battery. The other wire coming out of the coupler is L, I believe. This wire goes to the charge light in your dash. 12v is supplied to the bulb from the ignition switch. You can hook this wire to 12v switched, if you choose not to run a light (not necessary, but better). There is also a ground wire going to the alternator case that comes out of the stock RB harness. It's a large black wire with a loop connection on the end. It bolts to the small tapped boss on the back of the alternator. The large charging post gets a large wire to the battery. If everything is hooked up like this, the system should be operational. If it's not, you probably have an alternator problem. Good luck.

Your wiring sounds correct. I'm not 100% sure of the colors, as I verify the wire at the time of the swap by a trace (I put RB's into several different cars, not just old Z's). If you have the voltage regulator in the car and the large power wire coming off of the alternator is going to it, the regulator needs to be removed. Check to see that the small RB wires in the coupler are reading battery voltage, and the large wire is reading battery voltage. It's not uncommon to get an RB26 alternator with bad brushes or a bad IC.

4PK850 $20 shipped, if you can't find it there.

As far as the idle, I would say that's just a bad tune in those ranges if it does it consistently. Check MAP. It needs to stay stable and not fluctuate between more than three ranges. Any ranges the idle fluctuates between need to be the same fuel value. When it dies, is it after you have engine braked to a stop? If so, try killing the fuel in the decel map ranges. You may be rich under engine braking and loading up with unburned fuel; when you push in the clutch, it won't want to idle. Where are the coils? With the hit and miss ignition thing, I suspect heat, either from the engine or the coils themselves. If you run too much timing in the lower rpm's it overworks the drivers. For instance, if your base timing is 10 deg. at idle and you pull 20 more under vacuum advance for 30 total, under cruising conditions at 2500 rpm you could end up with as much as 45-55 degrees. The driver hates this at lower rpm's. I've also had cdi's and bad plug wires give me hit and miss problems with a hot-engine misfire. Blowing the fuse under a hard misfire is normal; It's protection for the coil drivers. If you are using the stock rubber insulated pulley, the outer ring will sometimes slip causing your timing to appear OK on the programmer and light, but be way off on the engine. This will cause the timing to be retarded and will also cause the exact same problems you are having at idle and high load misfire. Put the engine at TDC (not with the timing marks) and see if the pulley marks agree. There's a 99% chance that there's nothing wrong with the SDS. I have installed A LOT of SDS systems, and never had a problem that was the systems fault, so exhaust all other potential problems first, before wasting time with the ECU.

James, finally getting some stuff out of the way and will be starting on the S15 swap in a month or so. Got the JW Powerglide the other day, so I'll be needing the adapter and converter pretty soon. Hopefully yours will be done first so I won't have to play converter games. I'm backing down from the first guess and thinking somewhere around 5500 stall, as it will flash considerably higher. Any thoughts on your converter?

The stock bolt is 99mm from end to under the bolt head (there is no washer). The thread is 10mm by 1.5mm pitch. The length of the threaded portion of the bolt is 28mm. I use either HKS bolts or ARP head studs. The stock rods are weak enough that they will elongate the big end journal and ruin the bearing if you're turning rpm's high enough to require aftermarket bolts. I put Pauter rods in every engine going over 500hp. I use the stock bolts for the crank cap. I don't even know of an off-the-shelf aftermarket bolt for these. Keeping in mind that all of my customer engines are street driven, max hp is around 800-850, with occational rpm bursts to 10,000; I have never seen, nor heard of, a main girdle failure. The one piece girdle system shares the load between all of the crank cap bolts and it's virtually impossible for the cap to "walk", so high strength is not really necessary. This is another reason to use the RB26 block and oil pan rail. A stiff pan bolted to the outer, large bolt, ring will dramatically increase cylinder rigiddity.

Sorry, but this is just wrong. I hear this all the time and have no idea where it comes from. The Japanese 100 octane is substantially higher than US 91-93. For instance: 100% of the 700-800 hp RB's I build are street driven, and in many cases daily drivers, running upward of 30 pounds of boost at very near the stock CR. These cars are trimmed on Japanese pump gas. 93 octane in this type of engine, and it will desrtoy itself in short order. The US bases here recently upgraded to 93 octane (RxM/2 US octane measurement) and many of the Americans thought it was Christmas, as they could pay under $2 per gallon vs. $4 per gallon off base. The rumor was that it was the same high octane stuff as off base because "someone said" the Japanese gas was actually around 93 octane. Several of my American customers with high power engines (SR, RB26, VG30, etc.) filled up with the 93 octane gas and ended up having to drive a whole tank of fuel out without boost. Lucky for them they know and understand what SEVERE knock is. So, I put an SR20DET with air cleaner, muffler, and down pipe on the dyno with just under 1/4 tank of the 93 stuff and then filled it with the Japanese 100 stuff. There was a 20whp difference due to the computer sensing knock and pulling timing with the 93.

Boy, that brings back memories. When the R31 came out, we used to tear out the RB20 asd swap in L's. Broken cranks at the last pin are common on high powered L turbos. I've seen my share; too much twist.

Cut the hood out, man!

The only thing that's truely "bolt on" is the exhaust manifold to the standard Garrett T3 flange. You will most likely need to fabricate the down pipe, and modify the compressor inlet and outlet pipes, etc, when stepping up to a T3/T4 hybrid, etc.

Follow the line coming off of the actuator for the turbo. If it's directly attached to a pressure port, You're experiencing boost creep. This is common in modified engines with cams, etc, running the stock turbo. The stock wastegate hole diameter can't dump enough exhaust. From the factory, there is a T line goes to a cylindrical solenoid that bleeds off boost from the actuator. Another system uses the solenoid in line. This is usually a scramble boost device, though. It bleeds boost going to the actuator, or stays shut, not allowing boost to hit the actuator too soon and spools the turbo quicker. It reaks havok with aftermarket boost controlers and must be removed to run one. Remove this and plug the line (or route a new one).

The housings are interchangable between the R33 and the Z32 trans. The Z32 shifter sits back on a pedastal. $170 for a Z32 tranny and it probably has the same problems as the 33. Get it rebuilt replacing all three syncros and all of the blocking rings. You may be able to get away with changing just the outer sleve of the syncro and not the entire assy.

The Denso 100# injectors are low impedance. Not sure on the Ford ones. You don't need the Nissan resistor pack, Just a resistor in line with each channel to increase the resistance to 13-14 ohms. If you go with the VPRO, It will need a resistor for each injector. Not a good idea to run big high ohm injectors with high (turbo) fuel pressure. You may see problems with the injectors not opening.

I'll check around. It wasn't as bad as it looks. The guy left in an ambulance but he was OK, just a little beat up from going in sideways. The GT-R wasn't one of the fast ones. The two GOYU GT-R's are trapping at 180+ km/hr. The silver one with twin 3240's is a high 8 second car on the right surface (it's quicker than the HKS drag GT-R on that surface!!). He's getting well into fourth gear with the Hollinger at 150m. I'm going after him with the Corvette. I'll be stepping it up with an ATI F2 supercharger this fall/winter. Jon's RB26-S15 will be around 1000hp, but I don't think we'll be able to get the traction needed without a full back-half. For HKS class regs we have to stay with the Ford 8.8 independent. You need to hurry up and get that beast back here so we can lay down the law!!

Yea, I walk around the pits and all the line locks installed by most of the shops are using soft copper tubing.....The only ones I found that are installed properly are mine and Wing Auto.

First, go through EVERYTHING again. Make sure you have good grounds, etc. Then, check fuel pressure on the fly. It should be anywhere from 3-5 bar at idle, depending on where it was set. It should increase linearly with the boost. Check the MAP on the laptop. It doesn't matter what the boost gauge says if the MAP sensor is reading wrong. If there is a leak in the hose to the sensor, you'll be able to see it from the MAP reading. Check ignition timing. Should be anywhere from 30-40 degrees at WOT above 3000rpm with no boost. If that's OK, and fuel pressure is OK, and MAP is OK, the ECU probably just has a crappy tune.

If you're only worried about emissions, I guarentee you that the stock RB26 is waaaay cleaner than an L engine from the 70's or 80's or the VG in your Z31.

To add a little to this, The oil hole in the rod (not all engines have them) always faces the thrust (pressure) side of the engine. The L engine rotates counter-clock from the engines perspective. We all know: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction (Newton's Third Law of Motion). Well, for the rod pin to be forced down, it also has to be pushed to the left for the first half of the stroke. This loads the right cylinder wall with an equal amount of force. That's why it gets the additional oiling. On engines that rotate clockwise, like some Honda'a and Mitsu's, the oil hole will be on the left side of the rod.

The problem isn't with the coils actually "dying" (they do die, but venting them isn't going to fix the problem of cheaply made stock coils). With heat comes resistance. As the resistance increases in the coils, it takes longer for them to charge. In a high boost, high rpm engine, the coils may reach a point where the charge is not sufficient for the spark to jump the plug-gap and it will mis-fire. As the cylinder pressure increases, it takes more voltage to jump the gap. As the rpm's increase, the charge time between firing decreases. Say the engine is operating at a cylinder pressure that is taking 30,000 volts to jump the spark-gap, and the coils are just making it to the 30,000 volts at a given RPM. If the rpm increases and the available charge time limits the coils to 29,999 volts, there will be no spark in that cylinder and ignition probability will be zero. If the heat increases in the coil, it will have a no-fire at lower and lower rpm's for the same given engine load. Hope this helps.

Turbonetics uses all their own parts. Housings, wheels, bearings, etc. are not Garrett original parts. As a professional welder I can tell you that the turbonetics housings are made of some of the dirtiest castings I have ever welded on (followed closely by Hitachi). They are very porous and filld with inclusions of who-knows-what. If you take a good look at their compressor wheels, they have tiny casting slag on the leading edge and in some places on the flat area of the blade itself. Garrett uses the 360 deg. thrust bearing in all of their high performance T28's. The ones with the 270 bearing fail the bearing early, under heavy loads. Many of the Turbonetics turbo failures I have seen were split thrust bearings that you just don't see on Garrett turbos. Like I said before, I doubt the big name Turbonetics sponsored guys are getting crappy turbos. They're more likely built with Garrett parts.

The RB26 has a boss for the RB20/25 style pick-up, however the galley does not extend that far back in the block, like the L engine does. It only goes as far as the first, outer pick-up, so it's worthless.