cheftrd

It's an N42 that someone has modified. The chambers are welded and there appears to be around 2mm taken off the deck. Why they would do that to the exhaust ports??

When you say "hard to find", you mean that are already in the States, right? There are four on Japan Yahoo auctions right now, and I have three just sitting in my shop. The problem with exporting expensive engines with a heavy shipping price is the condition of the engine. You never really know how good it is unless you take it apart. It can look brand new and have six smoked pistons (or worse). I couldn't bring myself to send an engine with a $3000 price tag on it plus shipping without overhauling it first so I know that it's good. That can add $1500 to the price. Even then, somebody that doesn't know much about tuning installs it and burns some pistons the first day, and they blame you. Not trying to scam; they really believe you sold them a bum engine because it lasted for less than a day. Then they bad mouth you all over the internet. That's why it's hard to find reputable importers; most of the good guys have decided it's not worth the risk to their rep, and got out. BTW, when I buy engines brand new from Toyota/Nissan they only have yellow tape over all the openings, so somebody that sent your engine must care. That's a good sign. Good luck on the swap!

Last time I talked to Sean Morris at RBMotoring (it's been a while), he said importing Skylines is done. With the cost of the bond, there's just not enough money to be made. People are also worried about 2007 when/if the R35 hits the street. If you can get it for 70K from Nissan with 450-500hp, who's going to sport $65k for a 280hp R34? I know A guy here in Japan that was so pissed at Motorex for what they did to a couple of his GT-R's, he almost spent 250K for the bond and was going to hire some people (me) to to do the mods, just to put Motorex out of the import business until I talked him out of it. Hiro, of Motorex fame, was well known here in Japan as a scam artist. He got into some serious financial trouble and bolted for the States owing serious money. Funny how history repeats itself. Guess he found out the hard way that Americans don't just give up and turn the other cheek out of embarassment when you screw them. This also isn't the first time this has happened with shops that can't cut it here. I don't normaly say things about other people/shops, but now that the cat's completely out of the bag... I feel really bad for the people that paid their money and never got their GT-R's converted.

Sounds like you wiped a couple of lobes.

http://www.sdsefi.com/features/aug06300zx.htm This engine uses stock rods with ARP bolts, turns 7500rpm and has lasted for years as a daily driver. If you're going to spin it for extended periods, sport for the billets like Pauter or Carrillo. I had questions about the Pauter + beam rods at one time because they were "different". I have since come to the conclusion that they are very good, having spun them to over 11,000rpm in the RB26 and 13,000rpm in the 4AG with no rod or bearing failures. Solid engineering and very good machine work.

Smoke on start up is valve seals. The SR's rocker system puts a side-load on the guides. This wears out valve guides pretty quick, and this in turn wears out seals pretty quick. Almost every SR I've rebuilt needed new exhaust valve guides.

Stony, the short story is that Nissan, being Nissan, made everything interchangable. The crossmember from the 32/33 skyline will bolt into the S13/14, etc. If you do this, the RB26 will go right in with no mods using the 2WD RB mounts. However, steering rack mount will be an issue because the 240 is on the "wrong" side The modded aluminum pan is now in the mail. The front has been notched to clear the Cefiro/Silvia sway bar and may not need any other mods to clear your sway bar. If you need a crossmember, I can see if one is small enough to mail through PSC. If so, I can get them all day long for free. Do you still have the one that came off of the R31?

When I called the Nismo pump a bandaid, I meant with the short drive crank. That crank will break any pump. The Nismo pump is the same volume/pressure as the stock pump, but it has a hardened rotor and scroll. This is straight out of the 2006 Nismo catalog, which is the same as the one before it, and the same that Nismo sends me every year, so please don't argue because you read on a forum somewhere that the Nismo pump is higher volume/pressure. THE VOLUME OF THE STOCK/NISMO/N1 PUMP IS FINE FOR ALL BUT SUPER DRAG MOTORS. 90% of the RB26's I have built are 9,000rpm engines and have zero oil pressure drop at the gauge due to not enough pump volume using these pumps. The HKS and JUN pumps are for serious power motors turning serious rpm's. Oil flow is what keeps the bearings cool. High power creates lots of pressure on the oil/bearing, creating lots of heat which will kill the bearings. In this type of motor, you combat this by opening the oil clearances, which in turn flows more oil over the bearings, keeping them cool. This requires......drumroll please.........a higher volume pump. If you don't have a higher volume pump, oil pressure will drop in the upper R's and the bearings will die a horrible death. I am thinking about writing something up about all the ABC's of the RB26 I have observed and posting it here. Any interest?

Justin, now try some but welds using backing gas or tape. The back side should end up looking like a weld, as well.

Exactly. And you must be able to do this for a cryo or "N" (for nuclear) cert. PITA.

Much better. When you're running a bead on a flat plate (no but joint), try not to burn through (pic #3?). The discolor is fine but the actual burn through will fail you on an AWS cert.

Or you could just run a single plenum with a single throttle like all the other hundreds of 750-1000hp RB26's and 2J's that don't have any problems. The five fastest RB26's use a single and don't have cylinder to cylinder AFR issues. There are ten million other, more important things to worry about before you get anywhere near the level where you need to wory about getting every little scrap of power this way. Anyway, I build the sheetmetal parts of all my manifolds out of 0.125 5052 H34. No problems, although once, a long time ago, there was one with an extra large plenum that expanded some with 30psi. It made it look way better.

A customer brought me an engine today for a rebuild and I need some help I.D.-ing some of the parts... He bought the engine and car together, so he has no idea where the stuff came from. The crank appears to be a high-quality forging. The only marks are 28671 and 3750 stamped into the front of the first counterweight, 4340, 355, and KKO in the forging in the side of some of the counterweights. I assume the 3750 is the stroke and 4340 is the material. It also has some serious I beam rods with no ID, but ARP2000 bolts. The engine has spun 8000 rpm for two years with no problems as an NA, but I'm bumping up the power substantially with an ATI supercharger or N2O and need to know if the swinger and rods are up to the task or not. Any help in the crank ID would be appreciated! Thanks

First, you are doing well for four days of practice. That said, here's a few observations: Your weld speed looks slow. That's why the bead appears bunched up and the heat affect zone looks wide. On some of the stainless welds, the weld deposit looks contaminated. It's very important to ensure the welding rod does not leave the shielding gas envelope between "dips". The first weld appears to have a substantial curf. The heat affect zones are not even on both sides of the weld. When welding beads on a solid plate or doing a but weld on identical thickness pieces, try to have the torch standing up at 90 degrees from the plate. The only angle should be back, so the arc is pushing the weld puddle forward. You have it angled over to one side a little. This is pushing the deposit to one side and leaving the curf. I puddle the metal and then pull the arc back to the trailing edge of the puddle. Then dip the filler rod and move the torch forward. Once the puddle "catches up", I pull the arc to the back of the puddle and dip again. So on and so on. push-pull-dip, push -pull-dip... This is very quick action and takes practice. High speed material like aluminum and magnesium (10 to 12 inches per minute) won't allow you to pull the arc to the rear of the puddle before dipping. It's just stop and dip, stop and dip... You can download the entire tig welding handbook from Miller welding http://www.millerwelds.com/education/TIGhandbook/

You were correct the first time. Spot welds can be made with any welder, but most people associate them with resistance welds. Spot welds are permanent and structural. Tac welds are like spot welds, but meant to hold something in place temporarily. Miller welding has a huge library available free to download, with almost anything you want to know about welding. http://www.millerwelds.com/education/library.html

Two of my Speed Glass helmets are over ten years old and still kicking. 12V battery only that's sold at camera shops.

4AG standard is 81mm. Toyota sells oversize to 81.5mm. HKS sold the stroker kit for the RB20 "back in the day". Now with the RB25/26 parts available, it has become much more economical. If you are dead-set on this, I would go with the 26 internals if you have them, and custom forged pistons at no more than 81mm. I'll look around for a junk 24 piston that you may be able to use as a sample for pin height/size when ordering custom.

Also, as the RB piston pin is 21mm and the 4AGZ pin is 20mm, you must have the rods re-bushed with custom fit bushings, or the pistons bored and grooved for the 21mm pin and clips. Custom pistons are looking cheaper and cheaper. Or, you could just go with the RB25, with bigger valves, ports, etc. and make way more power. You could use the RB26 crank and rods you have to make it 2.6 with no mods. I've been in Japan for over 20 years, off and on, and have been working on RB's since about 1989. I've seen a total of two (2) RB24's because: 1. They were both built before the RB25 or 26 (see #2) 2. Once the 25 and 26 came out in the R32, the power output in the 2.4 seemed anemic, especially when you consider the significant cost of building the 2.4 vs. the larger output of the basically stock 25/26. 3. They are (extremely) prone to breaking cylinder walls. Both engines were brought to be for "problems". Both had cracked cylinder walls, bent rods, etc. (catastrophic failure). Not trying to rain on your parade. Just giving you some insight from someone who has actually been down this road.

The largest oversize 4AGZ piston from Toyota is 81.5mm. The stock rings are weak and don't tolerate much abuse above 1.0 bar without breaking. Boring any RB block 4mm over is asking for trouble.

There's also the S14 on the Exvitermini site that went 8.766 @ 154.63 mph.

Not sure about the States, but Japan has S30's and S31's. Same body style. I think the S31 started with the L20 EFI model... S130 followed the S31.

That, the TPS, and G sensors.

Or just buy the HKS clutch (twin or tripple) that is pull type. Replacement discs are half the cost of OS, as well. Pull type has much nicer engagement.

The first one is a damper. The pressure regulator is the one on the front of the fuel rail.

I think what he's asking is if the RB20 bell will mount to the VG30DETT gearbox. The answer is "no". The RB25DETT and RB26DETT bells will mount to the VG30DETT box.