Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Battery Install time

We decided to mount the battery on the passenger side of the cabin, behind the seat. The idea of this is to help offset the weight of the driver. All work on this was performed by Adam Kaitler, who came up with the whole setup in his car, and I just copied!
I went for a PULSE battery as they're a cheap option, and after having an odyssey a long time ago and not being particularly happy with it I thought may as well give it a go. We also installed a FIA approved kill switch, and mounted the box for the Painless wiring switch panel.


Battery and mount











Switch panel in place




Thursday, November 13, 2008

Suspension

The suspension is going to be left as it was prior to the rebuild. I've been really happy with the handling thus far, and the car has great traction even out of second gear corners.
The suspension currently consists of the following:

Tein Super Street Coilovers (Japanese spec)
Kazama Castor rods
Kazama Hicas lock bar
Cusco rear camber arms
Cusco castor rod brace
Tomei triangulated strut brace (front)
Integrated strut brace into the rollcage on the rear
Unknown aftermarket swaybars front and rear









I also have a under guard braces from an unknown japanese brand.


The Super streets were my only concern in that setup, but so far they've proven very good in combination with the big swaybars.
I'll be doing some aero mods to help the suspension work a little better. I've bought a GKtech undertray for the time being to try and smooth out some of the airflow under the car, and protect the sump from ripple strips. I'm thinking I will just extend upon this to create a full undertray with splitter for the front end, similar to this:
GKtech undertray:













Pity I have no skills, so it should be interesting!

I've also got my hands on a C-West GT wing. I used to have one on the car, and took it off due to a defect. I sold it to a mate, who put it on his S14 that he races. After going in his car and feeling the rear end stability it has, I decided I needed to get one again. The only issue is how I mount it to the boot... I'm thinking of doing a system like the one show below, or alternatively just mounting a straight bar across the inside, and putting the wing posts straight through the boot. This will impede access to the fuel system though, so I'm trying to decide my best course of attack that will provide a solid mounting plate while still giving relatively easy access to the boot area (within 10 minutes to get in).




Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Turbocharger

A lot of people give me strange looks when I tell them what turbo I'm running on my big $$$ engine, and I can see why. The fact is that I have it already, and it worked well on my previous engine, so I'd like to see how it goes on this one. I think the capacity of the engine will bring it on nice and strong, but the cams might be too big for it. Only one way to find out...

The turbo I'm running is a HKS T300.

Specs: T04s 56trim 76mm compressor .7 A/R comp housing, 60mm T3 turbine .63 housing, plain bearing
HKS External Wastegate
HKS modified manifold
Custom dump pipe and front pipe

In one of the earlier posts you can see what the turbo kit looked like originally. While it worked well, it was a nightmare to work on due to the position of the wastegate, and we didn't think it would even fit with the new gearbox. While we had everything out Sam (http://www.drdrift.com.au/) and I decided in the interest of serviceability we'd relocate the wastegate. A member of Skylines Australia came to the rescue and gas filled and welded up the massive hole in the manifold that was there from when the wastegate was ripped off at DECA (refer earlier post).

Big thanks to John at Provex for helping me out!

This is how it came out:


Hole:




Welded:





We then worked out the best place on the merge to relocate the wastegate.






It then went back to Williamstown Engine Reconditioners to be levelled out.

And this is it dummy fitted on the car:












I think it came out really well, over the moon with it.
Brakes

I'm a bit of a brake whore, so despite my previous setup working well on the track I couldn't resist moving onto something bigger and better for the return of the car. I figured I'm going to be arriving at corners with a fair bit more speed now, so they were warranted while I had the money to pay for them.

Old setup:

Front: Sumitomo calipers, Project Mu SCR rotors, Project Mu HC+ pads, Goodrich braided lines.

Rear: S14 calipers, RDA slotted rotors, DS2500 pads, Goodrich braided lines

New setup

Front: CSC 4 piston calipers, CSC 343mm 2 piece slotted rotors, CSC caliper mounts, EBC Yellow stuff pads, Maltech braided lines



Rear: Brembo R33 GT-R rear calipers, RDA slotted discs, DS2500 pads, Maltech braided lines



A little bit of an upgrade...

I have to give a massive thanks to Stuart at Benson Motorsport in Hobart (http://www.bensonmotorsports.com/) for finding the brakes for me. He put me onto the calipers and rotors which were 1 hill climb and half a track day old, and then sourced me caliper mounting brackets, as well as gave me a heap of advice in answer to all my annoying questions. Absolute champ.

For those that don't know who CSC is, they are an Australian company started by an ex-Harrop engineer. They are now known as BMAX, and are used on Ric Shaw's 24hr Nurburgring car so they're good stuff.

I can't wait to fit these bad boys up! I'll wait until the car is closer before I do as I want to keep my semi's in storage and stock rims obviously won't fit over the brakes.




















I'm going to have the rear Brembo's rebuilt, and then I'll paint them before they go on. I'll put another post up when I'm doing this.
Rollcage

Ok, you probably noticed (if you're not blind) the roll cage in the last post, so I thought I'd give some details on it.

It was built by Brown Davis Motorsport in Bayswater and consists of a bolt in rear half cage with a single diagonal, camera mount, harness bar and side intrusion cars.
I also had to have a custom seat mount made up to sit the seat on the floor due to the diagonal sitting me too far forward (I'm pretty tall)

Great workmanship on the cage, can't fault the thing. I wasn't 100% impressed with having to get a new seat mount, but it was probably a good idea anyway.






















Bodywork


OK, this was definately my least favourite part of all this, probably because I did most of it myself.

With the engine out it was the perfect time to clean up 15 years worth of engine bay grime, and give it a fresh coat of paint. Me and some mates started to strip down the car of all easily removeable bodywork, and then got stuck into the engine bay. What a pain in the arse! It was probably more of a pain considering we spent a night trying to get the engine loom out of the wrong side of the car...




That's what friends are for! Thanks Don Megaaaaa





Filthy!





Eventually we got it all done, and sent it off to Primal Garage ( http://dive.to/PrimalGarage) for spot welding and an engine bay respray in Satin Black. They did a great job on the car, and were very reasonably priced, thanks guys!







Onto the interior...


If I thought the engine bay was bad, then I was in for a shock at the work involves with getting the interior up to scratch. What a task!


The plan for the interior was to remove anything not necessary, and reduce weight as much as possible, and give it a fresh coat of Satin Black paint to keep the theme of the car going, as well as make it easy to touch up when it's inevitably scratched. That meant all wiring and sound deadening had to go. The wiring was fine, the sound deadening was a pain. I used dry ice for the most part, and then a heat gun and wire brush for the rest. It was dirty work to say the least... but we got their in the end. I'm still blowing black paint out of my nose...


Stripping:

Masking (pain in the arse):


Practice:



Getting there:




Done!



I think it turned out quite well in the end, and I'm happy with the colour too.