Engine almost ready!

Now it really has been ages since ive update this blog. Stuff has been happening but ive just been lazy to type it up to be honest.

About a week after I got the car back I spent a day or two re installing various bits and pieces such as door seals, wiring looms, engine bay ancilaries etc into the car. Basically all the stuff I took off to get the car painted.

I then decided that I wanted to go 5 stud with the car to get some better rim choices. This took a while as I had some problems with dodgy bearings. The parts I used eventually were:

Front:
- S14 lower control arms
- S14 spindle
- S14 wheel hub

Rear
- R33 hub bolted onto the S13 spindle
- Full drum brake assembly from an R33 - yet to hook up handbrake cables but they will be R33.

Anyway this is all done now and the car rolls on 5.

I have also made the decision that I will NOT be bothering with registering the engine conversion legally. I decided it was too much trouble and I really cant be bothered having a bunch of old men pick away at my hard work saying shit is wrong with it. As a result of this decision im going straight for all the "big parts" so the twin plate, turbo, gate etc are all going on from the start.

When i was pulling the motor down I had two exhaust studs snap off in the head. Through trying to drill them out it ended up making more of a mess so I decided at that point to take the head off and have it checked over/resurfaced and lay a new gasket down just for shits and giggles.

Anyway i have been pretty lazy up untill about a month ago but things have started to pick up now. I re-installed the head a few weeks ago and last few days have been spent cleaning up bits (yes im a clean freak) and making a custom brake line system to suit the R33 BMC + line locker im running.

Theres probably lots more that ive forgotten but thats about the jist of things for now.

Heres some pics as they speak more than words I think :P The last picture is about 5 days old and is how the motor looks at the time of posting. The pic of the 180sx is pretty accurate but it has a windscreen now :)

Might be ready for the big engine drop this weekend.....mayyyybe!

Paint is finished!

Got the car back from the painters yesterday and im very happy with the end product. Ive already started putting it back together with half of the main loom run through the car and the engine bay loom (not the engine loom) fully run through.

Progress will be slow with small things being done here and there for the next two weeks until I have another week of leave at which time the big stuff like rear subframe, 5 stud, front xmember, engine cleaning/prep will take place.

Pics?

Its white!! (sort of)

The car has finally had some paint laid on it and its now half way through its paint job. The interior and the engine bay have both been sprayed and I am incredibly happy with the way it has come out. Trust me, the pictures dont do it justice...it is a very crisp clean white in real life. Remaining is the rear quarters, roof, bonnet and fenders + headlights then I get the car back. Looking at about two weeks for all of the above.

Once its back I will hopefully have some time booked off work just to work on it so things should start moving nice and quick. As always, here are the pics:

Paint Update

These pics are actually from a week ago but I believe the car still looks the same (my painter has been sick). Basically the car has been to a panel beater to have the dents removed from the body and its been bogged up in certain places.

At the moment Im thinking it will be about 2 weeks before it lands back at my place and then I can start turning bolts the right way for a change.

Progress Update

Woah...its been ages since I have posted here.

Since the last post about engine removal things have gone rather slow to be perfectly honest. A few weeks after the RB came out of the halfcut I had the car towed from the workshop back to my house so that I can do the time consuming work at my own leisure. Whilst the car was at my place I have:

- Removed ALL left over sound deadening
- Flared the rear gaurds
- Removed all body seals except for rear quarter windows
- Cut out the battery tray and had stainless welded on top
- Bogged this up so it is nice and smooth
- Had front windscreen removed (it cracked so now I need a new one...)
- Removed body loom from the engine bay
- And just generally tidied things up/removed bits in preparation for paint.

I have been holding off posting until now as the car was still stranded at my place but as of yesterday it has left to be painted. There were delays with this as I was originally going to get it done by a certain business that turned bad overnight, then I decided I would paint it myself, then someone talked some sense in to me and I ended up finding a fellow drifter who happens to work as a spray painter and he was more than happy to do it for me. As it is sort of a personal favour kind of job there were delays in getting it to him, and it might take a tad longer than normal but none of this bothers me as long as the end product is good.

In the mean time I have received some bits in the mail that will be going on the car. These include:

- Garrett GT3540 0.70 compresor/0.63 exhaust
- 6boost high mount manifold
- Turbosmart 48mm external wastegate (dont know if I will use this though)
- Oil/water lines
- Plazmaman intake plenum
- Apexi PowerFC (uses AFM though so not sure if I will run this)
- Bee*R Rev limiter

So at the moment Im waiting on the car to return home so I can start re-assembling it all (sigh) and then give the engine a good scrubbing before it all gets bolted in. It sounds easy when I say it but I can imagine there will be so much shit that doesnt fit that im going to go crazy. Oh well, pics:

Halfcut Engine Removal

Well, finally got around to removing the RB25 from the halfcut. Looking back it would have probably been easier to lift the motor out from the top rather than the bottom but it worked so..eh.

The biggest suprise of the night was openining up the cam covers to find a well maintained clean engine underneath its dirty "been sitting around to long" shell.

Next on the to do list is to strip the engine down of its ancileries and clean + replace everything that needs attention...I want it to look like its new! Also need to get around to removing the remaining tar from my interior but thats such a cunt of a job its just in the back of my mind at the moment.

Halfcut Arrived

Well I heard from Ben @ KYP on saturday who let me know that my halfcut would be ready for inspection today! I went to check it out this morning and I was happy to see that it is exactly what I was after:

1995 Nissan Skyline R33 (series 1 body, series 2 motor)
RB25DET
5 speed manual
83,000km's
Non-ABS
Stock standard
Compression: 165 across all 6

We started the engine up whilst I was there and it was fine. It sounded so tough as it was with no exhaust etc so it put a nice big smile on my face.

I will be picking it up tomorrow and transporting it to the workshop where if all goes to plan it will be removed from the half cut that night so that we can throw the shell away (very limited space currently). Il post pics of this once done as well.

Anyway, here are some pics of the engine as it is now: