Real Fiero Tech

Had a day off yesterday, worked on the car. Engine is done and 95% of the plumbing. Need some 3" pipe and couplers for my new intake filters. No longer running MAFs. Vipec uses a MAP sensor which is so much nicer.

I just realized... timing belt + variable cam phasing? That must be a sealing nightmare. How often do those units leak and oil down your timing belt? Is that why you have the clear timing belt cover?

Just a cam angle sensor, adjust spark timing with it. Fixed cams.

The clear cover is just for fun

Ahh, ok.

I'd read an article not too long ago by an Australian tuner who would *GUARANTEE* his work... IE, if his tune broke your engine, he'd fix your engine. One of the anecdotes he related was that he'd started off tuning Skylines by setting the cam angle sensor the "right" way, developing a good tune and sending the customer on his way. Then some asshole manually advanced the cam angle sensor in order to advance ignition timing and get more power. Of course he blew his engine and went back to the tuner to make good on the guarantee. The tuner was thorough enough to check for that and denied the guy. Since then one of the first things he does following a compression/leak down test is adjust the cam angle sensor all the way advanced so enterprising customers can only retard it.

That's actually a good idea since timing can still be changed from the ECU. Nobody can manually f with it that way.

Again....




When I had my car in for a dyno after having my head repaired I had some issues. When we went to start the car the oil pressure sender was mysteriously missing from my engine. Also, the connector on my idle air controller was broken.... which is under the intake manifold.... Did I mention it is a FUCKING BITCH to take off?

My theory is, when my car was at the shop for 3 months last summer they "borrowed" some parts off my engine to repair other people's Skylines. When I picked it up abruptly it was still missing these parts. Skip ahead a few months and I had some health issues. Ever become allergic to gluten all of a sudden? Meee toooo. It was awesome. Took a few months to figure out what was actually wrong with me but I'm all good now.

Last week I finally got some ambition and pulled my intake to replace the IAC and oil pressure sender.

Broken connector



How does one even break a connector off like this? I'd like to know...



My car is now booked in for the 31th to have a good looking over and then a dyno on the 1st. Hoping to get around the same or slightly more power then before but a lot more drivability. Racing Greed that tuned my car last time didn't seem to care about drivability, just WOT. I would get about 2 hours of driving before my spark plugs would be so fouled that I would start missing.

Hope it goes smoothly and I can get more racing in this year. It's been too long.

Good to see you're still working on this... Was wondering what happened.

I guess things like that get broken when someone with western fingers tries to do work designed for Japanese fingers.

Japanese connectors on 10-year-old cars are very hard to get apart. Japanese connectors on 20-year-old cars just break.

Small Asian hands would definitely be an advantage with working on these imports.

Working on the car yesterday and today getting it ready for the dyno on Thursday.

Long overdue upgrade. Installing my catch can. I bough this one without any kind of test fitting. After an hour of head scratching, I found the only area in the engine bay it will fit.








I could have used an adapter and smaller lines but there isn't much weight difference between -12 lines and -6 or -8. The BIG difference is the cost of the fittings... Those 120* -12 fittings were over $40 each. Ouch.


Since before my last dyno day I upgraded my fuel system to use a swirl tank. I noticed under heavy braking and turning my fuel pump would lose suction. So now I have a Walbro 255 feeding the surge tank and an OBX pump feeding the engine. I wouldn't normally run OBX, but I was reading a DSport mag and they had a fuel pump edition. This one was properly sized for the power I was looking to make.





Bumper removed, much easier to get on and off a trailer.




I will be back Thursday night, I'll update with great success or epic failure.

Good luck! Don't blow it up!

Ok, weird update.

Turns out the ViPec ecu was toast. It would shut off the ecu when throttle was applied. It was doing a bunch of strange things ecu related. They hooked up a Link ecu which is pretty much the same computer and it runs and revs fine. I told him if be could keep it under $3k ill buy the link and later on ill return the vipec.

Kind of in a pinch. 5 hours from home here in Calgary, at a different tuner so link it is. I don't care as long as it runs!

Now returning the vipec will be fun. Nothing but horror stories from Lightsped (misspelled on purpose to avoid google).

So since the car runs and idles now we can tune it. Hoping for good news tomorrow.

What a moneypit! You should just let me take that off your hands. Think of the money you'll save!

Good to hear that this thing is finally getting close to being back on the road!

Well she survived. 440whp at 16 lbs. couldn't get the manual boost controller to go any higher. The previous shop owner didn't want to install my Greddy profec and installed a manual boost controller instead... Oh we'll, should be reliable on track with this much power anyways.

Autodream has convinced me to go single turbo. Going to ditch the twins for a modern twin scroll Borg Warner turbo. Want about 550 whp and responsive. Plus single turbo RB26s sound bloody amazing.

Good to hear!

crzyone wrote:The previous shop owner didn't want to install my Greddy profec and installed a manual boost controller instead...

WTF? Where did you dig this idiot up?

^ Dude, there is so many horror stories that I'm not even going to get into. Lets just say I won't be spending another dime at that shop.

So I'm on night shifts in the control room. Lots of time to surf the internet and look at what I'm going to run for a manifold and turbo. Think I'm pretty much set on a Precision 6266 ball bearing turbo. It's weird that it's an air cooled center section and not water cooled. Have not heard of failures so maybe it's good? Going with a divided T4 hot side and probably going to go with .83 AR for a bit more spool. Similar GTRs running this turbo are hitting 600whp at just over 20psi which is just about perfect.

There is a company called 6boost out of Australia that makes a good manifold that is guaranteed for life. The GTR community seems to love them and they are 2/3 the price of a full race manifold. Pretty sure I'm going with the 6boost divided manifold with a 60mm Tial WG.

Thinking I will run a waste gate pipe back into the exhaust but with a remote cutout so I can chose to dump to atmosphere. With an open dump I'm thinking the 3" exhaust I have now will be sufficient for my 600whp goal.

Going to drive my car probably until October and then start ripping it apart for the upgrade. My setup should pay for the turbo and the rest shouldn't be more than a couple grand plus tuning. Looking forward to a modern single turbo and ditching the HKS 2530s. They were great 10 years ago but mid-big turbos have come a long way. No longer need small twins to have good response. Plus the added efficiency will be well worth it!

Just ordered some new wheels. CCW Classics, completely black. 18x10.5 front and back, -13 offset front and -23 rear. Should be nice and deep. Not a fan of running spacers on my current wheels so I'll be selling them as soon as the CCWs get here.

New turbo, manifold and associated hardware are on there way here, I'll have some pictures soon.

Ccw is local to me and I know a few people that work there. Did you call ccw directly? If so you remember who you spoke to?

Yeah I called them direct. I was speaking with John, the manager.

My manifold finally arrived from Australia. Looks awesome and well built. 6boost and Full Race are the only 2 manifold companies with good reps in the Skyline world that I know of. Now just waiting on my other parts.