Well, since I’ve been stuck doing school work and not wrenching, I’ve been spending my limited free time working on some new parts.
In the works:
Hawk HP Plus pads
Rear braided lines
ES rear sway bar end links
BKR7E plugs.
Earls fittings for the new braided PS line.
And the materials to make this:
Yes, I’m good at procrastinating…lol
Myself and Mike1 headed out to the garage Friday night for a fix of beers and wrenching.
Turns out the ol’ man took the keys with him to the cabin, and left both locks locked.
Solution?
Anyway, a few minutes later we were back on track and ready to build some turbo’s.
:lol:
First up was the disassembly of a couple of my GT2871R’s.
I bought the car last April with a relatively new turbo, and never really had any issues with it.
The car was boosting 18-20psi with no issues,and had no issue with oil consumption, etc.
When I pulled the motor in August, I checked the turbo and it had some shaft play, so I decided to look for a replacement, so I wouldn’t have any turbo issues this year.
I bought a turbo from a scam artist named Jack Slovenski on the Nico forum.
The turbo was advertised as only having 2K on it, and having brand new shaft play tolerances checked by a Nissan tech, etc.
I buy the turbo and before I even receive it, he’s already withdrawn the funds and bought another turbo from another member of the forum.
The turbo shows up with the housings wiped clean, and put together basically hand tight.
I disassemble and find oil in the housings, and a bunch of burned oil on the turbine.
I address it with this guy, and get:
“i had never ran it, therefor, i didn’t guarentee that it would work. buying off the internet is a buyer beware thing, i never stated i would give a refund, therefor, i’m not refunding you.”"
Of course Paypal…being the useless money grab they are…tell me they won’t do anything about it and wash their hands clean of it.
Anyway, after a huge headache, this guy sends me $40 with “more on the way” then disappears off the face of the earth.
I hadn’t realized this before, but when I looked at it this weekend, the turbine blades are chewed up at the largest OD, looks like something has passed through them.
A few guys had suggested that the oil in the turbine could have been from the engine, and the compressor wheel from the intake/catch can/etc.
I figure that I’ve already spent a grand on this, and I can’t afford a new turbo right now, so I have to try it out and see if it is useless or not. If it is fuxed, as I predict it will be, my only other option is to use my old turbo again this summer, regardless of shaft play. It is unfortunate that I have one turbo with shaft play and another with a chewed up turbine and possible blown seals.
Nevertheless, I have to try it out and see if I’ll have a functional turbo this year.
As the turbo was missing some bolts and random bits, I took the best of both turbo’s and put them together. Mike1 had some fun “bench testing” the turbo’s with the compressor air nozzle while I put them together, lol.
I still have to heat-wrap my Full-Race manifold, but for start-up and testing/tuning, here it is in all it’s glory, rocking oil stains, tig repair welds, and other various signs of good use.
And everything mocked up.
I have to find my locking washers and exhaust nuts before I can really claim that it’s bolted up and ready to go.
Finally…after I had everything installed…I realized that there’s a hole in the CHRA.
I really hope this is just a casting issue, and is external of the water/oil passages.
It’s on the shoulder of the bolt channel for the oil drain, so I’m hoping it’s just at the shoulder and doesn’t affect anything inside the CHRA…Not having much luck with turbo’s.
Happy Easter.
So the Mazda 3 heim joint sway bar end links work. The bracket actually sits against the small LCA bracket lip that seemed to be in the way, and fits snug in this orientation.
On a related note, does anyone know the bolt size/thread pitch for the rear sway bar end link D-bushing bolts? There are 4 of them that bolt into the rear subframe, and I seem to have lost them all…lol
Also did a bit of an alignment to get things “close”.
I’m hoping to be able to get a local alignment, and not have to drive the hour into the city on what is essentially all new suspension links with no proper alignment at all.
I had about 3 feet of toe out in the front when I bolted everything together, lol
I managed to get that as close to zero as I could, while maintaining a relatively straight steering wheel.
I also dialed out some front camber (after I set the toe…doh). I backed it down from 3.9deg to about 2.2deg. I’ll probably settle somewhere in the 2.5 range when I get an actual alignment.
I didn’t do much with the rear, as it was somewhat close from matching lengths of the links when I took them apart and such. I was running 2.5 deg camber and zero toe last year. I’ll probably back the camber off a little when I get it aligned.
P.S. Check out Roaster’s new shoes on the far right.
It’s actually starting to look like a car again…well somewhat.
Does anyone know if the airbag system still works with the driver side air bag components removed and replaced with aftermarket hubs?
I’m wondering if I should keep the rest of the system there, or if it’s just dead weight?
Then I dealt with this…
Removed all the ABS stuff…
Had I know the entire passenger side harness was ABS specific (besides a few things that were tied into the harness for convenience), I could have done this with much less cutting. However, it was all clean pigtail cuts, so no worries.
I wonder how much I can remove from the main harness…lol
I think I’ll really clean up the harness next year, this year I just want to get it back in the car, and have the car ready for the season.
And ended up with this…
While I was back there, I sandwiched the previous hole that had been drilled for the battery box with some nuts, washers, and RTV. I think this may have been where a lot of the water was coming from (if you remember the rusted tire ring), and I’m hoping this will fix the problem.
The only other place I can think of is the location where the wing attaches (It’s pretty hidden, so hard to get to), or the rubber liner around the edge of the trunk. We’ll see how this does first I guess.
The water was always down in the tire well, and never on the carpet or lining, so I’m thinking it was getting in down there…either through that hole, or running down along the trunk seals somewhere.
Now to deal with the main harnesses…that will be left for another day.
Dick dropped over as well to help out with the “alignment”, and some other antics.
I finally found some of the turbo side hardware, so we bolted up the manifold and installed some of the couplers and t-clamps and such. I bought enough t-clamps to do my whole turbo/IC setup this year, as I hate hose clamps and figure I’ll do it right with proper clamps.
Finally, the GF got in another painting mood, and finished the front end sections that had been sitting on the bench since a few months ago when I cut them out.
I bolted up the passenger side front corner section (shiny piece…lol), then test fitted the middle piece. As you can see, the paint didn’t turn out the best on the center section, so I’ll have to prep and re-paint that before install. No worries though, it won’t be needed until after the engine is in for the final fit.
So one of the guys finished an exam today and decided we should go wrench on the 240 for a bit to get over it…lol. There were a few small things that had to get done with the car, rear sway bar, seat belt and interior install, etc.
We skipped all that and decided to wrench on the engine a bit.
Here’s what happened.
Laid a pallet on the legs of the hoist to take some of the engine weight and provide stability
Found the shifter and fitted it to the transmission
Checked out my old clutch.
It had obviously been slipping a bit, and on the other side of the pads showed a very strange wear pattern. I don’t have a picture, but only about 1/3 of the pad was engaging on the other side…it was like something was out of alignment possibly.
Checked out my new clutch…notice the unsprung disc as opposed to the sprung disc from last year.
Also…see anything missing here?
Oh, there’s the dust plate. I knew something looked off…lol
We ended up bolting up a transmission…you can see where this is going now.
Pushed the car back as far as it could go.
And ended up dropping this thing in.
Plenty of room in front of the car now.
In!
I didn’t really want to put this thing in, as I haven’t ran my harnesses yet, but we couldn’t really help ourselves…lol
Our justification was that we’d drop it in and measure the driveshaft clearances for the diff and tunnel and handbrake cables.
We never really got around to that, as we had to head back into town for supper/GF’s/studying (I have a final tomorrow…lol
We’ll see how fun running the rest of the wiring is…at least it’s looking like good progress right?
Check out the tight clearance between the ARC oil pan and Tanabe sway bar.
I think there’s actually contact.
Small victory today.
After OK Tire marked up my Volks in September, and 7 months of fighting with the sleezebag assistant manager and owner, I get a small token of victory.
I had to go to “corporate” and put the pressure on from there.
Their regional manager made 2-3 visits and had “meetings” with them, during other business I presume. The owner at least once, maybe twice told the regional manager that he would handle it with me and never did. He also told me personally numerous times that he would handle it or “look into it”.
After dealing with the Assistant manager for over a week with no indication that he’d even asked anyone (the owner) about the situation, I cut him out and went to the owner who lives and operates out of Clarenville.
A month or more of dealing with this guy, after about a dozen excuses, and I get the offer to send my wheels to Clarenville so his “guy” can look at them. I shut that down, and eventually get this - “I’ll give you a little less than half of the cost to paint them, but I’m taking the tire change and balance fee from that”.
I finally get sick of dealing with this redneck and go to corporate. The regional manager is told a few times (after meeting with the owner) that the guy is going to handle it. Eventually I tell him I want to cut the owner out of this and I want him to handle it, then deal with the owner later.
I get an e-mail saying he’s flying down for another meeting with the owner and he’ll give the owner the option of paying the shop directly for the repairs, or giving me a $350 check for repairs (the local quote).
I follow up with a couple of e-mails and finally get one this morning saying that there is a $250 check waiting for me at the shop to “assist with repairs”. I go over there and the guys have no idea what’s going on. They pretend like they don’t know who “Gerard” the regional manager is.
I tell them to get him on the phone, and now all of a sudden, they remember that they’ve had a meeting and the result was that they’d pay “up to $300 for repairs”. I still tell them to get the regional rep on the phone, and they hesitantly get him on the phone.
They come back telling me that a check will be there in half an hour.
The only real justice that I get out of it is knowing that a regional manager (who is probably making 6 figures) has spent a but-load of hours on this since the fall, the owner has been wasting his time and dealing with corporate, and the local assistant manager and guys at the store have wasted their time making up stories for this guy and generally taking shop time to deal with this.
In the end, I get an e-mail telling me I’m getting $350, a shop telling me I’m getting $300, and a check giving me $250. You have to love how organized OK Tire representatives are.
These guys have probably logged triple that in working hours and phone calls between the bunch of them, to save a hundred bucks or so from an unhappy customer.
I think the best part was looking at the assistant manager, as he sat there eating a box of pizza at the front desk (professional?) with his black eye (professional?), and avoiding eye contact with me the whole time. I also enjoyed the hesitant “Gerard? Bye, he don’t work here, I don’t know nothin’ about that”.
OK Tire
Honestly Driven
A friend of mine posted an '07 Modified article of my car on our local forum.
It gave me the itch to look for some Circa pics of the 240.
I looked around a bit, and came up with a pretty interesting mix.
Not sure if these are all accurate, but I think I’ve got the Circa dates about right.
Also listing random mods by looking at the pics…lol
Spring '05 - OEM
Summer '05 - Gram Lights, Nitto’s, Tein EDFC, Brembo GT’s
Summer '06 - Kouki front conversion, CF hood, Vented fenders, SR20DET, AEM EMS, HKS IC, Invidia cat back, lip kit, etc.
Summer '07 - Enkei’s
Spring '08 - OEM Kouki hood, K’s wing, Body shop, JDM K’s conversion, C-West Lip, Volk Ce28’s
Summer '09 - Buy the car and start racing
Winter '10 - Mid-Rebuild
Can’t wait to get this thing back on the road.
amazing job
It has been quite a ride for this car.
I can’t take credit for anything before '09, but I can say that it was a good starting point for the current build.
I’m just going to keep the ball rolling and refine the performance of the car…it already looks the part!
On another note, a good friend of mine just broke his '08 Evo X MR. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.
He’s ok.
The Moose is ok and back in the woods somewhere.
No details except that it’s back at the local Mitsu dealership, as it’s 2:30am here.
The moose came out of the median on the highway and pulled a pit-maneuver on the car.
He counter-steered and kept it on the road.
No major injuries, just the unfortunate damage to the car.
Got a package today.
Still waiting on another currently in customs, then it’s time to finish the car up for the season!
Hoping to get back at the car on Sunday, after our graduation antics.
This is 240 love!!! nothing compliments your furniture like a god set of hankook tires 
Good job and good luck with your build!
Glad you got the pads ok!
---------- Post added at 12:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:49 PM ----------
Moose hit was awesome, glad hes ok
---------- Post added at 12:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:49 PM ----------
Moose hit was awesome, glad hes ok
---------- Post added at 12:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:49 PM ----------
Fuck son is fucked up
Yeah thanks Sasha, they showed up way quicker than I expected.
“Great ebayer, A+++ seller, great communication, would deal with again…lol”
Got another package sometime within the last 2 days, a few days left for celebrations, and I’ll finally have time to put them to use.
We’ve got some rear braided lines, some ES sway bar bushings, fittings and hose to make a HP PS line, plugs, etc.
There’s a driveshaft shop Al driveshaft on the way somewhere to fit the non-ABS diff, which reminds me I have to get mine sent out (Sorry J).
And for those of you trying to duck some customs, check this out. I had no idea he was doing this, and laughed out loud when I saw the packing slip.
“Samples, promotional items, handouts”
“Congratulations on the win!”
“Reason: End of winter”
haha
And the reason I’ve been slack on the build as of late.
You guys don’t get these in the states, it’s a Canadian thing…but we got our iron rings yesterday.
Pardon the lack of color in my skin, we’ve been “celebrating” for almost a week now, and pulled a good 24hrs or so running into this evening.
Got a nap in, posting this thread, and getting ready for day 5…lol
Update!
I bought some 2700psi hydraulic hose, and made a power steering line with the help of CodyAce. Unfortunately Summit sent me one Earls fitting and one Fragola fitting without telling me the difference, and the cheap Fragola fitting broke immediately.
So I moved on and installed the clutch slave and braided line.
Pulled the old JDM plugs…lol
Note the cracked ceramic section on plug #1.
I finished up for the afternoon by installing some fuel lines + fpr + sensor.
Installed my AEM 3.5Bar sensor.
AEM Boost Solenoid.
And some vacuum lines and such for the TB.
I went home and found a package notification, then shortly thereafter picked up my non-ABS driveshaft. Here it is compared to my previous ABS driveshaft. Both are aluminum Driveshaftshop.
And picked up some fittings.
The one on the top left to replace the crappy Fragola fitting.
The one on the bottom right to adapt that giant old -10 or whatever it is to a -6.
The rubber hose fitting was just a spare/alternate to replace the -10 fittings for my remote oil filter.
I went out and bought a ridiculous amount of fluids.
The Castrol jugs were on sale for $26 down from $40, so I went ahead and bought a bunch.
I also often get asked for oil, so I bought some Castrol “shop oil”…lol
I’ll probably run the Castrol through the engine for the first week anyway just to clean everything out.
Add in some synthetic GL-4 75w90, some brake fluid and some PS fluid, and we’re ready to get to work.
I ended up buying Dot 3 brake fluid.
The fluid I bought has a 205 C boiling point.
The Dot 3 for ABS was at 252 C.
The Dot 4 was 230 C
The Dot 5 “racing” silicone fluid was only 260 C
Notice the Dot 3 for ABS is about on par with the Dot 5 racing fluid?
I wasn’t about to buy a bunch of those tiny 500ml bottles to get my hands on the Dot 5 or Dot 3 for ABS. Then I looked at the Dot 3 and 4, and figured I’d go with the 3, as the 4 really isn’t that great of an improvement, and is actually much less than the Dot 3 for ABS. I don’t think I’ll have any issues.
I installed my PS line with the proper fitting.
Then I sifted through the mess of fittings for the remote mount, and got to work putting that together.
Next up was checking the Z32 17/16" BMC.
I came across a thread talking about the lack of inner flare in the 2nd outlet of the bmc, so I checked and sure enough I don’t have one.
You can see that my decent double flare isn’t doing it, so I’ll either have to try a bubble flare on that line, or find a stock bmc and cut the flare fitting out of it.
The next big project was the main harness.
First I pulled it out of the box, and sorted it the best I could.
Then I “threw it in the car”
Pulled it through the wheel well.
Then tackled the passenger side engine harness.
Cut, cleaned, and re-taped everything, and buttoned it up pretty good.
Well actually, the old man dropped in and decided he wanted to pull that side of the harness apart because oil had seeped into it. I didn’t mind that, after he pulled it apart, I just matched everything up and it made for a clean install.
Pulled some of the Cruise and ABS crap off to the side, and tied the harness back.
Eventually I’ll get to clean up the harness, but it won’t be this winter
Looks a little cleaner inside.
Still have to tackle the relay box, the driver side harness, and the interior harness section.
I hate wiring…this should be fun…lol
Then I finished installing the remote mount oil filter, the fuel lines, the throttle cable, etc.
More to come later this week 
I realized yesterday that I had routed the harness under the steering column, and not over, so I had to pull the entire harness back through the driver side.
Routed it through the proper channel
And pulled it all through again.
Then (for only the 2nd time this year), I opened up the doors and wrenched in the sun.
Here are two of my other non-working Nissan’s…lol
I tied in a lot of the wiring, ran the battery cables and installed the grounds, and put the relay box back together.
Last night I test fit the rad, sprayed the front section, then installed the IC piping/BOV, the boost lines, and other random engine bay items.
man
your a fitting machine
i feel your pain though. after you build one line, you think to yourself, why the fuck did i want to do this again?
haha, just fitted up the IC and heater core.
Just some fluids now, and a start-up video will be in order.
Big update from this weekend. Video below
Edit: Video’s are converting on Vimeo. I’ll update them when they finish.
Yesterday I installed the battery box, ran the ground wire, and installed the battery.
Turns out I had a power cable grounding out, so it made for an interesting spark when I first tried the connection. Fixed it up, killed the alarm, and the electrical was in working order.
Next I fitted up the front section, bolted it into place, and installed the intercooler and horns.
Next up was installing the heater core, filling the coolant and checking all the lines.
After that, it was under the car to install the handbrake cables, the driveshaft, exhaust, and rear sway bar.
First up was cables. You can see how little clearance there is at the differential nose, especially with the raised subframe.
I decided to tie the cables off to either side to avoid the driveshaft as much as possible.
Basically punched holes in the heat shield and ran some zip ties through to hold the cables. The gas tank is directly above this, so there was no possibility of screwing a bracket into place if I had made one. I think this works pretty good actually. The skin of the cables are very close to the driveshaft at the front where they meet and bolt before the handbrake, but it’s a great improvement over the previous setup. I don’t think they’re close enough to actually do any damage, maybe just some cosmetic rubbing if anything.
While I was under there I installed the Energy Suspension rear end links and Tanabe sway bar.
Bled the slave cylinder and added gear oil to the transmission.
I went with Penzoil synthetic GL-4, the only GL-4 I could find in the city actually…lol
Bolted up the exhaust and wideband.
I had bounced around a couple of ideas for the BMC issue I was having. My second front outlet didn’t have the inner flare fitting, and a “regular” double flare fitting was going the entire way into the bmc and not sealing anything. (I assume, as it was loose). One option was to try a bubble flare, however my outlet fitting still wasn’t long enough to seal, so that was out of the question.
I checked my ABS block that had been removed from the car…and sure enough I found some of the flares. I followed the cutting procedure that a lot of guys do with the stock bmc, and got what I needed. As you can see, between myself and the old man, we had 4 tries…and only one was unharmed…lol
After installing the flare, I went ahead and installed the rear DIF braided lines and bled all around a bunch of times to get the air out of the new lines.
If any of you guys are considering these lines, here’s a tip for the install. Both lines are the same, and one is ran backwards in relation to the other one. This is because there is a splitter on the passenger side, which the line uses, however the driver side has a hardline running all the way from the passenger side.
The passenger side runs from the caliper bracket to the splitter block, with large end at the caliper. The driver side is opposite, with the smaller side on the caliper, and the larger side at the hardline. This requires removal of the caliper bracket on the driver side only, and removal of the hardline (at the splitter) on the passenger side.
The small fitting also doesn’t turn on the line, so this side has to be installed first, and the existing small fitting then screws into the large fitting on the line.
Passenger.
Driver.
After all of this, I filled the fluids and temporarily hooked up all of my gauges so I could keep an eye on things during first start-up!
There are two videos here.
The first is the first actual start-up of the car…complete with a healthy slapping from the head before the oil got to circulating…lol
I cranked it a few times with the CAS unplugged to get some fluids moving, then plugged it in and my buddy shot this video.
The 2nd video is from a few minutes later when everything warmed up, and it sounds a lot better. As a note, my new tune would not start the car at all, so I’m currently using the older dangerous tune.
There were two minor issues with the start-up, and they’re things that I’ll have to chase down this week. Any advice would be appreciated on the solenoid issue. The AEM solenoid started to buzz constantly (even with wires switched around), so I cut them to avoid the issue temporarily and get the car started. I don’t know what I’m going to do, has anyone had this issue with a boost control solenoid before? There are only 2 wires and the boost/vac line running to the unit.
The 2nd issue was that the fuel pump sounded like it was straining to prime/run, and I was getting conflicting readings on my electronic (sensor) fuel gauge and manual (on FPR) gauge. Turns out I had the AN lines reversed, so a quick swap of line placement took care of that this morning.
This morning I installed a seat, checked everything over, bled the power steering rack, and got ready to take it for a test run.
There are 3 video’s here.
The first is an attempt to start up and drive out…but I realize I don’t have a shift knob, lol
The 2nd is the actual start-up and drive out…plus some “JDM Camera Work” by Mike.
The 3rd is a quick clip from when I was pulling back into the driveway.
The car actually ran really well. I didn’t want to do too much, as I have no good tune right now, but I did go sideways around one turn by the house…lol
After that we snapped a few pics, parked the car, then took a break for some celebration beers.
And Mike built a fire…lol
Tonight I took the time to finish up the interior wiring and install the dash and accessories.
It’s really coming together now.
[COLOR=Silver]
Video’s updated.
so fresh so clean
The first item today was meth injection.
Found a place for the pump and installed it.
Removed an intercooler piece.
Drilled and tapped a hold for the nozzle, then installed the nozzle and intercooler piece.
Installed the water solenoid valve in line with the nozzle.
And tied everything back into the pump. After this, I ran the pump feed line to the windshield washer bottle, and drilled/tapped/sealed a fitting to provide the goods. Pardon the messy sealer, I wasn’t very meticulous as it’s going to be inside the bumper cover out of sight.
Next I installed the boost pressure sensor, and tied into the bov vac/boost line for a signal. Currently set for 7psi onset.
Finally, I tapped an ignition only 12V and a constant 12V source, and tied everything back to a relay.
After this I got to work on the front end.
Bumper support.
Hood latch.
Random strut bar.
And air duct for my intake.
After this I installed the front fenders. Check out the new fitment with reduced camber.
Installed the front bumper, headlights, corners, and grill.
Finally, I took the hood back inside (it had rained and somewhat washed/styled the hood, lol). I also snapped some pics of the ride height front and back, then called it a night.
