Ported SR Head

We got done porting a SR20 head the other day. Here are a couple pics.

Oil Coolers

A while back, I had a conversation with a customer about oil coolers for his GTR. Just about every manufacturer that offers oil coolers makes at least one kit for the GTR. "which one is best?" he asked.

There are many ways to judge a quality of a product. For an oil cooler, the obvious measuring stick is the cal/H. It's an universal mesurment, and just about every manufacturer lists it in their catalogs. Other considerations are pressure drop, filter relocation, and a thermostat.

But what good is a big efficient cooler if the air just goes around it?

Which brings me to my point, and a universal law, that you get what you pay for. Perhapse the best oil cooler kit for the GTR is the Nismo. Obviously, it's VERY well thought out, comes with all kinds of goodies, and it makes full use of the core with some very nice ducting. Here's the bad news--it's nearly $2000. We don't have any cars with a Nismo Oil Cooler, so this is from the Nismo catalog.

A more affordable option is the HKS kit. This kit, pictured below, is $800 which is actually reasonably cheap. They kept the cost down by going with a sandwich adaptor, not including a filter relocation, but it does come with -12 lines and a thermostat.

And a side view.

I'm not trying to sound like a Nismo or a HKS rep, but both of these are very quality pieces that I'd recomend. There are, undoubtedly, other brands that make quality pieces, and even if it doesn't come with bolt-on ducting, it's not that difficult to fabricate something like that.

There's a feature that I wished all oil coolers had--a drain. It seems like such an obvious concept, but I've yet to find an oil cooler with one, so this is what we did.

Taking the Slop Out of a R34 GT-t Steering.

For most people, there's nothing wrong with the steering feel of the R34 GT-t. That is until you get a chance to drive the R34 GTR. That's what happened to one of our customers. Actually, he's owned several GTRs before he got his hands on this GT-t, and he was not satisfied with the differences between the GTR and GT-t.

Many people think that, aside from the Engine and Drivetrain, the differences of these two cars are only skin deep. If that were true, the price difference between the two cars would be much less. I'm not going to get into the vast differences here, but here's a big difference.


Above is the steering rack taken out of the R34 GT-t


And here's a brand new steering rack from a BNR34.

As you can see, the mounting is very different between the two models. That's part of the reason why the steering feel is so different. This, of course, means it's not a bolt-on type of modification. So here's what we did...

And from a different angle...

It's not just the mounting that's different. Since the whole subframe design is entirely different between the two models, so are the lines. Instead of fabricating lines from scratch, we opted to use/modify the GTR and GT-t lines. A little time on the lathe and a little brazing later, it was all done.

Here's the midified rack and lines installed.

Unfortuantely, we won't find out how well this combo will work untill we get the car running. Still more work to be done...

Another SR20 that had a BAD day

We got a S13 in the shop a while ago that suffered from a rod knock. Naturally, most people would assume a miss-shift or something of the sort. We were slightly puzzled by what we found upon dissassembly...


As you can see in the picture, the oil pick-up (strainer) had broken off at the head! I, myself, had never encountered this problem before, so I talked to a couple of my buddies who deal only with the SR20. Apparantly, it's a pretty common problem with the red top SR20's. Probably brought on by a disgruntaled employee on the assembly line at Nissan. Whatever reason for this, the quick and easy way to fix this issue is to replace it with a newer/revised S14 oil pick-up.

Back to the engine damage. The broken pick-up led to a loss of oil pressure in the engine on the race track. This caused the spun rod bearing pictured below:


The bits of what used to be the bearings got tossed around the block and scrached up both the cylinders and pistons. To make matters worse, the extrerme heat built up in the spun #1 rod bearing actually deformed the rod itself allowing the piston to travel a little further in both directions than Nissan intended...


The silverish area is where the piston was actually making contact with the head.


And made contact with the oil squirter once.

So not a whole lot is salvageable in the bottom end, but what about the head? Well, the piston did kiss the head, so we wouldn't recommend it, but there's actually more bad news...

Although unrelated to the oil starvation issue, another reason not to use this head. This motor has had it...

Evo Catch Can

I'm pretty sure the few readers of this blog are tired of hearing more about oil catch cans, but this is kind of a progress report for the customer, so here it goes...

Here it is being assembled...

Here's what it looks like installed

And here's the picture of the engine bay

Aluminum Rod

Here is a picture of an Aluminum (AL) Rod next for everyone's viewing pleasure. The two rods are both for a SR20. We have a couple of sets for the SR20 and a couple for the RB26 left.

Many people I talk to about these rods are hesitant about using AL for a connecting rod, but these are not some cast AL pieces. They are 600t forged and VERY beefy (obviously). Due to the properties of AL, they actually cushion the jolt of the combustion which leads to a longer and happier life for the rod bearings.

The same manufacturer makes these for the domestic guys that make quite a bit of power (over 3000hp = quite a bit of power). Three Thousand plus horse power and the rods last for a season before they're replaced. To level the playing field (V8 -> I4) we'll divide those numbers in half and say a "conservative" 1500hp. I think if the rods can take that kind of power, it'll hold up to a 400hp+ track only car as long as the rest of the motor holds together.

Supplimental Pictures of the S14 Engine

Here are some pictures of the pistons/rods that went into the S14. As far as the timeline goes, these pics should've been posted a couple days ago, but I'm in a transitional stage of cameras. (switching from camera to phone and left the camera @ the shop)

So with the S14, we kept the stock rods and installed some ARP rod bolts for good measure.

Then we paired those rods with a set of CP pistons. Stock 86mm bore since the cylinders looked just about new. Which is a miracle in and of itself considering what the piston that came out of the motor looked like. Below is the said piston that looks a little too tired. I've posted this same piston earlier, but it's a different pic.


He shouldn't have any more problems like that anymore with the pistons in there now.

Look What Showed Up At The Shop

Our first R35 at the shop. Well, I'm not sure if this one counts. We didn't really work on it... yet.

Here's Mr. Wakita and the owner of the car talking. The owner of this R35 has had his share of GTRs--like the white R34 in the background on the right. (well, it's not really a GTR if you want to get technical...)

According to him, though, he gets more attention in this car than driving any of his other Skylines.

I'm interested in seeing how long this allure will last once they become a common car on the road (common compared to previous Skylines in the US)

A S15 Red Top

Here's another little something we worked on today. A S13 Red Top into a S15. Much more difficult than one might expect. You might think that it can't be any more difficult than putting a S15 Black Top into a S13. That's what we thought, too.

Here's a abbreviated version of what we've run into so far...

-Holes on the K-member for the engine mounts are different b/w the two (not that difficult)

-AC Compressors are NOT interchangeable (not that difficult)

-S15 engine harness has a LOT more integration of non-engine stuff going on (not pleasant at all)

It's All Fixed

The SR20 from a couple days ago was rebuilt yesterday with refreshed internals. It's got Solid lifters (pivots) now, so hopefully there won't be any more broken rocker arms.

The build list isn't that extensive, but I think it covers the basics:

-Cams
-Springs
-Cam Sprocket
-Head Gasket
-Pistons
-Rod Bolts

It's a simple and effective built for a 350hp daily driver. And here's the picture of the car this afternoon.


And the obligatory shot of the engine bay.

More S15

While we on the topic of S15s, here are some S15s at the shop right now...


But wait, there's more...

Trunk Bar

The S15 SpecR and the R34 GTR have a trunk bar. . . Why didn't Nissan put this on all their cars? I don't know. But we're not going to let what Nissan did or didn't do stop us from making their cars better.


Above is the trunk bar we made for the S15. We'll be making them for the S14, S15, R33, and R34 (GTR & GTS), but if anyone's interested in one for their car, we can make them for just about any car

Here's the trunk bar installed on a S15. I'll be posting more pics as we exand our line-up.

Lots of GTSs

Due to the cost of importing JDM cars, there are more GTRs in the US than GTSs.

Or so I thought. . . Here's the most GTSs I've seen in one place. Two R34s and One R33 GTS. Dont mind the R32 GTR on the right.

Fender Brace for S15

There are a lot of fender braces available for the Silvia chassis. I've found prices range from $60-300 for your average ebay special to your name brand brace. Some people aren't satisfied with your average name brand piece. Most of these production pieces have ease (cost) of production and ease of bolting on as their main concern that the function has taken backseat. Here's our version:


Instead of a strip of metal with nuts welded on the back, we welded a nut onto a piece of metal that we welded directly onto the body.


We'll be making several of these for S15 fender braces, so we made a jig.

Here's a completed one on the jig.

James' Oil Catch Can

Here's another Catch Can that we made. It's for a Civic. Yes, we work on Hondas, too. We pretty much work on anything with, or sometimes without, wheels.


Anyway, here's the mock-up with some fiber reinforced adhesive strips (aka: ducktape/duct tape, whatever)




Here's a close-up view of the divider.


This is what it looked like right before we welded it shut.

And the final product installed in James' race car... I was going to wait until the valve cover was installed and AN lines were done, but I didn't feel like waiting til next Christmas to post these pictures.

The Infamous SR20 Rocker Arm

Pictured below is/was a rocker arm from a SR20.


Here's what can happen to (but not limited to) your unsuspecting SR. With this SR, when the rocker arm went off track, it was pushed down on the retainer by the cam, knocked out the cotter, and bent the valve. (the bent valve was dicovered after disassembly.)

Here's another potential failure. Well, it's actually a failure, but it could've gone unnoticed for a while. One of the shims fell off. Luckily, it fell off down into the oil pan without causing catastrophic failure.

While we’re at it, here’s some more of the damage it can cause…

That’s about it for the rocker arm related damage for this motor… Here’s the good news for this particular SR20. The damage could’ve been much much worse. Not just in the head, but upon disassembly, we found that this SR had much deep-seated issues. Here’s the picture of the piston. As you can see, the piston’s ring land’s trying to come off. Well, it did come off, but the way it broke loose allowed the piston rings to keep the loose piece in place without a single scratch on the cylinder wall.

Considering that the loose piece could've come off and caused irreparable damage to the block, this guy was really lucky that the rocker arm fell off when it did.