Howdy

Just wondering if anyone has set up a manual transmission cooler or other cooling options for the nissan boxes. Mine is getting to 250F (121C) so I need to try and lower the temp somehow. I have already lagged the exhaust where it runs beside the gearbox which made a difference to how fast it gets there but I reckon it is still too high. I use Nulon 85w140 which is a GL-5 oil and the box is an SR20 with PPG helical dog set 1-4 and std syncro 5th. Any advice / experience regarding cooling set ups or additives to reduce friction is welcome. Thought some of you Guys with under trays might have temp issues?

Ha that's funny - got tired, nice problem to have. Sorry to hear about the rest.

It's a Motec M4 Pro, I'm using one output for the tach. Do you think this layout would work?

Nice photos, love the one of Gordo's car with the ocean in the background. Tom your always working on your car, looking for some ponies?

Good info, thanks Guys I wish I knew that years ago. Just out of interest do you know how to make a tach adapter to drive an aftermarket tacho like Autometer from dual coils? I need to free up an output on my ECU for boost control and I use Mitsubishi VR4 dual coils (waste spark) on my FJ20 (4 cyl) so if I connect the tach input to one coil it will read half the RPM and I can't find a 2 cyl tacho that suits. I'm currently using the ECU to drive the tacho.

Hey Lurch, I used those MaxSpeeding rods in my FJ but did have to resize them to be perfect (which I budgeted for anyway as they apparently size the rod with different bolts installed) plus I filed a piston oilier groove in the big end. So far (touch wood) they have held up to a 10000 rpm miss shift, and plenty mumbo. I too was nervous about using them, especially when the box had a slightly different logo to the rods - read MaXpeeding vs MaxSpeeding but they seemed to be a nicely made rod. I forgot about them until you reminded me.

Hankook Z214 C5 (medium compound) 225/50/14. Not much choice in 14" these days but so far these are pretty impressive.

Thanks Gordo. Its great to have some grip again, have been struggling with Toyo RRRs for too long, they just never worked for me. Didn't get time to fiddle really, front temps showed way too much camber, new heavier spring rates felt great but brakes are now a bit over worked. I was braking early and not riding over the ripple strips through the kink as much as usual so I reckon there's a lot more to be had once I get used to the extra grip.

New PB for Sandown 1:20.8. Only got in 2 sessions with new suspension settings, tires and brake pads so didn't really get time to change anything except tire pressures. One lap into the second session the alternator blew and I didn't notice the light. Looking at the logging afterwards I'm lucky I didn't blow the motor as lambda was reading 1.2 at 20 pounds boost. There was just an odd misfire every 20 or so seconds which happened coming out of corners so I was thinking fuel surge. Phew!

Good luck Guys. Hope the weather holds up. No more of those 200 KPH spins Tom. I'll be heading out to Sandown on Monday for the Tampered track day to see if I can generate a bit more grip with some new tires.

Awesome find Peter. My Bro had one back in the 80s. They are so light which makes the big block 186 red motor push them along surprisingly fast. The only annoyance was the access to the back as his had no hatch.

If the bit is badly clogged, caustic will dissolve ally - doesn't need to be too concentrated some drain cleaner in water - will bubble up and make hydrogen. CRC every now and again while grinding.

Quick up-date: Went back to the dyno to map the ignition properly but spent most of the time remapping the fuel due to some changes to the injector dead time which I did to get more accurate voltage compensation (was way out before). Had to virtually start from scratch again. Ran out of time but should be able to finish it off at the track. Graph is 19psi and yes it's rich as .... so there's more gold in them there hills when I get lambda to 0.82. Also will flatten the power out a bit more when I add some more timing and lean out after max torque. It's not bad though, made my 450HP goal with 5psi less boost than planned and really friendly power curve for the circuit - 300HP @ 4500, 350 @ 5000, 400 @ 5500, 450 @ 6000, 400 @ 7000 and 350 @ 7500 rpm.

The O'l Sphincter must have puckered up big time Tom. I give you a 9.5 for style, 8 for finesse, and 11 out of 10 for smoke. So glad you kept her on the track Mate, good work.

Awesome Video Ledge, so quick. How do you keep up? Better start working out that left arm to build strength for the long races. Maybe switch your beer drinking arm to the left. Any more footage? I want more!

Damn straight it'll work, the test is to lick the bottom and stick it to your forehead. Awesome job Gordo, looks like a fair bit of work. What did you cover up the Z shaped hole in your shed with?

Owch, must have tried a RonnieRollback in reverse.

G'day AC. That might have been my build. This Guy was very good - Stuart (Windscreen Master - 0400747506). He charged $340 to fit both front & rear screens, he supplied the front screen and I supplied the new rubbers & rear screen.

Like Lurch said re reverse idler gear, most look like that. A common reason for the early boxes to jump out of 5th is the big nut on the main shaft comes loose, might be worth checking.

So I ran the Z at Winton to gather data and work on the tune. It was a bit out due to the intercooler clamp being off while it was on the dyno. I just kept adding fuel until the injectors were maxed out. The 044 copy fuel pump was loosing flow around 18psi boost. Also the standard SR20 shifter was just crap with the dogbox so I was miss-shifting. The brand new nylon bush flogged out after only 3 laps. A mechanic from another car came up to me and inquired about the shifter as he noticed a few miss-shifts (5th instead of 4th into the esses) and asked to have a look. He advised me to get some stronger detent springs and a brass bush then gave me the name of the source. Nice Guy, involved with drift cars. The handling was not too flash, best I could manage was 37s with lots of understeer on turn in and exit. Soooooo it was time to take stock and make a few changes. Firstly I get a new fuel pump.044 Bosch, the copy is fine up to 18psi but dies in the ass after that. Trouble is EVERY EBay 044 pump is most likely a copy. I have a mate who's Uncle is a major importer of Bosch parts and his cost + 10% price is near double most "genuine" pumps on Ebay so I took no chances and got one from Speed Technology. I also got a short shifter off Ebay which I could modify to reduce slop. It has it's own detent springs so added to the new ones I got for the box, plus the mods I did to reduce slop, the shifter has an incredibly positive feel, so much better than the standard one. I also pulled the gearbox, replaced all the bearings, inspected the gears and dogs and relieved some material from the shifter rod gates and polished them to allow faster shifts between 2nd and 3rd. This made a huge improvement between 2nd and 3rd plus 3rd back to 2nd. The gearbox was getting to over 250 deg F so I lagged the exhaust with good quality heat wrap all the way down beside the box (the last heatwrap - drunken Ebay purchase - turned to glass and dropped off). This reduced the temps by 30 degF. To address the handling, or lack of, I whacked some old softer springs in the front and gave it another deg toe out but was a bit paranoid about how soft the springs were. I went from about 182 to 162lb/in which is real soft compared to most but my crap tires don't have a lot of grip (6YO Toyo R888's) and I had the rear bar on max and front bar on minimum so not a lot of choice. Sandown rolls around and I look at the car on the ground with the front splitter only 60mm from the ground with soft springs and I'm thinking how long is that going to last? Poo, so I make up 10mm spacers for under the strut tops. That worked out OK but looked a bit 4WDish at the front. Ahh who cares, just testing the car. At Sandown the car handled surprisingly well, the track was incredibly slippery with something akin to Teflon covering the turn onto the front straight and it had a little oversteer on turn in which is just how I like it, especially for Winton, but I'll back off the rear bar and rebound slightly for next time. The shifter was awesome and made a huge difference to how the car drove. It was so nice to be able to up and down shift without the clutch. The only problem was I kept getting pulled off for being too noisy so never got a full run until the tester finally went home. The new pump held up but I did max out the injectors at 24lbs boost so I'll settle on 20 for now. Plus the head seems to be lifting and I'm loosing coolant - 1L lost = 1L pure water found in the oil catch can. All in all pretty happy with the progress so far, the car was in the 1:25s and only a bit over 2 secs off the fastest car on the day and I can see another 2 to 3 seconds just in the driving, mostly over Rothmans into Dande Rd. Did a leak down and all cylinders are under 2% which is pretty good but the loss of coolant worries me. No pressure in the radiator, just using coolant and ending up in the catch can so my theory is it's leaking into the crankcase and evaporating out through the breather and condensing in the catch can. Now I just installed some ARP2000 head studs and hopefully that might fix the problem.

Great thread Jeff, most of all thanks for sharing the info, something I wondered about years ago but never had the two cranks sitting side by side. It's great to keep the L series - the best sounding engine EVER. Looks like a nice engine, hope it serves you well Mate.

FJ, now why didn't I think of that, that's a great idea. Bet it sounds awesome with the 4 throttle bodies.

Got a few conservative laps in at Sandown yesterday after being pulled off for noise 4 times. It was very slippery especially on these stupid 6 year old R888s, track was cold and damp in places but the car ran really well. Finished running the new motor in and was able to do some more tuning. Best time was 1:25.8 - 2.2 secs behind the fastest time set by a pretty serious crummydoor. Pretty chuffed with the motor, man she really goes. Video is after winding the boost to 18lbs and maxing out the 750cc injectors.https://youtu.be/TOeK-wYiwJM

Give you the hot tip, use gas. It is a rip off but well worth the expense if you have a reasonable amount of welding to do. Gasless sucks, spatters everywhere, porous etc. I persisted with that in the early stages, swapped to gas and never looked back, just couldn't get a good result with it. It is 2000% easier with gas. Also, you mentioned the oil leak - while you have the rocker cover off, check the tension of the head bolts, I always had the head lifting off the block causing leaks, but OK, that was with 15lbs BOOST, yeah!!

HOMEBREWmmmmmmmm! Used to make that, now it's hard to find the long necks, used to be only a 50m walk down the street on bin day. Your lucky about the "oil canning", mine played a great tune, similar to the drums in the movie KING KONG. Blow torch and a cold rag fixed that.