Hachi's Long Overdue R32 GTST Build Thread

[batman026]

The want for a 32 is strong. Keep up the good work. Car looks great

[lox]

Nice work man seeing this makes me miss my old one half thinking of getting one or seeing can I track down my old one. Good luck with it bud

[delsolcrx1]

Looks great man..... really top notch work you are doing to her

[Hachi]

Thanks guys for all the positive comments, helps keep the fire burning haha.

Okay, let's see. Last post around she hand finally touched the ground again. Still a couple parts to put on but 6 inches from the ground just didn't give enough room for manouvering so I would need to get the car onto a lift. This is where I found the next (unexpected) problem, The engine would start but it was missing like a bitch! Literally it wasn't even able to keep itself running. When I had bought the car, one of the reasons the seller was selling was because he couldn't sort out the misfire which meant it wouldn't do anything about ~3000rpm. This didn't put me off as the car was being bought as a project anyway.

So a bit of back-tracking here.........

After I first bought the R32, I did some research and asked around, and came up with a list of typical RB misfire causes to work my way through until I found the problem. First up was Coilpacks, Inspecting them, I found that a couple of them had cracks in the plastic, So these got changed. No change, still misfiring. Then I checked the earths and earthstraps, bought a new replacement for the strap connecting the engine to the body. No difference.

Put in a good battery in case the other was bad, this helped a bit but there was no real change. Then changed the AFM for another as the ecu kept throwing up a fault code for AFM, still no change, so tried another two AFM's just incase the others were bad ......Nope (I have AFM's if anyone needs haha).

Changed the timing belt, spark plugs, oil, etc. (You never know).... Everything all done still nothing.

After a while of fucking about with a paperclip to read fault codes, I decided to get an ECUTalk Cable for my laptop. It didn't help too much but at least I could monitor and log things.

Eventually one day after months, my dad suggested I check the battery voltage and see what it was reading when the car was running.........Under 12 volts and lower as the car ran on, dipping greatly when the engine was revved. This only meant one thing, Fucked alternator!

So we took the alternator out and sent it off to be checked and re-conditioned, once it was back on the car, the engine ran sweet as a nut....... That was until I moved to Dublin for a year to do a second stint in college.

It was over this year/the last 12 months that I was studying and ordering parts that the car saw little attention, only a regular start up once a week to keep it all okay. After having fitted all the parts and the car back on the ground I wanted to move the car and take it for a quick spin. Unfortunately though, the misfire was back just like before.
Not assuming the “Recon’d” alternator straight away, I checked just about every bit of wiring related to the charging circuit, checked fuses, relays, even bulbs in the dash. They do matter actually……at least one does, the one in the shape of a battery. It was one I had never seen come on in the car at all ever that I could recall and I was completely oblivious to the fact that it should have. So after everything in the charge circuit showed up being fine, I decided to bring the alternator in to be checked and sorted…. Turned out it was fucked again. So it got fixed, I was less €90 and the car ran sweet and that battery check light lit up and went out as it should.

So I thought since the alternator was fucked for so long the battery is well past its prime now, so in went a fresh new battery with the fresh alternator




Next up, I had some other parts to put in the new tie rods and rod ends. This required a lift, so up to Alan Opels house. This was a fairly quick job, as Al basically gets shit done fast when he's involved.




Oh that shiny goodness...... KTS Tie Rods and Rod Ends.




I also had a Walbro 255 pump for a while which I wanted to put in, I had gotten this off a member on here a while back but never really got around to putting it in. I bought a new filter for the pump as it seemed like the wise thing to do.




When installing it though, we found what Alan reckons is an S15 pump in there already, which was lucky because the Walbro ran okay-ish for a day and then packed in leaving stranded at a petrol station (Ironic)

Next on the list was getting the alignment done. Unfortunately, the first time I went to have it done the guys at the garage said it was too low to go up on their lift so I had head home and raise the suspension. I decided to put the standard shocks back in for the time being until after the NCT.

Gravel, possibly the worst surface on which to work on a car!




As such the car went from this:




to this, Monster truck mode:




It made it onto the lift no problem this time.




So right now that is the bulk of the build up to date that I can think of. I'll have another post in a few days, some more things on the way but mostly I'm getting in ready for it's NCT next tuesday.

Here's a pic of how it currently stands,




It needs the skirts and spats to be put back on now and also the bonnet to be lacquered, but I'll get to those in time.

[scottr89]

Good update man! She's coming together nicely.

The 32's just don't look right at the standard height do they?

Keep up the good work and good luck with the test!

[Hachi]

Good update man! She's coming together nicely.

The 32's just don't look right at the standard height do they?

Keep up the good work and good luck with the test!

Thanks Scott, yeah they look horrendously bad, it was actually painful to look at, at first.

[Spartacus]

Did you buy new wheels if you were selling those?

[Hachi]

Did you buy new wheels if you were selling those?

No, these ones are still for sale. I want to have 17's all around so it doesn't sit higher at the back

[jay2412]

lookin great man. im dealing with this notorious missfire myself "again". first time i checked coilpacks out and realised i had 5 splitfires and one standard...which the standard one was cracked and rank and arking thus giving a gee hair spark.done the insulating tape method, which worked for a while, but its back..(anyone have ONE splitfire lying about ha). Good luck with nct man and keep it up.

[Hachi]

lookin great man. im dealing with this notorious missfire myself "again". first time i checked coilpacks out and realised i had 5 splitfires and one standard...which the standard one was cracked and rank and arking thus giving a gee hair spark.done the insulating tape method, which worked for a while, but its back..(anyone have ONE splitfire lying about ha). Good luck with nct man and keep it up.

Ugh, tell me about it, Fuckin RB's are cursed. Let me know howimg it goes when you get that 6th Splitfire in. Interested to know does that make any difference for you.

With the NCT coming up on Tuesday, I've been tackling a few of the smaller jobs to get the Skyline in shape and leave the tester with no reason what so ever to fail it. During the initial rebuild of the suspension I had put on a pair of JIC Magic camber arms, which I later found out bring the front camber to -5 degrees and on the absolute limit of a pass. Not wanting to chance my arm, I got my hands on a pair of perfect standard arms from DarenM giving me back the standard -2 Degrees of camber.




You don't realise the length difference until you place the two arms side by side!




After that job was done, I got on to tackling the removal of the double sided foam tape used to hold on the standard skirts and spats. I wasn't changing them for anything different, but had taken the parts off so they wouldn't get damaged while I was working on the car for a few months (Read years) and also I wanted to properly polish them up again. Unfortunately I was left with the foam tape stuck to the car. I started trying to peel it off but that didn't work.

So here is an example of what I was working against




Then after trying tar removing...




No good, onto label and sticker remover...




Waste of time. I finally managed to track down what I am now considering the holy grail of sticker and foam tape removers




The Caramel Wheel




It made light work of removing the foam tape and I had the whole car done in a half hour, now bad considering I had spent almost an hour working away at 6 inches of tape the day before!




Back onto the NCT jobs and up on the lift. I had found that one of the Hicas boots had a tear in it. It was near impossible to notice but I just had a horrible feeling that a tester would come across it by chance. Thankfully I was given a new boot by Jay1412 and I got that banged on and in place yesterday.




The bitch that is the RB also got some nice new oil and other service parts.




It occured to me yesterday that I'm probably one of very few people that has actually changed a HKS filter element, but when compared to the old filter element that was in there, you can see why i decided to get a new one.




I also gave the mesh a fresh coat of paint. Before




After




I also finally got a new key cut as the original keys were splitting and ready to snap at any stage. They were almost worn down to nothing at this stage as well too! I've had the Nissan blank sitting around for ages and finally got around to having it cut from the key code on friday.

You can actually see in the picture where the original key is starting to split!



So that does it for today, I had a couple other jobs to do and then NCT on Tuesday, so no updates till then. Fingers crossed it goes well