C35 Laurel

Right seein as tho I have been a long time member here on DW, but as you can tell by my post count, more of a lurker than a contributor, I thought it about time to put something up on my latest project, which hopefully this time might just get used in anger.

Last year I sold my FD as I was far too precious about it to ever use it on a track. The intention was to take the money to the bank, find a nice part prepped S body Nissan (had a dabble with a couple of S13’s and got mates who’ve had some S14’s) for about half the money I got for my Mazda (which was a nice low mileage original jobby) and going and doing something fun with my cars instead of spending weeks modding them and never really using them properly.

However, I was spending an increasing amount of time looking at the stuff Rees and Tony had going through on JUC.com and ended up splurging all my cash on a laurel.

I was actually after a chaser, but this kind of popped up, I threw a bid on through the guys at JUC and blam! there was a Nissan in my life.

This was nice and dusty on the dockside in Japan.





This is on the way to the MOT to see my friendly mechanic


Since I got the C35 I’ve started to tinker a little, (and guess a lot!!) it seems to be a mix of all sorts of Nissan bits, but DW has been the best place to learn a little about the laurel, as there is not a huge amount out there.

It used to be a RB25DE engined club S with an auto box but was converted in Japan at some point to be an RB25DET with the 5 speed manual. It came off the boat with what I think are some impul body bits, the aftermarket wheels (which where tired to look at but round and not bent or anything) and impul shocks and springs.

I got a little fruity with the Halfords rattle cans one weekend ……. It’s a bit camp, but I quite like it!




Mechanically I’ve put some K-sport 8 pots on the front. Changed the engine, gearbox and diff oil, started to tidy it up and am currently in the process of fitting an exhaust and fmic so I can wind the boost up to the dizzy heights of 11psi (lovin the plastic/ceramic turbo on the RB25!!)

 

Quick update, nothin spectacular, but managed to rip out the cat, the mid box and the mahooosive rear box and throw an ebay special exhaust on.

I had to buy an exhaust for an R33 gtst and kind of make it fit as best I could, also butchered a straight through mid box from my old FD into the decat to try and keep the noise down a bit fot track use. Its not the prettiest of welding but its gas tight and with the FMIC popped on it seems to have free’d up the RB a little bit.

Wound the boost up to a dizzy 10psi, but seem to be hitting some sort of fuel cut (it’s feels like the same thing as when you wind the s body nissans up, but the general opinion is that the RB shouldn’t max anything out at the poor 10psi that the stock tubby can take?)

But that’s kind of secondary now tho, as I was at the retrocarmania show down at Weston park near telford at the weekend (tagged it into a road trip to pick up a mates new 180sx from brum) and under hard acceleration blew what I thought was the exhaust manifold gasket, but once I took it apart it looks like 2 studs have sheared from 2 of the exhaust ports.

So looks like its head off time to drill the studs out. Thinkin about putting back on a cometic metal head gasket and ARP head bolts saving me having to do it again in the future.

Don’t suppose anybody on here has used these or can recommend a better alternative? Do I even need to uprate the head bolts or would new standard items be sufficient?

Am planning on running a better turbo and fuelling, but want to stop the upgrades short of uprating the internals, so I will never be running mega high boost.

 

been far too long since I updated this, and I've spent far too much time and even more money fuckin about with this Nissan not to share it somewhere!!!!

Where to begin?

The last update was before I ripped the head off to drill out the sheared exhaust studs (plural), de-coked the pistons and fitted a cometic headgasket and conceptua uprated head bolts with a new inlet and exhaust gasket set (sorry didn't see the post with advice before I'd handed over the cash, so guess I'll see how the cometic fairs with time).

Left handed drill bits?!?!? who knew? thought these where kept with the left handed screwdrivers, sky hooks and tartan paint ........ but they are the fuckin nuts ..... as the heat goes into the stud and the drill bit snags it winds the sheared stud out







Put it all back together, timed it all back up, ran okay, ran it in, ran it all in, then did a grip sprint day (albeit quite slowly) without incident.

Messed about with some other stuff, then this little story happened ...........

http://www.driftworks.com/forum/engine-drivetrain/171604-rb25-misfire-not-usual-suspects-pt2.html

Click the links if you're bored, have hours to kill and have run out of pins to stick in your eyes.

once the 6 month misfire was sorted, I was back on with the mods to see what I could start to ring out of the RB.

So I popped on some Z32 300ZX rear brakes to try to balance out the K-sports on the front

welded the diff





i got hold of a set of 6 550 denso's from a guy on here and have had them flow checked, cleaned and new o-rings fitted ready for some booooooooost.



Cos I bought this rascal too .......... but when it got here it looks to have had a hard life at high temperature as the turbine housing is cracked to fook





But I've paid for it, so its goin on and we'll see how it pulls ........ yet another lesson about buying out of auction learned the expensive way I suppose

Whilst under the laurel to see what was causing the misfire I noticed that the 'RB25 engine and gearbox' that I bought the car with was actually an RB25 with an RB20 box, and I didn't want to run the risk of shredding the teeth off the gears when I turned up the torque .......... so out it came!



and in went the bigger RB25 box (which I very nearly shit myself lifting onto the car on my own!!!) with a helix paddle clutch, a new slave cylinder and braided clutch hose.





After a quick shake down I decided it was time to throw on the tubby and see if I could run it all in for few hundred miles at low boost and poop power with standard management, so as to get all the gearbox and turbo bearings etc nicely oiled and moving with some heat in em without thrashing fuck out of it all as I wasn't sure how long some of the bits had been stood before I got em.

 

So last month I fitted some brand new (and correct!!!) coil packs



and dropped it off for some mapping activities.

But unfortunately the Z32 MAF i bought turned out to be bolloxed, so 100 quid later and another one was with the mapper.

then I had another call this week .......... it seems that the injectors I spent even more GOOD MONEY buying and flow checking are are shafted too?

Its all a bit strange, but basically at 100% injector duty cycle the car is just about making 300 brake, so one of the injectors has been whipped out and put in a dummy rail/ECU rig and benchmarked against a standard one and low and behold by firing both into seperate cups from the same rail and ECU at the same time my supposed 550 injector put less fluid into its pot than the standard one?

So the flow test that was done with the servicing (which cost me 100 quid for some so called peace of mind in an attempt to avoid this exact situation) seems to have either been correct and the injectors have gone wrong in storage, or the flow test was bollox as the bucket test doesn't lie, either way the end result is the same and once again I'm down over 400 sheets with a set of injectors that are flowing less than stock ...........

Plus a car at the mappers waiting for some proper 555's (which will be at least another 400 sheets!) so it can be mapped and then another bill for fitting 2 MAF's and 2 lots of injectors when its done ................ happy days

 

So, after the above debarkle with the injectors and the coil packs I got the datsun back from mapping late Oct last year, drove it home and then ran out of Tax, MOT, insurance and money!

But popped it back on the road last month ............. and presto!!

I know its a bit obvious, but what a foookin difference a good map makes to the way it drives!

It obv pulls a lot better as its making more power and torque, but the way it behaves in town (even with a welder and paddle clutch) and the way it can chug along at less than 2krpm it just drive like a normal motor till you keep your foot in.

Its frickin brilliant ........... and shifts pretty well now for a lardy bus.

The boost controller needs fiddling with (or maybe a better one sourcing), but other than that it seems to be behaving itself and starting to make me glad I bought it for the first time ever!

.......... who knows I may even manage to get out and use it on track somewhere this year!

(shameless dyno plot picture)

 

Long overdue update ............

Spent another 3 months chasing yet another misfire (on boost this time), very long story short, yet another set of new genuine coilpacks have taken a shit and I was blowing the spark out

So I finally snapped and vowed never to use this setup again, so have fitted LS2 truck coils and moved to a coil 'near' plug setup with HT leads

I needed to alter the dwell time in Nistune and gap my plugs to 0.035", but it now happily pulls over 20psi without missing ( I keep meaning to turn the boost back to 18 or so, but its fucking ace!)

Also fitted adjustable suspension arms front and rear (not TCA's but everything else), subframe locking collars and some cusco coily's.







Dropped it to a more respectable ride height, rolled the arches .............





................and bought some dodge caliber steels and got em banded, took all the decals and badges off the back of the bus and gave it a wash