Finally got some time to write up my adventures of the last 2 weeks. so i will try and get everything in there.. at start of last week, with two weeks left until my 2nd attempt at making a drift day, I decided to change my engine and diff oil. got it done in a few hours and went for a good test drive with no issues so the next morning I drove the drift car to work, (only 3 miles away so what could go wrong) about halfway there I started hearing a ticking noise coming from the engine when I was on boost, by the time I got there the engine was ticking when ever I touched the throttle. I was already at work so I just left it until my way home after starting the car up on my way home the noise had gone, so I drove home as usual, until it came back about 5 minuets into the journey then I spent all evening trying to figure out what the noise was, hoping it wasn't coming from the bottom end (it was) having worked out that the noise from the bottom end only appeared when the oil was warm, I decided to try my luck with some thicker oil and some oil thickener as i wasn't going to be able to rebuild the bottom end in time to make it
clearly I wasn't making this drift day, not with that engine... so on last friday morning I tell my mate / S13 Sensei of my troubles and he replies with, "ah I might have a spare bottom end, its a shame theres only a week until your driftday or we could fix it" I say "why cant we do it in a week?" and that night start dismantling my car ready for the engine to come out on Saturday afternoon we take the engine out, stick it on a stand and dismantle to see the damage. rod bearing number 4 had decided that spinning wasnt enough, It was going to split into quite a few pieces and develop a hole big enough to see through well there's your problem.. {}
after sleeping on my options I decided to give this ago after spending my 1st drift day at the side of the road waiting for the AA and this one being delayed due to lockdown, I wasn't gonna give up that easily and I was at least going down fighting... On Sunday I Dug out my mates spare bottom end from being a pile of other engines, check to make sure it was in good enough condition and got it over to my garage. {} Monday evening I dismantled both engines and got all the bits organised too keep everything in the right place. I also used my last two days of for Wednesday and Thursday to give my self a chance.. {} Tuesday evening I had my first crack at putting the engine back together, it was easier then I thought but after a while I ran into some problems and called it a night as I would have some backup on wednesday (no one told me to put the engine at top dead centre before messing with it) after sleeping off 4 days of being in the garage until 10pm on Wednesday morning my mate came after work once again to get me out of the trouble id caused the day before, I put the engine back together correctly under supervision and the wizard put my timing belt back on and left me to reassemble the rest of the engine here it is 36ish hours before my drift day is supposed to start {}
Thursday morning we started at 9 am, Got the engine in by lunch and I got to reassembling the car while my mate went to do some work、 After some fiddling and re connecting things I’d put in the wrong place we managed to get the engine running and sounding pretty good ... then we see the oil on the floor, the leak was coming from the front of the engine so we guessed oil pump, and decided to see if we could at least see where the leak was coming from before we called it quits... After getting the front of the engine disassembled much faster then we thought. We saw our problem, the crank/oil plump seal was pretty much destroyed (the oil pump was one of the things I’d installed unsupervised) at this point 12 hours after we started and after a decent amount of takeaway was eaten we thought, there’s no point giveing up now, and with what we thought was a stroke of genius at the time (desperation) we decide to try and get the seal out of the oilpump on the donor engine, somehow we managed to get the seal out seemingly unharmed and it poped right on Then it was time to put everything back together for the 3rd time that day But by 12:30 I had a car with a running engine back on all 4 wheels ready to go in the morning,
Luckily I don’t live far away from the track so I managed to get 4 hours of sleep before I was up to start getting ready. I still needed to bleed the radiator and pack all my tools and spare wheels one the way to the track one of the boost pipes blows off as I’d must have forgotten to do the clamps, while sorting that and doing a quick check of the other pipes we noticed a familiar sight... oil dripping from behind the cam pully it looks like the salvaged seal wasn’t up to the job, but unlike the night before this was just a steady drip so I decided to at least get to the track and see if it got any worse... By the time we got to the track it was raining and although the drip hadn’t gone any worse the rain + me slowly driving to the paddock left a noticeable trail of oil and the marshals where not impressed, At this point I was too tired to care if I missed another day, but I thought I’d at least try to get one drift done, so we skipped the sighting lap / noise test (to avoid idling next to a Marshall for an extended period of time and went out. ofcouse after one lap the Marshall pulls me up at the start like and says I need to sort the leak out but I can finish my 2nd lap, so after a total of 4 corners 2 spins and 2 ish skid attempts decided to call it a day rather then trying to do somthing to hide the drip... {} At least after all my hard work, I made it out on track and got further then my first attempt... maybe my 3rd go will actually be a success who knows....
long time off, anyone want to guess how long my bottom end lasted after the drift day I didn't get to drive?
i got up to some more interesting stuff instead of fixing the engine a set of rays wheels, painted with some halfords paint and polished up before i put them on the car {}
and Finally got started on building a proper engine... I wanted to build another engine from the bottom up rather then trusting a "running" engine, so I found the cheapest base i could {} it came with everything attached to the engine and the stuff that had been taken off, Cas and viscous fan + the fan shroud its been sat a while but was full of fresh oil and no water had got in, so I stripped it down and drove it off to the machine shop to prepare for the rebuild {} {}
Still waiting for my Engine back so i got starting wiring in some more gauges {} tried to do it properly, and made a little gauge loom, with proper connectors and labels {} {} {}
sick of posting photos of broken CAs and no drifting but its all i got.... rebuilt engine.. {} stuck it in... {}
First lap out after lunch.. {} brand new water pump exploded, fan had its way with the radiator, early home time
New water pump and koyorad, just in time for there to be no drift days for 3 months and then my insurance to run out 2 weeks before the next one. {} {}
Unfortunately the 200sx is now for sale as i am upgrading, but first, some proof i actually used it {} {}
