FMIC Piping

Over the last 2 weeks mark (aka kermit) has been working on my intercooler piping, being an old hand at welding, but eager to explore new horizons in the form of all things automotive, i was eager to see what he could come up with.

Being his second ever FMIC piping job (his own silvia being his first), i really dropped him in the deep end by giving him the RB s13. As you already know there isn't much room left over in the engine bay, so the piping job was going to need to be to-the-millimiter perfect.

We decided to run 2.5 inch stainless steel piping as there just wasn't enough room to run anything bigger! Not only did the piping have to be made with 2mm clearance either side between the radiator and engine, but i also required as much room as possible under the battery to allow room for my oil cooler.

Mark's enthusiasm paid off and he definatly came up with the goods, working countless hours overtime to finish the job. Even calling me over one night to decide how we wanted the top pipe to run, as with the minimal clearance in the engine bay he was afraid that the top 'U' bend might shrink over time meaning the piping may start touching the engine. We had two options, either put a peice of silicon in the middle of the bend so that we can have a little more movement in case it does hit the engine, or run a bracket to the radiator support and adjust the piping in the fututre if it does begin hitting. I opted for the later as it looks much much cooler. and if it does begin to hit we can always chop it and put some silicon in later.

The job took slightly longer than planned but with all things automotive thats to be expected, especially with the standards mark works to! I even remember him refusing to give my car back until HE was happy with it, hahaha!!!

Now i don't want to seem like i'm sucking up to mark too much, but i do believe he deserves the appreciation, i challenge anyone to a place that does higher quality work in perth, especially for the price i was charged. Anyway, i'll let the pics do the rest of the talking!











The car has now been towed to badga's where badga and lance are to wire up the rb20 engine loom to the s13 fusebox loom and get the car running. I'll keep you posted!

Towing

well on saturday the fella who is doing my intercooler piping rang me up to tell me he would be ready to begin work on my car on sunday, which is perfect timing! So i spent saturday tidying the car up and organising a tow truck, there wasnt nessesarily anything major to do on the car, just a few little things which ended up taking up the majority of my day.

I filled up the gearbox oil, engine oil, gave the brakes a quick bleed, filled up the radiator, power steering fluid, etc etc etc, all the fluids!!!

i made the stupid mistake of assuming the engine oil was completely drained before tipping about 2 liters of oil into it and checking the oil level to see that it had never been drained! So i had to jack the car back up and drain about 7 liters of oil out. which i wasnt very happy about as i had wasted half a bottle of oil and now had to head back to the auto shop to buy some more oil. my fault i guess, i shouldnt have assumed.

As for raditator fluid, i had no coolant at home and dad convinced me to just fill it with distilled water for now to make sure there were no radiator leaks and then do a complete flush and replace it with coolant later. Probably not the best idea, but i did it anyway.

the brakes are still very very squishy, remember i installed the r32 brake booster so obviously even after an initial bleed, i will still need to give the car a run and then bleed the brakes a few more times to try get all the trapped air in the lines out.

i then remounted my remote oil filter so the lines ran in a better direction as described in the previous blog. after that i refitted the bonnet and was happy enough with the engine clearance and the need to raise the rear hinges is not needed. I will however, still raise the hinges if i have cooling issues.

With the car finally off the blocks, full of fluids, and rolling again, i pushed her out onto the driverway and gave the garage a good clean. Then went out to party mwahahaha... Yea, i shouldnt have though, our cheeky neighborhood towie gerrin rocked up at 9am sunday morning to tow the car, and after only arriving home at 5a from partying i was a little, er, worse for wear haha. None the less gerrin and his mate did an awsome job at towing the car and were really good about it so massive shout out to gerrin at anytime towing :D. Here's a few pics of the car finally back out in sunlight getting a ride on the back of the flatbed:

Last week was great, i recieved many items which i had previously ordered in the mail such as my thermo fans, oil cooler, and cat convertor. All of these went on over last weekend, starting with the cat.

I was surprised that everything lined up perfectly and that there was no exaust modifications to be done at all. I purchased the cat through jash at c-red tuning and was very happy with the quality of the product, i must remind myself however that upon initial running of the car i am to let it warm up for 10 minutes at idle and then turn the car off and let it cool down, this is to make sure the glue inside the cat is set correctly so it can perform at its optimum :).

Next went on the thermo fans, purchased through driftshop.com.au i got 2 12" fans, with experience with driftshop in the past i was more than happy to deal with them again. Unfortunatly however this time my experience was not as good, although still above par. They obviously were running out of thermo's when i ordered as i recieved two different types of fans, one looks like an older model to the other. No biggie though. To install the thermo's i removed the top hose off the radiator and undid the brackets so i could slide the thermos down in between the radiator support and radiator. To secure them to the radiator i had to get a small flat head screwdriver and gently pry apart a few fins in the radiator so i had enough room to slide a bolt through, being careful not to damage the core. The hardest part was probably doing the nuts up on the other side as the bolts were very long and it was difficult to get a spanner down to them. I found it easiest to cut the bolts down prior to poking them through the radiator. The wiring for the thermo's is not yet done, i suck at all things electronic and try steer away from anything above basic, so i will be getting a mate with know-how to help me out with this.

Upon receiving the oil coolers (i ordered an extra one for a mate), i discoverd a few fittings were missing that were required to fit up the oil cooler, and the job could not be done without these special fittings. So i was quickly onto the supplier who was thankfully very apologetic and sent the fittings via express post the next day. The braided lines that come with the oil cooler are high qaulity, as with the billet aluminium fittings and connections, the cooler itself isnt the best qaulity and it may be an idea to upgrade this in the future, but for now it will do, and im not very concerned for the ammount i paid. The hardest part about installing the oil cooler kit was finding the best place to put the remote oil filter attachment. Although the attatchment with oil filter connected is only about 7 inches long, the braided lines running into it are not flexible at all, and given that you need extra room to be able to remove and refit the filter, all up you need about 12 inches of space. Originally i had this placed up in the back right hand side of the engine bay with the lines running between the gap in the brake booster and brake master cylinder, but then i decided against this as the lines were sure to get hot enough to damage the brake master cynlinder. I ended up having to position the remote oil filter in the same location but on a diagonal angle with the lines running under the brake master cylinder. As for the cooler itself it currently sits freely in the drivers side, front bar air duct. I have refrained for securing it yet as i want to know exactly where the fmic piping runs first so that i can position the oil cooler as effiently as possible.

I also removed my stock q's diff and swapped it with a mates factory k's viscous LSD, this is a pretty simple task bar the weight of the fucking things. I knew they would be heavy, but with minimal leverage whilst lying under the car its near impossible to life them back into position. (the q's diff wasnt much of a problem, neither was removing the k's diff), but reinstalling the k's diff, being that it is bgger and heavier, we needed to lift it enough to slide a jack underneath it and jack it up into position. As for connecting it up, thats all self explanitory, 4 bolts connecting the tailshaft, 6 bolts on each side for the half-shafts (5 bolts if your s13 is a silvia), 2 bolts underneathe the diff bolting upwards into the rear cradle, and another 4 bolts bolting into the back of the diff.

Whilst i was installing the lsd i had my electronically minded mate 'tensh' wiring up my boost and water temp gauges, when lit up the look really good and even have a dimming function for when your lights are on. The coolest thing about these gauges is that when turned off you cant actually see the dials because of the 'smoke face', but when illuminated they appear suprisingly clear. so happy i am with the look of these gauges that they out the stock s13 instrument cluster to shame. Assuming they work correctly i will be planning to replace the stock tachometer with a similar style tacho and also buy myself oil pressure and oil temp gauges, but, lets get the damn car running first!

I also installed the watr temp sensor into the bottom line of the radiator, most people simply weld a nut to a metal tube and lpace it in the coolant line for this, but thats a bit dodge imo because a) i would look shit and coulbe be prone to leaks, and b) probably would give the most accurate reading. I decided to head into 'enzed' and got them to make a fitting up for me, they got a peice of metal tube joiner and tapped a hole into it with the correct thread for the sensor. This is much cleaner, looks really pro, and the sensor is in the middle of the coolant flow. I then bought mself a new coolant hose from conventries and cut a small section out so i could clamp the fitting into it.


During the week i decided that i wasnt happy enough with the clearance the engine had with the bonnet, so i decided on what i consider a pretty risky move, to drop the engine down a few millimeters by insterting washers between the crossmember and chassis.

To do this i put a jack under one side of the crossmember and took the weight up, then undid the 2 bolts holding the crossmember on on that side. I also loosend the 2 bolts a little bit on the other side to allow for some movement. Then i carefully lowered the jack down just enough to be able to push up the bolts through the chassis and slide 4 2.5mm thick washers on each bolt. The dangerous part about this is that if the bolts dont line back up correctly with the crossmember, im probably screwed. Luckily everything did line back up (a little persuadeatron action was required the get the bolts back through the crossmember as they did come off line a tiny bit) and i got the bolts done back up tight. The same process was repeated on the other side of the crossmember this time with greater confidence and less hiccups. All in all, 10mm of washers on each bolt was enough to lower the engine almost 15mm at the cam angle sensor (think leverage between the geabox mount and crossmember). We then put the bonnet back on and there was now enough clearance to not need to put any washers under the back of the bonnet hinges.

Anyway, thats a big enough read! here are a few pics of the washers between the crossmember, cat and exaust, oil cooler, and compelete engine bay shots (you can also see the missmatched thermos tucked behind the fmic).