S14 Trackslag, Rust Repairs, Cage, Brembo's, ABS and Aircon Delete

[Jim_Auto]

I decided that by the time ive had the head skimmed, bough new gaskets and head bolts, found and bought a good block and rebuilt the bottom end, it would be cheaper to buy a decent 2nd hand standard engine. I went to look at a couple, but after taking the cam covers off they were pretty grubby inside with worn cams etc. So i found this S15 engine on ebay. Its done 110k and was totally standard apart from a turbo timer and cone air filter. Its been regularly serviced, and inside the cam cover its golden with no big build ups of shite. It also has nice unscored cam lobes, so im hoping the bottom end is good. The engine was already out so couldnt really do any other checks. Just eyeballed all the threads for oil and water lines and manifold studs etc.It does have a leak from the front cover though, which i will have to address. No leaks from the rear crank seal which is good, though i might replace it anyway.

Being an S15 engine it has the roller bearing turbo. Ive checked the codes and it is so thats good. No major play, and no damage from foreign objects to the inlet wheel. So far im happy. It also came with a brand new Japspeed exhaust manifold and fitting kit. Not sure if im going to use it yet. It appears to be pretty good quality as all the headers are single pieces of tube that are bent, rather than bends all welded together. And the collector has been dressed to smooth out the welds on the inside.

So far ive mounted it on an engine stand, removed all the ancilliaries, and soon ill pull the sumps and the front cover to fix the leaks.

[Jim_Auto]

Got the engine on a stand i borrowed from a friend. Got the sumps off and the front timing cover. I was ultra careful getting the cover off to try and minimise disturbance to the head gasket. Going to get a list of all the bits i need and head on down to the dealers!

[Jim_Auto]

Its been a while since i updated this thread. The car still doesnt have an engine in, but its all there ready. I now have a greddy baffled sump, but i dont have the little gates, so ill have to make or buy some.

Anyway i went to a Rover SD1 spares day a few weeks ago and picked up this Sparco Pro 2000 seat for £20. I didnt realise that when it was new it would have been around £350! Pretty grubby.



So i stripped off all the covers, even the stuff thats glued on, and stuck it in the washing machine. Then with some fabric glue i put it back together.



Then i made some mounts using the runners from the old seat. Again i tried to get the seat as low as possible which involved beating the exhaust tunnel down slightly. I cut up some old side mount seat brackets and welded the ears on where i needed them.





Sprayed up with metallic grey as ive run out of black



Seat in

[Alex.j]

Still in love with this!

Possibly my favorite s14/a of all time!

I will be doing the overfender, rust remove etc very soon myself, great to see it done well hear! i just wish i had a garage to do mine in!

Looks awesome, if only you were closer, would love to take a look at this in the flesh!

[Slamz]

Awesome amount of work gone into this! Credit to you! Fancy welding up my s14 sills? I'm in Kent too haha.

[Jim_Auto]

Thanks for the comments!

Im sick of welding now, just done a mini for my cousin and now im doing this

[adv]

what kind of thickness metal you used around the area i have damage at, my damage is 100% located at this spot on both sides, the rest is spot on nice!
Really weird, anyone know where it starts? where the humidity comes in ?.

[Rallye]

No idea but mines going there to

[-ghost-]

hope jim auto doesn't mind the metal there is about 1mm. I think you will find it will be like jims car once you start cutting.

I welded all the holes up and any gaps are welded or will be seam sealed.

[spice_weazle]

what kind of thickness metal you used around the area i have damage at, my damage is 100% located at this spot on both sides, the rest is spot on nice!
Really weird, anyone know where it starts? where the humidity comes in ?.

When I did mine I used 1.2mm with a 3mm strengthening plate inside just like the original piece.





This is where the water gets in and causes the sill to rust from the inside out.

[Jim_Auto]

Its been 6 months since i last looked at this. Shameful! Ill hopefully have the new engine in by this evening.

[Jim_Auto]

Decided to pull my finger out and put the s14 back together. Its well over a year since the engine went pop at Snetterton. Although i bought a replacement engine from a s15, i never got round to fitting it. So here are some pics of when i swapped over the bits from my old engine, and today i reunited it with the car.

It was a good known engine, but it had a couple of leaks so i removed the sumps, and front cover and reassembled it with new gaskets and followed the application of sealer as per the manuals etc etc. Bought new inlet manifold gaskets and seals from Nissan which took a while to arrive. Used the s15 pick up which is supposed to be better than the s14 type.







If you've read the previous pages, you might remember when i bought the s15 engine as part of the deal i got a brand spankers stainless performance exhaust manifold with gaskets etc. But ive decided to go with the original cast one as ive heard they flow pretty well, and dont crack. So i assembled the roller bearing turbo onto the manifold with new proper copper gaskets and decent locknuts. I sold the stainless manifold and got some monies!

Refitted the flywheel with new bolts from Nissan. Cant remember how much these were but i remember they were expensive, and again took a long time to arrive.



One of the down pipe threads was screwed, so i drilled out all the threads and used brand new bolts and copper lock nuts. I usually suck at drilling stainless, but with a new drill bit and the right speed and pressure it cut really nicely.



Also fitted a new Apex clutch line and threw away the weird damped Nissan system.



Also fitted new fuel lines including the hard to get to ones under the throttle.



Got the cars round the right way for 'engine cranage'



Engine going in



Went really smoothly. Didnt have to get angry at all!

Once the engine was in, i cleaned the spray bars from my s14 engine (which was super clean in side) and fitted them, then put the cam cover on.





Just waiting for an o-ring to arrive for my oil relocation take off plate, and a fuel filter. Shame i stole the ally rad from the nissan for Rover Ill have to refit the standard nissan rad for the moment. Also i have no seats or harnesses as they are also in the rover.

[Jim_Auto]

Man it has been a seriously long time since i was last on here. My mate had badgered me in to doing a trackday at the end of October, so im going to get this car running again. The engine is in, but has never bbeen recomissioned. It still needs the CAS fitted and setup, oil and fuel filter etc etc. Got just under a month. Fingers crossed.

[chrispy]

Excellent work, you must be itching to get back out in it! Yours mates S14 is pretty mental too!

[Jim_Auto]

Yeah his car is rather nice. He cant actually make it this time. Ive another friend with an SR20DET ina BMW e30 shell, so ill be chasing him round silverstone, or trying to!

I spent a couple of hours unearthing the car from tarpaulins and crap at the back of the garage. Had to move the drift rover out of the way first, which was a pain as it had flat tyres. Neither car is a runner, so i had to tow them out with another car. Took ages. Started compiling a list of parts and jobs to get it ready for end of October.

[Jim_Auto]

I have had a very busy and expensive week!

It started with refitting the CAS, the then radiator, then I filled it up with fluids and did my final preparations before starting it up. Because the engine was an unknown quantity (I bought it from a chap who broke his s15 and with out seeing it running) and the car had sat for 18 months, I decided id build up oil pressure before I let it fire. So I pulled the injectors plug and the spark plugs. I cranked it on the key but couldn't get the oil light to go off. So I pulled the cam cover off to look for oil at the spray bars. I wasn't getting any. So a bit of head scratching. I swapped for a bigger battery to spin it faster, still nothing. Then I feared maybe I had dented the sump up blocking the pick up strainer. I removed the sump pan and it looked ok, but I massaged it concave just to be sure. I refitted the sump with sealer and left it overnight to cure.

Next day with another battery I tried again. Still nothing. I took the oil filter off the remote housing to check if I was getting oil to the filter. Sure enough with the filter off and cranking the engine a shoot of oil came out. That meant the pump was at least drawing some oil. I kept cranking for a little longer and finally I got oil at the spray bars. I put the plugs and injectors back together and it started first time to a healthy sounding idle. Phew! Not sure what it was, maybe it just wanted the attention.

The last engine blew the head gasket after running lean and detonating. Which really pissed me off because I had done all the supporting mods and was running low boost. I thought it was a blocked fuel filter but I wasn't sure.

In order to ensure the same didn't happen to this engine I booked a dyno session at Abbey Motorsport. Problems arose almost straight away. First my rad sprang a leak, then even more worrying was the car was running really lean at high rpm's. Three hours of messing around, swapping AFM, fuel pumps, and running the fuel pump direct off a 12v supply and it was still running lean. Put another ecu with a power fc connected and it could be made to run properly. The final conclusion was somehow the chip in my original ecu either had the wrong map uploaded or it had gotten corrupted. So with money spent and owed for the dyno session, a poorly ecu and only a week to go till the trackday, I bit the bullet and forked out for another remappable ecu. Car eventually ran properly and made 260bhp at the wheels which is an estimated 300bhp at the flywheel. That was at 0.8 bar.

End result, big expense, just to get me back to where I should have been before, and now I need to get another radiator oh and fix a leak from one of my turbo braided lines by next week. Cars piss me off.

[Jim_Auto]

Jesus, ive not logged in for a while! Got fed up of drifting the Rover, so im gonna have a play with this Nissan again.

[DavidRuston]

They might break as much as a rover, but also just as easy to fix pretty much.

I am back to s14 ownership after a few years away. Bolts are all still in the same place as I remembered them

[Jim_Auto]

Time for another thread revival. I haven't used this car since the Silverstone trackday. It just got put back in my Dads garage and forgotten about, as I cant afford to insure it for road use, and I have a busy job which takes up most of my time. In addition, when I do get some free time I try and go drifting in my Rover SD1 (that hasn't happened much either!).




But my friend convinced me that at trip to the Nurburgring was in order which changed everything. Ive learnt that if I don't just book stuff, it wont happen.




Because its 2 years since that car last moved, I booked a trackday at Brands Hatch as a shake down. I was most concerned about tyres and brakes, as the engine and box were faultless last time out.




I pulled the plugs out and dropped a bit of oil down the bores, poured a tiny bit of oil in the cam cover, removed the fuel pump fuse and cranked it over to get oil pressure. I couldn't actually get the oil light to go off, so after some time I just put it the plugs and fuse back in and fired it. The oil light went straight out and it idled perfectly. I LOVE NISSAN!




Loaded up and off to Brands














First problem, failed the 105dB static noise test. Balls.




Not sure why as its always been fine at trackdays, perhaps its just the insulation breaking down. Conveniently they have a shop on site that sells baffles. Cost me £80 for a suitable one, but that got me on track.




First session and car seemed ok. My Advan 048's felt ok, but not as composed as I remember. They are worn down to the wear indicators now and must be around 6-7 years old. They were well used when I bought them!




I was getting a vibration up through the steering column under heavy braking, and sometimes while steering. Im not sure what causes this, as I don't get much vibration back through the brake pedal, so it doesn't feel like a disc problem. But other than that the car ran fine.




Second session more of the same. Third session I fitted my Falken FK452 road tyres. The car has sat on these for 2 years and not moved so I was running them to see how flat spotted they were. Major result as they were perfect. Im still really impressed by these tyres. They stand up to abuse, give nice predictable handling, and don't cost much.




In the afternoon I did one more session of about 10 laps and then loaded up for home before I broke something.




Once back in the garage I got the front of the car in the air to look for possible culprits for the vibration under braking. The car is fitted with coilovers, poly rack bushes, poly tension rod bushes and standard lower arm bushes. I felt around and couldn't feel anything loose, but the poly tension rod bushes looked slightly twisted/distorted. Also the arb drop links looed a little tired and the arb to chassis bushes looked a little sad.



















I decided that it would be a good idea to upgrade the lower control arm bushes, arb bushes and drop link bushes as after 22 years they were probably past being abused. I removed the whole lot.




After doing some reading I decided to replace the lower control arm and tension rod bushes with Hardrace items. They are metal sleeve hard rubber bushes, a bit like the Nismo items. Same design as original, just much harder rubber. Although the tension polybushes didn't look damaged, on reflection poly stuff isn't great in moving link suspension components.




Ive read online that it can be difficult pressing out/in new lower control arm bushes as the open section design of the lower arm means that they bend or distort. So I made steel bracing for the lower section, with three holes cut out for access to the tension rod bolts and drop link bolt. I also welded a brace across the bush end area. The other benefit of doing this will be a stiffer lower arm. Looking at the original design, im sure it must flex or twist when under load.




Cardboard template.









Steel plates covered in zinc weld through primer.









Welding














All welded up









Ive left the tension arm bolted to the lower arm, as the car was laser aligned and im hoping that I can fit it all back together with new bushes and the alignment wont be massively out. Wishful thinking perhaps?




Anyway the new stuff arrives next week so ill see how I get on pressing in the new bushes. I also ordered some Nankang AR-1 tyres, which are meant to be good value trackday tyres.

[chrispy]

Any updates on this?