ChrisB

Hurrah! Good old Suzi Her namesake of the Perry kind is wearing pretty well too I digress..

Silly random question here - jerky - loss of fuel pressure / supply would do that - and loss of fuel gauge - are the connections to your fuel bucket all good?

After some excellent salesmanship from our friend Tarmac I've decided on a pair of Fast Intentions VQDE resonated 300 cell HFC pipes in non-polished stainless (2.5" T304) each with an extra sensor bung welded in, followed by a Stillen Y pipe. It would be silly to keep stock cats, and I had a look at my Y the other day - crusty.. http://www.fastintentions.com/product_info.php?cPath=41_45_51_52&products_id=104 I am keeping stock headers (just NO! to the thought of changing those on the drive!) and followed by my existing and perfectly nice Legalis R stainless back box. Yummy There might be a bit of a wait though (built to order and up to 6wks lead time)

And today's mod is... ...although my hoses won't thank me for it. It was this small (JDM) Mishi or the Cusco. It has a cute little temp gauge in it - for yet another temp measurement. The theory with 1.3 bar pressurisation is that at the top end of cooling temp range, a bit of extra pressure means higher boiling temp - so lessens the likelyhood of formation of tiny localised bubbles (which are much worse conductors of heat than liquid), so keeping hot parts uniformly cooled, and preventing pump cavitation (both things are very nasty). The cooling system should normally be efficient enough to never reach boiling point - but this adds a bit of headroom. When circuit pressure testing, the leak test is 1.57 bar - so well above the increased bypass pressure, so in theory, still safe. I might replace the large diameter hose clamps though, just for OCD Oh and did I mention it had a cute little temp gauge on it?

Whilst waiting for the next delivery of minor bits to turn up, not much has happened since last week's flurry. in fact. And with the rain yesterday, it was wet enough to I spend time reading the Nissan service manual for fun (I'm that sad), and have stumbled on a rather nice little diagnostic trick - you can get the BCM to issue a command over the CAN bus to the IPDM to initiate a self test mode: it's in section PG, page 34. It makes demister, lights, wipers, ac clutch and fans come on in sequence - cool. (To initiate 'Auto Active Test'': open driver door, wind down window a bit, ignition on - properly on not acc position - and within 20sec press door jam switch 10 times, then ignition off and back on within 10 sec) Oh and the clear pipes aren't staying - when hot, they squish too much for my liking under vacuum, so I have some proper hose on it's way.

Thumbs up from me too. I have a waterproof, double seamed, cotton lined PVC chappie - I think it was about 50 quid a couple of years ago. I find it very useful when doing the 'little engineering project', if its up on axle stands and the battery is off (locked but the windows cracked open) overnight. Also I used it when left the car in winter for a trip to Oz (watched over by our house/animal sitters of course ) - I put delivery bubble airbags in between the cover and doors then put a strap around the lot - I've heard of problems with wind flapping the covers.. So yes I do occasionally bubble wrap my car

In Buckinghamshire, the wife and I have a saying.. 'back in Bucks'. After a trip, we can always tell we're home on entry to the county - atrocious! Lovely county but possibly it's something to do with the number of Bucks broads driving 4WD.

I thought you'd like the brass, aluminium and stainless steel fittings too The clear bit is for up and downstream - I used a 12mm alu valve, but had to come down from 15 to 10 between CC pipes and pcv, so 12mm valve not 10mm aided stepping. Next up will be vacuum/boost referencing. Blue 5mm id silicone for that.

PCV checking and catch can.. That'll do pig..

Maybe - depends if its unburnt/rich stink through the exhaust or actually leaking I suppose. Investigation is certainly on the cards

It's not set up for commuting then Cripes !

So, it turns out there is a monumentally obvious way to overcome the 5 degrees of interference - turn the bracket upside down There are a couple of obvious places to fit with the different bracket types - plan A down by the coolant tank, and plan B down the cleavage in the fans (we all like a bit of cleavage ) although plan B would mean driiling into the shiny new mishi rad shroud - I'm not ready for that kind change yet. Although prettier, the cleavage option is a bit less serviceable compared to the down south option - the can is easily accessable when the tray is off - draining is by a hex plug. Obviously the BPV needs protecting from drips, but a simple shallow pan to drain into would do at oil change time. I have a carbuilder delivery inbound for the other plumbing, so I'll test this temporary fit before pinning the pipes down further, for the next few hundred commute miles (till Friday ). Considering where the vapours have been, the fan exhaust is not going to cause any adverse heating I would have thought?

Actually ...fan shroud... ..side mounts.. got me thinking now - plonk it right at the front.... I will have to see tomorrow as its dark now... dang..

The way I think about the lack of sight with the bigger cans is that it becomes more a service interval thing than a worrying about it filling up (as in small ones). A big tank should be good for thousands of miles. As it happens, this very evening I spent a good two hours trying to make mine fit. It is soooo close - pain to fit from the top too as my car is back on the ground - but I was trying to use pre-existing bolts (coolant bracket middle bolt). Literally only 5-10 degrees too much contact with the mishi rad fans. I will probably end up drilling separate holes.... bit like grundy's wheels this...

'ello

I was looking at all sorts of oil catch cans before I settled on the Rutlands one which a fair few other supercharged Zed owners have/are using. The thing for me was where are you going to mount such a large oil catch can? With other things like a fuel pressure regulator in the engine bay and other bits I just thought it was better to just go for the tried and tested one. ChrisB doing his supercharger build (members build threads) has gone for the Mishimoto oil catch can but it is very expensive imo ~ also he has yet to find a place to mount it so you may want to check out his build thread before buying anything. It is beautiful though

I still haven't successfully (non-interference) mounted my GIANT catch can. Soooo close though... literally mm. I will persist!

She purred like a kitten on the way home - cruise at 2750-3000 RPM, good temps and pressures, no lumps in torque or noises (all be it we're still NA), all good. For a moment there I was tempted to see this as a trigger to splurge on a lovely Syvecs S350, but my JDM ECM wants to stick with me a lot longer it seems Under the bonnet, everything is still looking good, and solid. I'm confident for the next steps - fueling. I will be carrying my code reader around for a while now though, just in case (probably a pre-requisite for modified anyway)

Woahh.. After a seemingly faultless test drive yesterday, Precious was a little reticent about going to work this morning.. Start-up small belt squeak (went away) - I will have tighten the belt a touch.. But then CEL light came on. I raced indoors to get the OM500 and P1065 - ECM backup power supply - popped up ... Reset OK and everything seemed hunky dory after that. So I gingerly drove in (32 miles cruising) ... and we made it fine.. Hopefully, with the battery off and on lots of times, it's just a spurious effect. If not, there may be a bit of a disturbed wiring effect going on - I'm amazed after the epic amount of engineering that the rest of it is all working so well so far! with a little

I'll be following with interest - certainly had a few kinks to iron out / guess at myself. It would be very interesting for me at least to see things I might have missed. Quality control is essential

Haha. A couple of weeks ago I was in bed with the wife - at about 3am we heard cat chirping noises. Oh no, here we go I thought. The the cat jumped on the bed, dropped a mouse and it ran along my stomach up into my arm pit and into my pillow. The fun we have eh? Yes the shrew (and mouse) were all repatriated intact. I had a large ginger who tried (and failed) to get a big wood pigeon through the cat flap. He just ripped its chest out outside instead ...And then there was the occasion of the guinea pig. We don't talk about that though

I live in the country - creatures are everywhere - randomly, yesterday infact whilst covered in car grime, I had to be called out to rescue a shrew from a hysterical neighbour (her cat had brought his first gift in )

Ok... it's been different today.. I went to on a reccy to checkout the last PITA job before the more casual stuff remaining.... the return fuel pipe install... Hot things be this way But anyway, I dived in and start stripping (all of this has been apart many times before.. and the JBL has a humungous magnet - hence the offset) Dismantled it and opened the hatch.... NO FRICKING WAY HOSE!!! A mouse nest on my fuel bucket!! It had had quite a munch on the wires too.. After a bit of gentle movement it fell down to one good remaining strand! Ok it was all a bit silly All fixed though - soldering iron out on the neighbours extension lead So threading up into the tank was a complete mare - I used a length of shrink wrap from the top to get a through path (worked well) then taped the end to the pipe and worked it through (many attempts were made to get the correct channel) .. and voila.. Underneath, these clips are barstewards.. this one particularly (nose bent against the underbody this time) As for the other end, there is a pipe holder in the engine bay. PITA to get to with your nose squashed agains the subframe.. But ..check it out!!.. And temporarily tied to the engine bay - plenty of pipe for the regulator to connect to. All nicely routed (caveat a couple of under body clips which I cheated for later fettling by cable ties)

:scare: ...no way!! (not in a good way either - but nothing inflicted by me ) All I will say now before tonights update

Ugh. Bit of a slog with the interim tidy up and quality control today. At least my helper was on site - he's a bit busy with important cat business usually.. There were quite a few undertray dramas.. Oil cooler doesn't like undertray bolts - whoops Easy, make em shorter.. (a bit too short that one ) Metal stiffener is a bit intimate with the u-bend. No worries, metal stiffener bends OK Much time was spent re-fettling the front bumper nibbles to make the cooler fit better. It looks the same but I know it fits better (didn't take a pic - too much to get on with) Final resting place of oil cooler lines.. Something had to be done as the plastics and angles join in such a way to prevent routing without cutting This was the biggest abortion. I refitted the down pipe and u-bend this morning and improved fit (metal to metal), but still it wont quite go. I tried to stretch the tray over the pipe but that seemed worse. This is an in-progress shot of chopping the tray supported by about 1 screw (it looks better in the end, but I forgot to take a pic ) I can almost imagine Zmanalex will pop up here and say "new and used undertrays in stock.. good to go same day or next" Not shown are 3D slices of plastic within the bumper assembly too. It might be better to throw the internal ones away - they don't appear to do much (sorry no pics). No I don't have a 2.5" hole saw - just drill bits and scissors/cutters Stillen fits nicely though So, on to the looms. Loomin heck in fact. There is a lot of spare wire in RHD cars compared to LHD it seems. I decided the best place for excess on the skinny loom was the other side of the engine Not a good pic - I seemed to be pointing camera at the wrong spot (camera went where head couldn't) but loops of un tied loom hanging down near the exhaust would be a bad thing! So tied loops are in order Jack shaft clearance - tip of tie wrapping dipstick was gleaned from the Vortech reliability thread Sprouted an engine cover - the cover's internal standoffs help push the looms away even more See what I mean about tight clearance (down pipe and A/C belt) - I'm half tempted to bash the down pipe but I don't fancy bodging fairly un-replaceable parts (unlike pastics ) But at the end of the day, it's ended up like this. She's now driveable (all be it NA), and a good understanding of some of the potential failure points has been gained. My biggest fears are the downpipe to u-bend union, followed by the u-bend to IC. Bigger couplers would help here. Tolerances are scary, but the pipes are in there rock solid. I think I have the looms under control - so events such as jack shaft pulley eating the VVT solenoid leads or MAF loom (or dipstick), or fails due to exhaust setting fire to wire shouldn't happen.. I might just put the front wheels on tomorrow and give her a well earned bath, ready for work on Monday. It's a bit full on this car modding lark in the hot weather FRS etc can wait for another day