S14 update: built motor and more

Two events in a row of the car breaking had me pretty annoyed. I even considered parting the car out at one point but Maq quickly talked me out of it. 

To be honest it isn’t a hard job to replace the rockers but at this point I considered getting the engine rebuilt as the original has seen quite a bit of milage. Luckily at the same time Kurt decided to part out his s15 which had a freshly built SR in it so I bought that off him. Luckily for me he’s already done all the break in so I didn’t have to. 

With a new motor sorted I set to work on getting the motor ready to pull out before the guys came over to help me. This was where I found the cause of my issues at Calder and it was such a small issue that it seems stupid in hindsight but I’ve learnt my lesson. 

It turns out that one of the vac lines at my gate had completely split causing the car to overboost. The Haltech has boost cut but it was slightly harsh and me constantly hitting it trying to thrash the car caused the rockers to break. Check your vac lines regularly! On a side note, luckily the boost cut only broke the rockers which meant the motor could easily be reused rather than throwing a rod from infinite boost. 

The RB box made it a bit of a pain to yank out due to the size. Luckily we had a few people to help. 

Room for activities. I wanted to respray the engine bay but I quickly realised how much stuff there is to remove.

With the motor out we all went for a quick feed. 

I picked up the new motor the next day. I had to swap over a few things before it was ready to reinstall. 

I decided to try tidy up the bay and relocate some things. Found a neat spot for the FPR. 

Tidied up the wiring behind the motor also. Was a lot easier since the motor was out. 

Since the new motor had a s15 rocker cover and r35 coilpack kit to suit I couldn’t reuse the teal curse s14 rocker cover and the plain black seemed a bit boring. I always wanted to try wrinkle red so I decided to give it a shot. I was also too lazy to prep a rocker cover for a proper paint job. 

After a very half arsed prep job I sprayed the first layer and it looked very orange...

A few more coats and some heat gun action it looked slightly less orange lol. Well it was worth a try I guess. 

I had also picked up a r34 rb25 gearbox to replace my r33 one as the synchros had gone to crap. To use the r34 box in push configuration, you need to replace the front cover and also the bell housing if you don’t want to drill and tap new slave holes. I couldn’t get the bell housing off my old box and didn’t trust myself to drill straight so I got Josh to help me out. What a champ. 

I decided to shorten the shifter an inch as it felt too tall with the dog leg. 

The clutch still had plenty of meat after a few years of use so I was happy to reuse that. NPC 10” Organic HD. Highly recommend if you want an easy to drive clutch capable of holding over 300kw. 

Back to fitting more parts to the motor. I decided to treat the motor to a new aeroflow sump instead of cleaning and reusing my other one. 

Fitted my wrinkle not so red cover and more bits. Upgraded to a gen v hypergate also as I was having boost creep issues previously due to the gate placement. 

Boys came around again to help get the motor back in. 

Double funnel technique as I don’t have a bendy funnel. 

Shortened shifter is perfect now. 

Like a glove. I just needed to make a new cold side pipe. 

As the old one was not very pretty...

It was just a 90 degree bend which made things easy. Quickly beaded one end. 

Shortened the other end then beaded. 

Welded the bung for the IAT sensor. 

And bung for the IACV hose. 

Old vs new. Simple but satisfying. 

I also decided to make some Teflon braided vac lines for the gate. 

Was relatively straightforward but very satisfying. 

Adds a nice touch to the engine bay. 

Now for the important bit. A trip back to the tuner. 

Trent had this msg on the table which was how I hoped the rocker cover would look. 

I was very happy with the results. The car has a fair bit more still in it but I didn’t need any more power. Nice and responsive.

Made a quick comparison between my old engine and the new one. Quite a big difference! 

That’s it for now. Hopefully I have a bit more time to write a few more posts soon as quite a bit has happened since then.