180sx: Turbo

The 180 had a t28bb making 170kw (stock afm maxed out) which honestly would've been fine but I decided I wanted a little more oomph in the form of a disco/gt-ss. I managed to find a hks gt-ss for a pretty good price and will be pairing it with poncams/springs.

As I type this I further realise this was probably a pretty fruitless endeavour for roughly another 10-15kw but too late now.

I ordered a cast Tomei dump to replace the gktech one for no other reason than to look nicer along with a d-max dual front pipe for better ground clearance and the gktech one on the car rubbed a hole through the flex joint. I must admit the tomei cast unit is very nice and I've had their previous non cast version. The d-max front pipe didn't compare to the HPI dual I've had in the past but I suppose that's why it's a lot cheaper than the HPI unit too.

Also after a lot of umming and ahhing I decided to get a d-max stainless manifold too. This was mainly for the bay to look nicer and have a bit of an og feel too along with a nicer sound being equal length. They're 3mm thick so hopefully it shouldn't crack as I'll be running the front pipe brace to the gearbox and poly exhaust hanger bushings which help to reduce movement.

All nice and shiny for now except the crusty exhaust housing.

I went ahead and made new turbo waterlines too as the ones on the car were rubber braided with one being of unknown old age and the other dying from running along the dump/manifold due to the oem s13 waterline routing. I bought shears at some point to make cutting lines a little neater as I used to use an angle grinder which would spit a lot of dust/debris inside the line after along with everywhere else in the garage.

The lines are teflon with braided stainless outer. I also swapped over a s14/15 waterneck and blocked off the line from the back of the head so I wouldn't have the same issue of cooking turbo lines.

I also originally ordered x4 90 degree fittings then discovered I needed x2 straights... Well if you've been tinkering with cars for long enough you've probably ordered fittings for projects which end up being incorrect then go to live in a spare stash that you'll hopefully use one day. Well that day finally came! In my spare stash I had one black and one coloured so that's why one of the fittings is red/blue lol. I guess you could say it helps to distinguish which line goes where though as I hid the coloured one under the manifold.

The car had a random mix of nuts for the turbo manifold so I wanted to reuse the titanium stud/nut kit off my other motor which meant removing the old studs. Some came off with the nut, some I had to use the double nut method to remove and this one just pulled out the head pretty much.

My stress levels were rising thinking that I'd need to drill and helicoil the thread but I decided to try my thread cleaner/chaser. I got this from ARP when I was assembling the 4age and wanted to make sure the threads for the head studs were all clean.

I got it to bottom out which was promising. I threaded in a stud and it was going in tight so we were looking good so far.

I chased out all the threads after which I was originally going to do anyways prior to fitting the new studs. I used a bit of cutting fluid on the bit then sprake cleaner and compressed air to blow out the thread after. This was worth doing as all of the other threads needed cleaning up and the new studs threaded in smoothly.

Anyways I gathered all my forms of 14mm tools.

And it's on. I used a small artist paintbrush to paint the antiseize onto the threads too. I find it helps to create less mess compared to putting blobs on.

For the drain I had a 5/8 barb adapter off the turbo to push lock hose along with a uncoil (pictured below - this was also a spare from the 4age rebuild since it came in a pack of 2) to help stop the hose kinking then heat wrap ziptied over the top of it all.

I might switch these zipties out for stainless ones if I remember.

Anyways turbo done, 1000 things left to do.