My very long awaited RB26 re-build - its nearly back!

[Andybrowngtr]

Right Then, I have been waiting for this for a very long time. This is the story of my eventual ownership of my (realistically ownable) dream car, my Skyline GTR, the feeling of success and achievement having worked hard, saved, borrowed and brought my Skyline, the pleasure of getting it back home and onto my drive for the first time. The devastation of finding that it had something fatally wrong with it after only 2 months, and the slow process of saving up to repair it, and not only repair it but make it much better, much more powerful and much more reliable than it was before.

Ever since I passed my test I knew this is what I wanted my hobby to be from now on, everything else was forgotten. Test passed and I brought a 1.3 GT polo coupé, at 17 as your first car, insurance stung a bit, but I didn’t care. A polo G40 and a corrado 16v followed. Then I went for the Corrado g60 supercharged and by that time I was interested in modifying and could afford to do it. Bigger supercharger, headwork and re-mapping followed, along with everything else but it got to the stage where you just wouldn’t be able to use any more power with it being front wheel drive and having a lot of torque.

Another years no claims came and I needed more grip, I needed 4wd, I needed a turbo and not a charger, having enjoyed the driving characteristics of a charger I wanted more top end boost.

Could I afford one…could I get insured for one….after some research and a loan I could! The corrado was up for sale and the hunt for the GTR began. My corrado was a very good, low mileage example, and was sold for the asking within a few weeks and I found the GTR I wanted. Every buyers guide read, i read as much about how they worked as possible, signed up to the forum, sorted a loan to pay for the rest of the GTR and a years insurance, went to view, immaculate. Few very minor things not to my taste but I thought it was the one, much better than the others I had viewed, great price, low mileage, perfect.

Had to go back a week later for the test drive, he apologised but said he didn’t have time to give us a proper run. Test drive, everything perfect, everything I had read in all the buyers guides, the car matched, no signs of anything nasty at all. He took us on a 2 hour, nearly full tank of fuel test drive, very impressive, cant be anything wrong with this, did all the checks, dvla, ect, rang the place that first mot'd it, all fine and above bored, had to have it. Made him an offer, he accepted, and I first drove it home in September 2007.





It had 33k on the clock and had not been in the country long, after the previous owner brought a house he couldn’t afford to run both so i was very lucky. Still limited (which is what i wanted) to 112 mph, everything was with it, spare, tools, mats, even the flare! Everything backed up the mileage, very little wear on stock wheel and peddles, seats, ect, not been under sealed and the underneath was very clean and rust free, no signs of accidents or replaced panels. Some nice aftermarket goodies two, Wheels, a hks exhaust, blitz intercooler, pair of hks BOV's and a good stereo head unit, i was a happy man. It had 33k on the clock and had not been in the country long, after the previous owner brought a house he couldn’t afford to run both so i was very lucky. Still limited (which is what i wanted) to 112 mph, everything was with it, spare, tools, mats, even the flare! Everything backed up the mileage, very little wear on stock wheel and peddles, seats, ect, not been under sealed and the underneath was very clean and rust free, no signs of accidents or replaced panels. Some nice aftermarket goodies two, Very nice wheels, a hks exhaust, blitz intercooler, pair of hks BOV's and a good stereo head unit, i was a happy man.

Oil was changed and everything else was professionally checked a few weeks later, everything perfect and enjoying getting used to it. Got it booked in for a full service and belt change, car never missed a beat! After about 6 weeks of ownership noticed a very faint tapping / clicking noise at half boost, oh dear…took it to a specialist, 100% big end bearing failure, very early stages, gutted! Drove it home very carefully with no boost and put it in the garage, feeling very sorry for my self!

[moonshine]

hope you have it back on the road soon andy,i know how hard youv worked for it polishing etc,good luck mate

[Andybrowngtr]

As it was September I decided to keep it in the garage, take it “off the road” My mum had just brought a new car so I had the old one which was an ideal, cheap to run mk3 golf, but a little unpleasant as I have just got out of my Skyline GTR and into a mk3 1.4 golf…..the power delivery is slightly different! But it was a means to an end. Still gutted as I had spent all the money from my corrado, plus the same again in a loan and what I had spent it on was sat in the garage and wouldn’t be back out for a while!
I decided to stick a trickle charge on the Skyline, make the garage as safe as possible, put a cover over it and start saving!



Spent the rest of the winter working and saving, spring came and I was looking into costs of getting it sorted, ouch! As I already had the loan to pay for half of buying the car initially and I wanted to save up for it to be done. I accepted the fact that this was going to be expensive and going to take a while and I started looking into other mods / improvements that could be done at the same time while the engine was out. Oil and water pump, ect and that’s when it started.

Well while its out I may as well do this, and that, and after all this money I’m going to want some power increase two. Realising I would be limited to the boost that the stock ceramic turbo’s could give me reliably I considered new units that would give me as much power as I could want, while staying as close to the stock driveability as I could. I decided to stay with the twin set up as I loved the fact that there was very little lag and plenty of power throughout the rev range.

I wanted to build the engine to be as reliable as possible, with plenty of power to keep me happy when it would be back on the road, plus the capability to take it further as I got used to it, without compromising on reliability. The only thing I hadn’t included to qualify this criteria was the pistons and rods, I thought about these a lot, do I need them, can I wait months longer for the car to be back so I can afford them. I decided to go for them. The parts list was constantly being updated and I realised it wouldn’t be back any time soon, but when it is back, it will be well worth it.

Lots of 7 day weeks followed throughout the summer of 2008 and just tried to save as much as I could. Autumn came and it was finally time to start looking into where to take it. Around that time I went to a place called Weston Performance to pick up some parts and was very impressed with what I saw there. Further conversations with the owner and the tuners / mechanics as Weston performance resulted in me deciding to have them do all the work to the car. We sat down with the parts list, I told them what I wanted, some changes were made to the parts list and we arranged a date for the car to go down there.

[Andybrowngtr]

That day came and I took the car out of the garage where it had been sat for the best part of a year while I was saving up.



Gave it a quick clean and arranged for transport down to Westons.

While waiting for the truck to come I tried to convince my girlfriend that all this money, all these cheep weekends and hard work would be worth it, and it was in fact a very good idea to spend this much money on the car. Getting her to sit in it didn’t really convince her though.



Truck came, got the car on it eventually (in reverse), and off we went to Westons.







I got to Westons before the car…strange scene as he set off half an hour before me, its only 70 miles away and we didn’t pass him on the way an hour passed and I was wondering if he had done a runner with my car! Whats happened, why isn’t he here! Rang him, he explained that he had reached the limit of his driving time before he had to have a break and had pulled over for his break in service station, panic over!

Hour later and the car was at westons.

[Andybrowngtr]

Cheers moonshine! It wont be long now!

[Andybrowngtr]

A few weeks later and they rang to give me a update, they said before they started removing the engine they started it up to confirm it was in fact the big end bearings, they said it started first time (after a year!) and sounded perfect..what! Don’t tell me I have been without it for a year and worked like a dog because of a noisy injector or rattling bolt! No unfortunately not they said, they got it warm and the tell tail noise returned, they confirmed it was the big end bearings and removed and stripped the engine. Following week I went down to have a look.





Big hole!











Didn’t realise there would be so many parts! Hope they can put it all back together again!

[jay-r33]

looking good matey, whats the new specs going to be?

[Andybrowngtr]

The usual suspects!





Exactly as diagnosed, massive excessive wear of the big end bearings under one of the cylinders, The bearing on the right was from below another cylinder and is how they should look, the two on the left show massive wear in the material due to no oil and the bearing running dry and rubbing against the crank.

All the parts were ordered and the car was put in the car park while we waited for the big box to arrive from japan.

[Andybrowngtr]

Thanks very much jay-r33! Give me a minute and you will see!

[Andybrowngtr]

While the parts were on the way the head was sent to the machine shop to be fully reconditioned and I waited for a call from them to say all the parts had arrived. In the mean time I arranged some further parts my self, there were already two defi gauges in the car but that’s all there was, two gauges, no control box or wiring, so as I already had the actual boost and oil pressure gauge, I thought I may as well complete the defi set and added a control box, water temp and oil temp and all the wiring I will need.

I also arranged an oil cooler with filter relocation and an apexi intake kit, figured id need one! All parties involved with my re-build will be formally thanked at the end of the thread when the car is complete.

About a month later, got a call, parts had arrived, couldn’t wait till Saturday till I could go down and look where all my hard earned had gone. Got down there, head was back from machine shop and all my parts were laid out for me to look at!







Feeling very lucky at this moment in time! This is why I spent all those hours working!









And was it worth those extra months of saving and waiting so I could have the pistons and rods also???



Yes it was! I drove home wearing a big smile! Sat in my 1.4 golf on the motorway watching the scoobies and evo’s fly past me, I didn’t care after what I had seen, spent the rest of the Saturday working as usual, but I didn’t care, god I couldn’t wait for it to be back!

[Darren-mac]

Very nice andy, no doubt the new build will get polished to within an inch of its life too! Nice work

[Andybrowngtr]

Cheers Darren-mac! It already has been! I am up to about Nov last year at the moment! Keep an eye on the thread for more updates!

[jay-r33]

blooooooooooooooooooooody hell!!!!! some very very nice parts where did you get the rods and pistons from??
is that a brand new head i spy. very nice
also what condition is your crank in with that bearing??

[Andybrowngtr]

Cheers matey! Yeah i told people i was up to something! 18 months of hard work is about to pay off, I let westons make the choices on what parts to use based on my needs and how i was building the engine, i basically went for the best i could afford and really pushed the budget beyond what i originally planned to make sure i got the best, this is why its taken so long, needed to save up!

The pistons and rods are from westons suppliers, one is from Japan and one is from Australia but cant remember what was from where, they are corillo rods and i have totally forgot the make of the pistons, i'll find out!

Its not a new head, just fully reconditioned and had some head work, and had only done 33k k's to start with.

I was lucky with the crank, there was very minor scoring, so a crank polish was done and then new bearings were orded based on the exact measurements from the crank after the polishing, now that polishing was not done by me! Westons have a specialist precision engineering company that does that side of the engine work for them.

[ukdelsol]

looks good mate , have they gave you a answer to when you can have it back yet? liam told me that it wasnt ready for you last weekend.
gotta be seriously winding you up now kowing that its nearly done but you cant have it yet.