More news on the engine rebuild: It seems the engine had a build up of thickened oil from previously bad maintenance in Japan. The old owner had a bearing replaced under warranty when he first received the car, which I’m sure was a cheap rush job to save the warranty company money. Misfortune has seen it now that the bearings have gone now when I have first received the car. In my attempts to make the 2 min drive home from where the engine starting making a lot of noise, I seemed to have caused a bit more damage. Ricol say that the smashed bearing was pulverised into small pieces and was pumped through the oil system, slightly scoring my fresh HKS cams in the process. They will be linished to repair them luckily. Something has happened with the piston rings too, as a later compression test to my ‘first started making noise stage’ test (which made an excellent 160psi on all four cylinders), has seen much lower and varying numbers at Ricol. Fresh rings are needed as well as a hone of the bores, but this means that compression will be like a new engine. It also means that a running in period will need to take place to properly bed in the rings.

The crank has been badly damaged and as such will be replaced with a much newer S15 SR20DET item thanks to Greg. He has also supplied me with a new 1.2mm Nismo metal head gasket to be used in the build. This should give fairly close to factory static compression ratio, possibly a tad higher depending on skim.

I have also decided to fit the Apexi turbo while the engine is out. This is mainly due to the worry that there might be bad particles of dirty oil in the old turbo that will be pumped through the fresh engine once it’s running again. Therefore I will fit the later model coolant pipe needed to bolt up the turbo lines, as well as have a factory Nissan BOV fitted to my existing piping and plumbed back to a new larger induction pipe off the turbo inlet to suit the 80mm Z32 afm.

This and the 550cc injectors will not be fitted yet, so I will need to take it easy on low boost until I can afford to have the car tuned for the bg power output. This will suit the required running in period well, so I will not really be at a disadvantage.

Thanks to Greg for supplying the mentioned parts, and to John for sourcing the new bearings at mates’ rates. As for Ricol so far no complaints, they have been very good. Hopefully I’ll have pics of the disassembled motor after I visit Ricol to drop off the parts.