Bad News and Good News | Poor Man's GTR [EP25]

Hey everyone and welcome back for another episode on the poor man's GTR. As you can see it is episode 25 and by the title we have a bit of a problem. I wasn't even planning on making this episode I was just going to sort of mention what happened but people seem to really like the mistakes because obviously nothing goes smoothly so we're just going to make an entire episode about what went wrong with the R34 Skyline's engine but before that let's have a quick look at what happened previously. Now because I post very rarely people sort of tend to forget what happened previously so the little what happened previously segments I guess help with the timeline of the build but anyways what we're going to do now is we're going to load the car onto the trailer and take it over to the guys at WTF Auto. Tristan, the owner of WTF Auto has his own YouTube channel and we got chatting cars, YouTube, we were sort of bouncing off ideas and he's like well you know what why don't you bring the car to my workshop let's sort of find out what the ticking noise is from the engine let's tune the car for you as well and then you can put it back together and hopefully see the road very shortly and yeah that's exactly what we did. All right we are at WTF Auto with Tristan. How you going fellas? And they've got a V12 Supra that they're twin-turboing but we'll get that get to that a little bit later but for now we have to get stuck into the R34 diagnose what the ticking noise problem is and then slowly work our way towards getting the car over there onto the dyno. Really loud around here. So as Tristan said the sound is the ticking noise is probably coming from this side so I'm going to pull the rocker cover off right now and then he can get all his measuring tools out see what the problem is and hopefully we just have to order a set of new shims. So there are still misconceptions about what engine is in this car and it is an RB25 Neo DE engine comes in an R34 Skyline that is naturally aspirated and we have obviously turbocharged it. Now the R34 GTT engines or even the GT engines used solid lifters in the cylinder head as opposed to hydraulic lifters in the R33 Skyline and that's where we thought the problem was. Some of the shims might have not been within spec giving us the ticking noise that was coming from the cylinder head so Tristan quickly measured all of them we found that three shims were out of whack, we ordered new shims the same day installed them and started the car back up again and the engine was unfortunately still ticking so we knew we had another problem. We did a quick compression test and cylinder one straight away told us that it was down on compression meaning it could be many things but we figured let's straight away pump some air into the cylinder and hear if we can hear a leak. So the intake, there was no air coming out of there so the intake valves on cylinder one were fine and we went to our exhaust and we could hear a bit of a hissing noise, air was coming out of there meaning that we had a damaged valve on cylinder one and it was time to take the car back to the shop and pull the cylinder head off. So as you can see I'm actually using the forklift to pull the cylinder head off the block and I've left both the intake and the exhaust manifolds connected to the cylinder head because I found that it was going to be easier to take them both off when the head is on the bench instead of it being in the car and not having much room to work with. So as you can see the glass is also back in the car which is a very satisfying moment because I think the glass was one of the first things to actually come off the car because we had to get to all the spot welds to repair or replace the rear quarter panels so having the glass back in the car makes it look a hell of a lot more complete and we are really only a couple of episodes away from actually driving this car on the road and producing more vlogs which is ultimately what I wanted to record for this YouTube channel with the build is only a small part of what there is to come. Originally I was planning on ordering brand new front and rear windscreen seals from Nissan but after doing a little bit of research and talking to a few people this was not only a cheaper and easier option but in my opinion also looks better as the rubber seal almost kind of counter sinks compared to sitting on top of the body until you see the final result and compare it to what it looks like original you won't exactly know what I talk about what I'm talking about but in my opinion the universal rubber seal is definitely the better look. In my opinion one of the best things you can do to a car is buy a brand new windscreen that has no rock chips no scratches it's just nice to have on the car. Now you're looking at this and you're probably freaking out for the overseas viewers because I know these are really hard to get your hands on but for us very luckily in Australia we're able to get aftermarket windscreens and this one only cost me $300. My front windscreen was cracked but look even if it wasn't cracked I still would have gone out of my way to purchase a brand new windscreen because it really does finish the car off nicely. So with the cylinder head off the car Tristan came over to do a couple of tests and see what the problem actually was before we take the cylinder head to any machine shop and stuff like that and while he was here I got him to have a look over the Supra see what his thoughts were on the car and he pretty much told me well the car is borderline between you turn it into a full-blown track car because it's missing a lot of pieces a lot of interior pieces it needs to get registered and there's just there's going to be a lot of work or you actually go through the effort of restoring it. Still being in school means that there isn't a lot of disposable income that can be tossed at the car but we're actually doing a another engine in it which should be a lot more budget friendly and as you guys know by now restoring the actual body doesn't involve a lot of money it's just mainly my time. I still get to produce the videos and do what I love so we have decided to restore the Supra and if you follow me on Instagram you'll know what exactly what's happening with the car sort of behind the scenes but this episode isn't about the Supra so let's get back to testing the cylinder head. Pressure goes to 35 pounds. That should be a good 500 watts. Oh look at that. So you have a must say this is hands down the coolest way I've ever seen to test a cylinder head. Damn. How cool is that? Well it's cool because we found the problem but it's not cool because it's my cylinder head. Well I'm just going to enjoy the majesty of this for a little bit longer. Obviously that valve's good, that one's bad. What happens if we push on it? Nothing. So what actually caused the valve to bend is the next question. I haven't gone through it before so I might as well explain. Not being a professional, not doing enough research at the time, I think I might have bent the valve when I was timing the engine up. The first time the car started the timing belt slipped off because I didn't have a harmonic balancer on. Just saying that now makes me think like what the hell was I thinking but yeah I just we just sort of wanted to crank the car. We didn't actually think it was going to start up and this thing just fired up out of nowhere. I did turn the car off and then the belt sort of slipped off so I really do highly doubt any contact was made between a valve and a piston in that moment. There are absolutely no markings on the piston that would show like a quick impact like that. What I think the problem was is when I was timing up the engine a couple of times after because I think I've had this timing belt off three or four times. I was timing it up and when I was you know I had my 27 mil soccer on the crank it got to a point where it was really hard to push and it still wasn't at its marking and I think the camshafts weren't degreed properly either and I think one of the valves might have been open the piston pushed up on top of it and it bent a valve and that's exactly where the ticking noise was coming from the entire time because the valve was bent. Luckily the car never really ran long enough to damage the valve seat so all we had to do is throw a new valve in make sure it doesn't leak and then we just sent the cylinder head off to the machine shop. We got it faced so the new head gasket was sealed properly. We ditched the factory head bolts because people say they stretch so I just threw in some ARP head studs a Kemetic MLS head gasket which is the exact thickness as OEM. I think that's all I did and yeah just faced the cylinder head sort of slapped it together. Now that was a bit of an exercise I think that ended up costing me six seven hundred bucks which sort of defeated the purpose of using a $500 engine but mistakes do happen and I'm happy that it did happen on this crappy motor instead of it happening on a very expensive motor. So we're sort of learning as we go and yeah hopefully it won't happen again. Is it worth it? No? Yeah it is. Oh god. So we are slowly approaching the end of another episode obviously this is episode 25 but I really do think if I made episodes such as these that we would be at episode 40 or even episode 50 because everything with this car has been pretty much two steps forward one step back. A lot of the things would you know would really piss me off you know looking back six months ago I'd make a mistake and I'd be really really mad at myself about it but I think over time I've slowly started realizing that everything I'm doing is pretty much a first time for me it's a big learning curve and I shouldn't beat myself up about it too much. All the mistakes I've made have mainly been time consuming to fix they haven't been very costly to fix like money wise so that's a good thing. So I think with having grown this mentality if that even makes sense it's going to be good to go into the next build because obviously the next build is going to need a lot more patience because it's going to be another hectic project such as this one but we're going to have more hands on deck as well for the next project. I'm going to sort of let other people do work that I might have done now like the wiring I just don't ever want to touch wiring in my life again. I lost probably two or three weeks trying to sort out some of the wiring on this car and it's still not finished so somebody could have come in done it in a day or two sort of pay the electrician and everybody's happy at the end of the day instead of trying to pull my hair out of things I'm not interested in. I like the bodywork side of things I like filming I like editing so hopefully the next build being Supra is going to flow a lot quicker um yeah and as you guys can see I'm sure the quality has also gone up we're filming in 4k now bought a new camera that cost me an absolute arm and a leg it should make filming a lot more exciting once again and I just cannot wait for this build series or the version one of this car to be over. I really want to make vlogs the weather is getting better and better by the day out here in Western Australia COVID is non-existent here so nah definitely stoked about that I want to use the car I want to drive the car I want to make driving videos get away from the workshop for a bit I've said that a million times and then come back and build the Supra the way it should make even better videos. If you've stuck around this long thank you very much for watching and we're gonna see you shortly