Z Club of NZ Forum

I've had this car for about 8 years now, it's been through various guises, it was completely standard when I bought it off an older dude.

It's had the standard motor in it, a turboed L28, a 3.1L turboed L series, 3.1L turbo with individual throttlebodies and an RB26. It's had a few brake and suspension setups as well.



After doing this to the 3000K old N1 oil pump it's now getting an NICS RB20DET that was originally out of a 200ZR Z31 until I can afford to replace the oil pump with a Tomei one and buy a twin plate clutch. It may end up with an RB30 + 26 head in it if I can't find a decent 26 crank.





It's been a long and painful road to get where it is today but some of the other mods are:

5 stud conversion front and rear
S13 coilovers front and rear
BBS LM wheels, 17x9 front and 17x10.8 rear with 235/45/17s and 275/40/17s
R33 GTS-25t gearbox
Kaaz 2 way limited slip 3.9:1 ratio
'83 S130 rear crossmember and control arms
Z31 rear axles and brakes
R34 GT-t front brakes
300K speedo and 10K tach
'83 S130 rack and pinion power steer w/R32 rack ends and tie rod ends
'83 S130 brake booster and S15 master cylinder
Big front mount
HKS oil cooler kit
S13 CA18 aluminium radiator w/electric fan
Power steering cooler
3" exhaust

The trusty old 3.1L motor, never let me down.



The RB26, GT4088R, 360rwhp on 14psi before the clutch started to slip




I've got these other two waiting in the wings as well. The 2+2 is probably going to get sold to my mate as I don't think I'm going to have time to do anything with it, it's in a million pieces at the moment. The red 2+2 in the first picture was my 2nd ever Z, the photo is about 12 years old? The 2 seater is in pieces now, needs a little rust fixed before reassembly.

great stuff, i had no idea of how much of a Zed whore you were... keep it up!

do you also have a R31 somewhere?

Hah, I just love S130s, can't get away from them. I've got an iron mask DR30 coupe as well.

You should tell everyone just how many S130 2 seater have been in your ownership over the years I have had 2 and that is more than most but how many have you had, 5 or more.

Great work man! Time to enjoy the ride now!

I wish I was in the country to finish off my project S130. One day.......

Well it's no RB26 but at least there's a motor back in the hole. Need to spend a bit of time hooking the wiring back up etc but I should have it running over the next couple of days.

Got this thing started tonight, couple of little hickups, hooked up the fuel lines backwards by mistake, an 044 does not sound good being dead headed. Also forgot to reset the timing in the Link before I tried to start it, had some sweet blue flames coming out of the turbo hah.

Need to get a couple more silicons to redo the intercooler piping and get another flange for my BOV to weld on to the new piping, I'm going to run 2.5" on this motor instead of the 3" stuff I was running on the 26 as it's pretty much all different anyway.

It sounded pretty good running but only ran for maybe 20 or 30 seconds, I didn't change any of the other settings in the Link so it's probably running a bit lean. I removed all the factory idle control stuff and managed to connect up the Bosch stepper motor thing I was running on the 26 so hopefully it'll idle okay once the intercooler piping is all sorted.

is the RB26 ok except the oil pump?
or do you need to give the whole thing some love before it goes back in?

Crank needs replacing or an expensive repair to the snout so at the moment the plans are to drive it around for 6 months with the RB20 in it while I take care of the other 2 cars then look at building an RB30 with all the good bits.

Got the cooling system plumbed up today and let it warm up fully, took ages to get all the air out of it, the radiator fan was coming on (at 92 degrees) but the bottom hose was still stone cold. Drove it into the garage under it's own power (only just) so it's one step closer to being ready.

Still need to get some silicons for the intercooler, I'll try clocking the turbo tomorrow and make sure the wastegate actuator is going to line up with the flapper. Will have to buy another blow off valve flange too, I can't find any on Trademe so might have to buy one from the States.

Hopefully by the end of this weekend I'll have tidied up all the little bits and pieces so it'll just be the intercooler piping, plumbing for the idle control left and the downpipe left to do.

Modified a throttle cable bracket that Zac got for me from Pick'a'part, think it came off an SR18/20 Bluebird? Just need to tweak it slightly to get the angle the cable goes on to the throttle body a bit nicer.

Got one of these off Trademe, should turn up over the next couple of days. Cheaper than buying the flange on its own, $18 whole dollars!



Also ordered most of the silicones I need for the intercooler piping, the only one I'm stumped with is a 3" to 2.25" 45 degree reducer for the front of the turbo, might have to come up with another idea there. I also need to get another air filter, I forgot I used the newish one I had on the DR and the one off the 26 is a 4" inlet, I don't think stepping up from 2.25" to 4" is a very good idea.

Played around with clocking the turbo on the weekend too, the turbo was actually pretty clean inside the compressor cover, a little bit of degreaser and it came up pretty good. I have to wait for the right angle bend for the compressor outlet to show up before I can put it in its final place.

Blow off valve thingy showed up today, has a couple of burrs that I have to remove but other than that it was a pretty good deal for the money, it seems a little bit smaller than 2.5" as it slides into the silicone joiner with no trouble, might need t bolt clamps on it.



This is the engine bay at the moment, still a bit messy but it's getting there.



Also got myself some Holden power. Should have gone with a 253 but this will do for the moment.

Building an RB30det at som stage me thinks?

I've slowly been working on this thing, brought a new wastegate actuator and bracket from DSR, as much as I hate them it was $18 and looks like it'll work okay with some slight modifications. The way I'm going to mount it means I have to have the right angle outlet at the top which makes it very difficult to fit the air filter in, I might have to put it directly on the front of the turbo.



Also bought another almost complete RB26 which I'll be picking up on Thursday, it's got no turbos, exhaust manifolds or sump/diff and apparently it's run a bearing but hopefully the crank is salvageable. Have to decide what to do with the good bits on the other motor, whether I keep the head and head studs or just sell it as is after replacing the crank.

Started pulling the new 26 apart today and it doesn't actually look that bad so far. It was well, well overdue for a cam belt change and I'm pretty lucky the bearing crapped out before the cam belt broke! The grease seal had actually fallen out of the tensioner, it would have been extremely noisy when the motor was running. Some of the cracks in the belt are about ½ way through and it feels really stiff/brittle.





Number 6 big end bearing is the one that had crapped out, the bearing on the right is one of the other ones, see how wide the rooted one is? It's been beaten flat by the crank.



Crank doesn't look too bad, once I get it all the way out I'll be able to have a better look at it.



The main bearings were all worn but don't look too bad overall.



This is the most annoying thing I've found about RBs so far, there is pretty much no way of getting the cam belt drive gear off without rooting something, the oil pump, the gear itself or the cam belt guide behind it.



This pile is mostly the bits and pieces I got with the motor, there's a full loom, the motor actually had the exhaust manifolds which I wasn't expecting, all the idle control stuff is there.