Ouch!

The bolts holding my brake caliper adapter to the wheel upright/knuckle are begining to rust to fastener heaven after only 5 months hence I recently made an enquiry with Pro-Bolt on some titanium equivalents. Below is the price quotation they sent me.

Total quotation cost after discount and including shipment came up to 128.06 GBP or MYR633 depending on the exchange for a grand total of 16 pieces of bolt, washer and nut. I don't like to whine and I know modding cars is an expensive hobby but this is still very very stupendously outrageously expensive to me! Now you know why F1 teams have an annual budget larger than the GDP of some countries...

Yummy Yummy!!!

Was following up on the delivery status of my K1 conrods with Toby when he sent me this gem with the same subject as this blog post :)

You're in trouble if I need to tell you which is the stock and which is the forgie (forged piston). Pistons are from Ross Racing Pistons and are forged from 2618 billet bar stock and have been heat treated and aged to T61 condition (2618-T61). Per Ross, 2618-T61 is the material that is used when fatigue resistance and durability are of prime importance by all premium racing piston manufacturers. This material has less than 1% silicon particulate content. High silicon content pistons (eg. forged from 4032 or MS75) will not stand up to the most extreme stress placed on many racing pistons. If a crack starts to form in a high silicon piston it will continue until the piston experiences a catastrophic failure. This is because adding sand to the aluminium only makes it more brittle. A crack on a 2618-T61 piston will continue to an area where the stress is not that great and will then stop.

As usual with engineering there are compromises. High silicon content pistons have a lower coefficient of thermal expansion allowing the engine builder to specify much tighter tolerance between the piston and the cylinder wall to ensure excellent ring seal and minimize cylinder bore wear. The larger piston to cylinder wall tolerances on a low silicon content piston will lead to characteristics such as a "rattly" sound when the engine is cold and has not warmed up. While this sound is undesirable to the majority of people it is no issue for what I'm building the Slowtra's engine for. I'll take the much improved piston strength over some additional noise any time any day. Care will also need to be taken to ensure during engine warm up to minimize wear. Even with bone stock QGs one should not rev and thrash the engine when it is cold anyway.

Compression is Toby GT Auto spec which is a tad under 9.0:1. Should result in a very responsive engine. Rings are the excellent Total Seal according to Toby. Now please excuse me while I go clean my pants. More details and pictures to follow...

K1 Technologies Connecting Rods Here!

While it might have taken more than eight months for me to get my K1 conrods, the rods were with me for less than 96 hours before being sent to GT Auto. Took some pixs before sending the package to Pos Laju. Picture below of the packaging. Four connecting rods are in this box.

Thanks to something called "globalization" many famous brands are now made in the PRC including K1 Technologies. The next time you laugh at "Cina Mari" parts think twice as your branded part could actually be made there! K1 rods are designed and finished machined in the United States though.

Labelling and details of my rods. "5.531" in the top row is the connecting rod center distance (ie. length). The numbers in the bottom row mean that total weight is 474.8g (grams), big end weight is 342.2g and small end weight is 132.6g. Interesting K1 uses metric for weight while length is still in imperial. "ARP2000" is self explanatory but if you are still not sure you can continue reading a bit to understand what it is.

Opening the packaging. The dark coloured liquid thingy is probably assembly lube. Not K1 gel though :)

The K1 Nissan QG18DE conrod. More pixs from Greg can be found in my earlier post.

The big (crank) end. As mentioned in my earlier post, the big end bolts are ARP2000 for their high tensile strength and excellent notch toughness.

The small (piston) end. The two holes are oiling holes that get the oil on the wrist pin. The K1 connecting rod features fruction reducing fully floating wrist pin design.

Each K1 connecting rod is CNC machined from 4340 steel forging and then undergoes core hardening and shot peening process to improve its strength. Each K1 rod is also magnetic particle inspected (MPI). During this inspection process the connecting rod is magnetized and then a magnetic flux such as iron particles is applied to its surface. This attraction helps reveal any surface imperfections or flaws on the conrod's surface.

This should now lead to some nice Ross forgies. I also have ACL engine bearings (crank/main, rod and thrust) on order and plan to WPC treat them. The ACLs are on back order though as the main bearings will only be avail end December. Everything should hopefully be ready for engine assembly some time early next year...

Bits n Pieces

Picture below of the stock QG18DE crank pulley and water pump pulley. It's the same as the QG16DE. The QG15 supposedly runs a narrower accessory - power steering and alternator belt (3 belt ribs) compared to the QG16/18. Main crank/power steering belt is 6 ribs. Let's call this 6/3pk belt for the QG15 and 6/4 pk belt for the QG16/18 belt. Now having said this the pulleys on my QG18 looks more like a 6/3 pk arrangement. Bro Fooyc what say you? Anyway be it 3 or 4 pk is no big cause for concern as one would just have to change the accessory belt.

Currently from what I know there are two manufacturers for lightweight aluminium same diameter as stock QG16/18 crank pulley. Alutec and Redline Motorsports which looks pretty similar to the Alutec cept the name. Who ripped who you decide. The Redline is bout 330 bucks or so plur or minus RM10 depending on how you bargain. You can also read up on the Redline crank pulley in the Malaysian N16 forum here. Both (Redline and Alutec) are in the 800+ grammes range which is around or less than half the weight of the stock crank pulley The Alutec is made from 7075 grade aluminium which is stronger than the more common 6061 grade aluminium used on the Redline crank pulley. I previously bought the more expensive Alutec crank pulley and you can read about it here. Never got around to installing it though. The Alutec is only avail down south in Singapore while the Redline is widely avail in the Klang Valley. In addition I also have another project to custom manufacture the crank pulley. More details to follow :)

In addition Unorthodox Racing from the US also make an underdrive (smaller diameter) crank pulley for the QG18. Basically an underdrive pulley is designed to drive the vehicle's accesories at a slower rate than stock. This increases engine horsepower by reducing parasitic drag caused by belt driven accessories such as the aircond and power steering. However too much of a good thing or underdrive will lead to decreased performance from said accessories. Whether that concerns you varies from driver to driver and car to car but IMHO I personally prefer stock diameter for a daily driver.

On a completely different topic, the gearbox mount for my RS5F70A gearbox has arrived. Picture below. The smaller part is the support rod bracket which I ordered just for kicks. Price came up to quite a bit including shipping (bout RM400 or so). These are brand new Nissan items though.

My gearbox is basically ready to go in at this point but I have not decided if I wanna mod my stock puny driveshafts or get Nissan or oem QG18/RS5F70A items or custom some performance ones. Price will be pretty massive for Nissan driveshafts or performance ones though. If you need to know it's in excess of two thousand smackers and possibly more.