5 GT Turbo Blue - R5GTT - Build

[Iain]

Hi all, this will be my first build so any pointers or advice is welcomed no matter how obvious or basic it is!!

I wanted to build a car from scratch, so I picked up this unfinished project and had it painted.
I've finally got it home and its time to get cracking.
I've already disassembled the engine and I should have the bits back from the engine shop soon.
It will be getting new standard pistons, liners and a piper 285 cam and pulley. I havent decided on the turbo and carb setup yet.
The head is being skimmed and fitted with updated springs.

Today I got the front subframe off and the first job will be to clean and paint it and refurbish and paint the caliper's. The disks, tie/track rods and wishbone's will be replaced with new ones and I'll be using Polly bushes. The car came with gaz coilovers so I'll need to check and clean them.
I'll start with the front of the car so I can get the engine in asap and do the bodykit, rear and interior after.

I'll also be going round the shell cleaning up any rust spots and hammeriting anything thats not blue

I'll update as I get things done, again any advice is welcomed ☺

 

[andybond]

285 cam with vernier is a very good move. What kind of power delivery are you after ? This will help determine the turbo that is suggested.

You have some gucci bits there as well. I notice a MSM rad/cooler combo there.

Welcome ! and please keep the updates coming.

 

[Big Steve - Raider]

Hi @Iain !

You've got the start of a great project there mate, keep the updates coming, I'm keen to see how this one goes?

 

[Mark Davis]

Loving the colour.

 

[DaveL485]

We have a smurf! (again )

@la21t your new bezzie mate!

 

[la21t]

Fantastic colour pal

Good luck

Sent from my LG-D855 using Tapatalk

 

[mattk]

That colour is fantastic mate, all the best with it and keep us posted :ag:

 

[Iain]

285 cam with vernier is a very good move. What kind of power delivery are you after ? This will help determine the turbo that is suggested.

You have some gucci bits there as well. I notice a MSM rad/cooler combo there.

Welcome ! and please keep the updates coming.

I'm not sure about power delivery yet, it's probably going to see a lot of twisty b road action I know that much :ay:

 

[andybond]

Twisty B. That would lead me to suggest a t25 might be more approriate then. The power is a little less , and lower down the range.

 

[Iain]

Can you get 200hp from a t25? That's kind of the mark I'm aiming for.
Made some progress, got some stuff blasted and I'm in the middle of painting. Should have the front sub back together soon

The suspension is off to Gaz to be refurbished as the shocks were knackered.
Looks like there's some cracks in the manifold are these bad?
Cheers!

 

[Mark Davis]

You can get cast manifolds for about £30 so not too much expense to get another one.
You'll need to consider a better clutch at that power too.

 

[davemaygtt]

I will be controversial and say you should get a vnt for the twisty b roads, great fun!

 

[Iain]

I will be controversial and say you should get a vnt for the twisty b roads, great fun!

A local dude I know is rebuilding his 5 with a vnt, I'm looking forward to seeing it go

 

[Iain]

So after a more than a year I thought I should come back here and finish what I started, sorry for the delay. :bv:

So I moved the 5 to my house and mostly worked on the building the engine through the winter as the car is on the driveway and rolling around in the frost is balls. I refreshed the brakes, and the suspension went to GAZ for a refresh and I got a set of Gaz rear shocks in a sale. Painted stuff and then when the weather got better I started putting the bits on the car.


I had the head skimmed and rebuilt with new seals and piper springs, The block got new pistons, liners, bearings etc and a new crank and is running a 285 piper cam. The custom rocker cover turned out to be a bit rubbish so I ditched it and I've gone standard with a spare standard rocker I've still to paint.

 

[Iain]

I followed the book and with some help and advice from other 5 owners it all seemed to fit together well, I guess I'll find out soon if I did anything wrong...:bk:

Here's a few other pics of stuff starting to go on the car, I've actually done a lot more since these pics but I need to find or take more pics of the current state of the project and I'll need to type more... so I'll update in a bit :by:
Forgot to mention I took the fuel tank off and gave it new hoses and refreshed the servo and put new brake lines on.

 

[andybond]

Some graft gone on in here ! Keep the work up ! Dont leave it so long next time

 

[Iain]

My original goal was to document as I went so I could be pointed in the right direction as I had not idea what I was getting myself into when I first started this project I just knew I wanted to build a car. It was either going to be a R5, 205 or a 180sx etc as these are the cars I've always liked. It just so happened that a 5 project came up for sale fairly locally when I decided to start a project and this turned out to be very fortunate as the car it's self being small, light and fairly simple made everything so much easier when working on the driveway, not only that, I've found that the 5 community is full of people who have a wealth of knowledge that you can only really be acquired from years of working with and driving 5's and they've helped me to understand what I'm doing on countless occasions as I've worked through this project and so I must say thanks for that it really does make a big difference and it would have been impossible for me to get this far without the people that make up the 5 community and there help and advice :ay:

At some point in the past year and a half I bought this white trophy 5 turbo mostly out of impulse as it won me over with it's ridiculous looks and it's low price tag and I eventually got it transported home from Lincolin to the North of Scotland and had it parked nose to nose with my project which helped a great deal as I had something to compare to. The original go was to restore it but it didn't exactly turn out that way.


The I knew the trophy required welding but the extent of the rot wasn't clear until I got the body kit off, the floor and boot were good but the sills were really bad and I would later find out that it had 3 layers of outer sills and all sorts of filler nonsense going on. As I had the two 5's nose to nose it became clear that my first project was missing quite a few parts and in the end I decided to use the trophy and a donor car as it had some really good parts... external waste gate, side exit exhaust and a much better dash and dash loom and engine bay loom which all worked as the trophy was functional, it also had a working viper alarm system with central locking.

Here is a picture of the first test fit of the engine and inter cooler/radiator combo, it's a rad tech cooler/radiator combo with two fans. It's quite a tight fit and there was a lot of putting it in and taking it out and tweaking and moving the fans about in an effort to make more space between the turbo oil feed thing and the fans but I eventually got it to a point I was happy with and I will find out when it I get the engine going if there's enough room for engine movement. I also modified the oil return pipe to get it as close to the engine/gearbox as possible as in it's orignal place there's very little space for forward engine movement as it was almost touching the radiator.

With a donor 5 and the engine lowered in the project began to move along much faster. I transferred the entire dash and engine bay loom from the trophy as well as the side exit exhaust, external waste gate and alternator.

I also took the grinder to an OEM rocker cover to removed the brackets and painted it black as the custom rocker cover although usable wasn't filling me with confidence, the gasket was poor and it didn't really fit properly as it fowled against the water pump and it only had two clamping bolts. I did drill a hole for the third bolt and took the grinder to it to make it fit but I plan on getting quite a bit of HP out of this engine and I want it to be reliable and I didn't feel like I could trust this rocker cover which is a shame because I think it looks awesome.

After I was happy with the interrad I started adding the coolant pipes, I originally put the coolant bottle in the standard location and used a mixture of blue pipes form the trophy and white pipes from china, I didn't bother with the swirl pot and ran water through the carb, manifold and round the back of the turbo into the top of the water bottle, I used an old metal hoover pipe to extend the piper to the bottom of the rad and wrapped all the coolant pipes near the exhaust and turbo in heat reflective tape because I'm paranoid about heat melting stuff and I figured anything I can do to make the cooling system perform better will help make the engine more reliable.


After buying what I think is a t28 but it might be a t25 (it said both in the description on ebay) VNT garret turbo and test fitting it with a cone filter it became clear that the expansion tank would have to go somewhere else as there wasn't enough room for the air filter I was also researching and taking advice and it seemed the best solution would be to move the tank to the scuttle area. I also didn't want to the fuel pressure regulator down at the bottom of the engine bay where I think it is on standard 5's, it's rubbish and dirty down there and to me it just seems like a bad place to put anything. I made a bracket and experimented with putting it higher up in the engine bay on the side of the strut tower top thing.


I'm paranoid about fires :ck: so in the end I decided to scrap this idea and move it to the scuttle with the expansion tank and to run the fuel lines up the back of the brake booster, servo thing into the scuttle. I was going to put the brake fluid reservoir in the scuttle area as well just to make the engine bay as clean as possible but after much thought I decided to keep it in it's standard place, it sits well there with the standard drip lines and moving it just felt a bit to much overkill maybe later if I rebuilt the car I will move it... :bv:

After a lot of drilling and test fitting and so on... I eventually got the expansion tank and FPR where I wanted them, I sat the tank as high as possible as advised and made a bracket to hold it in place, it sits with the top being about half an inch from the bonnet so I'm pretty happy with it I also added extra layers of pipe to the coolant pipes where they go through the scuttle wall and cut fuel lines to line the edges of the holes in an effort to stop any rubbing from engine movement so hopefully the setup will work and be reliable but time will tell, that's if my engine even runs :bv:... I also ran the cables from the starter motor up through the scuttle and along to the battery and through the fire wall just to make the engine bay less busy... if that's possible on a GT turbo :bv: and I bind the the water pipes to the manifold and just went with coolant to the carb which I've been advised should be fine!

I also fitted the oil catch tank and plumped it all in...


At this point most of the electrics work as far as I can tell, I need to permanently wire in the AFR, Boost and oil pressure gauges and get the dash in as well as the vacuum lines. I need to find a turbo elbow solution or have one made and find somewhere that sells V-band clamps that actually fit my turbo as eBay ones are too narrow and no use and also rubbish, I also need to work out how I'm going to mount the actuator to control the vanes and what kind of actuator to use but it's starting to get there. Now the thread is up to date with current progress I'll try and keep it up to date.

If anyone knows where I can get v band clamps for this turbo it would be muchly appreciated and any advice on VNT control also appreciated... I think I've got my head round it but not 100%, cheers.

I think tomorrow's job will be dash and electrics :dm:

 

[Big Steve - Raider]

Great Update @Iain and I can see a lot of work has gone into your build!! Keep up the good work matey!!

What's your plan for the car when finished? It's certainly got a few choice parts on there for more power?

 

[Iain]

I don't really have a plan but when I started the project I wanted to build a car capable of 200 HP and with minimal lag. I've got a valo green box clutch in there which is the limiting factor after that it's probably limited by the carb? I'll Hopefully have it on the road before winter and have it tuned well enough and have it reliable enough to use as a daily. I'm thinking 180 HP with the vnt kicking in just after 60mph in 5th gear where ever that is in the revs. Apart from a few sneaky back road runs in the trophy I have literally zero experience with gt turbos not even as a passenger so I'm basically taking it as it comes.
On a side note I completed a 1700 mile round trip last weekend in a van delivering large parts from the trophy and at the same time collecting the wheels and the seats for my project as well as dropping in at Santa pod to see all the 5's so at this point all that's left to source to complete the car is rear arches as mine got snapped when the cover got blown off in a storm... a windscreen, side skirt clips and the parts to plum/tune the turbo in correctly... cheers.

 

[andybond]

VNT - I have played with them a bit as has @James5

I recognise the white car as well - a guy called James owned that.

Great looking progress so far !