BodenM

It lives again! Cut the metal pipes off the cradle and body with a mini hacksaw and fitted Aeroflow hardline to AN adapters to put a -6 AN line where the previous rubber line was. Also replaced the cactus stock pump with the Deatschwerks DW300, which to my surprise was a 100% drop-in replacement, even the electrical connector was the same, and the lower bracket with rubber isolator fit perfectly too, that was a pleasant surprise for sure. Only problem I have now is I'm 95% sure the factory jet pump that draws fuel from the passenger side of the tank is restricting the return too much, which is causing my fuel pressure to be at about 55psi at idle/low load instead of the normal 42psi. Dammit, I was hoping to not have to pull the back seats out again any time soon, they're so god damned heavy and awkward to remove T_T

In other good news, finally finished painting the Evo 5 wheels I bought months ago, and man did they turn out m i n t. Painted in Nissan Titanium Grey (KAC), they're a dark almost gunmetal silver/grey, but when the sun hits them you get this lovely bronze-y colour to them and it looks awesome.

So more fun times for me in the past week or so, got the Radium FPR fitted, but not before dropping one of the fuel rail spacers down the back of the engine and having it literally disappear into the abyss. Replaced it, and put RTV on all 3 so when I next remove the rail they stay stuck to the head.

Got the Evo 8 ECU in and running too, car drives great with it (after I swapped the IACV, and adjusted the BISS because it was set so wrong that the car would just refuse to idle after a short while on the E8 ECU, I'm surprised it was able to idle at all on the stock ECU, it seemed like it was basically screwed all the way in). Interestingly despite all the information on hand saying otherwise, I had to swap the fuel pump relay and fuel pressure solenoid pins back around to their original configuration as my wiring harness does NOT have them swapped from factory and as such instead shares the same pinout as the Evo III.

It hasn't been all sunshine and roses though, on Tuesday this week it left me stranded at work when the fuel pump decided it was a great time to cark it. "Fine" I said, I have a DW300 pump just sitting here that I've had for months. Go down to the car today (since it's stuck at work) to put the new pump in, SURPRISE, those absolutely lovely fittings on the soft hose from the tank to the body line decided they didn't want to come undone and preferred to be round rather than hexagonal. Bit the bullet and have ordered some hardline to -6 AN adapter fittings, as well as matching 200 series hose and hose ends from Aeroflow, will just cut that bloody soft hose off and be done with it. 

Been playing with wires tonight, pretty much finished the Evo 8 ECU adapter harness, just need to wire in an OBD-II plug and reflash connector and add a flying lead to what is normally the rear O2 sensor wire to connect the wideband to and then it'll be ready to go into the car!

Goal for this week is to get the fuel pump, FPR, wideband and Evo 8 ECU in the car and have it running and driving so I can start doing some tuning this weekend, I'm very excited. omw to put 25psi through a stock 4G63T and lift heads 

It lives again! Finished putting it all back together last night, only to find the battery was proper cactus after 3mo of sitting so went and grabbed a new (and bigger) battery today and she starts up mint. Took it down to the local carwash to give it some love and it drives great, the new clutch feels good and the lightweight flywheel makes the engine so much more responsive.

Got some more goodies too, almost time to start winding more power into this 

I'm not dead, still alive, ended up parking the car for 3mo and giving it the finger when leaving for work every morning on the R1200 instead hahaha. Quit my job, got a Prius for free, got a new job, fixed the Prius and flipped it and now this weekend I've finally pulled the RVR back into the garage and started the process of dropping the gearbox and replacing the clutch.

Fun bits, a Competition Clutch lightweight steel flywheel, Competition Clutch forged clutch fork, and a Mantic Stage 1 organic single-plate clutch.

End of Day 1, had to stop early as my mate who was helping had to go to work

End of Day 2, box and transfer out, clutch and flywheel off.

The cause of the clutch issues, a part of the clutch hub had broken off and let the springs out, which were rubbing against the pressure plate fingers and causing the clutch to drag and not disengage properly.

Rubbing marks on the pressure plate.

Unfortunately while removing the flywheel some of the bolts partially rounded off so I'll be buying a full set of flywheel bolts, going to try and get some before Wednesday's public holiday in Brisbane so I can smash out the rest of the job then. I also have some go-fast bits on the way, got an FPR install kit from Extreme PSI when I ordered the flywheel and clutch fork, and I also have a patch harness coming from Autosport Wiring to turn into an adapter harness for the Evo 8 ECU, and a Radium 3.0bar FPR, Pierburg 3-port boost solenoid and AEM X Series wideband O2 coming from Pro Speed Racing, so I'll be able to put the Deatschwerks fuel pump in that I've had sitting here for several months too haha.

So now that my car is running I thought I should make a little thread to document progress and the things I do to it. My name is Boden, I'm from Brisbane, and this is my RVR Hyper Sports Gear R. I came to own this car almost by pure chance. I had just sold my previous daily driver, a 2002 Smart Fortwo and I was in the market for something new. I nearly picked up an E39 BMW 525d wagon with a manual (how's that for weird and rare?), but someone sniped me before I had a chance. Disheartened, I turned to Gumtree, and said to myself "hm, I haven't looked at RVRs in a while, I wonder what the market is like right now." Punched in "RVR", hit the search button, and there it was. A black, manual RVR HSGR, not only very close by but for a very reasonable price. I sent the guy a message, and worked out to check it out the next day. Owner was an old bus driver, real nice guy, although I'm 99% sure he was pretty much unaware of what he was selling. Considering it came with rego and a roadworthy, I almost felt a little bad for how little I paid for it, with just 147,000km on the clock it drove sweetly and pulled strong throughout the rev range. I was smitten immediately. I've always had a major soft spot for the oddballs of the car world, and the RVR has to be right up there near the top of the list of my favourites, so to have an opportunity like this fall into my lap at just the right time was awesome. I told the owner "I'll take it!" and bought it on the spot.
 
The day after I picked it up:

The only modification on the car, an RS*R exhaust (likely fitted before it left Japan in 2008), which has a lovely tone to it when you give it a bootful but is very civilised when just pottering about.

 
Unfortunately, the honeymoon came to an unexpected and displeasing end very soon. The same day after the picture above, I was driving home after hanging out with a few friends. Indicate right to pass on the highway, roll onto the throttle just a bit in 5th, and after a second, I hear a strange noise. A, short, muffled "ping!". Immediately, the car loses power, and sounds weird. I limp it home, fearing the worst. "maybe it's just a bad plug lead or plug?" I tell myself. The next day, I pulled the plugs, and immediately, there was a problem.
 
The first three plugs came out alright, if not a touch oily.

 
But, then there was cylinder 1's plug, can you spot the problem?

 
I mean, I don't know about you, but I'm 90% sure a spark plug shouldn't look like that. Then, praying that by a stroke of luck the engine was ok, I threw a fresh set of NGK BPR6ES plugs in. Quick spin around the block. No dice. Still down on power, running on 3cyl and sounding like a god damned Subaru. "If I wanted dead engines I would have bought a Subaru, quit sounding like one!", I yelled at the car. Unfortunately, cars are not living objects and hence do not respond to being yelled at. I borrowed a compression tester from a mate, dreading what was to come. "Maybe it's just a clogged injector?" said an increasingly nervous me. Hooked it up, throttle open, give the starter a few turns.
 

 
WELP. Not even enough compression to make the needle wiggle. Cylinders 2 through 4 all reported 170psi+ each of compression, which confirmed the engine was basically cactus on cylinder 1. I put the call out on an RVR group on Facebook. Bazeng responded, coming through with the saving grace, a freshly rebuilt RVR HSG motor with ARP head studs. A deal was struck. I dropped the car off the following weekend with Taz (who is also an awesome guy) to begin the engine swap. By this point, I was ready to light the car on fire, so having someone to do the bulk of the heavy lifting (both literally and metaphorically) was a good thing. The weekend after that, I headed over with a mate to help get the old engine out and the new engine in and sorted. Despite our best efforts we were foiled by a ridiculous storm, so we had to stop and call it a night, with only a little more work to go. Taz got the rest of the work done during the week, and I was able to go back to driving it! That leads us to today, and a much happier me now that I'm back in a properly grunty, boosted car, especially after coming from a car, despite being turbo, with just 55hp.

Now, what do I plan to do, you might ask? Well, in short form, in the short term (and in no particular order):

• Enjoy it, naturally.
• Evo 8 ECU
• New wheels (the Koyas on it currently are F U G L Y)
• Evo Brembos
• Evo 7-9 coilovers
• Hektik stereo uleh
• More sound deadening
• Get the driver's side seat repaired (the right hand side lower bolster has collapsed, and there's some holes worn in the fabric on the bolsters)
• Clean up the body - repaint the bumper to get rid of the failing clear coat, buff and polish out the scratches and love marks, replace the fugly bumper lights fitted for compliance with either OEM or some better fitting ones, slap some TME stripes on it because they look awesome, etc.
• Other misc. things that I've forgotten about.

Over the longer term, once I fix up my other car and get that on the road so I'm not left with no running cars again:

• 4-spider center diff
• Holset HX35
• W2A intercooler
• MOAR BOOST
• when engine goes pop, forged rods and pistons.