Well aside from fighting off a splitting headache I've managed to get a bit more done on the rear end of the car. I've cleaned up the bolts and fitted one side. I'll get the other side tomorrow and get the wheels on the back end and finally get the shell off the axle stands. Then I can start on the front end.

Here's some photos of the bolts after 24 hours in the white vinegar:

Then I cleaned them up again with a wire brush, and put them in for another 24 hours, after which they looked like this with a final quick wire brushing to remove the now very loose rust. Then I got the bolts put through the suspension and tightened up:

Well I've managed to get a bit more done even if some nuts keep chewing up threads on parts they really shouldn't.. but I suppose that's the problems you get with 20 year old car parts!

I've been cleaning the old suspension bolts up with some white vinegar, leave them for about 24 hours to loosen everything up, then wire brush the debris off, again for some more time then wash clean and you can use baking soda to neutralize the acid in the vinegar. Then dry and they should be good as new.

Also stripped the old vinyl wrap off the fibreglass rear hatch and placed it on the car with the lexan rear windows to see how it'll look. Just need to get some hinges and locking catches now to put it on properly.

Also after some rubber mallet persuasion I've managed to get the rear subframe on the car, and 2/4 nuts holding it place.

Then I decided to see what the suspension would look like on it, so I've bolted the coil-over in place

And then placed the arms & hub in (no bolts yet as they're being cleaned by the vinegar!) and seen how it all looks.. and it's starting to look pretty good.

And finally just about finished the pulsar design mock up in photoshop, added in the Compomotive TH 1780 Wheels, removed the huge spotlights and then sorted out some shadows I'd inverted and shouldn't have.

Well, not updated for a while as I've been struggling for stuff to do while waiting for the last of the bushes for my suspension. Also had a 10 day wait for the hubcentric spacers from H&R, and realised when they arrived that I'm an idiot and had already bought +15mm each side for the fronts. So looks like I'll be rolling on +15mm all round.. Doh!

Hopefully the last of the bushes should turn up before the end of the week, we've had some issues with the postal service round our area recently with things going missing (had a £70 external HDD disappear from Amazon... as well as one of my mum's Christmas presents.. I'm suspicious anyway). So once that gets here I'll be able to fit it and start getting the suspension on. I've not done it yet as it'll involve putting the car in the middle of the (double) garage so I've got room to work on both sides as its up against one wall at the moment. This means the whole garage will be taken up by the car which I'll get moaned at for, so leaving it till I've got everything and can get it easily done in a couple of nights after work.

The plan after the suspension is all on is to get the parts ordered for the braking system, some wilwood 4 piston handbrake calipers for the rear, a pedal box, master cylinders, copper piping, hydraulic handbrake etc and get all of that put on, still undecided if I'm keeping the Porsche brakes or swapping them for a set of new wilwoods yet, but we'll see once its all on.

And also worth noting if you ever get powercoating done and plan on fitting hubcentric spacers, don't be an idiot like me and get the center parts of the hubs done that the spacer slips over.. as it won't go and you'll have to spend some time with a dremel crying softly to yourself as your sand off the powdercoating you've just paid to have done lol

I've also been asked about the "dry sump" system I'm planning on making for the car, it's not really a true dry sump system, but the oil won't be stored in the bottom of the engine any-more and will be fed through to the engine differently than normal, but hopefully it shouldn't involve too much faffing about and if I do kill the engine at some point the system should just bolt straight onto an identical SR20DET block easily enough.

Looking at the standard system its a relatively uncomplicated system, so it should be easy enough to modify:

So, what I'm going to need will be a spare sump (Just the pan I think.. though you could go the whole hog and change the whole sump bottom) from an SR20DET that I can modify, and a spare oil pickup pipe:

Now.. what I'm planning on doing is getting an external oil tank, and mounting it inside the passenger foot well above their feet so that its higher up than the engine's standard pick-up point. This means the oil in the tank will attempt to level out and there will always be liquid in the pick-up pipe. The pick-up will run from the bottom of the oil tank to the sump, through there and up to a modified standard pick-up that has the pipe attached to it

That's the oil getting from the tank into the engine, now I need to pick up the oil from the sump itself and put it back into the tank, which will involve creating some form of funnelling system down to a pick-up point where a scavenger pump will suck any oil it can get hold of through an oil filter then into the tank ready to be re-used by the engine.

We're still using the standard SR20 oil pump itself to push the oil around the engine and to the essential parts, what I'm attempting to fix with this solution is the pick-up not being able to get any oil to it, however with a few litre tank feeding it I can be pretty safe knowing there's enough to go around.

I'd also like to point out I'm in no way a professional engineer.. so there might be something hideously wrong with my plan that will come to light in a cloud of smoke and parts, but I'm 99% confident that won't happen.

I'm also toying with the idea of using an accusump system as a backup in case the pressure fails at any point (or to pre-oil the engine before start up).

There will also be an oil cooler somewhere in that setup and no doubt hooked through to one of the rear radiator intakes.

Oh I think I've finally decided on the vinyl scheme for the car when I get it wrapped, essentially the car will be a Matte Grey finish (No not primer coloured!!) then I'll have gloss black version of the original NME design with a thin bright green pinstripe around the edges. Green wrapped spoiler, and probably green mudflaps, roof vent and wing mirrors too.

I've done a terrible mock up in photoshop.. I won'd be having those huge spot lights mind you.. and the car will be fitted with a Turini Wide Arch Kit:

Also another quick note before I forget, I've been talking to James about what to do with the pedal box setup and we've decided that in order to accommodate different sized drivers I'm going to have the front seats fixed in place but the pedal box will be on a rail system, similar to how the seats are currently. Then when a different sized driver gets in they just adjust the pedals to the correct distance away from them.

This means I'll be able to get some copper pipe and fixings ordered to run the brake lines around the shell and as long as the master cylinder ends appear roughly in the right place I can then mount the fixings to them and have braided hoses from them to the master cylinders on the pedal box which will allow them to move freely back and forwards. I believe this is a relatively standard thing on race cars that are shared, but something I hadn't considered until recently. I guess its the little details that make a build special?

Well although I've actually been getting on with some parts that arrived I have been consistently useless with updating this website which is poor show on my part.

Since my last update I managed to attempt to fit the ball joints using a hydraulic press, and if anyone is reading this and thinking of doing the same after just paying out for powder coating, then stop right there and don't do it! I managed to let the whole wishbone slip out of place because of the awkward shape of it and it badly damaged the powder coating when it did. So I've had to send that back to the powder coaters to get fixed, and it should be ready to collect today. I've since found out there is a proper tool you can get for the pressed in ball joints which is like a C-Clamp with some various sized piping for it this allows for the ball joint to be slowly pressed into place by the clamp as it compresses.

I've also bought (and recieved) my fibreglass boot and rear plastic windows (second hand off a forum member), I've also ordered a heated windscreen so the car should pass IVA without me needing to come up with some crazy heating system in the car (as I'm not having a proper heater matrix).

The poly bushes arrived and have been fitted, I'm just waiting on the bushes for the rear part of the front wishbones to come which should be early next week.

I've also got a sheet of metal to start patching the holes up in the engine bay and start work on the smoothing to make it look presentable for when I do the wire tuck, I'll need to borrow a welder off my Uncle however as mine doesn't seem to want to push the wire out for more than 5 seconds at a time, which makes attempting smooth welds quite tricky.

And finally I've ordered a set of +15mm (per side) rear spacers with wheel studs from H&R, their Trak+ system which having previously bought the +10mm (per side) kit for the front's I'd highly recommend if you're looking for some hubcentric spacers that come with everything you need to fit them. The reason for the staggered setup is I've been told (by others that have tried & tested the setup) that it help massively with the car's understeer issue by spacing the rear out slightly wider than the front. Plus it should make it look better when I get the wide arches fitted on the back of the shell.

With any luck before Christmas I should have a rolling shell finally, which is something to celebrate I think :)

Now for some photos of the work that's been done and the new parts, first up are photos of the hubs now they've been assembled with the brand new bearings in them and a quick photo of the rear subframe and rear trailing arms with their poly bushes in place. Then a couple of quick pictures of the fibreglass boots and plastic rear windows.

Awesome, collected the powdercoated subframe, wishbones and hubs today. Incredibly impressed at how good they look, and can't wait to get the bearings pressed in this weekend and start looking at putting it all together. Only thing holding it up now is the rest of the poly bushes for the suspension but hopefully that'll be getting sorted soon. Photos!!

Quick update as I've not had time to update properly recently! New ball joints arrived, with any luck the poly bushes will be here in the next week or so too. Which is handy as I've sent the hubs and sub frame off to be powder coated yesterday. Got some new front lower arms coming too as I managed to bugger mine up, so those will be getting powder coated too.

Got the week of the 19th off to get the suspension on the shell and start welding the engine bay up, also need to make brackets for the seats that week as well. Should be good to make some progress on it for once.

In other news I'm debating selling my r34 skyline to fund the project so it gets done sooner and buying something cheaper to run, specifically a Honda dc2 integra, shall see how in feel in a week about it before making a decision.