2008 GU VI DX Wagon - aka Bruce v2.0

[Nick74]

Still not at tough truck

Front two studs are out and replacements are in. We have entered the reconstruction phase!!!!

Might get to the mud runs a bit late.................but will be there tomorrow for sure

Will do some pics and a proper story later

Cheers
Nick

[Nick74]

Well well well.......................the plot has thickened.

The Turbo arrived and unfortunately I had no time to put it in so it stayed in the shed for a bit before I could get the bugger in. Also the day before I was due to put it in the bloody noise got waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay worse - it now sounded like a tractor

My mate Kev came up to help me put it in and another mate, James, lent me the space in his shed to do the job.

So engine cover comes off, batts disconnected, cooler off, hoses to turbo and cooler off, second battery out - All of this gave us pretty good access to the huffer.

So then it came time to take the heat shield off. There are six bolts that hold it on. and as luck would have it the first one we touch (on the back of the dump pipe) seems to not want to budge one bit. So we WD40 it and do the others all with relative ease. We get back to the stubborn one and it just won't move, eventually our efforts round the head so we have no choice to grind it off. At this point my mate James says "if you have hit this trouble already maybe you should take it to a shop for them to do" James was right, but not to do with the turbo install......................

Once the shield was off, the dump pipe came off easy as did the turbo from the manifold. We did snap one of the dump pipe studs so that means we had to get new studs from Nissan - being Sat arvo this was not going to happen. So we put the turbo back on with new gaskets and all, the oil lines were a total bitch to get back on but after many swears we got them on. The mission was to then install the dump pipe back on using the two good studs, which we did, and then when I had the new three from Nisan on Monday I could replace one at a time taking out the old ones as I went.

Kev returned to Sydney with the job at that stage. I went to work on Monday and at lunch got my three studs and bolts from Nissan for $75 (FFFFFFFFFFFFF) and came back to James's shed on Monday night and put the whole thing together. It went pretty well which was a pleasant surprise. Cooler and piping all reinstalled. Started it and the noise was still there along with the new tractor noise........FFFFFFFFFF. Killed it and went to look over the job to see where the noise was coming from. next possible cause was the piping as we thought we found a shady bit on the pipe that runs under the part off the intake that goes back to the airbox. Took that off did a silicone repair on that and was just about to start it when I noticed this green fluid in the pots on the rocker cover all around 3 and 4 cylinders.

My initial thought was coolant, as I had moved some of those hoses. But upon tasting it was discovered that it was diesel......................FFFFFFFFFFF Gave it another kick in the guts whilst James inspected the area. The leak was easily spotted. There is a low pressure fuel return line that runs down the middle of the rocker cover which was spitting out the diesel. One of the TEE pieces that goes into the cylinder had snapped. This then jogged my memory that whilst getting the new turbo on we were leaning on top of the motor, at one point we heard this plastic snap/crack noise but couldn't see what it was - we now know that it was one of our hands resting where it shouldn't have.

James and I decided that we might be able to do a shady repair in case Nissan did not have the part in stock that we needed. We got a water bottle top, cut sleeves through it so that the low pressure fuel line could sit in that and then we filled the cap with epoxy to see if that sealed. Called that the end of the day................

Went to Nissan the next day and they had the whole line just for $38 so I snaffled that and headed home after work. In the arvo at work James texted me to advise that our shady repair had not worked - it had sealed the join but also the line so no diesel could get through. I was very happy that Nissan had the part so I told James I would be there after dinner for another crack at getting the Pootroll functioning.

Once at the shed I put the new low pressure line in (twice as I put it in wrong the 1st time) and chucked all the piping and cooler back on. Started up on the second attempt and the noise was still there....................... FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.

The possible intake noise had been rectified and the turbo had been replaced so it wasn't one of those. James then diagnosed that it may be the bearing in the alternator as it was in the same area we thought the noise was coming from. So I packed up all my tools, thanked James for his help and drove the 5 mins home with the Pootroll making shedloads of noise.

The next day I rang the local auto elec and managed to get my job squeezed in. This was now early Thursday morning. I would like to thank Steve Mudge Auto Electrics Medowie for pushing my job to the top of his list. If anyone in my area needs work done then give Steve a ring as he is a bloody legend.

It may now be pertinent to point out that I have a mate, Dave, flying down from QLD to go to Tuff Trucks with me on Friday - he is off the plane at 1.30pm on Friday and I'm hoping to have the Pootroll back together by then. I rang Steve back at 9.30am on Friday and he said it wasn't the alternator but there was other things he would like to talk about. So now, scared as buggery, I rode my pushie over to his place to get the bad news

Steve said the alternator was fine. But there appears to be oil weeping from the cooler - I knew that was happening and was trying to save to get a new one. He also said that both of my batteries were shagged and that by the time a cold winter gets here they wouldn't work................yay more expense for me!!! Most importantly he told me that there was an exhaust manifold leak on the front cylinder and this was most likely where the noise was coming from.

I ring Dave hoping that he had not left for the airport as I was going to tell him not to come..................he was already at the airport. I told him the crappy news and he said not to worry, he'll get it going for me. A few hours later after ringing Nissan and finding out that they had no $78 gaskets in stock I picked up Dave from the airport - the Pootroll was making so much noise he could hear me long before he could see me. We got it back home and started to pull it apart.

Turbo and cooler and all that stuff came off pretty easy. Had to take alternator, heater hoses and exhaust manifold guard off which were all a PITA.........but they did come off in the end. We also had to drain the radiator. Speaking of a PITA the manifold itself would not budge off the studs - it took a lot of levering and swearing to get it off. This did not bode well for the straightness of that part - it seemed like it was no longer flush mounting with the gasket - and this would've been the source of our leak. The soot around number one cylinder confirmed this. There are 8 studs holding the manifold on and the 6 closest to the firewall came out pretty easy. The front two also required no effort to snap - we didn't even look like leaning on the spanner and they freaking snapped - the job just turned to SH!T

I had no car to get anywhere at this stage so I rang my mate Sean at about 3.30pm and he left work to get me 8 studs from Nissan which they had in stock - these cost me less than $40. Sean also got me some easy outs to remove the two studs. Once they arrived and Sean stopped laughing at me the easy outs went on but they were not doing the job for some reason. We were no left with no choice but to drill the bastards out.

At this point we called an end to our Friday and planned to go to Tuff Truck over the weekend and get the Pootroll back on the road on Monday when parts places were open as we needed a few things to get the job done.

Woke up Saturday morning packed what we needed into the spud peelers Vectra and headed out..........................it started to drive a like shit - it's done this before and it was a blocked fuel filter - this is because the spud peeler will often run the tank dry ish rather than fill up at the 1/4 mark. So that meant we had no choice but to get the Pootroll working if we wanted to get to Tuff Truck - it then started to rain so we had to tarp up the front of the Pootroll so we didn't get soaked..... OHHHHH the humanity!

So we needed parts but had no car to go and fetch them. After some ringing around places we found a place that had all we need. Newcastle Nuts and Bolts was them and they were open late enough for us to get there on Saturday. I called in another mate Dash to give us a lift into town - he was very obliging on the horrible rainy day to drive us in.

Once back at home with the bits and the constant rain we started drilling into the side of the head of the Pootroll where the busted studs were.....................from my novice point of view this was getting pretty scary, but luckily for me Dave took it all in his stride and said we could get the bastard going. Not long after starting drilling we decided we had to remove the 2nd battery tray but could get the nut on the guard off so we had to grind it off - and as of right now I still have no second battery or battery tray! Once that was out we drilled into the two busted studs and the head - you will be glad to hear that Dave had a plan.

We had bought an appropriate tap and die set, a few drill bits and 2 M14 HT Bolts. The plan was to drill a 14mm hole into where the studs were, then whack a thread into them using the tap and die set. This worked and worked quite well. It did take some time patience and skill - all showed by Dave. I was a passenger at this stage.

Next part was to drill a 10mm hole into the threaded end of our M14 bolts - this hole was going to be long enough to take the end of the standard 10mm stud which would normally go into the head. After settling on a substantial guide hole we were able to drill into both bolts quite successfully - this was all done with a normal Bosch drill with the bolt clamped to the drawbar of a trailer......................... Once the hole was in the M14 we threaded it as well. We then cut the head end of the M14 bolts off to leave us only with the threaded and holed part.

Next job was to put the two studs into the prepared sleeves (which used to be M14 bolts) and then whack that into the 14mm holes in the head. I could not believe my eyes, but this all worked like a charm. Dave was quite rightly well pleased with himself - I coulda gave the bugger a kiss.

As I told the spud peeler "we had just entered the reconstruction phase!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" This was about 2pm on Saturday. We then filed back the manifold face to try and get a better fit which in the end seemed to work.

At this point Dave had been here for just over 24 hours and has done nothing but bust his arse on my POS truck - I felt like shit for doing this to him but like a true mate he had no qualms about getting this job done for me. Everything went back together pretty well apart from the friggen turbo heat shield.

Parts that were put back on in loose order were ; refilled coolant, refitted heater hoses/lines, reconnected EGR, put alternator back on, manifold and heat shield, turbo and heat shield and dump pipe back on, cooler and piping back on. We started it at about 8pm on Saturday night............................it worked and the praise be to JEEBUS the tractor noise was gone. What was the "turbo noise" was still there. I didn't give a sh!t about that at this stage, I just wanted to get to Tuff Trucks - so after looking for my ticket for 30 mins we arrived at the gates at 10pm and got to see the last bit of the mud runs - which was waaayyyy cool.

After the mud run finished we drove back home that night at 1am and then headed back out at 7.30am on Sunday for a full days TT

Soooooooooooooooooooooooo where does that leave me????

The Nissan diagnosis of shagged turbo was completely wrong as the install of the new $2000 turbo made no difference to anything. I will be ringing Nissan to have a freaking go at them about that. I will also be booking it in to have the blistered/bubbled dash replaced just so it costs them some friggen money. This will most likely be the last Nissan I ever buy.

I have a second hand GU CRD ZD30 Turbo with 133000klms on it which will be up for sale very soon if you know anyone who is keen lemme know!

As for the "turbo noise" after driving ir for 180klms or so Dave and I agree it has to be boost related so it will be coming from somewhere after the turbo. It has to be turbo to cooler piping, the cooler itself (my main suspect) or the piping after the cooler. So I will start testing them with soapy water and stuff this weekend. I may even see if another friendly local GU owner who doesn't have a noisy truck will lend me the bits I think are suspect just to trial it before I but it at the very cheap................cough cough.........................Nissan prices

I would like to thank all my mates, Kev, James, Sean, Dash for all chipping in what they could. I really appreciate it your help fellas and I owe you bulk beers!!!

I would also like to thank Dave for his ballsy repair job and positive attitude which has helped us get to see TT this year and get the Pootroll back on the road. Thanks Dave I owe you a million million thanks. You are a rare and true gentleman and your help is not a thing I take lightly and will never forget.

I didn't really take any pics but Dave has - I will post them up when Dave gets them to me or posts them up himself.

[Nick74]

Below is Dave's version of event with pics - part I

Bit of a story to this so hope you don't mind the read.....

For the last couple of months Nick and I had planned on going to Tuff Truck this year. We'd bought weekend pass tickets and the whole works and were really looking forward to going. I'd bought plane tickets to get from Brisbane to Newcastle too. The plan was to pick me up from the airport and head straight out there.

However. About a month ago Nicks Patrol started having some rather disturbing noises, mostly under power. Nissan dealer says it probably needs a new turbo. $3200 they'd do it!
Nick rang around and could get one for $2300 jumping the order queue or $1800 if he was prepared to wait for the next shipment. So the latter option it was. Once arrived, he and some other mates got stuck into it and swapped it out.

No friggin' difference! Same noises. :crazy:

What the hell is it? Getting desperate now he takes it to an auto sparky friend thinking maybe alternator. Nup, but points out the soot behind the alternator may very well be part of the problem.

By this time I'm waiting for my plane at Brisbane on Friday morning and get a call from Nick. Essentially he's suggesting we call it all off. Well I wasn't having any of that now was I. I thought he said something about intake manifold gasket. I said no worries, we can cut a cardboard gasket if we have to, we'll get it going. No problem.............

So I get down there and Nick picks me up from the airport and I get to hear these noises on the short trip to his place. Sure didn't sound good at all.

Get there, open the bonnet and set up a fan to cool things down so we could work on it asap.
Pull the new turbo off. All looked good. At this point I open up the old turbo. The leading edges had lost the black coating that the compressor has, no big deal. And importantly, there hadn't been any contact with the housings at all. So all in all I wouldn't hesitate to re-install it. It had only done 133k kms.

Now we're looking at the exhaust manifold. And sure enough I could see a tiny gap at the no.1 port.
So the noise that was heard was the exhaust gas leaking out and vibrating the gasket, gum leaf harmonica style.

OK, loose nuts? So I put a socket on them and try to tighten them. Top one, yep loose. Bottom one, same. But as soon as I start getting any tension, snap. Damn that went easy!!!
OK, so the manifold is going to have to come off, drill the broken studs, ezi-outs, new studs, some hi-temp gasket goo just for good measure and we should be all good right?

The other six nuts come off fine, one unscrewed the stud but that's ok we're going to replace them all. And the other "loose" one promptly snaps too. So that's two we've got to extract........ Then the manifold was a bitch to get off. The holes simply didn't line up with the studs and they were binding rather bad. With large screw drivers, chisels and a big lever I manage to pry it off. And could see the marks the threads left in the stud holes, it wasn't a good fit at all. How they fitted it at the factory I don't know.....
In fact, ultimately I believe it greatly contributed to the two studs breaking in the first place. The surface where it broke indicates it had been flexed back and forth in relation to the engine.
You can see how offset the holes are on ports 2 & 4 are.

http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/a...foldstuds1.jpg

Meanwhile Nick has arranged for a set of new studs and mate of his to pick them up from Nissan and bring them home. Nick then pedals the few km's down the road to the local hardware store to get an Ezi-out set. And I do my best at drilling a hole in the middle of the broken bit of stud. I got one of them fairly good I thought, the other I wasn't so confident of. Try the ezi-out but it's not going anywhere and I dare not break it. I really don't want a piece of hardened steel left in the hole. About the only way to fix that is to heat it red hot with an oxy to soften it so that it can be drilled. And with no oxy that wasn't an option. So all I could do is carefully drill out as much as I could and hope to not damage the head too much. Did that and called it quits at 10pm Friday night.

http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/a...foldstuds2.jpg

You can see how far offset the original studs were.

I woke up at around 2am with bit of an epiphany and spent the next two hours trying to go back to sleep but my head is developing a plan of attack.............
Last edited by DJR96 on 21 Mar 2012 00:24, edited 1 time in total.
Cheers, Dave.

[Nick74]

Part II

The "correct" way to fix a damaged bolt/stud hole like this is to use a heli-coil or re-coil kit. The hole needs to be drilled to the same size as the stud that's meant to go in it (10mm in this case), tapped, heli-coil inserted, stud screwed in and it's done. A very legitimate repair and when done in alloy it is actually stronger than without the heli-coil. In fact some things are designed and built with them from the beginning.
But the likelihood of me getting all the old stud out without damaging any material beyond the 10mm diameter I rated as buckleys and none. So I'm thinking about making an insert that uses a larger outside thread size. 1/2" perhaps? I search for a tapping/drill size chart and do some maths. There's not a big enough difference between the minor diameter (bottom of the threads) and the 10mm M10 of the studs, even with UNF. So I have to choose M14. Freaking hell, that's getting big!

So Saturday morning another of Nicks mates takes us for a trip to a proper bolt and fastener store that has everything I need. M14x1.5 and M10x1.5 tap sets, a handle to turn them properly, drill bits to suit (12.5mm and 8.5mm), and two M14 x 75mm bolts (that takes care of the outside diameter and no need to get a die and handle to cut those threads.

Get back, file the manifolds bolt holes so that it will go on without any force. You know, fit like it should. Bolt it in place without the gasket and use it to guide the drill bit on the front holes. See, things you think off in the dead of night......
Carefully go at it. Jammed a few times as bits of the old stud broke away. But eventually get a pair of clean holes. Manifold off and carefully tap the M14 threads in the head.

http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/a...foldstuds3.jpg

For reference that's an M8 stud to the left of it. (For a coolant pipe)

http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/a...foldstuds4.jpg

http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/a...foldstuds5.jpg

However, in the last photo you can see I've drilled through into a cavity where there's oil. I don't know if it's an oil gallery or just where oil drains back to the crankcase??????
Too bad. Can't give up on it yet!

Now for the inserts. I was hoping to have access to a lathe to drill and tap the big bolts, but it wasn't happening. I had to just do it by hand. Came up well I think.

http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/a...foldstuds6.jpg

That's them with the new Nissan studs screwed into them before I cut it to length.

Screwed in just fine. I'm very happy with them.

Something else I thought of. The bolts holding the manifolds on the Ford 6.0 Powerstroke engine I've got have an inch long spacer tube between the bolt heads and manifold. I figure this is to increase the length of bolt under tension to give it a bit more elasticity to cope with thermal expansion and contraction.
With this in mind I decided to put four flat washers under the nuts. As many that would fit whilst still allowing the nut to fully engage, just one or two threads exposed out of the nut.
But the manifold has bit of a counter-bore and the holes I filed oblong need two washers filed to match to suit the depth of the counter-bore. Just a bit of fiddling about but a good result.

I put a flat file over the mating surface of the manifold. The ears of the bolt holes seemed to be slightly bent in and I had put a little ding on one edge trying to get it off before. But worse, there was a bend over it's length, particularly between ports 1 & 2. Not being bolted down securely seems to have allowed it to bend!?! I wouldn't have thought that possible. Perhaps it's cast steel not iron?

Anyway, we haven't got much choice but to use it anyway. I separated the four layers of the gasket, clean them and apply some goollygum around the port holes and bolt it up. Tightening it up the manifold appears to have pulled straight and flat against the head just fine. And all the nuts take a fair amount of tension no problems. I'm still happy.

http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/a...foldstuds7.jpg

We bolt all the rest of the turbo and motor back together. Nick chose to put the new turbo on. Only because he had stripped some thread in one of the bolt holes where the elbow on the front goes and thought it detracted from it's saleability. The original bolts only go in 4-5mm so it's easy to strip the thread. We got some longer bolts. The holes are a good 10-12mm deep.

All done! Fire it up and just let it idle to get some warmth into it to help cure the gasket-goo. Tidy up, get changed, and head off to Tuff Truck on Saturday night, getting some dinner on the way and we get there around 10pm.

It still got a little squealy whistling leak somewhere that seems to be directly related to boost pressure. Hoping it's just one of the hoses. It's interesting though because you can hear how quickly it responds and spools up. In fact you can hear it spike for a moment before the VGT adjusts. It's so responsive the ECU and vacuum operating the VGT can't keep up. And that's factory stock. Not that I think it is a problem at all.
At least the manifold isn't leaking at all. Well, except for some oil dripping from the bottom stud from where I penetrated through..... Damn, should have put some gasket-goo on that too. That was a dumb oversight because it means it all has to be undone to do it now. Oh well, maybe in October when Nick comes by my place. And if the manifold is still not flat then I can machine it flat too.

Cheers
Dave

[Nick74]

Okay - patrol is still going.

Have done 1031 klms on the last fill up and the litres taken were 135.19

This gives 13.09L per 100k. Which is probably the best results I've had,
* tyres were at 32PSI
* had no spares on the rear bar
* kept revs between 2000- 3500 (a few times I went over)
* mostly did no more than 100 but there was 70 or so klms of 110kmh so I had to do that speed
* AC was on when I needed it

So there you have it. Going to QLD in October and am hoping to have the money together for an exhaust, a pyro and boost gauge as well as two new batteries by then so it can be put together whilst I'm up there. I will turn up the boost (3-4 PSI) a little bit and get it dyno tuned to suit the chip express module I have

Does anyone know anywhere around the Hunter area there is a good diesel place who can tune it for me??

Cheers
Nick

[Nick74]

Have done 877 klms on the last fill up and the litres taken were 121.91.

This gave me 13.9l per 100klms

Trip was Medowie - Gloucester - Moonan Flat - Scone - Willow Tree - Gunnedah - Boggabri. Whilst coming over the tops I aired down to 28 PSI and did not air back up till down at the bottom. So a lot of low speed stuff, not in 4wd but many many gear changes and lost of accel and decel.

* tyres were at 34 PSI on tar 28 PSI on dirt
* had no spares on the rear bar
* kept revs between 2000- 3500 (a few times I went over)
* mostly did no more than 100kmh except in the 110k zone on the Kamilaroi Hwy where I did 106kmh
* AC was on when I needed it

Considering the drive/terrain I'm happy with the numbers

Cheers
Nick

[Nick74]

This car is the biggest POS C%nt whore of a thing in the universe...................I hate it
That is all

[GQUTERUS]

Giving you more grief Nick?

[Nick74]

Yeah - the heater wouldn't blow hot air last night. So blow and behold the coolant levels were extremely low. Temp on gauge didn't move tho
So I filled up the reservoir, idles it for 10 mins, filled it up again then drove it for 20 mins. Have had to top it up again this morning - in total since last night it's taken 4L of coolant.

Have requested a payout figure..............if it's feasible I'll get rid of it

Cheers
Nick

[jackwalks]

Hiya Nick,

I sat down with a jug of coffee, laptop on my lap in my bean-bag, got comfortable & started to read all 8 pages of your life & torment with your awesome vehicle.

After I finished reading all pages, I slowly got up, emptied my bladder(1.5L of coffee in my mug - no break), opened up my garage door & slowly pushed my 2001 patrol into the protection of my clean garage, then grabbed some white sheets & slowly covered my beloved precious. After reading all the trouble you have had with yours I am way to scared & nervous now to even touch my in case it falls over. I even had a few tears run down my face going through all the same emotions you had over this nerve-racking journey.

my condolences

Adam