The Invin­ci­ble RB26DETT: Heart of Godzilla!

Intro­duc­tion
Few Japan­ese engines are held in as high esteem as the ven­er­a­ble Nis­san RB26DETT. The engine was first fit­ted in 1989 to the Nis­san R32 Sky­line GT-​​R, and imme­di­ately caused upsets in motor­sport and tun­ing cir­cles, includ­ing it’s iconic debut at Bathurst in Aus­tralia using the N1 des­ig­na­tion (more on the RB26DETT N1 down the page). Here we present a few per­ti­nent facts about the pow­er­house of the later model Godzillas.

The unit is from the RB fam­ily of engines, a 2.6L dual over­head cam, elec­tron­i­cally fuel injected, twin turbo (RB26DETT) charged inline six cylin­der. It uses a cast-​​iron block at it’s core, with alu­minium cylin­der heads, 24 valves (4 valves per cylin­der) and uses 6 throt­tle bod­ies, unique amongst the RB family.

Mechan­i­cal Specifications

Power & Torque

Due to the “gen­tle­mans agree­ment” in Japan, the power of the RB26DETT is always 206KW/​280HP on paper, though mechan­i­cally stock stan­dard vehi­cles have con­sis­tently pro­duced fig­ures that place the power at 320HP plus. For the first series, peak out­put occurs @ 6800 RPM, with 353 N•m (260 ft•lb) avail­able at 4400 RPM. The final series pro­duces peak power also at 6800 RPM, and 392 N•m (289 ft•lb) at 4400 rpm.

How­ever, the motor is rec­og­nized as being over-​​engineered, much like Toyota’s 2JZ, and power up to and exceed­ing 600HP on mechan­i­cally stock inter­nals is com­mon in tun­ing cir­cles. Some highly mod­i­fied vehi­cles car­ry­ing exten­sively mod­i­fied RB26DETT’s pro­duce well over 1000HP.

The N1 series RB26DETT, pro­duced by NISMO for Group A/​Group N motor­sport is believed capa­ble of a max­i­mum power exceed­ing 1900HP.

The Z2 series (des­ig­na­tion RB26DETTZ2/​RB28Z2),  a stronger N1 block bored and stroked to 2.8L, pro­duces 368KW (510BHP), with 540N•m of torque. The engine fea­tured in the Sky­line GT-​​R Z-​​tune.

Tur­bocharg­ers

All mod­els except the N1 and Z2 (itself a mod­i­fied N1) ver­sions of the RB26DETT use twin, par­al­lel ceramic tur­bocharg­ers, uti­liz­ing 3 cylin­ders per turbo and run­ning at 10PSI (restricted by boost restric­tor to 14PSI). The N1 and Z2 ver­sions use Gar­ret T25 steel tur­bocharg­ers due to issues with the N1’s higher boost rat­ing, with the R32, R33 using Jour­nal Bear­ing ver­sions, and the R34 using the Ball Bear­ing type.

Engine specifics

• 24 valves, 4 valves per cylinder
• Cast-​​iron engine block
• Alu­minium cylin­der heads
• Camshaft Dura­tion: 240°in, 236°ex lift: 8.58mm in, 8.28mm ex (Stan­dard). Camshaft dura­tion 240°in, 236°ex lift: 8.58mm in, 8.28mm ex (N1)
• 6 throt­tle bodies

Cars using the RB26DETT

• R32 Nis­san Sky­line GT-​​R
• R33 Nis­san Sky­line GT-​​R
• R34 Nis­san Sky­line GT-​​R
• Nis­san Sky­line GT-​​R Z-​​tune
• Nis­san Stagea 260RS

Mazda’s adding a new clean diesel to the ever pop­u­lar Mazda 6 fam­ily sedan. The new CRTD is based on the stan­dard 2.0L petrol, but only gains 6 kg despite tur­bocharg­ing and a bevy of improve­ments. The 136KW(185HP), 400nm motor promises to be an exer­cise in torque steer for the light sedan, but own­ers will be smil­ing with an impres­sive fuel econ­omy of 5.6L/100kms.  The new CRTD will be sent first to Europe, and it remains to be seen if motor will arrive in Australia.

Mazda Devel­ops new Clean Diesel Engine with Improved Out­put and Envi­ron­men­tal Performance

Mazda Motor Cor­po­ra­tion has devel­oped a greatly improved clean diesel engine that offers out­put and envi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance com­pa­ra­ble to a gaso­line engine. It will be pro­gres­sively intro­duced to mar­kets around the world, begin­ning in Europe in 2009.

The newly devel­oped MZR-​​CD 2.2 clean diesel engine has a dis­place­ment ten per­cent greater than Mazda’s cur­rent MZR-​​CD 2.0-liter diesel, and achieves top class torque of 400 New­ton meters. Improved fuel injec­tors and a lower com­pres­sion ratio con­tribute to its enhanced fuel effi­ciency. Addi­tion­ally, the engine’s diesel par­tic­u­late fil­ter (DPF) fea­tures a Mazda-​​developed world-​​first cat­a­lyst acti­va­tion mech­a­nism that enhances the removal of par­tic­u­late mat­ter (soot) from the exhaust gases. The new cat­alytic com­bus­tion treat­ment process enables the DPF to burn off par­tic­u­late mat­ter approx­i­mately 60 per­cent faster than cur­rent sys­tems. Due to this tech­ni­cal advance­ment, the MZR-​​CD 2.2 is clean enough to qual­ify for the Euro 5 emis­sions stan­dards. (This is based on a Mazda in-​​house assessment.)

Fur­ther­more, the addi­tion of a dual bal­ance shaft and a more rigid engine block has resulted in a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in engine vibra­tion, and helps achieve extremely quiet operation.

Main fea­tures of the new MZR-​​CD 2.2 clean diesel engine
–2.2-liter DOHC com­mon rail turbo diesel engine
–Top class high per­for­mance clean diesel engine:
–136 kW/​185PS max­i­mum power out­put
–400 Nm max­i­mum torque
–Excel­lent fuel econ­omy of 5.6 L/​100 km
–Greatly improved quietness

Newly devel­oped diesel par­tic­u­late fil­ter (DPF)
Mazda’s new clean diesel engine has a high ther­mal resis­tance diesel par­tic­u­late fil­ter (DPF) with a cat­a­lyst that opti­mizes the com­bus­tion of soot in the exhaust. The cat­a­lyst fea­tures a pro­pri­etary world-​​first acti­va­tion mech­a­nism. Com­bined with more pre­cise engine con­trol, this mech­a­nism dou­bles the inter­val between DPF regen­er­a­tion cycles, and reduces the time to com­plete the regen­er­a­tion process to a third of the time nec­es­sary for con­ven­tional systems.

Cat­a­lysts use the oxy­gen con­tained in exhaust gases to burn off par­tic­u­late mat­ter. In order to ini­ti­ate com­bus­tion, the tem­per­a­ture of the exhaust gas must be increased. This requires addi­tional fuel, which adversely affects over­all fuel economy.

The ceramic base mate­r­ial in Mazda’s unique cat­a­lyst has a mol­e­c­u­lar struc­ture that enables the easy move­ment of oxy­gen stored within it. This extra oxy­gen can be sup­plied as required to sig­nif­i­cantly increase the rate of par­tic­u­late mat­ter com­bus­tion, effec­tively the DPF regen­er­a­tion speed.

As a result, the new cat­a­lyst mech­a­nism reduces the amount of fuel required to burn off the par­tic­u­lates (soot). This improves the over­all fuel econ­omy, and results in lower CO2 emis­sions and cleaner exhaust gases.

[Source: Mazda]

Rumors have been fly­ing about a new per­for­mance ori­ented Toy­ota sports car hit­ting the per­for­mance scene for a con­sid­er­able time now, from an AE86 revival to a new Supra, but per­haps no one expected news that these shad­owy rumors would coa­lesce into the for­got­ten Cel­ica GT-​​4.

The last model Cel­ica. Will we see styling cues from this?

But per­haps even more sur­pris­ing is the rumor that the car will be engi­neered to a large degree by Sub­aru. In Novem­ber Toy­ota con­firmed rumours of a new sports car and Cel­ica replace­ment, with the sports car being a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Sub­aru and Toy­ota, and now it seems the car is the per­for­mance model of the Cel­ica line. How­ever, the new car will not come with a Toy­ota bred turbo four in the tra­di­tion of the (some­what) under­pow­ered motor of the old model — instead it’s going to be car­ry­ing a Sub­aru Boxer turbo, most recently seen in the all grown up Sub­aru Impreza WRX STi.

The new model is said to come in two dis­tinct per­for­mance vari­ants. First, the base ‘GT’, pack­ing a front engined, RWD dri­ve­train and nat­u­rally aspi­rated 2.0L 4 cylin­der Boxer (most likely from the Impreza RX), designed to slide in under the $20,000 bracket. Sec­ondly the full fat GT-​​4, which car­ries the new JDM STi’s 224KW (300HP) Boxer turbo and AWD sys­tem stan­dard, with Motor Trend claim­ing the engine will be closer to the cars fire­wall in order to facil­i­tate the instal­la­tion of in-​​wheel elec­tric motors to help with traction.

The GT and GT-​​4 will be built in in coupe and three-​​door hatch vari­ants, but no five door vari­ants because of Toy­ota and Sub­aru not want­ing to com­pete in the Impreza’s arena, which is rather tongue in cheek con­sid­er­ing this new car will inevitably be seen as either a Impreza in Toy­ota cloth­ing, or as direct com­pe­ti­tion by tuners. This begs the ques­tion then; will the new GT-​​4 be a real con­tender in the hotly con­tested price for per­for­mance bracket? Will the Toy­ota be lighter, faster, and more capa­ble than the new STi? Would Sub­aru shoot them­selves in the foot, and does it mat­ter con­sid­er­ing Toyota’s widen­ing stake in Sub­aru?

Does this mean Sub­aru will become more and more the per­for­mance arm of Toy­ota? Time will tell, but we cer­tainly hope not.