Adam's Supercharged S14

This is for all those PICTURE THREADS ONLY. Motor installs, product writeups, showing off your car, put the thread in here.
adamky
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Adam's Supercharged S14

Post by adamky »

So, after buying this car 9 years ago with the intention of boosting it, I'm finally getting around to it. I bought her when she was just a baby with only 49,000 miles.

The car is pretty much finished as I post this, but unfortunately some issues with one of my Deatschwerks injectors has put everything on hold. So, I figured I would do a build thread.


Here's the setup:

-Thomas Knight supercharger kit purchased from Simon (blacks13coupe)
-M62 supercharger also from Simon. (Was rebuilt around 10,000 miles ago.)
-550cc DW injectors
-80mm throttle body with 3 inch intake piping for the whole setup
-Modified OBX 4-1 header to replace my rusting Hotshot
-Pulleyboys 2.5" supercharger pulley
-Walbro 255
-Skullworks oil relocation adapter with braided stainless lines and fittings. Filter mount from Transdapt.



Here is what is already done to the car as far as the motor/drivetrain go:

Motor
-Stock bottom end KA with almost 140K on it
-JWT S1 cams and cam gears (I re-degreed them during this install, setting the centerlines to the cam card)
-S13 Nistune ECU w/ home made conv harness
-RSR Exmag exhaust (80mm)
-Hot shot header and 3" test pipe (header is being replaced)
-N62 MAF
-LC1 wideband
-Knock light
-Koyo radiator
-Ford Taurus fan (with only the low speed hooked up)
-Nissan quest 110 amp alternator
-Magnecor 8.5mm plug wires

Drivetrain (all parts have around 4000 miles on them):
-RPS Max street clutch rated to 400wtq (used with re-surfaced stock flywheel)
-B&M short shifter
-Shaftmasters one-piece steel driveshaft
-new clutch master cyl, stainless braided line, dampener removed, etc.
-S15 HLSD with 4.6 ring and pinion

Brakes are 300zx on all 4 corners with working e-brake and R32 e-brake cables, and 300zx MC.
Suspension consists of Eibach Sportlines with KYB AGX, SPL RUCA’s and front tension rods. I’m running the 7 spoke 350Z wheels (17") with Dunlop Direzza Star Specs 225/45 front and 245/40 rear.

Here’s a shot of the motor before we touched anything: (What a mess!!!!!)
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First thing we started on was the header. My Hotshot header is rusting pretty badly near the bottom. The metal is actually peeling off in layers at the bottom:

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To replace the header, I bought a OBX 4-1 off of ebay. In addition to the header, I bought two 3” ebay test pipes. I needed the 3 inch piping for the header, and at least one flange to bolt to the test pipe already connected to the exhaust.

Here’s the header more or less how it comes from OBX. The flange that joins the two pieces has been cut off in this pic, but you get the idea. That mid-pipe piece is only 1.8” ID, which is barely any bigger than the 1.5” primaries. Weak…
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After cutting the flange off, we started on port-matching it, because it really needed it. Here’s my friend Tom doing the port matching:
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After several days worth of cutting, grinding, test fitting, and welding, this was the result: (Ignore the red power cable. That has been re-run through the interior.)
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Here is the finished header next to the old Hotshot:
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Last edited by adamky on Sun Nov 21, 2010 6:52 pm, edited 19 times in total.
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Post by adamky »

Next, we removed the intake manifold.
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The knock sensor had seen better days. It had a crack right down the front of it:
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After the manifold was off, I removed the PCV tubes and tapped the ports for 3/8-16 stainless steel plugs.
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Last edited by adamky on Wed Nov 17, 2010 9:07 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by adamky »

The fusebox definitely needed to be modified and/or moved. It was going to be in the way of my intake tubing and throttle body.


First, we cut off any plastic that wasn’t necessary.
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We ended up with a much smaller fusebox, which was no bigger than it needed to be:
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However, my fusebox cover was now too big on one side. So, I used a dremel, a heat gun, a vise, and some other random tools to cut and shape the cover to fit the fusebox. This is what it looked like after cutting and reshaping:
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I painted the cover with the same wrinkle black paint that I had planned to use on the valve cover:
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Last edited by adamky on Thu Jul 22, 2010 7:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by adamky »

Skullworks oil block, new knock sensor, new PCV valve:
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There was not a lot of room in the top of the engine bay to install the remote filter mount. So, we found a good place down against the inner frame rail. I zip tied any wires out of the way so that nothing rubs up against the stainless lines (I have read it can wear through plastic/rubber with ease).
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Last edited by adamky on Wed Nov 10, 2010 1:23 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by adamky »

I decided to redo all of the intake tubing. The kit came with the intake tubing all ready to go, but I really wanted to run a larger throttle body, so I decided to hack the flange off of the intake tubing and redo it all (Sorry Simon!). I used 3” aluminum pipe and had to match it up to my 80mm throttle body. I wasn’t sure how to do this, so I improvised. Stuck the 3” pipe in the vise, and used an impact gun along with an exhaust pipe expander. I kept turning it and moving it further out as I expanded it, so it ended up in sort of a cone shape:
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After some work, I got it to match up nicely:
Before:
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After:
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Here’s a pic of the mock-up for the intake tubing, along with the modified fusebox:
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Once we had the intake tubing all how we wanted it, we took it to a local shop and had it welded up. It turned out ok. Not the prettiest, but they are good solid welds. We designed it so that there's a coupler between the supercharger inlet piece and the upper piece that the throttle body mounts to. We figured that this would help keep the upper piece and throttle body a little cooler compared to having it all one piece (where heat would transfer easily into it and make the entire pipe hot). It also makes it easier to install:
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The two ports on the pre-throttle body maf/filter piece... one is for IACV/AAC and one is for the valve cover vent. The angled pipe on the post-throttle body tube is for PCV. It will see vacuum at idle, and I am hoping the air rushing over the pipe at WOT will create some vacuum on it as well. There’s also a tube on the backside that you can’t see for IACV/AAC.



Since I was putting 3” pipe on a flange that had a 2.5” hole, there was obviously going to be a nasty edge where the two met. So, I got to work with the Dremel and ported the heck out of the inside edge of the flange:

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Last edited by adamky on Wed Nov 17, 2010 8:59 pm, edited 9 times in total.
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Post by adamky »

Here’s a test fit of the MAF/filter part of the intake, in the hole I cut for it:
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Here’s a pic of the filter mounted just in front of the wheel. I don’t have plastic fender liners anymore, so this was definitely going to be a problem. (I could imagine puddles and road debris beating the crap out of my filter):
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So, I took an aluminum shelf and went to work. After some test-fitting, hammering, cutting and bending, this is what I ended up with:
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Next, I roughed up the back of it with some 22o grit sand paper, and hit it with 3 coats of rubberized undercoating. It turned out great:
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From the front, you can just see the filter peaking out from next to the fog light:
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Last edited by adamky on Fri Oct 15, 2010 12:38 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by adamky »

We decided to do something a little different with the supercharger plate mounting bolts. The bolt in the very front kinda digs into the radiator hose. And there’s a smaller hose behind the radiator hose that also runs right over a nut/bolt. So, we decided to tap these two holes and use a larger bolt, which eliminates the need for the nut/bolt sticking out the top.
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**We found some stainless bolts to use instead of those black allen head bolts in the pics. They are flush with the supercharger plate when installed with the gasket, so they do not poke into the hoses at all.
Last edited by adamky on Wed Nov 17, 2010 9:04 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by adamky »

We had already relocated my battery to the trunk a few months ago:
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However, we ran the cable underneath the car… and didn’t put a breaker or fuse on it… not a good idea. So, while the car was down, we took the time to re-run the battery cable through the interior and add a 100 amp breaker to it.
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The battery box is mounted very securely, and the box has been properly sealed and vented.
Last edited by adamky on Wed Aug 11, 2010 5:59 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by adamky »

Test-fitting the intake tubing and mocking up the IACV stuff. I had to make a bracket the IACV plate.
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Also, after looking everything over, I decided that the IACV may not be getting enough air flow from all of these small fittings. So, I drilled the fittings out and used larger tubing and ‘T’ fittings for everything.
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Last edited by adamky on Thu Jul 22, 2010 8:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by adamky »

Installed my gauges in an ATI dual gauge pod, and mounted the knock light right by the wideband.


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Last edited by adamky on Fri Oct 15, 2010 12:40 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by adamky »

I decided to use a smaller supercharger pulley, so I order the 2.5” pulley from Pulley boys. I wanted to install it without destroying the stock pulley, so I bought their pulley installer/puller kit. I wasn’t very impressed with the puller though. It didn’t look nearly as nice as it did on the website, and it destroyed my stock pulley. And yes, we were using it the right way:

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After installing the supercharger pulley, I did some research on here and started getting scared that my intake temps would make the car very prone to detonation. I found several people that had broken ringlands even on 10 psi and a conservative tune.

So, I ordered up a bypass valve solenoid from Snow Performance, and installed it right under the sensor for the boost gauge:
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What this does is allow me to run the system like normal and get 11 psi, or, at the flip of a switch, I can send a boost signal to the bypass valve actuator, causing the actuator to hold the bypass valve open under boost, limiting boost to about half. It's an internal bypass so it just vets the boost back down to where the rotors intake air.

I also went ahead and ordered a water/meth injection kit from AEM. The AEM has a “boost safe” feature that sends a ground signal to a boost control solenoid. My plan is to run full boost and water/meth at all times. However, if the system runs low on fluid, not only will it let me know by lighting up a LED, it will also send a ground signal to the boost solenoid, which will cut my boost down to about half until I add more water/meth to the tank.

I didn’t install the water/meth kit just yet. Tom installed the tank in the trunk, but that’s as far as we got. The plan is to tune the car on low boost, and then hook the AEM kit up in a few weeks.

Tank installed:
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Last edited by adamky on Thu Nov 11, 2010 9:51 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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Post by adamky »

By the way, I just wanted to say that Simon really sold me one heck of a nice kit. If it wasn’t for the fact that I can’t leave well enough alone, I could have bolted this kit on and been boosting in no time.
All of the bolts were in individual, labeled bags:
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There was also the supercharger plate itself, the alternator bracket with idler pulley, the intake tube, a practically new belt, the heater hose, vacuum tubing, plate for IACV, and every single nut and bolt that I would need. Very nice and complete kit! Thanks man!!
He even included a brand new supercharger gasket.
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Post by adamky »

...
Last edited by adamky on Sun Oct 31, 2010 8:21 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Post by adamky »

So, that’s about it for the prep work. Quite a bit of time was spent on re-finishing and cleaning as much as time would allow. We cleaned most of the engine block, and Tom spent a good amount of time cleaning up the upper part of the intake manifold. It looked brand new by the time he was done.

Things like the fuel rail, fuel injector caps and screws, brake booster/throttle cable bracket, valve cover bolts, etc., were all sandblasted and then painted with high temp clear coat. The end result was a glossy silver/gray that almost looks like gun metal. Tom also sandblasted the rusty areas of my stock pulleys and I re-painted them in low gloss black.

One thing I forgot to take pictures of was when we unwrapped all of the electrical tape and other stuff from the engine harness. We removed the unnecessary plugs for stuff like the EVAP controls. Then we separated everything and re-ran everything to it's new location. Then it was all re-wrapped in split loom tubing and electrical tape, and ran underneath the manifold runners.


We got it all together this past Sunday night. The car fired up on the first try, and I got to drive it a little, but I had to put it back in the garage Tuesday because it was missing really bad. This caused lots of unburnt fuel to be dumped into the cylinder(s), and of course all that gas made its way into my oil. The oil had a real strong gas smell to it. After some testing, it seems as if something is wrong with one of the injectors. It appears to be spraying so much fuel that it is misfiring. We tried moving the injector to a different cylinder and the problem followed the injector. So, I sent them back to Deatschwerks today and hopefully they get them back to me quickly.


I want to get it tuned at low boost first, and then switch to full boost once I get the water/meth installed, which should be within the next week or two. So, I’ll have some more updates after we get the bugs worked out and the tune dialed in.

Here are the finished pics: (Some of them are just close-ups from when I was playing with the different camera settings.
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Last edited by adamky on Sun Oct 24, 2010 7:56 pm, edited 10 times in total.
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Post by tom550 »

are you going to cover the front of it?
are you going to get a filter sock?
mines down there too but i dont have a back plate but i do have a water sock on it.
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Post by adamky »

I don't plan on making any changes to the filter setup. It's far enough behind the bumper opening that I doubt rain water will be able to directly hit it. I'm just going to be careful to avoid large puddles. I'm not even sure what a water sock is!
Last edited by adamky on Thu Jul 22, 2010 9:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by sdaigle240 »

cant wait to get home so i can see the pictures! no pics at work!!! ive been dieing to see it all come together.
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Post by blacks13coupe »

May I be the first to say this build looks sick man. You are doing all the little stuff that I wanted/needed to do. With the meth injection, smaller pulley and cam gears I don't see why you won't make 250+ whp. I am just glad this kit was left in capable hands. DYNO that bish!
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Post by adamky »

Almost forgot about the throttle cable bracket that Tom fabbed up, using a piece of scrap aluminum we had lying around.

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Last edited by adamky on Fri Oct 15, 2010 12:43 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by adamky »

blacks13coupe wrote:May I be the first to say this build looks sick man. You are doing all the little stuff that I wanted/needed to do. With the meth injection, smaller pulley and cam gears I don't see why you won't make 250+ whp. I am just glad this kit was left in capable hands. DYNO that bish!
Thanks man. The way you packaged the kit really made things easy. I appreciate the extra time you took to pack everything in there carefully and label everything.

Its a bummer that so far we have done everything right and I can't drive it because of a problem with a new part... but, I guess it happens. If they can get it back to me in a timely manner, I'll be happy. Besides, it gives me time to go ahead and finish installing the water/meth kit.
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Post by sdaigle240 »

YESSSSSSS. so much awesome, very motivational.

i dont want to do my usual babbling on, but just to clarify...your hooking up the "boost safe" ground wire to the "scramble boost" ground wire on the tru boost? in talking to and AEM engineer this was the only solution we came up with....only down side it the scramble boost setting can only be maintained for 25.5 seconds. with the LED and the cut in power it should be more then enough to alert you though.
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Post by adamky »

sdaigle240 wrote:YESSSSSSS. so much awesome, very motivational.

i dont want to do my usual babbling on, but just to clarify...your hooking up the "boost safe" ground wire to the "scramble boost" ground wire on the tru boost?
Not quite. The signal from the AEM will be sent to the boost control solenoid. This solenoid, when activated, sends the bypass valve actuator a boost signal, which actually keeps the bypass valve open while in boost. So, you still get boost only because the valve is fairly small and can't bleed it off fast enough. Ryan said he sees around 4-5 psi with his bypass valve setup to see boost. With the smaller pulley, I should see around 6 psi, but I was getting some spikes 8 psi when I got to drive it the other day.
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Post by sdaigle240 »

reading fail on my part. i saw an aem gauge, assumed tru boost, and some how in the process forgot about the snow performance valve. thanks. not that it needs to be said, but damn does it look proper, u got me pumped for DD SC s14s!!!!!!

ive been wanting a more true fail safe for the WMI, hummmm, can i do this with the WG?? if i could run this and skip my whole scramble boost time limit restriction that would be nice.

what brand wrinkle paint? i use truck bed liner alot, i used it on an interior gauge pod, but that looks much closer to the stock look.
Last edited by sdaigle240 on Thu Jul 22, 2010 8:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
airman wrote:I'm all about spreadsheets. Bitches love spreadsheets.
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Post by tom550 »

god i love it. especially the roof cooler. that thing is sick!!

make me want to have a garage like that just so i can do the same thing. :lol:
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Post by Kamilitaryman »

adamky wrote:Almost forgot about the throttle cable bracket that Tom fabbed up, again using a piece of aluminum from a networking rack shelf. Can you tell we both work in IT??

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Haha great use of IT equipment. I walk past server/switch racks outside of my office everyday. We replaced a few racks last year but I had to send everything back to HP :( Damn it!

Great build BTW!!! 5 STARS! Great attention to every little detail. Can't wait to see what this thing can do! Keep at it man! You're doing a great job!
PM me if you're interested in getting something powder coated!
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Post by tom550 »

http://www.knfilters.com/search/wrap.aspx

There you go.

They prevent water from getting to your filter. They still let air get in. Their not water proof but they do help. My filter is literally right in front of my wheel and no problems so far. They also keep the filter clean.

Ive uad mine for a few weeks with a few rain storms and haven't had much of an issue.

Here's actually 2 wraps. One that stops water and another that like does nothing just keeps it clean.
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Post by adamky »

sdaigle240 wrote:ive been wanting a more true fail safe for the WMI, hummmm, can i do this with the WG?? if i could run this and skip my whole scramble boost time limit restriction that would be nice.
I believe so. They make two solenoids. One says it is specifically for supercharger bypass valve actuators, and the other is for wastegates: http://www.snowperformance.net/product.php?pk=14
sdaigle240 wrote:what brand wrinkle paint? i use truck bed liner alot, i used it on an interior gauge pod, but that looks much closer to the stock look.
I think it was VHT wrinkle paint
tom550 wrote:http://www.knfilters.com/search/wrap.aspx

There you go.

They prevent water from getting to your filter. They still let air get in. Their not water proof but they do help. My filter is literally right in front of my wheel and no problems so far. They also keep the filter clean. .
Cool, thanks for the link. I'm going to leave it alone for now and just check it frequently. Hopefully I'll be ok.
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Post by wance »

Hey man good job. I love that wrinkle paint it looks amazing.
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Post by koukidriver »

What spark plug wires are you using nology?
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Post by adamky »

Magnecor 8.5mm
Wiseco/Eagle, JWT S1 cams, BC valve springs, PT5857, ID1700 injectors, SR20DET ECU w/ Nismotronic, COP conversion with LS ignition coils, etc, etc...
--> YouTube channel --> my build thread
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