Friday, March 21, 2008

The Clean Room - Nissan GTR engine building facility


Yokohama Japan: Building the twin turbo VR38 GTR engine.


It’s a totally different world in the air-pressure regulated GTR clean room engine assembly area when compared to the rest of Nissan’s motor assembly facilities.

The workers in this clean room are called Takumi, or skilled craftsman and each motor is assembled entirely by one technician. This Takumi is building a fuel injection rail. The engines move from station to station, around the room as pieces and specific tools are added and needed. The process takes about 200 minutes and involves some 370 steps.

If there are any irregularities detected during assembly, the engine is set aside for analysis. Nissan even designed special electric tools for the clean room instead of the normal air-operated setup in order to keep dust and particles to a minimum. After assembly, each engine is tested with a no-load firing run, followed by a full load power test. For the startup of production Nissan has 13 Takumi’s building about 27 motors per day in a single shift, but can add another seven builders and go to a double shift as production ramps up.

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