What is up engine heads it's time for iconic engines and today we're talking about one of the most iconic engines ever made. The way it was born and the things that it has achieved have forever cemented it's iconic status in the hall of fame of internal combustion.

The engine I'm talking about is Nissan's RB26 engine. A collection of two letters and two numbers known by virtually every petrol-head on planet earth. Now in today's video we will as always cover the history, specifications and tuning of our engine of choice but in this video we will also be doing something we don't usually do in iconic engines and that is comparing two different engines throughout the video.
Of course you can probably guess what we will be comparing the RB26 with.....yes of course the 2jz from Toyota. Now I haven't read up on the rb26 engine in a pretty long time so when I googled it before making this video to refresh my knowledge on a few things I was very surprised to see that the internet nowadays seems to think that the 2JZ is the better engine and the reason for this seems to be all the 1000hp builds and the 2jzs ability to better cope with obscene power. Now I understand that quarter mile racing is the most popular form of motorsport in United states and probably also in Australia and I understand that these two countries sort of dominate the English speaking internet so I it seems that which matters most in quarter mile racing has somehow trickled down into the shared pool of petrolhead opinions and tainted our minds. Now I love drag racing as much as the next guy and definitely do not intend to diminish the achievements of the 2jz. But there is SO MUCH MORE to an engine than it's ability to not fall apart under ridiculous amounts of boost. Saying engine A is better than engine B because it can survive 1000hp longer is like saying CAR A is better than CAR B because it doesn't overheat as fast when idling at 5000 rpm in the middle of the desert.
So today I'm going to try and enlighten you and explain why as a man of culture you should prefer the RB over the 2JZ.

So the official full engine code of our engine is RB26DETT. 26 is obviously the displacement. 2.6 liters. D is DOHC or dual overhead camshaft, E is electronic fuel injection and the two Ts represent the twin turbos fitted to the engine. So what does RB stand for? Some will tell you it's response and balance or even rhythm and balance. In reality it stands for nothing. It's just two letters designating an engine series like SR, VG, JZ or anything else. But despite this I like to think that RB stands for race bred – because it would really be fitting.
To learn where the RB26 comes from we have to look back at the Japanese Touring Car Championship or JTCC. Now throughout its life the Japanese touring car championship would be held under numerous different regulations, including FIA's Group A regulation and would be known under various different names, but it was always Japan's premiere touring car championship, the cream of the crop for touring car racing in Japan, a place where manufacturers could demonstrate the capabilities of their cars and earn the reputation needed to boost sales. Basically the JTCC, later JGTC and finally Super GT was to Japan and much of Asia what DTM was to Germany and Europe.
Now the 1987 and 1988 seasons of the JTCC were both won by a Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworth and even though Nissan succeeded in winning the 1989 season with the Skyline GTS-R they had realized well before that their car is becoming less and less competitive. It had roughly the same weight but was down on power compared to the Sierra. So well before 1989 Nissan started to work on a car that had one goal: To obliterate the competition in the Japanese touring car championship.
Naganori Ito was appointed as the Chief engineer and Kozo Watanabe as the chief experiment engineer for this project. Now the R32 project was a bit of a personal vendetta for chief engineer Ito. The previous generation of the Skyline, the R31, was seen as a failure from long-time skyline owners, enthusiasts and car critics in Japan and Ito bore the brunt of this criticism. Interestingly enough Ito only had to put his name on the R31 project because he was suddenly assigned to it and asked to finish it due to the fact that the original chief engineer Shinichiro Sakurai had fallen ill.
So to clear his name he insisted to be allowed to lead the R32 project from the very beginning.

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00:00 Men of culture
01:53 History
10:34 Specs
15:07 Tuning
23:11 Cringe