Hoffman5982's Super Awesome Driveway Swap- Finally Running

[Hoffman5982]

So I'm finally starting my sr20det swap. I'll go ahead and warn you, this isn't going to be a huge build with a huge turbo and all of that good stuff. It's going to be a simple s14 sr into s14 swap. I will, however, be replacing quite a few parts, just to freshen the motor up a bit.

I'll start with the beginning, for those who don't know or remember.
I bought the car on January 25,2009, after totalling my first s14(which was also my first car). The car was in pristine condition. The paint was almost perfect(garage kept) and the interior was perfect also. It had a nice slection of mods, which included z32 TT brakes with r32 ebrake assembly and z32 BMC, tokiko shocks w/ eibach pro springs, Kazama tension rods, ST Sway bars, and a few extras.

Since I received the car I have installed Godspeed RUCAs(I was broke. Theyve held up great so farm but I might replace all of the arms with SPC, unless they aren't any good?), Stance LX+ coilovers, new gas tank, and re-did the interior a bit and installed a new sound system. Here's is where the car is at right now:


During the last couple of months I have been purchasing all of the stuff for the engine. What I have gotten is:
Full OEM gasket set
1 Piece Platinum Driveshaft
J30 VLSD-Need axles
OEM Waterpump and Tstat
OEM z32 Fuel Filter
Fidanza 2.1 Kevlar/Carbon clutch kit
Aluminum Radiator
FMIC
HKS SSQV BOV
OEM Oil Pump
Prosport Gauges

There's quite a few more things, I just don't feel like listing them.

Now some of you might remember me saying that I was going to buy an rb25. That was the original plan, but after thinking about it, I'm about to start college. I need a reliable engine with easy to find parts. The sr just seemed more practical. An rb would have only cost about 600 more, so cost wasn't what changed my mind.

Now on to my plans:
1st: during the swap I will be pulling the dash and pulling/re-doing the dash harness. I have a bad whine in my speakers, and I've regrounded the full system, so I figured it has to be something I did when I rewired the full stereo system before. I will be doing the whole dash harness, along with the engine harness, with braided sleeving to give it that nice clean look.

2nd: my gauge setup will be pretty unique(hopefully). I'm will remove the a/c controls and move them into the din below my stereo for now. The guages I got have the smoked faces. I removed the faces, and will be cutting a piece of tinted plastic to fit the hole where the a/c controls went. The guages will mount up right behind it, so that when the car is off it will be nice a clean, but when they turn on they pop with love explosions all over your chest.

3rd: I boutch a/c controls out of an 06 altima. Once I get the harness(if anyone can help find me one that's be great) I plan to cut the radio bezel below the dins and mount the controls there(where the ash tray and 12v is). I know I'll probably have to use fiberglass.

4th: this all comes after the swap, when I start working more and making more money.
I'll be replacing the carpet and floor mats(duplicolor fabric paint DID NOT hold up) along with new trunk carpeting. I will also be redoing the sound system. I already have a nice Alpine headunit and Kenwood Components, BUT we just got Polk audio and kicker at work(bestbuy) so I get a nice price. I already picked up 2 Kicked 8" CompVR subs, and Ill be buying the Kicker ZX700.5 amp eventually. I might buy some better components from Polk,who knows.
Then I will sound deaden the entire cabin. The doors and trunk already have Dynamat, which has helped tremendously.
I'm done talking about what's to come, because this car will never be finished.

NOW for the swap. Here's how it's sitting now. Tonight I got the transmission off and got the engine on the stand. I bought the engine from JDM-Online, and so far, I'm extremely happy with it. We'll see once I get it torn apart.

When I first got it:



My first ever turbo. Im excited


And how it sits now, on the stand. Dont mind the hanging belt, I removed the alternator


[imghttp://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i40/hoffman91/95%20240sx/DSCN0825.jpg][/img]

You can kind of see where I sleeved the coil-pack harness


So that's it for now. The next few days its gonna be kind of slow as I'm having to register for classes and whatnot, but Ill update as much as possible

Also, the motor came with a K&N M's Intake on it. I can't find much about it online, but it seems to be one that you clean instead of replace. I think I might use it temorarily. It had a dent in the fins, which I kind of straightened out. What do ya'll think?

[Camaro Chris]

Sweet I'm building a 314 also, good luck!

[OM3GA]

Awesome!

[Bumnah]

Get the swap running. THEN take apart the dash wiring. You're making extra work for yourself if you have to diagnose an electrical issue to get the engine running.

[Dittoz7]

Gonna keep a close eye on this thread...

[Hoffman5982]

Small Update

Today I stated stripping everything off the outside of the motor. I removed the intake mani and exhaust mani/turbo. The turbo has very little, if any, shaft play which is awesome. I went to remove the oil pan, and found out there was oil in it. I guess I had expected all of the fluid to have been flushed before shipping, which is why I had to clean up a good bit of oil.
After I get back from college orientation I'll probably start cleaning out all of the crud in the intake manifold, and hopefully tomorrow I'll have the exhaust manifold and turbo elbow sandblasted to removed the rust. Here's a few pics



stay tuned!

[Gabes13]

I like this.

[JDM Sil4ty]

i love where this is going too.. i see options for myself.. ima college boy tooo!.. hahha

[KYZAAC]

good luck man! looks fun! i started my swap a few months ago, first turbo as well, can't wait for first start up! keep us posted
car looks sweet btw, kinda makes me wanna find a clean coupe

[Hoffman5982]

So I thought I would share this.

Tonight I had orientation/class registration for college, and afterwards I decided to go to my girlfriends house because I've kind of neglected her he past few days. So I'm just cruising. Windows down, tunes playing, and I look over and see a rat climbing up the passenger seat... A FREAKIN LIVE, DISGUSTING RAT. I slammed on my brakes to send it flying forward and then it ran back under the seat. I haven't been able to find it since, so I put a cear-trap-like mouse trap on the passenger floorboard on top of a huge trashbag so it wouldn't leave a mess. I'll let ya'll know if I find the little bastard tomorrow.

Goodnight all

[KYZAAC]

holy jesus man, i woulda went right into a pole lol any idea how it got in there?

[Hoffman5982]

not a clue, man. My only guess is maybe it came in through the a/c ducts

[Hoffman5982]

Ok guys, sorry for not updating this thread the past few days. There was a family emergency and then I had to work all weeked, so I haven't been able to really do anything til today.

Last night I came home from work with the intentions of starting on replacing the headgasket. Then I couldn't find my 10mm allen head socket. So I just go in for the night, order a new one from sears, and then when I woke up this morning I went and picked it up, along with some wire brushes from harbor freight, because I couldn't find the ones I bought when I was painting my brake calipers.(Things like to go missing at my house, which is why MY tools stay in MY room, and only I use them)

When I got home I immediately finished removing the head. I had already removed the cams so it didn't take a while. Anyone who is wanting to remove their head, it isn't hard, but either have a really large breaker bar or a nice sized piece of pipe to go over the breaker bar. The head bolts are on extremely tight, and after loosening 4 bolts with my breaker bar(I think its about 24" long), my hand was killing me. The pipe made it much easier. I only got a few pictures today. I forgot to charge my camera battery
Here's the engine with everything removed:


I think I mentioned before, but this engine is really clean(Im sure they cleaned it before shipping). Here's the little bit of grime I have to clean, and then I can start painting



Here's the inside of the head. There's no milky oil or excessive oil buildup, so that's a great sign


And here's the block with the head removed. This is before the new headgasket, and this is also when my camera died.



After that I replaced the valve stem seals. I honestly feel like I waisted my time. The seals that were in there looked perfectly fine, just like every other gasket. I say it was a waist of time because it was such a pita. It took me a good 2-3 hours to remove everything, put the new seals in, and reassemble everything. If I had known I was going to have to go through all of that I would have saved and bought solid lifter, valve springs, the whole nine yards. Oh well, atleast I got it done.

Tomorrow I am going to go through and replace the rest of the gaskets, degrease and scrub every nook and crevice on the block,paint the block, and then start putting the motor back together. Hopefully by friday I will have removed the ka and started on the wiring harness.

I also wanted to add that my motor is so JDM that it came with HKS spark plugs

yea, I'm cool


On a side note, and I know this has abolutely nothing to do with 240s or even cars in general, but for anyone else that owns an HTC Eris, and you're sick of having to wait a few seconds to pull up the phone or having to wait for it to load anything, I really recommend rooting your phone and installing kaosfroyo. It's the 2.2 update that we didn't get. Also, with SetCPU from the market($1.99) you can overlclock to 700mhz. Awesome shiz

More to come!

[Hoffman5982]

UPDATE!!


So today I started off with cleaning and degreasing the engine. I spent about an hour, and didn't get much done. I called it quits until I get it off the porch tomorrow and pull out the pressure washer.

Then everything got put on hold due to the awesome weather we're having down here is AL. It's times like these that I wish I had a garage.
After it cleared up I started on removing the front cover. This is where I realized how dumb I was to not do this yesterday. For anyone who has done this, you probably know that you must have the head off or loose to take the old cover off and the new one on. Well, I did not.

Here's how dirty it was before. Nice and grimy!


I got the stupid hunk of metal off after a good bit of prying. I ended up breaking the corner as you can see here.

And this is what it looked like without the front cover


This is when I realized I fudged up. So I had the honor of removing the cams once again so that I could loosen up the head. Once I had this done, the liquid gasket I had put on had pretty much dried, so I had to scrape it off and put more on. After about 3 friggen hour I had the new front cover/oil pump on.
I almost for got this little booger

And this is with the new front cover on, and before I cleaned the excess gasket



The last thing I did for the night was replace the water pump. Honestly, there was no point. Here's the old and new one together. Other than the dried gasket on the old one, it's just about as clean as the new one.

Oh well, atleast it's nice and shiny like the new front cover
And here is the final product

A clean engine is a happy engine!


I also replaced the o-rings on the injectors and the gaskets on the throttle body, AAC Valve, exhaust manifold, intake manifold, and intake collector.

Tomorrow:
I am going to lower the engine to the ground, get the timing on track, get the engine sealed up to pressure wash it, mask things off and paint. hopefully tomorrow night I can start putting everything back together. Then on friday, Ill remove the stand, replace all of the clutch stuff, and re-attach the transmission. after that it'll just be pulling the ka, painting the engine bay, converting the harness, and hooking the gauges and whatnot on. Hopefully by the end of next week I'll be driving around with my snazzy new engine, but we'll see.

Tomorrow or thursday I'm sending my 1-piece driveshaft back to exchange for an abs one. On monday I'm off to the junkyard to pick of some j30 axles shafts so that I can finally install my vlsd. I'll see what else I can get my hands on there.

That's it for now. I'm dead tired, so I'm off to bed.

Until next time....

[zach-Ka]

Lookin good. Doing it right the first time...

[Hoffman5982]

Yea I've learned that it's a lot easier to work on an engine when its OUT of the car

[Hoffman5982]

Ok so I know it's bee a few days since the last update, but here's another update finally

In the last few days I've gotten a good bit done. I started cleaning and painting exterior pieces of the engine. Here's a few of them




I used Duplicolor cast aluminum on the intake manifold and Duplicolor gloss & flat black on a few other misc pieces. I also cleaned the engine itself, masked it off, and painted it in the cast aluminum. It looks extremely clean now, unfortunately I forgot to take pictures. I'll take some hopefully tomorrow.

The next day I started working on the timing, which was not fun. I found out that somehow the chain came off the bottom sprocket, and then got jammed when I turned the crank to TDC. SO, I had to remove the head and front cover, get it back on the sprocket in the correct place, and put it all back together. That was a heap of fun....

I also started putting a few things back together, as I finally finished replacing all of the gaskets.

Now on to today....

Today was the last day I will ever drive the good ol ka. It was a little sad, but I'll be moving on to a refreshened motor with more power, so I'll get over it. I started at 2pm. First I got the front end completely removed. It seemed easire on my first car, but that might have been because it had already been ripped off for me in the wreck.

The we started removing all of the hoses, disconnected the a/c compressor, and un-hooked all of the plugs to the wire harness. It looked about like this then

that was at about 3:30-4:00

After that we went over everything to make sure we didn't miss anything. Everything checked out so we started un-bolting the motor and transmission mounts, got the engine strapped up, and started lifting. it lifted about 5 inches up and then started lifting the car. for some reason the transmission wasn't coming down. after a crap ton of tugging and pulling, we manged to get it down, and the engine at almost the right angle to remove. The we ran into a problem with the bell housing not clearing the cross memeber. I put a jack under the transmission and lifted it a little so it would clear. Still wouldn't come.

Long story short, it turned out to be the downpipe getting stuck on the steering rack thingy here


Noob mistake, but we got it off and the rest was clockwork:








My brother helped me with it all day. He's on the left,and me on the right. That's my happy face


we finished at midnight, so that was 10 straight hours!

So that's it for now. Tomorrow I'm heading to the junkyard for j30 axle shafts, then a barbeque tomorrow afternoon fnf style(whoever reaches for the chicken WILL say grace, and then a possible midnight install of the j30 dif, or else I'll started again on reassembling the sr. Wednesday I'm going to trailer the car to the car wash and drgrease the crap out of the bay, and then start on painting it. While that's drying I'll start on the wiring. Hopefully by thursday the sr will be sitting in the bay. Friday and saturday nothing will be done. I work all day long both days(gotta love tax free weekend).

I'll keep ya'll updated

[OM3GA]

lol awesome

[Hoffman5982]

lol thanks!

tiny update:

went to the junkyard and got the axles. It was pretty easy getting them, but it was 112 degrees outside. We were drenched with sweat before we even got out to the j30. Hopefully that will be ready to install this week, just have to exchange the driveshaft

[Lonismos14]

Any more updates . Question are you coming to the big drag in albany. Alot of people are coming from dothan are coming.

[PyR0NiAk]

Why is this not in the SR section, Hoffman?

Also, ditch that k&n filter... Oiled filters + MAF sensors = bad..

[Hoffman5982]

well dang, I typed out an update earlier and when I hit post it told me to log in, even though I already was. Its done it before but always posted what I typed, but this time it didn't. Maybe it's safari? oh well, Ill type it in a little while

[s13sickboi]

looks really nice, even though im not an SR fan...

[Hoffman5982]

Why is this not in the SR section, Hoffman?

Also, ditch that k&n filter... Oiled filters + MAF sensors = bad..

I figured since I come to this section every single day I might as well post it here

The K&N is temporary. What do you suggest? I was going to buy the apexi power intake kit

[Hoffman5982]

looks really nice, even though im not an SR fan...

Well with the ka your building, it makes me not wanna be a fan of the sr too. Maybe Ill hold on to the ka and build it throughout college.....

[PyR0NiAk]

Why is this not in the SR section, Hoffman?

Also, ditch that k&n filter... Oiled filters + MAF sensors = bad..

I figured since I come to this section every single day I might as well post it here

The K&N is temporary. What do you suggest? I was going to buy the apexi power intake kit

I'm actually using the ISIS filter.
Apexi, Greddy, and HKS are all good choices...

[Hoffman5982]

OK well I guess Ill retype it now.

Last week I left off with puling the engine. Now that the ka was out I started scrubbing and sanding the bay, prepping for paint.
It started like this


This cleaned up nicely


Then I removed most of the stuff, and masked off anything I didn't want painted. I also removed the battery tray as I bought a battery box to relocate it to the trunk, then I started the primer


This is how I kept from getting paint on the coiovers. Its just a cup that fit perfectly in the hole

Then I started painting





Im really happy with how the bay came out. I used Duplicolor Paint Shop Performance Red paint(1qt) and a Preval sprayer from car quest, which an air canister with a bottle attached for paint. It's supposed to work as well as an actual gun. I don't know how true that is, but it worked great for painting the bay.

After that I cleaned and painted the turbo. It looks 100x better now




The I mounted it on the engine. The first pic shows the block after I painted it. I still have to paint the valve cover






Other than that, I started on wiring the other night. I got the dash plug repinned, now I just need to extend a few things and sleeve.

I picked my flywheel up yesterday, so Ill be putting that on today after replacing the rear main seal. Then Ill install the clutch, replace the throwout bearing, and reattach the transmission.
It's all about ready to be dropped into the car, so I just need to get the wiring finished. Hopefully I'll be able to fire it up this weekened.

We'll see

[Hoffman5982]

Any more updates . Question are you coming to the big drag in albany. Alot of people are coming from dothan are coming.

No I havent heard anything about it, plus I have a lot going on besides this swap, so I wouldn't be able to if I wanted to come

Do you know who is coming from dothan?

[amolao]

Nicely done, you guys like pain?? I bet it some maunevering to get the engine clip out with the stick shift on...
Make to sure to have a list and check all steps during the final prep. Double check the wiring by using the schematic for it and multimeter. Now is the time, ensure you use good strong solder joints, no splice on connectors.

[Hoffman5982]

lol, we didn't even think about taking the shifter out, but it didn't really cause any problems.

And I stopped using butt connectors a few years ago. Its all solder and heat shrink,then wrapping with braided sleeving