Hi guys! I'm sharing my project with you to show how someone with little experience can go through a project and accomplish things, learning as they go. I began this project with no prior fabrication or engine building experience, and scant knowledge about the VH engine. It's all about the passion! :p

Oh pretty much all of the following stuff is copied and pasted from another forum, so some of the wording will look like I'm replying to people and explaining stuff.

Who cares, most of the info is there.

I've done quite a bit since the last update, so bear with me and I'll continue to update in here.

Enjoy:

May 11 2006:

I scored an HR31 GTS-X for NZD$2k, and have decided that as it's a coupe body & lighter than a laurel, I'm gonna drop the gear into that instead... as the engine bay and driveline are identical.

So until pics arrive, here are some specs to drool over:

Drivetrain & suspension equipment:

VH41DE 4.1 all alloy Quad Cam 32 valve EFI VTC V8 (now rebuilt to 4.5 with VH45DE crank & pistons)IMPUL tuned/chipped factory ECUCustom fabricated stainless cold air intake with water mistingCustom fabricated 4-2-1 headersDual exhausts, 3" first half, into resonators, into 2.1/2" second half, into mufflersAt least a 3 or 5 core radiator with twin thermal fans5 speed manual conversion, custom modified bellhousing to accept toyota W57 transmissionCustom mounted slave cylinder, unknown replacement master cylinderModified rocker cover for master cylinder clearanceCustom fabricated gearbox crossmemberCustom designed lightweight 7079 alloy flywheel with friction insert, >5kgXtreme heavy duty pressure plate, 1050kg clamping pressureXtreme ceramic brass button paddle clutch with sprung centerD2 36-way adjustable coilover suspensionS13 180sx front suspension conversion, lower arms etcCustom fabricated 6061-T6 aluminium rear suspension hat-converters (2 to 3 stud)Custom modified rear wishbones - suspension mounting point remade to suit D2 struts, no swage on leading edge of strut eye, so chamfer on lug taken outNolathane bushes all roundCustom solid UHMWPE rear crossmember bushesCustom engine mountsCustom driveshaftR200 longnose clutch type LSDZ31 300ZX rear 5 stud hubsSpec2 S13 Silvia 5 stud front hubsR32 GTS-t Mspec front rotors, 280mmx30mm (to be replaced with slotted aftermarket items soon as the budget allows)R32 GTS-t Mspec 4 pot front calipersR33 GTS25t Mspec rear rotors, 297mmR33 GTS25t Mspec 2 pot rear calipersTo run ultimates for brake pads, and high quality dot4 brake fluid80s Nissan Pulsar brake booster to clear heads, and GTS-t Mspec brake master cylinder18"x9.5" rear & 18"x8.5" front deepdish alloy wheels275x35x18 rears & 245x40x18 fronts, Goodyear Eagle F1 GSD-3s

June 15 2006:

UPDATES, PROGRESS, WOOHOO !

Got the boys round on saturday, bought two bottles of JDs and four 6tonne axle stands, grabbed the engine hoist from my mate's dad's work, and got stuck into it !

Dirty old RB20DET ready to be hoisted:

Engine being a and getting stuck on the mounts... me doing the ape dance on top of it trying to free it up:

RB20 !!!!! That's right, get out of my engine bay you piece of junk !

Engine actually lifted out quite nicely...

Motor's now free of the car, just gently pulling the hoist back to clear the chassis...

Catch of the day... one dirty old RB20DET auto, ready to be separated from the tranny !

Damn I have to degrease all THAT!!

Mmmmmm, my front tyres, now fitted and balanced. 245/40/R18 Eagle F1 GSD-3's

CAMBERED OUT !@!! Man I look like a spud... Mind you, that was after a number of JDs

MONSTER TRUCK STYLES $^!#!11

One HR31 GTS-X less engine, ready for transplant!

June 19 2006:

Heaps of progress this weekend. Ripped out the rear subframe, finished sorting out my 5 stud rear end. I now have handbrake cables, 5 stud hubs, Z bearings (Z31 bearings are HUGE, almost 1.5x wider than the R31 bearings, and until we figured this out, the hubs weren't sitting right).

Installed all the nolathane bushes into the various suspension parts, ripped the HICAS out. I'm leaving the HICAS lines there so I can reuse them later for a diff oil coolin circuit.

Now we just gotta paint the engine bay and I can reassemble the entire suspension & drop the motor in. It's easy streets from there !

June 23 2006:

Quick update... engine bay has been painted, absolutely mint now !

Have fitted D2 coilovers, and will bolt up the front & rear crossmembers tonight, and the rest of the suspension.

Engine is going in tomorrow... will have many new pics, car sitting on its big wheels with new ride height etc, big update coming on monday !

June 26 2006:

Wooo ! Got heaps done in the weekend, here are updates as promised !

Workshop, please enter... this is the sight that presented itself on saturday morning, before getting started with the assembly !

Here's the engine bay, painted up and ready for a motor ! So much nicer without all that sick crap all over the paint !

Some of you guys might be interested in what clutch master cylinder and brake booster I'm running:

Check out that clearance ! Car's too low at the front at the mo, gotta raise it about 20mm, and that pic is while on stands.

Nolathane castor arm bushes... will have to do for now until I get some nice adjustable pillowball ones !

Fat ! 275/35/R18 + mad dish ! There's only about 2mm clearance between the inner sidewall and the wishbone, so I'm going to have to space the rims out a bit.

Wow this camera really did take quite ****ty photos >_<

Heh, an HR31 GTS-X with a badass VH41DE V8 in it ! Not your every day conversion, definitely one of a kind

Sorry for the quality of the pics, this isn't really a night time camera... will get better though, my mate's coming over during the week to take another batch of pics !

September 11 2006:

Yo ! Update with pics !

Done quite a bit since the last update, have fitted longer studs to the rear hubs, made some spacers etc... done a bunch of other random crap.

My mate who was helping with the wiring has just been fired, for blowing up my 110amp heavy duty hitachi alternator. DAMMIT.

Details of particular interest are the rear solid mounts, spacers for the rear calipers, the perfect sump clearance with the R31 crossmember, aluminium steering column bush, bent & redirected fuel lines, extreme angle of front sway bar link (as per my thread in the suspension section).

Here are pics:

September 18 2006:

Quick update: I've modified my gearbox crossmember so it'll fit the mounting stud spacing on the underside of the 31 chassis (it seems there are 3 potential stud locations on either side of the transtunnel in these chassis, depending on which car it is they use a combination of any of them.) The HC32 Laurel had studs in the frontmost two places, whereas the coupe body has the front & rear positions. As such, the custom gearbox crossmember needed modification. I welded a 3mm steel plate on top of each side and drilled new holes, it'll bolt up now.

Also, my laser cut caliper spacers will be on the way tomorrow... getting them for FREE ! Sandvik NZ are looking after me, I got the sales rep to hook me up with them as 'samples' so I can 'inspect the quality of their laser cutting' I love this job :p

More work to be done tonight. Another update will be on the way when there is something new worth photographing ! 8)

November 3 2006:

BACK FROM THE DEAD!!!

Well, I'm ditching the extractors that have been made so far, and completely remaking the entire setup with port matched laser cut flanges, and doing it MYSELF!

My dad lent me his mig and I've been going nuts doing the things that have needed doing for a long time. I've chopped out the spare wheel well and box sectioned it up with tack welds, and etch primed it. Gotta put sealer all over it yet. I also need to chop the semicircle for the exhaust tip to stick out on that side, slowly but surely getting there however!

I've also pretty much fabricated the passenger side exhaust, just gotta mount it up properly at the front.

Here are a series of pics of where I'm at... many of them are gratuitous manual conversion shots, showing my flywheel & clutch assembly etc.

I start fabricating extractors this weekend !

Enjoy fellas, it's not gonna be too much longer until we hear the first R31 coupe in the world with a Quad Cam V8 roar!!!



Oh and yep, that is a power steer cooling circuit!

December 11 2006:

Miss me ? Of course you did

Nah, just when everybody had pretty much forgotten... I return triumphantly with another monster update !

The news ? The car is just about ****ing finished! Oh yeah, over a year's worth of pissing around and building up my parts inventory, learning new stuff here and there, and even innovating one or two things... and the GTS-8 will see life in only a few weeks time! I feel like a proud dad...

The rear guards have been flared to fit those monster 275's under, a symmetrical exhaust outlet cut into the other side of the rear panel, etc.

Photos from the exhaust shop where things are being finished off. I made about 70% of the exhausts, headers etc... but then cut myself pretty bad with the cutoff wheel (almost lost my thumb) & dad had to take his welder back home that same weekend too, so off to Pit Stop to get it finished... and look how ****ing tough it looks now on those wheels! So stoked, R31s kick ***! 8)

January 10 2007:

Yeah same with mine without an engine, I tried lifting the front and nearly threw it off the axle stands at the back! Mind you, that's partially lever action due to the heavy diff & rear suspension. The chassis seems quite light overall.

Oooo, and update: Literally about 3-4 days until I'm driving the car!

Engine starts and runs with the key... and sounds GLORIOUS. The induction roar and exhaust note is nothing short of ridiculously staunch, pure race car. The sound of it bouncing off limiter at 7500rpm is almost orgasm inducing!! I love Nissan engineering (when combined with my own)!

Just a few tiddly bits and pieces to sort out (wheel alignment, bedding in brakes & clutch etc, finding out if anything blows up), and I'll be taking the car to get complied in the next few weeks.

I have pics and videos, but the videos are like 17mb quicktime *.mov files, and I haven't converted them to a format I can have on the net.

Note: The intake has changed because I've actually got a bend in the intake and proper AAC/ACV valve snorkels welded in place, it looks mint! I'll have more pics soon, once I'm driving around.

January 12 2007:

[quote author=Naife link=topic=52255.msg624523#msg624523 date=1168410848]whats happnin with the top of the intake. looks like it's been faced.[/quote]Nah nothing, I just pulled off the plaque ages ago and haven't got around to sticking it back on yet.

Yeah I'll check out putting em on youtube, but will definitely need to do something about the size of the files first. The first couple of vids are **** anyway, engine sounds rattly because the hydraulic lash adjusters are a bit sticky since the engine sat for like 3-4 years before I came along. They're nice and unstuck now though, and the motor itself is practically silent... the thermal fan and the gearbox make more noise at idle !

Been working on it every day lately, don't think I'll get to take it for a drive until probably monday or tuesday... the h0m0 who first volunteered to wire it up ruined the loom completely! Take this for stupid: Ignition coil #6 was wired to the temp sensor. Ignition coil #2 was wired to the resistor that was in coil #6's circuit. There were around 12 or more such 'mistakes' in the eccs loom... and that's just the beginning! Every solder join he does is a bird**** dry join... and check this out... the power wire which feeds my VCT, EGRG solenoid valve, and a bunch of other important ****... he brought into the car through the passenger side, fed it behind the dash and out through the driver's side under the guard, to link it up to the positive terminal on the battery.... why, I have no ****ing clue, but it only needed to be wired in to the 'on' position of the ignition switch.

Remember I said his bull**** wiring blew up an alternator ? Well we checked out all the wiring, did some tests, and decided it was mint on that part of the loom, so I stuck on my replacement 125amp alternator that I bought for 120 bucks and that one ****ed itself as well! Blown regulators in both. Cannot be replaced, no replacement parts in the country. Every other Nissan alternator has an inversely designed housing, so I can't even run an RB alternator... even the VH45DE alternators are inverse and will not fit the bracket to bolt it to the engine! WTF!%^##$&!

There is light at the end of the tunnel however, as these VH41 motors are used in stock car racing... built to 590HP, 9,000rpm (minimal headwork, solid lifters, dry sump, forged rods & pistons, insane cams, highrise manifold & carby)... so I called a chap from Palmerston North who knows the most about these motors in NZ... he builds all of these race motors and has done considerable research and development on the VH engine (and his quad cammers rape all the other A grade superstocks... Ford SVOs etc, just these past couple of weeks his motors have been dominating the racing in the south island!). He just happened to have another replacement alternator for me for 120 bucks again... second time I've had to ask him for one. Thankfully he's a good chap and gave me the mint deal! Later this year I'm getting him to build me a 450HP, cammed out, VH41 base motor with the VH45 internals, good for 8000RPM.

Anyway, waiting for this alternator to arrive is why I'll probably be waiting until monday to drive it... dammit !!!

Have a productive weekend folks!

January 15 2007:

It drives smooth, with excellent grip and VERY precise steering. Apart from a few minor teething problems, the GTS-8 is very much alive, and has hit the streets!



I owe a massive thanks to all of my mates who got involved... JP for his expertise with wiring & troubleshooting someone else's bull**** chopshop job on my loom, Scott for getting me a wicked deal on tyres, Reuben & Shannon for helping out with the car, Mark for letting me use his hoist for ages, Ed, Brendan, Gar, Matt, Nik, Tom etc for pitching in and helping with getting **** done, Dan for hooking me up with badass deals on heaps of stuff I've needed to buy... and anyone else I've missed who have given me a hand.

CHER!!

It'll be keg time after compliance & track day.

[youtube]B0sb2q7sfAk[/youtube]

I've run some valvetrain flush through it and unstuck all the lifters too, they're pretty noisy in that vid... the engine runs so damn smooth now! I turned the idle down to 800ish RPM too. You literally cannot hear the motor anymore when it's idling, not a single valvetrain sound. All you hear is the fan, gearbox whine, injectors ticking away, and exhaust burble. It's a minter!

Trademark sound of an alloy quad cammer, the induction noise is so damn loud and crackly, it sounds brutal from the front!

January 16 2007:

Ah wicked, Orion set up a nice as gallery for me! Check it:

April 4 2007:

Just a quick update... this project is far from dead, but I'm upgrading a number of things and making some changes.

I'm rebuilding the engine with 4.5 litre internals, effectively making it a VH45DE hybrid motor... the VH41DE is a far superior base motor due to its duplex timing chain setup & other differences, and the extra 400cc should grant more easy power.

The heads are being ported out, and stiffer valvesprings that allow for more lift are being installed.

I'm designing & CNC'ing some custom camshaft blanks on the CNC at work, making them from 4140 steel roundbar. Then I'm having a company in auckland do me an angry grind good for over 400thou valvelift, more duration, and more aggressive ramps.

I'm looking at a solid 450HP, 100HP/L target, or possibly even more... and an 8000rpm redline.

The cooling system is going to get an upgrade, with a fatter radiator, twin radiator fans with custom shrouds.

The exhaust system will be revised entirely... new extractors, and upsizing to twin 3" pipes... and probably changing mufflers.

I'm going to modify the bellhousing where the slave cylinder bolts on, so that it's actually sitting straight, cos at the moment it's slightly angled and pushes the clutch fork into the edge of the hole in the bellhousing, occasionally it gets stuck when changing gear... very annoying.

Front guards are going to get flared & new inner guards made, and rear guards may get more treatment yet, with wider spacers to go in the rear and sit the wheels even further out.

Brake booster is being replaced with an oldschool pulsar one that's small diameter, but longer.... seems to be what I need.

Fun times ahead! The next trackday is on 9th August... lets hope I make it to that one!

In the meantime, I finally got a video up on youtube from the very first test run day of the GTS-8... was experiencing clutch slippage and some other minor things, wiring was still very messy... but hey, it's a work in progress [youtube]oTsb0vUhBHo[/youtube]

June 06 2007:

Yo!

Build's coming along nicely, I have the heads being ported, combustion chambers being polished, stiffer valvesprings fitted, and working on my own cams which I will machine out of roundbar.

In the meantime, I've been buying up VHs... and will have two complete engines at the end of this, plus a spare block & heads and various other parts

With winter and ****ty weather here, it's difficult finding motivation to get out and lie under the car at the moment >_<

Check it out, bet you can't do this with an RB block

June 15 2007:

Well, have been cleaning up my new internals in preparation for the coming build... here are some pics of my lounge table. My house smells like degreaser now... ohhh yeah! :bigok:

June 18 2007:

MOAR PICS!!!Here's what my lounge currently looks like. The cardboard wall is my temporary workbench, and with the heater turn on, it also doubles as a spraybooth :

Here's my shed as seen from the shed door. As you can see, there are parts everywhere.

Boxes of assorted crap.

POLISHED VH45DE CRANK READY TO GO..... YUMMEH >:D

Bare VH41DE block & complete assembled intake manifold

She's a chunky one! All good though, tuned length runners for helmholtz resonance at various RPM to smooth out torque

Now THAT'S a bottom end... deep skirt 6 bolt crossbolted mains goodness

Here are the heads off my new 500 dollar parts motor... this was being used as a boat motor...

As you can see, electrolysis between the mild steel exhaust manifold and the aluminium heads has caused pitting and corrosion on the exhaust ports. Not a big deal, as the heads are mint otherwise, and these can be alloy mig welded and milled to perfection again. Fortunately I have a mint set of heads presently being ported & polished etc by a race engine builder.

VTC (Valve Timing Control) drum/duplex double row chain sprocket.

The main bearing beam which ties together the main caps to reduce vibration and increase rigidity.

The mint VH41DE crank out of the new motor... wrapped up for storage.

My cheap & easy degreaser bath, fits 8 pistons perfectly It was meant to be!

Homemade exhaust header... re-painted with a few fresh coats of black VHT.

My custom flywheel, and Xtreme heavy duty 1050kg pressure plate & 6 puck brass button clutch with sprung center.

Random assorted old brakes & brake boosters... I have ****loads of spare Skyline junk.

Calipers etc...

The heads that I cooked on my first motor... not sure what condition these are in, one day I may have them tested but I'm pretty sure they'll be warped & ****ed. Still, good for spare valvetrain parts.

MMMMMMMMM, new bearings & thrust washers...

July 2 2007:

Ok starting to get serious now. My 'office' is set up with a cylinder head on my computer desk, crankshaft next to me, and various internal parts lying around. Armed with my vernier calipers, two FSMs, and information from VH forums, I am now tackling the cam design head on.

I spent the whole weekend working on the cams design, and have started modeling up a VH41/VH45 dummy test rig (block, crank, rods, pistons etc) accurate down to the last detail (not so much in the block tho), so I can model up an accurate cylinder head and perform piston/valve clearance experiments with enhanced cam profiles, as well as experimenting with their effect when running in conjunction with the 20 degrees advance on the intake that VTC offers.

Providing I can model the cylinder head accurately enough (should be able to, I cross reference measurements relative to each other so they work out sweet), I'll be able to experiment with virtually every cam profile possible within the allowable clearance to factory pistons.

You may also note the values for the cam profile are presently based on the standard ones (apart from duration @ .050"), I just have to add some detail to the ramps so I can more accurately control these values and therefore the valve's lift.

Remember, I'm designing these for me first, for my jap spec VH41DE with dual row timing chains & smaller cam sprockets etc (using VH45DE internals though), but when I've finished it's only going to be a small matter to change the front face to make them VH45DE cams.

Watch this space!

Some pics for great justice:



You may be asking yourself 'what's a 25 year old doing sitting at home on a saturday night measuring car parts'... quite simply, I do it for the love of brutal acceleration. Thrashing a badass V8 at high speed is a feeling that is tiers and tiers above the generic act of getting boozed & partying, and this will all be worth it in the end.

August 27 2007:

I'm back!

So while I've been playing nutty professor with my computer and cams, I've managed to enlist the help of Dan the master panel beater. Dan is as pro as it gets, I've seen him rebuild an entire S1 RX7 door with the bottom half completely missing (rusted away), and you couldn't even tell it had been paneled! He's also completely stripped, sanded, primed and painted a whole car inside & out, within a week.

Anyways, Dan has started on my guards... I want flares, big ****in flares, so I can space the rear wheels out and even up the track between front and back. The fronts are being flared because they were flush with the tyres and causing all kinds of rubbing and scraping, including the driver's side guard chopping into the edge of my GSD3 sidewall!! Not safe at high speeds!

If you're gonna flare guards, use one of these:

Little bit of elbow grease gets it started:

And the back guard has been flared by around 20-25mm... I should have got a photo of the inner skin, it's mint as!

Check it out, straight after rolling & a bit of hammer work, hasn't yet been touched up at all. THIS is why you should use a proper rolling tool. Ignore the dent, that's all getting paneled out too:

Staunch flare!! I'm gonna be able to bone the car out and not worry The side mouldings will be heated up and bent to fit.

The front is pretty damn flared too and it suits this car, but the best part is to the untrained eye, it doesn't even look modified!

Other than that... the monster build is slowly coming together. I have all my engine bits ready for balancing and will be picking up my race heads in a week or two. I'm moving very slowly because I'm tackling one aspect at a time. I hope to have the car finished for summer and beach cruising

September 11 2007:

So I've almost finalised my rebuildable engine mount design, and added crossribbing for strength. I've done this because the nolathane mounts I had made have already started separating away from the steel parts. ****, tbh. It's just a **** design, and needs to be redone. How I'm doing it now is BRUTAL.

The plan is to measure the crossmember from underneath and draw up a plate that I can weld in place on the underside of the mounting surface, then drill two holes through for the new mount design. This should add plenty of strength to the crossmember, and the mount itself will be stronger as I'm moving from one M10 stud & a locator on the current mounts, to two M12s.

What isn't included in the pics are the M12 countersunk capscrews that actually go through the holes in the plate & get welded to the plate while fully torqued up, prior to the main mount body being welded on & the support ribs welded in place.

Overall it's a pretty strong design, has more surface area to distribute the load, makes full use of the available mounting surface areas on my crossmember, and is rebuildable with fresh urethane (or other material) inserts should any flog out. Oh, and if the bush does flog out, the engine still can't go anywhere!

Will be getting the last bits laser cut tomorrow and picking it all up on friday.



Oh and I nearly forgot... this is all reasonably compact and shouldn't be much bigger than the factory mounts _b

Comparison, look how gay the standard mounts are (RB engine mounts):

I've now reinforced the crossmember with 5mm plate:

September 11 2007:

Here's another little custom side project I got goin on... my oil catch can! (And fuel surge tank to follow)...

My engine bay's gonna look mint! Everything's either stainless, black, or white!

Using Stainless Steel 316 RJT dairy fittings, I'm making an easy to open & clean catch can. Gonna tig weld it to some 4" tube & weld some fittings in place. Assembly of top components shown as follows:

September 12 2007:

Yay more goodies have arrived :

Three core 50mm radiator:

2x Flowmaster Super44 mufflers... pure brutality! These sound the sex!!! 8)

And my pride & joy... 2.1/2" X pipe kit for manifold pressure balancing & beautiful sound mixing!!

I can't wait to get back into cutting & welding

Oh, I got these too... these will be awesome for my new extractors:



I'm now building to my original spec, which is equal length runners collecting to 3"... joining to a 3" I.D. flexijoin on each side (wish I had taken pics of those, they look brutal... oh well, will post later), and from there through reducers to 2.1/2" since the exhaust gases will have cooled slightly, then through the X pipe, then through the coby resonators, and out the back through the twin Super 44s.

It's going to have wicked scavenging effect when combined with my cams, and it'll sound like entire worlds being destroyed. Custom dual exhaust system ftw tbh.

Where I'm at now:

About to move into a workshop, so work on the car will undoubtedly finish there.

For now, I need to finish the new engine mounts. The plates are made and sitting in the crossmember at home at the moment. I've gotta weld the tube sections to the crossmember plates, and add the reinforcing gussets. Then hammer the urethane bushes in with the crush tubes. All I have to do then is drill four 16mm holes through the engine side bracket plates, bolt them on, cut them down to suit, and weld them to the plates on the engine... which is presently dummy positioned up.

I also have to chop the bottom of the sump out & weld a plate in to clear the steering rack better, also enabling me to lower the engine by around 25mm. This will effectively give me enough clearance to run a custom strut brace & clear the plenum too _b

Then have to fabricate the new exhaust system, finish making the new rear spacers to move the wheels out to 20mm instead of 8mm.

Umm... reassemble pretty much everything. Touch up the body etc.

Quite a bit of work left, there's plenty of custom **** to go. I'll keep updating in here, good to have a forum where it's more accessible to be viewed. _b

Just a quick update:

The guards have been profiled & finished, now just need a light sand & paint.

Check out these pics, and compare to the above pics when they were standard... brutal flares, Dandan is truly a master of his art

Long rebuild is long!!!

So on friday Brendan texts me asking if I had all the bits for my motor... which I did, except for my heads. Next thing you know, Brendan and GaR are over at my house at 9pm and we're assembling the bottom end of my VH41/45DE stroker motor.

I laid down a plastic sheet on the carpet in the lounge, setup the block on the engine stand, and opened the FSM on the computer to refer to for assembly orders & torque settings.

Pics as follows:

Brendan & I carefully removing remaining silicone sealer from various holes, and tidying up edges of the block:

Deep skirt block with main bearing shells in place:

Careful installation of VH45DE (4.5L) crank, Brendan is reaching up through a cylinder bore & holding the upper thrust washers in place:

Forged steel crank sitting in block:

Brendan wiping some of the oil off the high tensile steel main caps. I had cleaned them and then stored them in bags soaked in fresh engine oil to prevent them rusting:

Careful placement of main cap #1 with bearing shell fitted:

Fitment of the remaining main caps:

6 bolt, crossbolted main cap goodness:

Tapping the caps down to ensure a snug fit:

Fitment & alignment of the main bearing beam. This is a rigid aluminium beam that is bolted down with the main caps, and serves to increase rigidity by spreading the load across the caps, as well as reducing vibration:

Mmmm, overengineered bottom end goodness!

Serious people are serious... just aligning the main bearing beam to ensure it's fitted perfectly... I'm pretty picky about these things:

Bolts 1-10 have an initial torque setting of 39Nm +/- 3, so we set the torque wrench to 40Nm and did them all up in order:

They then have a secondary angle tightening step, which is 60 degrees further with a +5, -0 tolerance, except for bolts 3 & 4 which are shorter and bolt straight down on the cap rather than on the bearing beam, whose angle tightening step is only 40 degrees further with a +5, -0 tolerance. We tightened them all as close to 62.5 degrees & 42.5 degrees respectively, as possible:

Also, bolts 11-20 have an initial torque setting of 29Nm +/- 3, which we did to 30.. then a further angle tightening step of 35 degrees with a +5, -0 tolerance, which we turned to as close to 37.5 as possible.

Fitting the side bolts now that the bottom bolts have been torqued to spec:

Brendan tightening the side bolts to a torque setting of 49Nm +/- 3, so set the torque wrench to 50 for the lot:

Final visual inspection to ensure everything is mint:

Crank torqued in place:

Mmm vibration reducing, ultra rigid crossbraced block reinforcement goodness:

PISTONS FOR DINDINS!!!????!??! Heating up the pistons to 60 degrees so they thermally expand, making the fitment of gudgeon/wrist pins easy:

Preheat oven to 60/70 degrees for ten minutes, then put tray in oven....

Bake for 20 minutes & allow pistons to turn crispy golden brown. Do not turn over:

While the pistons were warming, I inspected each conrod big end cap mating surface & side sliding surfaces for damage... there were some slight sharp edges from the new rod bolts having been fitted, which I carefully filed down flat:

Doing one at a time, I grabbed a warm piston from the oven, installed a circlip in one side of the piston, and slid the oiled gudgeon in from the other side:

Then I pop the small end of the conrod in place (making sure it's the right way around as per the FSM's instructions), and slide the gudgeon on through:

With the other circlip installed & everything double checked, I give it the swing test to ensure it swings smoothly, which it does:

I then got on to fitting the rings, while Brendan chucked his ring compressor on & tightened it up:

Slap a new big end bearing in....

and feed that sucker down the bore, being careful not to scratch it:

Then use the correct technique as seen in professional reconditioning shops around the world, using the handle end of a soft hammer to tap the piston down into the bore:

Gently does it, and the piston gradually slips down into the bore without those pesky rings popping out:

There we go, a piston at the top of a bore:

Meanwhile, GaR was keeping an eye out from underneath to make sure the rod lined up nicely with the big end journal, so the rod bolts wouldn't hit the journal and scratch it:

Torquing rod bolts up... two stage tightening again. 14 to 16Nm, then 38 to 44Nm. We settled on 40Nm, to be on the safe side.. don't want the motor so damn tight that all the coating instantly shreds off the bearings!

Misc WIP shot, Brendan going WTF!

We finished up at about 3:30am, a solid 6 or so hours of rebuilding... of course, taking our time, being careful & double checking everything, and mucking around a wee bit in the process. The engine is tight, but not real tight... and turns smooth.

We did not check bearing clearances with plastigauge because the crank has been checked off & polished by Waikato Engine Reconditioners against the FSM spec sheet, and I'm running STD tolerance bearings, so it all matches up.

I checked crank end float with a vernier caliper... not the most accurate method, but I'm pretty damn good with a vernier.. and the end float seemed to be around 0.13mm, within tolerance. This shouldn't matter either because I am running STD tolerance thrust washers and again, this checked out ok with the reconditioner.

I used NDC bearings, which are a decent quality bearing. I checked around on the internet and read some reviews... people seem to be reasonably happy with NDCs. I couldn't afford to be too fussy as bearings for this motor aren't in plentiful supply.

Piston rings came from Hastings Rings Manufacturing in the USA... they provided me with an excellent price and very quick delivery. AA+++, would buy from them again.

So yeah, my bottom end is now assembled... a JDM spec FGY32 VH41DE base motor, fitted with VH45DE crankshaft and pistons... so effectively a VH45 stroker kit. Not sure this has been done before, if it has, nobody's documented it!

Huge thanks to Brendan & GaR for cruising round and giving me a hand! Brendan brought his oldschool REPCO torque wrench & ring compressor etc which are crucial for rebuilding an engine! I didn't mention GaR much, but he was a huge help with keeping an eye on various things during the process too, and taking great progress pics!

Now on to the next stage!

I got my CMM measurements back, have replicated the valvetrain part positioning, and am presently finishing a few things off to run the simulation (still gotta model the finger rocker arm etc).

Before anyone gives me grief that the conrod or 'crankshaft' etc isn't modeled properly, consider that the detail of what they actually look like is irrelevant for the purpose of the simulation, and I have the important dimensions in place so that they actually behave as they would in the real assembly. Also, I only have to simulate everything in cylinder 1, and then just pattern what I design to each cylinder's cam lobes. Check it out:

Finally now that we have the workshop, work can continue on my car!!!

So I've chopped a step out of the sump enabling me to drop the motor around 25mm lower than before , here I am with the chopped sump bolted to my dummy block + gearbox assembly, about to test fit and check for clearances:

A little bit of pushing, shoving, heaving and grunting on part of Brendan, and GaR sacrificing his elbow against my block for the greater good, and me rushing around like a madman ensuring the driveshaft slid in nicely and the gearbox mounted properly, the dummy assembly sits in place:

Bowl of the sump had a wee bit of interference with a lip on the crossmember, so I had to clamber under there and cut it back by around 8mm to make clearance. I'll seam weld it too, although it doesn't matter as the cut doesn't compromise its strength, being the pressed lip:

Views of the cut I took out of the crossmember lip:



Big chopped step taken out of the sump... I'll get one of the boys from work to tig the new plate for me:

With the engine in position and clearances checked all round (minimal clearance, just how I like it... nice & tight), Brendan chopped me a 699mm piece of 2x4 to slot in between the chassis rails to sit in front of the motor, with the center marked clearly. We used this as a visual basis to check that the engine is centered properly.

So... engine centered? Check.Engine as low as it gets with minimal clearance? Check.Engine isn't tilting to one side? Check.

Last thing to do now is to make cardboard templates of the pieces needed to weld to the plates on the engine, that come down on either side of the crush tube in the mount bush, then cut the steel to shape and weld it in place and voila, brutal engine mounts. _b

Next step will be to rip the sump out and get that welded up with its new shape, and also slap a spare set of heads on the dummy block and begin exhaust header fabrication. Woo, project for the holidays

Girls love a dirty guy, look at that sex appeal!

Quite the busy weekend! I got stuck in and finished my engine mounts, learning a couple of welding tricks in the process... heh

Engine mounted in place with the new mounts. Note: 10mm steel plate engine mounts are excessive overkill, even in a nuclear war, my engine wouldn't fall off. It's like expending an entire 500 round tin of ammo on a 50cal just to kill someone. I wouldn't have it any other way _b







Brutal:

Chassis rails are 700mm apart, note the perfect alignment of the engine's centermark at exactly 350mm

So all up, a productive weekend, I'm very satisfied with progress... great to see something go from concept to reality. Got my welder running mint as even though the 0.6mm wire is a bit too small gauge for the hotter welding temps (worked around this prob tho), and the sump is now ready to be welded up with 4mm plate.

Pics of the finished product... rebuildable mounts with dual M12 studs, and bushes pressed in. From concept:

To reality: