I haven't seen any FSM's online for generation truck but you may keep an eye on eBay as stuff like that pops up every now and then.

As far as performance goes, the VG30 is an incredibly stout engine stock. As far as actually getting power out of it though... the only really easy and good way of doing it would be boost. They respond incredibly well to forced induction.

What kind of performance are you looking for? If you're wanting to keep it normally aspirated it will be very hard to make much more than stock. You would have to do some intensive work (higher compression, more displacement if possible, etc. etc.), which even then will get you minimal gains compared to boost.

What kind of power are you looking for?

If you need any large items shipped like engines or even front clips, I can help you out. Just go to AssociatedShippers.com and get a quote.

You could probably pay someone to make a turbo kit for the truck for half of that price and make more power as well. I've always wanted to turbo a Nissan truck but I've had a hard time finding a good deal on one that I'd like to modify (VG, 5-speed, 4x4).

Here's a guy that swapped in the VG30ET from a Z31. If you can do a swap like that with minimal fabrication (my guess, you would probably only need some exhaust work and maybe a custom motor mount). As this guy has done it, you can contact him and he should be able to provide you with tons of info and how much he spent doing the job. http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2358115

I actually don't know of any other vehicle that used the VG30i. Its kind of strange, I don't even know why Nissan used throttle body injection on the truck. The later trucks went back to the multi-port injection so it was kind of weird. I bet you could swap the ECU, sensors, intake manifold, and fuel system from a VG30E powered vehicle to have a better fuel system to tune with.

As far as getting the best out of it NA though, the only way to get big gains would be to bump the compression or get more displacement or both. Cams will make a good difference but won't add a ton of power.

There is one setup you could do, NA, that is one of the more powerful ones I know of (besides that super expensive 300 hp engine). You actually take a VG33E and put early Q45 pistons in it. You have to bore it out slightly, but you'll get a 3.4 liter VG that can make around 250 hp or so. That would be the cheapest way to make power NA.

I definitely mis-worded what I was trying to say. It would be even less than half. For instance, I turbocharged my Maxima for around $1,500 and could have even done it for less, but that using mostly salvage yard parts which still worked great. I rarely had any issues with the thing and it was a blast to drive... sadly rust killed it.

The beauty of the VG is you don't even really have to build up the internals for a turbo setup unless you're looking for tons of power. There are plenty in the 300-500 whp range on stock internals. They are very, very well built engines. If you're only looking for something up to the 300 hp range, a simple turbo setup would get you there fast and would be lots of fun. You definitely wouldn't regret it. A turbo I can think of off the top of my head that would be good is the T3/T04E 50 trim that you can pick up for around $600 new. That thing should support upwards of 400 hp and costs the same as a set of custom pistons would cost you for a slight overbore on an NA setup.

The downside to the VG and displacement is there isn't much room to bore out. I can't remember the limit off hand but I know for sure you wouldn't even be able to get it up to the 3.3 liters that the VG33 is. I know for sure it will cost you a lot of money to even get you close to 200 hp out of the thing. How much are you looking for though?

Most VG guys are going to tell you the same thing. I can't think of anyone that would recommend trying to build a VG up for NA power unless you have a VG33 and aren't looking for a whole lot of it. That's just one of the downsides of the VG, terrible NA performance potential.

As far as the computer, I would switch over to one of the later Z31 computers and injection system and use a romulator on it. I believe Nistune is probably the best one out right now for tuning the ECU's and that's one of the best routes to actually tune a car, is to use the stock ecu. They are quite powerful when modified, you almost have the same control as an expensive standalone unit (really the only difference is standalone units sometimes offer extra outputs for accessories like boost control or something).

As for checking sensors, you would need the info from a good repair book or the FSM to know for sure how to check it. One thing you could try is to cross reference the sensor part numbers on your truck to see if they are used on any of the other vehicles that have easily accessible information. For instance, we have the 84, 85, and 88 300ZX FSM here and if there are sensors shared between those Z's and your truck we can find out how to test them.

200 hp NA out of a VG30 will probably be pretty difficult to attain without very good cams, heavy port work, most importantly some custom high compression pistons, and probably more. You can't bump the displacement very much so that's not a route you can take with the VG30.

Valve wise there is a company that makes 1mm over sized valves for the VG30, which might help a bit in trying to get some power out of it NA.

The 3.3 liter I was talking about is the VG33E out of the:
1996 - 2000 Nissan Pathfinder
2000 - 2004 Nissan Frontier and Xterra
1999 - 2002 Nissan Quest/Mercury Villager

It is a 3.3 liter version of your VG30. It has differences in the casting of the block to allow a larger bore for the 3.3 liters. With this engine you can get Q45 pistons and more out the block a tiny bit for a 3.4 liter VG33E. This is said to able to provide upwards of 250 hp and would be your absolute best route if you don't want to mess with a turbo setup.

I believe there may be some external differences on the block so there's a chance a you'll need custom motor mounts to get it in there. I've not seen much else info on the VG33 besides the Q45 piston setup. I know there are a few Z31 guys that have swapped the VG33 in place of the VG30 and put their turbo kit on, but I don't know what all was involved in doing that.

I think the biggest thing you'll need to do, regardless of what route you go, is to change out the ECU and fuel injection setup. I'd get one of the newer setups so that the ECU can be easily modified for better ignition and timing curves as well as a bump in the redline of the engine as that will help out with power production with proper mods (mostly cams as they can be designed for top end or low end power).

That should be good for now. I need to get out of here so I'll post more later if need be.

As far as running a carb, I don't believe any VG's ever came stock with a carb. There was one company that did actually modify a VG30i intake manifold to accept a carb for Datsun 510's (VG swaps), but I'm not sure if they're still in business. Their website is still up so you may send them an email about it: http://www.vg30.com/510vg30parts.html

I'd look into changing around your ignition system as well if at all possible. I'm not sure what kind of options are out there as far as simplifying it (like going with a carb) but if you can, this will allow you to up your revs a bit, which will help with power output when you get the necessary breathing mods (like mentioned above).

Tuning is definitely a good idea, however you won't see a whole lot of power on the stock setup as they're generally pretty close to their limit.

Cams, valve springs (if upping redline), headers, carb (if manifold is still available) and you will see a decent gain. Custom, higher compression pistons and you might get around 200 hp or maybe a bit more. As a comparison, the VG30DE is at 222 bhp. It is a quad cam engine with a 10.5:1 compression ratio. Same bore and stroke as the VG30E so if you can make the SOHC head flow as good as the DOHC head and get up to a similar compression ratio, you theoretically should have around the same power. (cam timing, intake and exhaust manifold design will change the actual power output a bit as will the VTC's of the VG30DE, it won't be exact but may get you close)

Alternatively, If you want all of the info for the VG33 3.4 liter setup just let me know. I can find the exact info on how to set it up for the 250 hp setup they did.

As far as other cranks, nothing that I know of.

The beauty of the VG30 is that there are so many available, you can generally get a good one cheaper than you can rebuild the engine you have.

The SOHC VG30 uses 13 bolts per head to clamp to the block while the DOHC VG uses only 8. On top of that major difference, oil and coolant passages will be different so it would be pretty much impossible to put a DOHC head on a SOHC block. Even if you were able to though, the amount of stuff you would need to add overall (intake, exhaust, computer for upgraded fuel system and VTC's) would make it an even worse swap than the VG33 as far as difficulty.

Wiring harnesses are actually very easy to pull out and swap. What's nice about Nissan's harnesses is they keep everything bundled, they're all one piece and only a few wires stray from the bundle for various external controls and feeds (power, ground, fuel pump, etc.)

The easiest way to find out if yours is like that is to look for a big bundle of wires coming out of the firewall. If there is one then that should be your wiring harness.

As far as sensors, you'd just have to compare what you already have to what is one the donor car. I've not been able to look at the stock setup that comes on your truck so I don't know what the differences are.

if your homie really does own a shop just ask him to modify a stock 300zx turbo manifold to fit your truck and put the carb(with a bigger jet) before the turbo should take care of the fuel

go to any junkyard in the country almost gurenteed to have a vg30 block with low miles

machining a vg30 is not for most shops the clearances are VERY small
but if you can find someone worthy, i would go with 8.5 to 1 compression pistons, rods , valve spring and a 3 angle job then 10psi boost with a stock t3

The actual engine harness with be a single bundle of wires that goes from the ECU to the engine with very few actual wires straying from the bundle. Those other wires/bundles you saw were likely for the gauges, radio, climate control, etc. etc. There's a lot of wiring in cars but Nissan is very good about keeping the engine harness separate, especially on the later models like a 95.

As far as finding a VG cheaper than $500, I picked up 2 VG's for $250. One was a parts engine, the other still had the hone marks from the factory on the cylinder walls... it was in perfect shape. Only reason I pulled it apart was that it appeared to have metal head gaskets but turned out to be Felpro gaskets so I pulled those out for some regular head gaskets that Nissan uses from the factory. I ended up putting that engine into an 85 300ZX Turbo since it has the 9:1 compression ratio, which I feel would be much better for street driven car. I wouldn't bother with the lower compression turbo engines. The 9:1 setup will handle more than enough power and by the time you'd break anything you'd have to go with some custom pistons anyway. I love VG's.

Even if you get a VG30E, you can swap everything from your current engine to essentially turn it into a VG30i. VG's are easily 200,000+ mile engines when properly maintained. I know you could easily put over 300k miles on it if you felt like driving that much.

Since you do have access to machining equipment though, if you feel comfortable building up the engine I would most definitely say go for it! That would be awesome to have access to a machine shop, I'd be doing tons of stuff to my engines.

One thing i think everyone is not paying atttention to in my posts is that i am not trying to make a freaking drag machine, or anything super trick, or anything that is fast period. all i want is my TRUCK to have a little more bottom end grunt, im not going for mph or ET or even thinking of trying to run it that way at all. This is my DUNE climber, not racer, not baja 1000 truck, it is a FREAKING DAILY DRIVER THAT I NEED TO HAVE MORE BOTTOM END TORQUE. Essentially i need a stroker kit, as this is the best place to add torque.

Power wise, the reason I asked you in the beginning about how much power you wanted was so that I could get an idea of what you're wanting to do. If you would have started with "slightly more power daily driver" I would have simply told you to do all of the bolt-ons available. With all of your talk about custom internals and such, I was under the impression you were looking for a pretty big increase in power because of the kind of work involved.

If you're only wanting slightly more power for a daily driving setup, here's what you need to do:

Cams - should be the single best upgrade you can make that is available for the VG (JWT makes pretty large cams or you can get some custom grinds from places like Isky cams)
Fuel - since you want to go with a carb, that's already a given. Just be sure to have it tuned as well as you can to match your other mods
Headers/custom manifold/exhaust - small gain but will be good to do to match the cams. Don't go too large or you could make the low end power output decrease due to reduced flow

If you're going to be taking the engine apart you may consider doing some port matching to help overall flow, maybe a bit of polishing. I wouldn't try doing too much to the heads though as if you do a poor port job you can actually decrease the power output.

If you go with a cam company that does different grinds I would actually call them and tell them you want a cam setup for low end power, they should be able to do a custom grind that will benefit the low end of the power range a little more instead of a mild overall power increase.

That's about all you can do that comes to mind. You may consider a lightweight flywheel if its a 5-speed (not sure if one is made that will work with the truck or not though). Generally the lightened flywheels make it slightly more difficult to actually take off but should free up some power all throughout the rev range. If you need even more low end then you might just consider looking for a different rear differential setup, a higher ratio. This will give you much more torque to the wheels. It will hinder your highway driving if you do any as it will be at a higher RPM for any given speed. If you mostly drive in town this shouldn't be an issue.

That should be just about it. You are not going to find a stroker "kit" but if you want to spend the money can have one made... it will not be cheap, it will probably cost more than the truck is even worth to modify a crank... actually getting everything needed for a long stroke setup would probably cost more than nearly all of my cars combined. Not only would the crank have to be modified or one custom made you would also need custom rods and/or pistons... which in that case I would just spend the money to have custom high compression pistons made, which would increase power decently well. Custom pistons are relatively cheap as well, definitely much, much, much cheaper than a stroker setup would ever cost.

Not to sound like an *** or anything, but don't change around anything I say again. I'm trying to help you out and you're not letting me and attacking me. I asked for simple info on what you were looking to get out of the truck and once you started talking about doing a lot of internal work it made it sound like you were wanting a pretty big power increase. Now that I know that's not what you're looking for, the above should be exactly what you need to get exactly what you want so please, no more negative attacks against everything that I'm trying to say to help you out.

Good luck with it!

i was considering a lower gear set, but unfortunetly i would have to do this in the front as well, since it is a 4WD. but if i could pick it up cheap enough that wouldnt be too bad. but if i do that i am going to want to atleast put a new LSD in the rear because i think the clutches are gone in it, if that is even how this system works.

assuming i keep the fuel injection what kind of air flow will be acceptable to the computer/mass air flow sensor? do you know of any bigger valves for these heads as well?

The 4WD will definitely make it a bit more difficult to pull off. I bet they do probably use a regular "R200" style setup up front so you could possibly change the ring and pinion out for a higher ratio but that may not be something you'd want to mess with. I don't know if anyone has done it before so I wouldn't know of all of the work involved in doing that. LSD wise, I bet actually it probably just has an open differential actually. Being 86.5 though I'm pretty confident it will be open as the 300ZX didn't even get LSD until 87. Just to be for sure, one of the easiest ways to check would be to look at the differential cover itself (if it has one, not sure how they did the axles on those trucks). Generally LSD diff. covers will have fins on them for extra cooling while open diff. covers will be smooth. Another way to check is to lift the rear and spin one tire. The other will spin in the same direction with LSD and the opposite direction without.

Air flow wise it should handle the bump in power you're looking for without any issues. The only problem you'll have with that system is when you start reaching the limits of the stock system, which generally would take quite a bit of power (more than can likely be attained with general bolts ons and such).

For bigger valves, Ferrea makes 1mm over sized valves. Those are the only ones I've ever seen and are said to be at the limit of what the stock head can handle size wise. Jury is still out on how much they help out, not much data yet that I've seen.

Kind of a strange coincidence, in this thread http://forums.nicoclub.com/zerothread/308149 the guy is in this race series that actually uses the VG30 with the TBI manifold but with a carb on it. They actually just use some sort of carb adapter to switch from TBI to carb so that may be a pretty decent option for you if you're still thinking about that. You might get in contact with the guy to see where they get the adapters from. I looked over the race series' site to see if they mentioned but couldn't find it so he may know.

As far as the LSD goes i am pretty sure it had one to begin with because i could always spin both tires, peeling out or in the sand. then after a little while of driving it i noticed it would only spin one, in sand or peeling. so i decided to drain the fluid, and to my surprise A LOT of metal came out. Other than one tire not spinning, the Diff works great, not crunch, grind, or anything. So i was just assuming that the clutches had worn out and that was the metal in the bottom. So even if the clutches are worn and i spin one tire should the other spin in the same manner, or should it act as an open diff.

If your truck has the older style ECU then it'll probably be a bit harder to modify compared to the later ECU's... being TBI though they may not use the "later" ECU's at all, I'm not sure there. If the ECU has an EPROM in it then you should be able to tune it using a Romulator or similar. If not, then the carb would definitely be the easier route as you'd have to swap fuel injection systems.

Another potential option could be a piggy back fuel controller, something like the Apex'i S-AFC. The only issue I can see there is whether the MAF would be supported or not. If you could make it work though that would give you enough control for fine tuning the a/f ratio.

That would definitely be interesting if it had an LSD in it. I know I've sometimes got both tires spinning with an open diff. and other times one wheeling it. Anyway... if it does happen to be a clutch LSD then I believe those can be rebuilt and are definitely the preferred LSD to have. The other is a viscous LSD, which can't technically be rebuilt and just has to be replaced (the viscous unit). That's as far as I know differential wise. I haven't got to mess with those much yet.

i just picked up one of these, and it runs like garbage, even after the tune up i just put on it. no power in higher RPM range, and bogs terribley when you go foot to floor.

And yes they make stroker kits for the VG30E, look into Paeco, otherwise it is correct that it will cost more than $500 for this kit. You can also adapt the DOHC stroker kit from JUN but thats an even more ridiculous price.

If displacement is what you want/need... I'd just go VG33.

the only way you see more then 200 hp, is if you turbo it, other wise the $ per hp with be RIDICULOUS

anything less then 200hp will not work in the sand with the stock gearing

maybe a low gear ratio differential would help you with rock crawling and might help you in the sand so you don't bog down

If you wanna stay TBI, maybe is an option...with other appropriate upgrades of course...cause you still need fuel to not go lean with all that NOS. Lean=bad.

MTCookson, whats wrong with Paeco? I haven't heard anything about them. Email me Zdaddy@Vgpowered.com

I could see many backyard mechanics just slapping this stuff in because someone said it was ok. but at the shop i worked at we checked everything that came in, "balanced" or not. And most of the time the "balance" job was horribly off. If it is anything other than that i will definitely reconsider the stroker.

This was posted by a guy on a different Maxima forum I used to be on.

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well as some of you might know.. i am rebuilding my engine in my 91 se max. and i got most of my parts from Paeco industries. i have read many threads involving people wishing they could have that and that for there max when the look at paecos catalogy. well i took it the step further and ordered my cams to be done, new pistons & rods, and new inner&outer vavle springs, and retainers. first off i would like to say that it took much too long for everything to get in. second when i got most of the order i brought them to the machine shop that was doing the work to my engine, they said that the retainers not only were wrong but they were made very very very poorly. they were made out of some really crappy aluminum that would have gotten eaten up not too long after i ran the engine. third the "new" inner&outer valve springs were glass beaded. and they were supposed to be ballpeened but they were glasspeened instead. but other than being peened wrong which infact does make a difference the springs are ok. after i found that the retainers were totally wrong and were pieces of **** and the springs that i got were not peened correctly we called them and told them that there were wrong and i wanted my money back. and when we told him that the springs were peened wrong he told me that i didnt know what i was talking about and said thats what it looks like when they are ballpeened. when the guys at the machine shop told me that they werent ballpeened and there were glasspeened. anyway to make this shorter, i sent the retainers and the guides that i was told i needed back, they called the next day to tell me that i couldnt get my money back i would get store credit and i said i might not ever do business with you again. so to sum it all up they dont sell as good of a product as they say they do and also thier customer service isnt great at all. and on top of it all thier prices suck, they over charge for the pistons and rods. the only thing i havent had a problem with that i got from them have been my cams that i sent to them to get growd. so before ordering anything from them if you deside too, check around and look at good companys first and talk to your local performance machine shop or performance shop and tak to them and see if they can find something for cheaper becuase either way from paeco or not to get internals for the 3rd gens its going to be made custom. its not as expensive as you think as long as you talk to people that know what they are doing. well its long and if you have any questions about good or bad companys when it come to internals PM me or email me.

Do a search though and you'll find quite a few bad responses about them. Here's one I found: http://forums.turbobricks.com/...31224