Block question

[Z32man]

I have been thinking about buying another 300zx and I found one but the owner claims he got an engine swap but has no papers. Is there any way to find the build date in the engine or block? Where and what would it look like?

[Ace2cool]

No, there's no identifying plates on these engines, sorry. I'm assuming you are used to American vehicles of old. I wish there was, but there really isn't. The only real way to identify the ballpark year would be to look at the injectors.

The older models came with the square top injectors, and the newer models came with round. On the TT, the '94 and up came with the newer round injectors. If the injectors are square, it's a '90-'93, and I would be wary, as the '90 model has head warp issues on the passenger side. If the car is OBDI and has round injectors, it's a '94 or a '95. If it's OBDII, then it's a '96+ and doesn't have VVEL (Nissan's variable valve timing).

As far as N/A goes, I they got the newer injectors in '93, due to more frequent failure than the TT. So the same rule applies here, where the newer style round injectors are better to look for, and the VVEL dropped in '96, yielding a (non-published) 20hp drop in the TT and marginally less drop in N/A HP.

Hope all this helped!