e to the de... the official fodojonny write up

[fodojonny]

so here it is kids. the official write up. this will take a little time so please wait to post until it's completely done. I've been plotting this swap since I bought this car in february it was actually a valentines gift from my amazing fiance. it was a 1990 s13 with the original single cam motor. it had the usual timing cover issues. it was bone stock except for a k&n air filter. with only 137,000 original miles it had been sitting for quite some time. I replaced the guides and timing cover and removed all the emission related parts leaving only the necessities. it soon threw a rod.

I've been studying a couple of cars I've been working on at work with the de motors in them. I noticed the frontier looked very similar to the native single cam motor in my s13. the belt and distributor arrangements are identical with the exception of the v belts versus the serpentine belts on the 240. I was also working on a 240 swapping the motor on a 92 because of a blown head gasket. I noticed it had most of the same sensors. so the swap began............

to do it like I did you'll need to start with a clean engine bay. (mostly for making the car easier to work on) I have an electric fan and plan on getting another one with all unnecessary things in the engine bay removed with the exception of the a/c components. so no fan shroud or emission components at all.

you'll need a complete motor and partial wire harness from a 240sx out of a 91 or 92 (because I know the iac plugs are the same as the sohc motor) a 3k350 belt for your new belt arrangement, a coupler for your intake or an after market intake for a 91 or newer 240, solder, heat shrink, miscellaneous hoses and your fluids. nothing else is needed for the swap.

I assume you know how to take the motor out of the car so I'm not going to go in to any great detail about it but remove your single cam motor leaving in your a/c components, p/s pump and lines, the entire wiring harness and the transmission.

you'll have to do some modifying to the p/s lines so nows the time to do it. so bust out your preferred cutting tool and hack off your p/s pressure line as close to the banjo bolt as possible. cut the suction line to fit and loop the two together making it look like this.

now set the single cam next to the dual cam and strip off all the accessory brackets off of the dual cam and take the single cam alternator brackets and a/c bracket and bolt them to the dual cam. everything bolts up and I took lots of pics comparing the two so you can see for yourself.

all your accessories bolt up to the block and move the belt arrangement one groove up from the single cam's pulley arrangement. ( I theorize it's because of the different timing cover/oil pump setup on the different motors, I think if you had a frontier motor you'd be able to use all of your single cam pulleys and belts) so you'll use your old alt belt for your a/c and have to search out a 3k350 belt from an 89 pontiac gran prix (I think that's the car it come from) your belt arrangement for the alt. will be tight. it comes super close to the thermostat housing but doesn't quite touch it. I suggest you keep an eye on the tension of it. here's pics......

so, by now you should have your motor set in the car with all the accessories bolted up starter on and bell housing bolts tightened up. it's time to tackle the wiring of the swap. the only part of the harness you'll really be messing with is the part that connects to the injectors and iac plugs. we'll make a jumper harness for the distributor also. you'll need to wire in your injector connectors color to color to do this swap but the wires all match up so it's super easy..... here's a pic.......

you'll also need to unwrap your engine harness where all the iac plugs are and stretch the wires to reach. like I said before all the plugs are the same so only peeling back the harness insulation and stretching the wires is necessary. here are some pics of the sensors and where I peeled the harness back..............also you'll need to cut the plug from your old single cam dizzy and wire in the plug from the dual cam, it looks like this.........if you do it like this you could always go back to the single cam and all you'd have to do is rewire your injectors. sry I don't have a wiring diagram but I'm going to try to explain the wiring the best I can.......*****there are four wires on each plug the de plug has a B/W, B, B and white wire. the black and white wires are wrapped together in gray insulation. these are your crank and no1 cylinder position sensor wires. leave them be for a second.... the b/w wire is for your e.c.c.s. relay. it's the same color on the engine harness side for the e motor. the b wire is ground and is also the same color on the harness. so solder those two wires together first. now unwrap the other two wires and wire the solid black one to the green and yellow wire and the solid white wire to the solid green wire. *note* the wires on the single cam dizzy plug are different colors than the actual single cam harness******now it's time to ghetto fab your intake like I did or just install your ebay one and you'll need to hook up your throttle cable on the outside pulley like this....and if you ghetto rig your intake it'll look like this......not too shabby if I say so myself..... I used all the parts I had available to me in order to cut cost but it doesn't look so bad or run half bad either for that matter. it runs exactly as the single cam did and I never had to go under the dash to wire anything. my tach works and I'd say I saved a ton of money by not buying any "extra" parts. it looks about stock and should be virtually unnoticeable that I swapped it after I get done doing my fancy tape job. so what do you think kids? did I accomplish something worth talking about? can we get it stickied?!?!

Modified by fodojonny at 11:54 AM 6/2/2008
Modified by fodojonny at 6:42 PM 9/6/2008

[fodojonny]

it's done kids!

[aaronscomp]

does your power steering still work mabe i missed something while reading

[fodojonny]

no, there is no power steering pump in the car at all. it's not bad to drive though with out power steering. I use the alt. to tension the water pump drive belt instead.