KAT Redeaux

[Kaleo55]

Here's a tale of woe from me. As some of you may know, I have spent considerable time and expense on developing and building my baby. Well for the past 8 weeks or for the most part of teh summer my baby has been out of it, after I had just gotten it to a point where I could really appreciate it. Here is a tale with a message to many of you and hopefully a lesson we can learn by.

You can follow the build on this forum and others that document the development of my KAT project. A painstaking process of the acquisition and collecting of all the parts and components needed to build and complete the project. And, finally the process of building, installation and assembling of my Project Cayenne. With the amazing help of Willi and Mike at JDM Motorsportz, I was able to move this thing forward and assemble a respectable KAT.

My woes began, near the end of May, and a short time after the completion of Project Cayenne. It was to be the debut or unveiling of the car at the Nicofest in Carlisle, PA. Apparently, the trip out to Carlisle from Philadelphia (about 125 miles), proved too much for the upper timing chain guide on the newly built KA. Here's the rub, first off, the upper timing guide has been notorious for breaking along with the upper chain tensioner. In fact, Nissan has revised it's design guide and does include the use of either the top guide or tensioner in it's current rebuild kit.

The old axiom "you get what you pay for" comes into play here. I had in my acquisition of parts, bought a no-name, Chinese brand timing kit to fill the job. Big mistake! The inferior product as was proved, used cheap plastic composite guides and tensioners. Any way the upper timing chain guide and tensioner had indeed been broken. We should have known better as the engine had been making that notorious marble-shaking noise stemming from the upper timing cover.

After getting the car back to Philly, a quick examination of the upper timing area revealed that upper guide had indeed broken. We removed the remnants of the upper guide and reassembled the timing cover. But the damage had been done.

Essentially driving a boosted KA with parts of the upper timing guide rattling around the lower timing mechanism and housing was not a good thing. The debris from the upper timing guide had basically caused the lower guide and tensioner to disintegrate become completely loose. This in effect allowed the lower chain to become a chain-saw, cutting through the thermal wall of main coolant vein. Thermal coolant was now able to penetrate the main engine core and contaminate oil lines. To say the motor was running hot is a bit of an understatement.







The motor was sent back to Jeff Beezer at the Engine Shop, torn down and $2,100.00, and three weeks later sent back to JDM Motorosportz into the loving if not frustrated hands of Willi "San" to be reinstalled al over. Seriously, the new motor had to be over overhauled to such an extent it was pretty much like starting over. Short of replacing the AMS rods and Wiseco pistons, I needed to order new rings, Cometic head gasket, Clevite mains, new gaskets, valve guides and shims, bushings and of course, complete timing kit, chains, gears, tensioners, oil pump, water pump, all Nissan OEM of course! Jeff ended up doing another valve job on the head and resurfacing, re-hone the block, and micro-polishing the crank. I also ended up replacing the the twin Flex-a-lite electric fans with a 16" Maradyne unit, since the FAL's somehow were damaged and vibrating violently. One more expensive item bites the dust.





All this, put me out of my Baby and into two different "Enterprise" rent-a-cars for 8 and a half weeks. Did somebody say SR swap?

Bottom line, a new set of Greddy "Warning" gauges to keep me informed and whole lot of grief, time and money to get me and my baby back on the road. After a year and half of what could be called a frustrating build up, a great deal of attention to detail and tender loving care applied by Willi and Mike at JDM Motorsportz, the car is again on the road.

We're gonna break her in a bit, get her back on dyno for another tune soon. I hope to see some you folks at the upcoming Wheel Concepts Showdown, at the New Jersey Convention Center in Edison, NJ. We'll be showing along with Five Stars Truck. Biggest show of the Summer and at the IFX Summer BBQ, if not at the weekly meets at Ikea in South Philly.

Kaleo

[Florida240sx]

Instead of rental car why didn't you just pick up another car? Or how much was rental a day?

[WDRacing]

WOW man...that is definitly a story that must have sucked to type out. Chinese parts are great for certain things...that is definitly not one of them.

Hopefully things go FAR better this go around.

WD

[480sx]

Apparently, from the looks of it, the timing chain and the cover dont get along to well.

Damn sorry to see that, some bad luck man. Hopefully your new long block will have a longer life span ^^.

[NateDogg]

Your story brings me some motivation and appreciation for the perseverance it takes to achieve success after learning the hard way.

I just put in a second motor and for the 4th time my oil pan gasket is leaking. I guess I'm getting good at it by now. Did you use a silicon or cork oil pan gasket on your build?

Best of luck man.Nate

[WDRacing]

I've done a combo of different methods, ranging from no gasket and RTV to rtv on both sides of the gasket. If the pan is straight, then a gasket with rtv on both sides should definitely do the trick. Not to much RTV though, just enough to get the "squish" effect out the sides a little.

[Florida240sx]

I do rtv only on my oil pans. No problems here. Now if I can find otu why my car doesn't "catch"

[TheOne]

that sux, but ya live and learn.

btw i always use rtv for oil pan gasket, in all 3-4 stock non-boosted engines i've swapped in my 240:(.

[Chezedik]

Right Stuff Gray, nuff said.

[Kaleo55]

I had Jeff rebuild the motor up finished long block and he apparently used rtv as well on the pan. I thought I had a leak in the pan, but it turned out it was the oil pressure port was a bit loose. One becomes hyper sensitive to any and all wet spots anywhere around the block. So far so good. Still got a few issues to deal with that always annoying, needs a new rack and pinion, AC hose has a leak, driver's side switch need replacement. On and on it goes... car is loud as hell but damn it is still fun to drive!