My 450ZX Project

[Chrispy300]

Well I've been hanging around here long enough now and I haven't put my Zed (not Zeeeeee, Zed! ) up yet.

A bit about me first, I'm 22, mechanical engineer, but just quit my job as a engineer for a pump company to finish my engineering degree. I'm from Brisbane, Australia and yes sometimes I do have Kangaroo's in my back yard

I was originally going to put the VH45 into my 1990 J-Spec 2+2 NA manual which I had owned for years and spent a fortune on. Had done most of the suspension, brakes, respray etc.

Piccy!

Ended up picking up a pretty mint '93 NA J-Spec manual slicktop for a bargain with a rooted engine. Had a full C2 Veilside kit (which I sold the front bumper of as it's hideous), blingy 19's, rebuilt 'box, Tein coilovers, big sterio install, retrimed interior plus a ton of other stuff. I sold most of that stuff off as I had better stuff on my old 2+2. I stripped the 2+2 of the goodies and driveline then sold it to a mate who had recently written his Zed off at the racetrack (hit a wall at 90mph or so)

New and old

I pulled all the stickers off that afternoon, stupid ricers...

[Chrispy300]

My first VH was in less than fantastic condition

A bit sludgy

Cleaned it up best I could, but then I broke a bit off the block near the heads from a cross threaded bolt I bought another one off a mate which was in fantastic condition.

New VH

Looks like a brand newy

Reckon the water pump is new or what?

Doing the wiring, big thanks to Nick for his little chart of what goes where...

Loom all done, looks like a OEM... nearly
Modified by Chrispy300 at 1:09 AM 6/16/2009

[Chrispy300]

Now for the post with all the goodies in it

R33 GTR V-Spec Brembo's

Magnaflow Muffs

Truck turbo

Various Suspension bits

Nice oil cooler

Nismo 1.5way LSD

Tein SuperStreets and EDFC

4 point rear roll cage

OEM J-Spec '99 model Recaro's

Work Rezax Roars 17x8 for the front and 17x10 for the rear These are soooo light it's silly!

Also got a 3L surge tank and 2 Bosch 044's.

[Chrispy300]

Details on my engine mounts







I used Z32 front lower control arm bushes along with some pipe and steel I pinched from work

All in



I used one of Wes's adapter plates to run the standard Z32 gearbox. I had to machine down the spigot bush a tad to suit. Down to about 20mm (+ 2thou - 0)





Making my sump:

I just cut the flange off one of my sumps and bolted it to my junk engine. Belted some 2mm sheet steel till it sorta fit



It fits and everything!



It leaked a lot though... I didn't prepare the surfaces very well and I'm not too crash hot with the MIG. Took it to work and got one of the boilies to grind it back and TIG it up nice.

[Chrispy300]

So that about brings us up to now. Another few months and she should be done enough to get registered and driven around

All I've really got left is:

Cooling systemExhaustOil cooler and remote filter mountOil pickup - hopefully sorted this weekendAccusump coz I don't trust my sump and everyone else seems to have troublePut the interior back in

[marlin29311]

Damn! That looks great dude!

[Longfellow]

Looks awesome so far! I like the oil-pan idea.

[Ptotherice]

Very nice build man. Love the Z (Zed ). Can't wait to see more on this.

[Black Trunk]

Nice ZED

[ktzed]

Hey another guy that says ZED! Thought it was just a Canadian thing. Looks awesome so far, keep it up!

[Chrispy300]

Hehe, got the engine started today!

Quick vid

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jALIMTKBqwU

[TurboSauce]

Nice work

[Carl H]

lol, the pre requiste open header video...making progress tho!

[John Dixon]

Hehe, got the engine started today!

Congrats! That's a bit step

[elwesso]

Agreed.. That thing sounds pissed off but it will all come together soon... Now oyu just get to deal with all the issues that regular VH45 people get to deal with!

[OUKNO]

Congrats it'll be nice to see another finished 450zxyou feel like making some more engine mounts and or oil pan, it would put me another foot forward to getting my swap started

[Chrispy300]

Haha, nope. You can make your own sump and mounts

Made my passenger side extractor the other day.



They aren't equal length, well runners 2 and 3 are close, but 1 and 4 are miles off Meh, too hard and not much room down there. Least I can remove these with the engine in place, just have to drop the crossmember to angle them the right way. All in all about 10 hours work I think, not bad for a first attempt

Not looking forward to the drivers side

[Chrispy300]

Drivers side extractor done. What a PITA!



Also cut a hole in a spare damaged bonnet to see how it clears

[hannibal]

Looking good!

Nice work on those headers too

What are you planning to do with the hood? A scoop?

[Chrispy300]

Got my new number plates

[Chrispy300]

Well I've been a bit of a slack bastard with updating this thread so here are some updates!

Still not done, but everything is progressing

You can clean up the standard exhaust header flanged a good bit too. They have a bit of overlap from standard, just hit it with the die grinder to smooth it out.

Banjo fitting and braided clutch line to give a little more room as the standard line was touching the valve covers.



PWR radiator modded to suit electric water pump.



Modded thermostat housing to clear the bonnet



Flywheel spacer. 8mm thick. I lost one of my spacers and had this made. Then I found it the day after I got the spacer made...

Rear subrame, adjustable toe, camber and traction arms. Also installed the Nismo diff, turns out it was a 2 way, guess you can't trust Z1... Also installed a copy GReddy diff cover. Takes 2L now.

Back in. I really wish I cleaned up the subframe before putting it back in

Got a carbon canister off a R33 GTS-T skyline too, HEAPS smaller than the Z32 one.

Shinny bits! 2qrt accusump, and shinny AN fittings!

Nistune installed

GReddy ebay bar. Fit pretty well actually, just needs a little bit of love.

I call this the fail sump I wasn't very specific when talking to the fabricators. They don't normally do car stuff and screwed up 3 times in making it, took 11 weeks too Fabricators are in high demand over here.

Just didn't fit, flange was too wide, didn't clear main bearing studs, no room for pickup, just not right Didn't cost me too much so can't complain. Was really my own fault.

Accusump installed. For some reason my Z came with a metal reo bar. All the J-spec zeds have the fibre reinforced stuff. This looks like a custom job to fit around the horrible Veilside C2 bar that it had. Anyway, I could weld the Accusump brackets to it.

New sump! Made by people who know what they are doing! Yay!





Water pump blanking plate, made out of the fail sump

All I really have left is to make a new pass side mount as the engine sits a little wonky and the steering rack just touches the sump. Bit more toidying up of the wiring, plumb all the oil stuff up and general tidy up. Still have to sort the bonnet out, it has to be ally to pass the mod plate inspection here so that could get expensive...

But should be able to go for a sneaky fang around the block soon

[tmorgan4]

Looks great!!! It's nice to see an other ME student actually building something.

I do have a question for you.....

Where are you hooking your accusump line? I've got one as well and was looking at options to make sure the oil is forced where it's needed and not back into the pan. Some one way valves are used and what not but I'm curious how you were doing yours.

I'll be interested to see how you do the electric water pump as well! The thought has crossed my mind since I could elminate the water pump belt and not have to figure out a tensioner.

[Chrispy300]

Thanks I hate engineers that can't use a spanner or a hammer, my old boss used to make all the young engineers get on the tools in the workshop and on site to get an 'appreciation' of how to do things

For my oil system I have a Permacool filter relocation kit. So adapter plate on the standard filter mount, -10AN pushlock fittings off that, into the filter mounted under the nose panel, out of the filter into a thermatic valve, -8AN outlets to the oil cooler, -10AN return to the motor with a -10AN tee to the accusump.

I hope that makes sense.

I've decided against having a check valve before the accusump. The standard oil pump is a twin rotor PD pump so there is no way all the oil could go back into the sump. Maybe a little will go back towards the pump, but not enough to matter IMO. And the added restriction of the check valve can't be too good.

Restriction all the time is worse that a bit of oil going back to the pump on the odd occasion oil pressure gets low.

Also I got the electronic control valve that opens at 30psi, I'm not too worried about it.

I'll get some more pictures of the electric water pump on the weekend. It's a Davies Craig unit with the electronic controller, so I I don't need to run a thermostat. I have it sitting behind the right hand headlight, feed from the bottom of the rad, outlet to the old thermostat housing, outlet from the heads to the t0op of the radiator.

[tmorgan4]

Good info! Thanks for typing that up and I'll be keeping an eye out for updates.

[BlazingCopperZ]

Thanks I hate engineers that can't use a spanner or a hammer, my old boss used to make all the young engineers get on the tools in the workshop and on site to get an 'appreciation' of how to do things

Same way here, most of the engineer's that I work with (including me) worked part time in the fab shop while still going to school, really helps to design better stuff when you've had to build similar projects.

I was worried about oil drain back from my oil cooler, but the twin rotor pump not draining back easily makes sense. Where are you running the oil hoses to the filter? Not much room to get past the radiator unless it is pretty narrow.

The oilpan looks great, looks so much better to grind the outer welds off the corners. How much does it weigh being made out of aluminum?

[Chrispy300]

The oil lines run between the radiator and the chassis. I have a PWR twinpass radiator from a TT. I got it back in the dark ages when no one made aftermarket radiators for the NA. There is heaps of room.

The mild steel sump was a lot lighter than the ally one. The fabricators who made the ally one made it out of 6mm plate for some reason Like I said, I wasn't too specific. The new one weighs slightly less than the standard one.

[Chrispy300]

Update time, most of this is cut and paste from another forum, so if it doesn't make sense, ask

Some good news, and some PITA news. We'll start with the happy stuff first.

Spaced the drivers side mount and redid the pass side (it was wonky anyway). Now I have clearance for my new sump. It's nowhere near as much as it looks. Probably about 4mm at the centre, and tapers up to about 8mm.





Engine sits nice and level now

Got some rad hoses sorted for the EWP.

I got a little too enthusiastic with the grider removing the stupid little brackets off the hardpipe in the picture. Ended up holing the pipe Don't have a spare so I'll go down to super cheap and see what hoses I can find :p



As I'm too tight to spend $200 on anodised spanners for doing up AN fittings I improvised

Lube the fitting up. The guy at the speedshop said to use ARP assembly lube.



Get your nice hose

Push it in with a lot of grunting and effort.

I actually found the -10AN fittings easier to get in than the -8AN : I'm confident that they will take 300PSI like they say they will. Don't know why Speedflow say not to use them for main oil systems, but Earls, Russel etc don't have a problem with it...

I used this stuff on all the threaded joints as it looks nicer than thread tape.

Oil system, or complicated s***fight as I like to call it, is all piped up now.







I think it might run a little warm in traffic Biggest fan I can fit is a 14". May be able to fit 2 12" if I try real hard.

The stupid metal reo bar sits real low too.

Now we start with the PITA section...

Tried to cut my exhaust gaskets.

Transfered the shape from the flange, cut it out ok with some tin snips but couldn't cut the holes. I tried a ball pein hammer, drill press which wrapped the gasket around the drill, and a dremel with a tungsten carbide bit which ended in pain and blood. I've decided to ring up Nissan tomorrow...

Now for a big PITA problem.

Since I've raised the engine a tad on the pass side it's rotated and now the rocker cover touches the clutch master and is now bending it

I thought I'd cut up my spare rocker cover to see if I could clearance it a touch. Really isn't enough room Cam caps get in the way.





If I can't get a shorter master I can get a Willwood floor mount pedal with master cylinder and reservoir for about $100. Then I can pretend I have a race car :p

Next PITA thing...

I chucked on the old purple people eater bonnet that has the dirty great hole in it. The standard intake piping clashes with the main brace that runs down each side. It's the one part I REALLY don't want to cut. The standard pipe is full of ridges and what not, I will try and source a silicone one and see how that goes.

Can anyone help me with this plug? Near the AFM and CAS.

[SuperHatch]

Can anyone help me with this plug? Near the AFM and CAS.

That goes to engine control sub-harness 3. Since it is a 3-pin plug, your engine came out of a car without active suspension. Those three wires split to two connectors on the sub-harness. One two pin connector would have gone to your power steering pressure switch. The other single wire goes to the oil pressure switch. Neither are necessary for the engine to function.

On a 91 VH and a 94 VH the P/S Pressure switch wires are Black/Red and Green/Red. The third wire, Yellow/White, goes to the Oil Pressure Switch.

The ECU will actually use the P/S Pressure switch signal to adjust idle for steering load at low speeds. The oil pressure switch wire doesn't connect to the ECU at all, it connects directly to the instrument cluster to ground the oil pressure warning circuit. The only thing you are concerned with is at the F51 connection on the engine harness near the ECU. This is the white plug, the oil pressure switch wire ends up here, still the same color (Yellow/White), you can leave it disconnected.

[Chrispy300]

Fantastic, thanks for your help

[Loch Ness]

nice project keep up the impressive work