my vh45 s13 project!

[DJButton]

Saweet!

[SuperHatch]

I was able to get most of the cooling system figured out tho

plumbing the radiator turned out to be simple...to reroute the lower hose i took the stock bracket and trimmed down the mount tab and flipped it upside down, then bolted it to the head using one of the thru cover bolts...worked very well.hoses were plumbed using the ka hoses with minor trimming but i'll need a joiner of sorts for the lower hose as can be seen from the pictures; that or a single piece of hose, would be perfered but hard to find.might be stuck with the stock radiator and stock ac cooling fan for now, a friend has a taurus sho fan which I'll try to mount for ultimate cooling.

front shot:

drivers:

passenger, note the rerouted solid pipe and connection lacking a joiner.

Carl,

Just trying to give you a heads up. There is no way that the stock radiator and AC fan will keep up with the heat produced by this motor on a hot day. I'm speaking from experience.

My cooling setup is as follows... Koyorad AL race radiator and stock AC fan. I had the lower inlet moved to the other side to ease hose routing and to promote cross core flow, which the KA setup does not. I had a bung welded into the radiator for a thermoswitch that turns the fans on at 190 and off at 170. With the car idling in my driveway, hood up, on an 82 degree day, the fan came on at 190 and never shut off. I watched my coolant temp gauge come down to 182ish from 190 and then stay there. Had the hood been closed or if there was a load on the motor I would have been in trouble. Keep in mind, I don't have a heater core at all, so that reduces my cooling capacity somewhat, but with my much larger than stock radiator I was still in trouble. I'm now looking into a custom shroud on the AC fan. If that doesn't work, it'll be a dual fan setup...

There are two major players in cooling system capacity. Fan CFM and fluid volume. My setup has volume but limited CFM. Yours has neither... start saving the pennies!

[gs14racer]

Yea i have to agree, the minimal would be a koyo rad. I had the koyo radiator with dual flexalite fans and the most i ever got to temp wise was 200 after 5 consecutive runs drifting on a 100+ degree day. All the other times my fan would cycle on thermostat between 180-195 on stop and go traffic and city driving. If you have proper ducting it will help alot more as well.

[Carl H]

trust me i know all about cooling issues in a swapped chassis, i own an rb powered car...talk about space constraints.ideally i'd love to run the factory clutch fan but there is no way due to hood clearance, i just purchased a spal fan rated at 2500cfm which with its 16" diamater should cover a large majority of the radiator and keep it cool.I've devised a very simple cooling system fan trigger from parts i know i can scrounge up in the junkyard...so i'll post that methodolgy up when I get the parts together and have them installed.in the grand scheme of things radiator size only affects heat saturation, you can only shed about 10*f of heat thru a radiator at any given time from the time the water enters the inlet till it exits...the overall width and subsequently its capacity only dictates how long it will take before it completely heatsoaks.

if you hadn't read it i sudgest that you take a look...http://home.satx.rr.com/nissan...t.htm

I'll proly use the stock fan/ac fan to get the junk out of the vh's cooling system and make sure its working ok before switching over to a spal fan/aftermarket radiator, as stated in that article and from personal experience i'll be fabbing some airguides for the radiator once it is in and running properly to get the most airflow out of the engine.also keep in mind with that article that the people who wrote it are using large frontmount intercoolers which block a significant ammount of air...so the results are not exactly comprable to the non turbo vh.

[SuperHatch]

in the grand scheme of things radiator size only affects heat saturation, you can only shed about 10*f of heat thru a radiator at any given time from the time the water enters the inlet till it exits...the overall width and subsequently its capacity only dictates how long it will take before it completely heatsoaks.

I completely agree with everything you've said with the exception of this point. While the water pump flowrate vrs RPM curve dictates the radiator inlet and outlet flowrates, the size of the core dictates the flow velocity within the core. If that "x GPM" flow entering the inlet now has twice as many cores to flow through, the velocity within the cores will be halved.

Convective heat transfer increases with velocity, so we reduce the transfer rate out of the coolant into the radiator body by increasing the number of cores. However, since the coolant is flowing slower the air passing over the radiator has more time to cool each part of the fluid. So while larger radiators most certainly increase the total thermal capacity of the cooling system, they can increase efficiency as well.

Edit: I just read that page you linked, and I'm going to refrain from commenting on it.
Modified by SuperHatch at 9:50 AM 8/27/2008

[Carl H]

so i came back from school for labour day weekend to work on the car...didnt get as much done as i wanted but oh well.I have the passenger side header done for the most part at the moment, i need to weld on the vband flange for the 'y' pipe but that shouldnt take too long at all to do; once that is done i'll clean it and hit it with a quick coat of paint to keep it rust free and start work on the drivers.I am building the headers so they can be installed and removed in the car, while i am not using bolts to do so it would make installation easier but i can get them on with the stock studs in place.before anyone bishez and moans that the headers arnt equal length i dont care, if anything it will sound a little weird at idle but under full song should be fine, after all this is just a budget build and my first time taking on a project like this.I may go back and make some new headers later on but if i boost the engine then the ones right now will do just fine.snapped a few pics of the header and its fabrication; not as many as i would have liked but since i was pressed for time i had to work almost non stop.It also appears that even if i wanted to i couldnt use the stock radiator due to several large cracks in the brass/copper material used in the endtanks...again previous moronic owner bent the mount posts instead of removing the bracket by hand...is it that hard to take your time to remove something so easy to remove?

raw materials pile, the exhaust is the super cheap ss autochrome 200$ shipped to your door special...cheaper than buying a muffler and piping to suit with a largeish center resonator and two individual mufflers it should be quite nice.Sounds good on a friends ka so i'd imagine it will do fine on the vh.for what its worth the finish is nice but fitment is absolute crap, piping is in the right place but the hangers are not; still not a hard fix.

here we are with the header just about finished and bolted to the head:

welding up the collector,took a while to fill in the large gap in the middle.

completed header with me looking like a total loon, dad insisted on a smile.

back shot of the header with me looking less than enthused:

for those of you who have kept up with nick's thread (who hasn't?) you'll remember that he sourced out a maxima powersteering pump.Since the stock vh pump will come no where near close to fitting between the s13 frame rails i figured it was worth a go.Low and behold it fits perfectly with about 1/2" clearance to the tc rod bracket...pic is bad but you get the idea.have to swap over the vh mount bracket as well as the ps feed from the resivor.I plan to cut up the pressure tube and weld on a -8 or so an fitting and having a short piece of line made up to link the ps pump to the rack while allowing for some flexibility in the system.definately needs a shorter belt due to the smaller pulley but all in all should work out fine.

thats it for now kids, i'll have pics of the drivers header (the start) tommorow.

[Coolwhip]

Carl, you know better than putting up full body shots of ourself holding car parts on the forums... just asking for a photoshop to pop up now, hahaha.

Manifolds look good man, how much time was put into that one?

[l0nestar]

Dude,

I don't care what any of these other haters have to say, good yob!

Did you get another burn from the welding? Looks good!

[Neejay]

Exhaust will sound good. I have a KA with header, resonated test pipe, and this exhaust and it sounds like sex.

That header looks absolutely great.

[gs14racer]

Headers look good, also good heads up on the maxima pump, now i dont have to cut my tension rod bracket.

[Carl H]

well managed to bust out the drivers side header today and finish up the passenger side (vband flange needed to be welded).I am quite happy with how the drivers header came out, it is compact and has loads of clearance around the steering shaft as well as the frame rail; this is good as a bound steering shaft is not fun under load.unfortunately i did not have time to take pictures of the headers installed due to time constraints (had to drive 3hrs back to school) but they do fit and fit well.on a side note upon closer inspection of the powersteering pumps the two pumps are IDENTICAL except for a single mounting tab mainly the one that is accessed thru the front of the pump.I have not tested this yet but i plan to pull the maxima pump off and pop the pulley off then swap on to the q45 pump for a robustly mounted pump...the maxima pump by its self requires some 'finesse' to get on and does not line up well due to the fact there is no locating bolt...i hope remounting the q45 pump loaded with the maxima's pulley will do the trick.I'll proly weld on a -6 an male (atleast it looks like it will do the trick) to the maxima outlet and use some pushfit hose/an connectors along with a modified hardline to connect the pump to the rack...in theroy it should work...in theroy.anyways here are some shots of the completed headers, the build quality on the drivers is much better than that of the passenger header.I was able to get 90-100% permeation on all welds on the drivers header; now that I've figured out the welder and the proper settings for steel piping.

drivers and passenger from the back of the head forward:

same shot but again from the front:

headers upside down so you can see pipe routing:

and again from the front:

I will install o2 bungs in the 'y' pipe right after each collector they should be far enough apart to give decent readings from each bank while avoiding as much turbulance as possible.I also forgot to install the egr tube pickup so that will have to be done as well...the list is never ending but atleast the end is in sight.hopefuly an update in a week or so.

[Mettler]

Congrats on building your first set of headers! Brings back memories from when I did mine, uneven length also.

I was not all that happy with the exhaust note on mine however, and have gone on to build a new set with even length runners. I recommend using a crossover pipe somewhere in your exhaust system, should hopefully improve the sound.

[Neejay]

You should market those...heh..

[Carl H]

the runners arnt too far apart from eachother and an xpipe will be used to help make it sound somewhat normal...anything is better than the stock crap.

[Carl H]

another short update...got some work done on the car this past weekend, i'd say the car is 85-90% complete as all that is left is to reweld the hangers for the exhaust and fab up a y-pipe to connect the headers to the catback and modify the hood for clearance; after that minor things like running the lowerharness and wiring up the fan to its controls.

one major thing i did was to refit the q45 pump to the block with the maxima pulley on the pump, this is not a direct bolt in affair as the shank on the q45 pump is slightly larger than that of the maxima's so the maxima pulley would not go home on the q45 pump.grinding bit and a little bit of time i was able to enlarge the hole enough so that it slid over the shaft properly and sat home.here is a quick pick of the q45 pump fully bolted to its mount:

since we're on the topic of power steering parts i also fabbed up a line using xrp fittings and hose available from a local speed shop...however any good hydraulic shop should have comprable fittings and hose.I used the q45 pump outlet to allow for some play when positioning the hose as the maxima outlet ran right into the oil filter assembly after the hose was on.hose consists of an m16x1.5 to -6 adaptor (thanks to djbutton), a bump tube m14x1.5 to -6 adaptor, a 90* -6 fitting, and straight -6 fitting. sorry for the poor shots but it was terribly hard to get clear shots.hose was routed between the engine mount plates and the block and wraps around near where the lhs lca bolts to the xmember.

pump outlet:

rack inlet:

ps belt had to be improvised as there was no belt available that would just 'bolt on'...belt is a 5pk1235 that was cut down one rib to fit the 4 groove setup...however it was very hard to get on so i'd sudgest finding a 5pk1245 if possible.Cooling system was also addressed, radiator is a r32 skyline radiator off ebay (140$ shipped!) and a spal high performance 16" fan that pulls 2300cfm, once rigged up to my electromechanical control it will switch on automatically to regulate coolant temps.

all emissions are being retained on this swap except for cats as they are terribly expensive and did not come with my engine; so this means that egr had to be modified to work.I ended up using the stock egr tube and welding a bit of straight on to it and then rotating the header fitting some...only is fed from one cylinder but it should work decently.

The headers have been painted as well as installed for good, however i took a few shots of the headers installed to give an idea of clearance.steering rack does not bind on the header at all.

passenger side:

drivers near the oil filter housing:

drivers near the brake booster, note that the steering shaft DOES NOT touch:

back shot of the block, you can make out the egr tube near the steering shaft.

when fabbing the headers i made the mistake of building them independently without having the passenger bolted to the car...since the heads are slightly offset i tried to correct for this but over estimated resulting in the drivers sitting a bit higher than the passenger and the passenger being a hair bit longer.name of the game i suppose but it will be fine when the y-pipe is made.

brakes have been fully reinstalled...booster and master placement will make changing plugs quite interesting but it clears without any modifications to the firewall, this is a bolt on nissan booster out of a VERY old sentra.brakes feel good using the smaller booster but i suspect that there is some air in my rear lines giving the pedal a slightly spongy feel.

some hoses for the booster vac feed as well as routing of the accelerator cables:

quick shot of the air tube, need to find a maf adaptor of some flavor or i may just cut the tabs off and bolt a filter directly onto the maf body...not sure yet.

overall engine bay shot, fusebox and fan wiring are incomplete as i havent decided yet if i want to bolt the fusebox back in its stock location or to move it to where the battery was.

next time i go home i should have it finished and driveable...the quick turn up the street doesnt count much.

[Neejay]

Sweet. Do you have a side shot of the hood clearance?

[SuperHatch]

Everything's coming along very nicely Carl, keep up the good work...

Couple comments:

Do you have any concerns with overdriving the PS pump as much as you are with a smaller pulley?

With the brake booster, if there are any issues you might want to consider an S14 auto booster, mine fits with no issues.

[Bronze MFP]

in regards to the PS pump, if it is being overdriven, i just had an idea on how to maybe reduce the flow it puts out. I may be completly off base here as i've not seen the internals of the q45 pump, BUT, i remember when disabling the rear HICAS part of the R32 gtst pump on my old swap, that you had to remove a bunch of metal fins inside the pump. well assuming the q45 pump is the same design, and its being terribly overdriven, would tearing apart the pump and removing maybe half or more of the fins be an acceptable way of bringing the pump output back into check?just another hair brained, half-cocked idea from yours truly...

[l0nestar]

Very nice man. I can't wait to see how this thing moves.

[Carl H]

long time and no update, thats what a gas shortage in the southeast will do to you!this week is my fall break and i have used part of it to try and finish up the car...luckily its almost there.the first order of buisness was to finish up the exhaust and piping so that it wouldnt be incredibly loud as only open headers can provide.I fabed up a 'y' pipe to connect the headers to the exhaust and to also form an 'x' pipe to help ballance out the sound that the unequal lenght headers might create.

here is the finished product:

a shot down the vband flange, unfortunately there was no way to expand the piping to reach the full id of the flange, so this will most likely cause some turbulance but i cant imagine enough to make a noticable difference in hp output.

the whole header back exhaust, i had to cut the mounting points off of the exhaust and reweld them for it to fit properly...had poor fitment when i started.

undercar shot of the exhaust, sorry for the poor lighting but was hard to take a picture at the time.

quick shot of what it looks like from the cockpit, fuel pressure gauge is there to diagnose the hesitation issues i was having:

instumentation, stock cluster works perfectly without fail, hud unit its self has failed but the digi speedo works correctly; tachometer has been recalibrated and i offer this service along side my wiring services.

sideprofile:

tail shot:

here are a few shots of the 95% complete engine bay, a few things to clean up here and there but very close to being complete.need to wire wheel the rust off of the battery tray area and seal to prevent more rust as well as clean up the power supply wire.dont mind the mountain dew bottle, have to source out a new catch tank as the one on the car is beyond dead (suprise suprise).





have to source out a new fuel pump, mount the battery properly, and modify the hood and she'll be on the streets!

[Coolwhip]

looks good. it's getting there ;0

[l0nestar]

Yummy!

[LEMHEAD16]

Do you have a wiring diagram you would like to post up?

[Carl H]

sorry, but wiring is not something i distribute...i convert harnesses to support myself while in school and to fund my education.

Do you have a wiring diagram you would like to post up?

[Flamereka]

Glad to see its powered by Mountain dew just like me.

[Carl H]

been a while since the last update but the car DOES run and runs quite well...had to tie up a few loose ends and fix some problems but for the most part IT MOVES!found the root problem of the random cutout...you'll like this one...be sure to check your used fuel tanks before install.

this effectively killed the fuel pump so the only option was a new pump...150$ later i have a new pump in tank and it drives flawlessly.

started on the hood so i wouldnt attract too much attention from local law enforcement.have a bit more to do and need to cut and reweld as it is uneven in places but it does the trick for now.

an overall shot with a shot of her new shoes, r32 gtr wheels woo!:

tail shot, exhaust needs to be realigned tho.

a few engine bay shots, also note the work in progress with stuff here and there...have to cut a hole in the fender well for the cold air extention for the intake.





more to come, videos perhaps this weekend!

[Coolwhip]

way to go keeping it discrete with that hood mod

another clean looking swap in the bag carl, nice job man

[Neejay]

Good job man. I really want some R32 wheels.

How long before a vid?!?

[Yellow4g63]

Nice looking Carl. Get a stock air box on it now lol and it will look like it belongs in there.

[irax]

first section of the bellhousing, most important as it will locate the trans for the rest of the mouting...

trans bolted on awaiting second section, alignment is still good.

second section and modified bellhousing, notice large gaps from differences in bellhousing diamaters.

quick shot of the ringgear and one spot on the trans that needs more grinding for good clearance.

second section welded along with first section:

trans bolted to engine, she's quite snug and fits well...

if your could do this but for a vq35de engine i would you! it would make my life soo much easier