When initially choosing my adaptor plate, I narrowed down my options to the Taarks and the Collins adaptors because they both use dowels to centre the plate onto the engine and to centre the gearbox onto the plate. Ultimately, I chose the Collins adaptor for the following reasons:
- It works with a machined bellhousing (the Taarks says not to machine the bellhousing, more on this at the end). This was important because I wanted the gearstick to sit as far forward as possible.
- Collins had driveshaft yokes in stock which I would need to buy anyway so it made it easier for shipping.
I placed an order in late January 2022 and got my order within a week or two. Great! Checked the plate fits the 350z gearbox – perfect fit, and then had my bellhousing shaved 14mm. The plate is around 15.5mm thick which accounts for the removal of the 1.5mm sandwhich plate, so the input shaft is sitting in the factory position. So far, so good.
I then pulled my engine out and here is where the drama began. The plate had 3 bolts align, the rest were a few mm off. It’s a bit difficult to show some of the misalignment, but these two shots are probably the best to see:
I drilled out the M12 bolt holes to ½” which got a few more bolts to fit – enough for me to now mock up the box, but clearly not ideal for every day use.
I thought maybe the dowel placement was a tad off so I pulled these out to see if it would make any difference, I managed to get one more bolt to align at the cost of another.
I got in touch with Collins Adaptors regarding this and after a bit of mucking around to convince him there was a problem, he said he was going to send another plate out for me. But before he sends it out, he wanted to check it against a SR20 in his workshop. Great, no issues with this.
It took Collins Adaptors over a month to organise this engine, and by the time it finally arrive, it turned out to be a FWD SR20VE. He sent me a photo with the plate hanging on by three bolts. If this was done to instil confidence in me that the new plate is a good fit, it failed.
I received the replacement plate a week or so later. I learnt my lesson this time and found a spare block to check against rather than unnecessarily pulling out my engine yet again. Guess what? Still doesn’t fit. Only managed to get two bolts on:
The alignment is close on most of the other holes, but not close enough. Again, it’s hard to capture this on a photo as a slight off-axis can make it appear “ok”, however trust me, the bolt does not want to go in. The story for holes 3 and 4 is the same as the previous plate.
This really gave me no confidence that the dowels are aligned correctly and will centre my input shaft properly. I emailed Collins Adaptors again who responded initially to and then ghosted as soon as I asked for a refund. He will flat out will not reply to me anymore.
Funnily enough I went to review the plate on his website, obviously not giving too many stars due to fitment, and I noticed there was a message “submitted for moderation”. As you may have guessed, he blocked my review. There are no other reviews on this item (and most others) which tells you that either his customers do not put reviews up, or that no one has anything good to say.
Once I realised that the replacement plate was not going to fit, I decided to order the Taarks plate instead. This arrived within a week from Australia. I cannot speak highly enough of this plate. Perfect fit. Excellent finish. Even has a little loop to support your starter motor properly. Honestly having the two plates side by side, you can tell that Taarks went to extra lengths to create a very good product. The plate has had some material removed to reduce weight, the edges are all smooth and it even has the part number lasered into it.
So here it is, Taarks plate on the engine, perfect fit, no hassles. Please save yourself a lot of hassles, headaches and money.
Sooooo, anyone want to buy the two Collins plates? They fit really well haha, never had a problem with them, selling as I decided to go a different route etc etc.
https://www.efisolutions.com.au/gearbox ... 0z-to-sr20
Extra Info:
Taarks plate says it needs a S15 style flywheel and does not work with a shaved bellhousing. As I shaved 14mm off the bellhousing when I was using the Collins Adaptor, I had no other choice but to reuse the shaved bellhousing. The Taarks plate is actually 5mm thinner than the Collins plate (11mm vs 15.5mm respectively). I ended up using the standard sandwhich plate with the Taarks one to create 12.5mm thickness. This brought my shifter even further forward which is great for me. The only issue I ran into was that the input shaft fouled on the pilot bearing boss of the s15 style flywheel. As my input shaft bearing is in my crank anyways, I had my engineer machine this boss off. No issues now. Plenty of spline still for the clutch, the input shaft doesn’t hit the crank etc.
Here’s a little photo of how the gearstick sits in the factory hole:
If anyone is thinking of doing this swap or needs any other information from me, feel free to hit me up!