Hey guys im new here so I need your help, Im leaning toward getting this engine but im not happy about the stock output i see alot of you are sticking on a slightly bigger turbo. How much of this will require tuning? Any one have any advice about bolt on horsepower? im looking to make just about 300hp to the wheels then ill be happy if i have to tune alright oh well i just want to make that kinda power reliably, or is this not the engine for me?

You aren't going to get 300 without a tune, plain and simple.

yeah kinda seemed over optimistic to gain over 100hp without a tune, by the end of my typing out what i was asking you guys i realized it was stupid lol

If you are looking at about 300 whp without effort without a lot of money, it's going to be a 1jz. Install and turn up the boost with a boost controller.

This motor takes effort but it's the same with the other motors. Bigger turbo, bigger injectors, tune, ecu, exhaust and rebuild so it doesn't blow up. You will soon realize that a SR, CA and KA will need to be rebuilt with headgasket and other misc s*** to hit 300 whp safely.

You should be tuning any performance engine....

The CA will need an overhaul from the word go anyway so you might as well put ditching that factory ECU and wiring on the build sheet. It's 24 years old.

As far as rebuild goes are you saying just the gaskets or do I gatta go the full 9 yards for pistons, rings, and journal bearings? Can I safely reach 300whp on stock internals? I'm going to research on how much the injectors exhaust and possibly cams I figured I'll upgrade everything evenly as far as fuel air and spark

ok going off of this link which has been a great help for me to understand everything thats needs to be done

http://www.nicoclub.com/archives/float- ... guide.html

Now how would i go about getting my ECU chipped?
And this SAFC im assuming its a piggy back because it talks about controlling air/fuel mixture so which do you guys recommend to use?

Thanks for the help guys im new to this whole tuning thing originally i wanted to just drop in a engine with power and make it easy but im just exploring my options plus ive always been really curious to see someone fine tune fuel trim. I know there are serious risks involved as far as blowing up the engine especially when it comes to ignition timing so im going to let a pro handle it but it would be nice to get a first hand view on all of this.

DoctorVroom wrote:As far as rebuild goes are you saying just the gaskets or do I gatta go the full 9 yards for pistons, rings, and journal bearings? Can I safely reach 300whp on stock internals? I'm going to research on how much the injectors exhaust and possibly cams I figured I'll upgrade everything evenly as far as fuel air and spark

I apologize if this comes off caustic, but I have been trying to convince people for over a decade to listen to reason with very little success and it's become painfully tedious.

What part of twenty four god-damned year old engine don't you get?

I have never understood where the youth get the impression that a Japanese engine is somehow made of some magical stuff that keeps it from obeying the laws of physics. Go to your local junkyard and look at the 1989 cars in the pile. Take a look at how rusty and leaky and completely ate up they are. Open the hood and look at the engine. Now, imagine taking whatever engine it is and getting it to make 160% of what it put out a quarter of a century ago without completely overhauling it at step one.

Let me say that again QUARTER OF A DAMNED CENTURY!
When the CA18 last appeared in a Japanese home market car George Bush, the dad not the retarded son, was inaugurated the 41st president, Miami Vice was on its fifth season, Michael Jackson was on his second nose and Russia was still communist. What machine from that era is still working anywhere near the level it was back then, precious few. You want an 89' TV? How about a cup of joe from this 89' Mr. Coffee?

8 bit ECUs were cutting edge, Nissan still thought that secondary butterfly intake would work and you were pimptastic if you had a turbo timer, a boost gauge and a manual turbo blower upper, er, I mean "boost controller."

The CA18 at this point in time is at best "vintage?" more realistically ancient. It's not that the design suddenly doesn't work, it's just that it might as well be a flat head Ford V8. Hell, those probably have an equivalent, possibly better aftermarket support structure than the little mighty mite.

The knowledge base consists mainly of goofy ****s like Dee, Ryan, possibly me and folks like us who happened to be in the right place at the (right?) time to catch this short-lived wave with the CA18 and have some experience with it and a pile of period parts that are as common as hen's teeth now.

The good news for a new guy is, we are happy to help with what we know, maybe even some bits and pieces, but you are coming into a niche in the Nissan engine pantheon if you opt for a CA18 and you need to at minimum get a serious cold shower. This is a complex machine that has been beat on, abused, poorly maintained, forcibly yanked out of a crusty shell, left outside in the weather, tossed into a container and sent across the ocean and "tuned" by people who likely don't know a damned thing about anything, but have a subscription to Import Tuner, a hammer and no fear.

That is not necessarily a non-starter, but like any significant undertaking you have to know what you are getting into, be honest with yourself, plan, budget, prepare contingencies and be ready for everything that can go wrong to go wrong and at the worst time.

300HP on a CA18, not hard at all, but you need to take it seriously and do it right if you want anything more than a claymore mine with one full throttle run left in it before it pukes its rods up.

At that power level it's pretty basic.

IMO the rods are the only irredeemable weakness with the design. Nissan made sure to give the SR20 better bolts which is why stock CA18 rods fail, the bolts stretch. Some would say aftermarket bolts in reused rods. I am against that, it's a bandaid on an unknown commodity. For the cost of properly prepping some old stock rods you could just buy some new aftermarket rods and worry about other things.

New factory cast pistons are fine, but you could go forged for extra insurance. Have the engine block hot tanked and checked for cracks. Have the deck checked for trueness and have it fly cut if needed. Have it bored the minimum required to get a straight cylinder and if you can get it done with a torque plate it's worth the additional cost. The block is the foundation for everything else so don't half-a** it. Same thing with the head, have it properly cleaned, not some engine cleaner and a garden hose. Have it professionally cleaned. CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN. It only takes a small chunk of **** plugging an oil passage to destroy all your hard work. Buy a new stock oil and water pump. Just do it.

A stock head gasket is tough. The fancy ones are not really necessary at these power levels. It's not the boost that blows gaskets, it's detonation and that's killing your pistons too so don't let that happen. It won't because you are going to man up and take care of your fuel delivery. That means fresh large injectors, I'd skip right over 550s and snatch up some 720s just so I wouldn't have to go back in there, but some professionally cleaned up 550s will cover you. A simple adjustable regulator on the facory rail is all you need with a good high flow in tank pump.

In your head, good, cleaned stock cams and lifters will be fine. If you have to buy new lifters, you might as well throw some new cams in there. Anything in the 256-264 range with mild lift will cover anything you could ever want to do, will not require solid lifters or exotic valve springs and will deliver the power where a street car lives. Dyno queens are fun to watch, but no fun around town. Get new springs and collets, cleaned up used retainers are fine. You want to concentrate on making sure your valves are opening and closing in a controlled fashion (springs) and not dropping into the chamber (collets.) Get some adjustable cam gears. It seems racy and all, but you are going to get them so you cam degree the cams straight up. Any head or block shaving or thicker gaskets is going to throw the cam phasing out of whack. You really should take the time to get the cams degreed in. Being able to say you "degreed a cam" will get you some cred with the old farts too and god status among the fanbois.

I'm going to need you to come up off that wallet again. The factory engine harness and ECU simply have to go. Standalones aren't cheap, but trying to stack piggybacks on ancient, crusty, out of date and slow electronics to run your fresh new engine is penny wise pound foolish. When you get confident adjusting any parameter you want to squeeze more power out of your simple rebuild while others are still d!ck around with piggybacks you will thank me. You will need some meters to watch the important stuff. Minimum:

1. Boost gauge.
2. Wideband air/fuel
3. Fuel pressure
4. Oil pressure

The factory water temp is adequate, oil temp is nice to have, but not absolutely required and exhaust temp tracks for the most part with your mixture which is what the air/fuel meter is watching or too much cam overlap which you won't have because you didn't buy a set of 272 10.5s so people would think you were cool.

Stock intake and exhaust manifolds are more than capable. clean them up and replace the exhaust studs and spring washers on the head. Hang a nice little T28 on there with a full exhaust system from the turbo back.

Be sure to cool that compressed air down with a good intercooler. Bigger is not always better and a smaller higher quality core will be better than some Egay hugetastic chinese knockoff. Buy quality in everything you get and you won't have any regrets. You will need to upgrade your radiator too. Again, old and crusty, get a newer better one and keep your cool.

A quality aftermarket clutch is fine, save the twin plates and three puck metal clutches for the big dawgs and the posers.

i appreciate the advice but please do not confuse me for some guy that thinks you put on a airfilter and get racing magic, granted some of my questions were heinous but please dont think im some 16 year old with their first car. Ive worked on cars for 6 years now, most of it has been dealership diagnostic and repair so im not new to this but ive never built a engine for power.

Some people say you can apply 300hp to a KA on a stock bottom end and be fine thats why im asking these questions, i do get its a 20 year old engine that the first owner bought knowing this is a sports car so im going to have fun with it then afterwards it was pulled out of a car by a guy that gets paid minimum wage and sits around waiting to be sold. Im trying to acquire all the info i can before i start this build so im planning and budgeting idk what this thing is capable of thats why im asking you guys and honestly im glad this forum to grumpy old guys that know what theyre talking about rather than kids that throw things together with haste and speculation.

Im not going to go with bigger cams if i dont have to i wouldnt think i'd need to for just 300hp, so as far as valvetrain is concerned ill go with the springs and retainers and i might get the adjustable cam gears although fine tuning cam angle will take some serious research to know what im doing i dont know much about them but i cant imagine can retard my valves into my pistons but i can at least adjust overlap

looking at everything you advised me to do im guestimating this whole process at best would end up costing me about $5000 and thats a big maybe. Seems like what i gatta do is

Standalone
oil/water pumps
tanked and fluxed
Rebuild kit with rods (saw one for $1500 last night)
Ive got a radiator already
intercooler/turbo
exhaust
Injectors/pump/FPR
clutch
Valve springs/retainers/cam adjuster

Stock CA in good shape with a GT2860rs, injectors and a suitable chip will give you 300hp you should not need to worry about.
Make sure to keep track of A/F and temperatures.

What's wrong with 8bit engine management? My MegaSquirt is 8bit...

Mike, I think your post should be stickied. Definitely something for all to see.

300whp is definitely doable, even on a basically stock motor. The rod bolts are the weak point, but I believe ARPs are a good solution for the money (depending on who you have the work done by, my machine shop installed the bolts and measured/resized the big ends for $40 for all 4 rods). Some say they the stockers are just fine, as long as you're making power by boost, rather than by revs (revs is what puts stress on rod bolts). If it were me, I'd go with ARP rod bolts, head studs, standard gasket kit, new water and oil pumps, timing kit (basically an OE master rebuild kit, nothing fancy, not even rings or bearings), plus some Supertech pistons. Then all the good quality bolt-on stuff before mentioned.

But, this is just me, and I like CAs. CAs can make great power, but you have to be committed to it. Personally, I think the only reason a person should go with a CA is because they like the motor (for it's design, uniqueness, or whatever else may float your boat). If you're just wanting to make the power and don't care which way, the CA may not be for you. A boosted KA or a JZ as previously mentioned could be much more viable routes. Cost-effectiveness may come down to opinion, but no matter what, reliable power is always going to hurt your wallet. It all depends on what you want to be hurting your wallet. Choose the route that makes you happy, but do it properly and we'll help you along the way (provided you go CA, otherwise GTFO, lol )

BTW:

DoctorVroom wrote:im looking to make just about 300hp to the wheels then ill be happy

I call BS. Enough is never enough

The post themadscientist made is excellent advice.
Follow it as it is spot on.

In saying this, perform a compression test on your CA to get an idea of its internal sealing capabilities.

TMS is right about the rebuild. You CAN'T get an imported engine that is going to be ready for 300 hp anymore. I know it sucks, but it's the truth. You HAVE to plan on a rebuild for that power level. It's completely possible to do this with stock internals. Issues are that once you tear it apart, you MAY find the cylinder are out of round or too worn to re-use the stock pistons. If this is the case, you will likely have to get forged pistons because you can't get cast CA18DET pistons anymore. As for the rods, I am running stock rods w/ARP rod bolts. Myself and other have done this and the rods needed NO modification. There is a risk that the rods can become out of round when replacing the rod bolts, and should be checked regardless. That being said, my engine saw 8K rpm countless times on stock rods and stock rod bolts, but lightweight forged pistons.

The stock EMS is more than capable of supporting 300 whp as well. ROM tunes are still possible, and Nistune is a VERY common EMS solution.

If you're still on the fence about this, I'd suggest go KA24DE turbo. Same power for the same money, but with more torque, response, and street drivability, and less stress on components. (Not that 300whp would kill any kind of properly built engine.)

The people here, I think, are either drawn to the exoticness and underdogness of the engine, or are just stuck with it (Euro guys). Or both. If you have none of those afflictions, and still have the freedom of choice, I'd choose something else. To be clear, I'm not bashing on the CA, I'd just like to help you make an informed decision.

TMS almost makes me regret even buying mine lol kind of made me sad

Damn, I missed this post? TMS put the smack down asnd told like it is. And definitely spoken like a true "VET" of the game and put into such detail, that not even the novices could over-look it. I couldn't have said it better myself. Big "Ups" to the moderation team; especially TMS on this topic

TMS's story pretty much pertains to ANY engine you plan to make some serious power with, not just the CA or SR or RB engines.