VG30DETT to SRZ32 Build thread.

[bardabe]

I'm not very active on the forums, being that the new gig i landed keeps me extremely busy and any free time i had i spent it helping out a few friends with their projects that kept me pretty busy. over the past year and a half I've managed to build a couple of Evo X's (most recent being a Borgwarner 83/75 Evo X GSR) a WRX, a Legacy GT, 3 RB25 S14's one SR20 S14, Franklin's SR20 Z32 and a 2JZ S14. & I've finally gotten depressed enough to take the old girl out of storage and get working on her.





Long story short after my recent suspension work in October 2013 (Full NA Subframe, replaced all Bushings, Ball Joints, Control Arms, upgraded to ARP Wheel studs, & got a Custom set of Koni Coilovers.) my car started to misfire at idle on cold starts & get hot in traffic. leak down test showed a leaking head gasket not bad enough to mix any of the oil with coolant but blown regardless so i parked it.

I finally got around to start taking her apart earlier this year, I had an S15 SR20 Block & Cylinder head laying around that i was originally planing on using (mainly due to how much i liked the swap on Franklin's car i did a few years ago http://www.300zxclub.com/showthread.php?t=215442 ) but I had been influenced towards the JZ engines & the VQ engines by other friends of the industry. I was influenced into the VVTi 2JZGTE due to my love of sound and torque of Inline 6 cylinder engines. I didn't plan to make more than 600RWHP as keeping this car in a street trim is priority. so no crazy roll cages, gutted interiors or anything of the sort is in the plans.












I bought a CD0009 Transmission from my friend Steven (Mista Lee on the Forum) and picked up the VVTi 2JZ from the warehouse this last Saturday. I cleaned her up and did a compression test. got a solid 160-165 across the board. I ordered a CD0009 Adapter & clutch from Maverick Motorsports so i can start making mounts and go to town.





I ordered a borgwarner S360 Turbo and mated it to a HKS Replica manifold (for the time being) to start mocking things up.







after placing the engine in the bay and realizing how much crossmember i wouldn't have and how much re-engineering i had to do i pretty much parted out the entire 2JZ build sheet and kinda bought an SR.



Then this weekend I had progress,
I got to pull the engine out of the clip and sold the transmission. I still need to get rid of the five lug, the RHD stuff, Speed sensor & basically everything else from the clip that i do not need for the swap. while that happens I put the SR on the stand and took it apart. I stripped it of all components this past weekend and took the head off. from initial looks i was a bit skeptic since the engine oil looked dirty. I have never had a bad engine from my supplier so I took the head off and just as expected the cylinder-walls pretty much look perfect. I was able to clean the top of the pistons with a simple spray of parts wash and a rag, only one wipe and the pistons were pretty spotless. since I'm re-sealing the engine and changing out all the gaskets I replaced the factory composite gasket with a 1.5MM Tomei head gasket & brand new Nissan head bolts. I also re-sealed the front timing cover / oil pump, I still need to re-paint the valve cover so i can finish sealing the engine so I can clean the outside of all the old leaks & that weird white calcium build up.

















I've been stashing parts for quite sometime now, I should have my bell-housing back from animal auto sometime this week. so I can mate my transmission to the block and begin fabricating motor mounts. just today my ATS Clutch arrived from Japan. (thank you Yasu!) so I'm super stoked for that, i don't think I'll ever have to worry for a slipping clutch. thanks to George over at Maverick Motorsports for the smooth exchange in adapter kits I won't ever have to worry about breaking a transmission thanks to his SR20 to Z33 adapter. I hope to this week finish bleeding the lifters & get the valve train all back together. I still need to make up my mind on what I want to do with the valve cover, ultimately I'd like to send my Valve cover to MCR Factory when i forge the engine & do the top mount turbo but i need to figure out something for now.

[bardabe]

This Last weekend I was able to make the hangers for my exhaust, I also took the apexi gauges and installed them. I re-loomed the apexi harness with milspec loom for a cleaner look through the windshield and ran all the wiring. I also had a chance to mock up the Intercooler mounting and I'm really thinking of making an aluminum bumper beam with tabs for the IC. Not sure how traditional I want to do the mounting on that.











-Juan


Update January 11, 2016

Friday night i got my transmission case back from the CNC. Saturday morning I wasted no time and put the trans back together 100%, bolted the adapter plate to the engine and got started on making mounts. I can't believe it actually look me two days to make up my mind on the design and pull it off but over all I am very happy with the way the engine fits and the mounts came out.





















All i have to do now is trace where exactly the oil pan will hit my x-member and then I can pull the motor out so I can finish re-sealing everything. once the engine is put together i plan to hit it with my friends steam cleaner, get it all nice and prettied up and drop her back in for good. so I can fab up the charge piping, Downpipe, Intake & wire it up.

good night folks!!

[bardabe]

So Over the past two weeks I've had some updates. shortly after making the motor mounts the following week i put the lower sump on the car and trimmed my cross member where i had marked the flange at. I also installed the manifolds and turbo back on the engine nothing i thought was worth sharing really. I did however run into a couple of issues that pushed my progress back by one weekend.

first issue was that the clutch release bearing wasn't sitting close enough to the pressure plate so the clutch fork was traveling a good 65% of the travel without touching the pressure plate at all. I only had 13-14mm of travel left before the clutch fork would touch the other end of the window opening. unfortunately the slave cylinder was going to run out of travel well before that. so i had to do lots of research and come up with a solution. (room for link to tech thread here)

anyway, so between all that drama i got my Advans back from powder coating from my friend Edgar. I really can't wait to see the car on the ground with the engine in place





anyway,

so this weekend i put the adapter plate on and finalized the install of the ATS twin disk (had to remove it to measure overall height from the flywheel surface).



such a shame that some of the coolest parts of an engine you can't see



So this is exactly how much of the original material i had to remove from the cross member to fit an SR20 with a CD0009 transmission into a Z32. (i think it's about the same if you retain the Z32 transmission and x member. MAYBE a little more but i forget how much i took out on franklin's car.



I didn't TIG the cross member because I got lazy and didn't feel like doing the additional prep work. plus i need to work on my MIG skills so what a better place to practice than your own car. anyway, in this picture you can also see my aluminum fuel lines. these are temporary as i only plan to run the car on 91 & 100 octane for the time being. no E85 until the big fuel system upgrades & turbo upgrade. at that point I'll switch to Stainless steel hardline & Ethanol compatible braided line.

Final engine fitment using Cusco Engine mounts for S14/15 and my custom mount brackets.







I'm pretty stoked for the amount of room that i have to make a proper downpipe for the top mount in the future. unfortunately i will not be top mount for a while so i fabbed up this 3" bellmouth for the T28







Also Aaron over at Driftmotion came through for me and got my custom driveshaft made. this is the first Aluminum driveshaft I've ever had on my own car lol. all of the years building cars for customers and i never bought one of my own so I'm pretty stoked to have it.



throughout the week I plan to make the mid-pipe for the car to link my Downpipe to the Tomei Exhaust and fab up the plate for my gear shifter. once that is done I can finally install the driveshaft and be done crawling around the floor like a peasant.

[bardabe]

So Monday night i finished my downpipe, I finished it around Midnight (little after) and being that i have to be up for work at 5:30AM i didn't take time to take pics. so here are some pics i took yesterday.







I forgot to drill & tap my exhaust manifold for my EGT probe so before i permanently install that with the Tomei Ti i have to pull the manifold & turbo out to handle the drilling & tapping. I did get some progress on my shifter bracket last night though I should have pics of that sometime tonight or tomorrow.

[bardabe]

[CENTER] Blah Blah Blah SR20 Blah blah VVL [/CENTER]
so the entire first quarter of this year has been pretty nuts, finished a few loose ends in my garage. designed a torque plate, fixed a few more cars, tuned Pacotaco's Car. life is good but I've been keeping the Z in the back burner and it's time to bring her back to life.






I took the cylinder head off, put the straight edge on it & well it's not a core i would want to use to make a ton of HP. I could probably sell it to someone on here that wants to deck it and keep going but even so i would feel bad it's warped pretty badly so I'm going to keep it as a JIG for S14.3 rocker covers, good side money and my quality is hard to beat.



Anyway, I've decided that with the S14 head so far gone I would just say screw it and do the proper build. I'll be using JE 86.5MM VVL Pistons, K1 Rods, & this super sweet JE Head Gasket. I've used the JE head gaskets on subarus upwards of 700WHP without issues so i know it'll be a solid HG to use on the SR20, added bonus? it has all three holes so using the FWD oil pump won't need HG modification like Tomei & Apexi.




I have more goodies on the way but I'll keep updates coming the next few updates will basically be a proper write up on how I'm doing my RWD VVL Swap. so I'll leave this here for now. P.S. I also purchased an Apexi Water temp gauge lol