inline6

Bryan will need to come up with a plan. My understanding is that the furnace brazing process heats the entire block to a specific temperature and that the brazing material, wherever it has been applied, will flow. We have discussed creating "stepped" liners. These would have machined steps where they seat in both the top and bottom decks. For the brazing, there is an ideal fit - the liners cannot be too tight or too loose. And of course the entire block will have to be remachined after the furnace...

Here is what I have: I had two complete, but I used one half of one of these. These are original nissan parts, but they may be a supercession of the original mats and not match 100%. My car never came with factory jute on the floors, so I don't know. Here is a link to a dealer: Let me know if you are interested in these.

I have an Electromotive Tec3r that I am planning to use. My plans are for a normally aspirated engine with a redline of 8000 to 8500. We'll have to see what the head will flow, but I'd like to see 400 hp. I am not well versed in fuel injection yet, but I think single injectors should be fine for my application. If we can find someone to do the block prep and furnace brazing work, I would think they would be more willing to do two than just one.

Lots of research and planning but not terribly far into the execution. I've settled on an N42 head which has had all of valve seats removed and it has had the chambers welded up. There is a lot more work to do on the head. We are working now to determine what to do for the valve train. We're wanting to go with valves with 7 mm stems and beehive springs. Right now, we're researching what spring retainers will work with the nissan keepers (collets). We're looking at machining the diameter down on some of the chrome-moly Schneider ones. We've got the LD28 block bored to 89 mm, but have to figure out how to proceed with liner design and have yet to source someone to make the liners and someone who can do the furnace brazing operation. We also plan to do Kolene® Kastech® Electrolytic to the block before brazing the liners into place. The next step Bryan will do is exploratory surgery on the bores of the LD28 to learn what we can about the bottom and top decks. I am not terribly concerned about pace of this project as we are building a 3.0 liter to replace the engine that was in the car for now. The head for that engine is only needing minor work. And the N42 block we are using for that engine has had all of the boring and other necessary machine work completed. I hope to have that engine in the car in March or April. Garrett

I believe I have some of the factory stuff... nos. Let me get a pic and get back to you.

A perfect fit for me - 5' 9.5" and 195 lb with 34 inch waist. Very comfortable - seems like they were probably made by creating some molds from form fitting foam. With L shaped mounting brackets, they weigh 9.2 lbs as best as my scale will measure. Seats by themselves are just under 7 lbs. I also got the fabric/fiberglass inserts you see in one pic and some sliders. More weight - but these aren't for a competition car.

Yay! My new seats arrived.

We'll need to go bigger with the diesel block, yes. We didn't want the guy doing the boring to do more without Bryan (my engine builder) being there... and timing didn't work out right. The guy that did the boring took more than 8 months to get to it, so we were happy just to get this far. Bryan will do some manual cutting and examination to see exactly what we have to work with - the lower and upper decks. Liners will be custom designed, and may include a step, so we are wanting to move slowly rather than bore out another .120" and just go with what is left. The N42 will be run as is (after finish honing). After sonic testing, we offset bored three of the cylinders - (4, 5, and 6) .010" for wall thickness reasons leaving the minimal thickness (one spot in cylinder 4) at .170". It seems this N42 would be good for 90 mm... if .150" walls would be sufficient for normal aspiration. The N42 engine will be the temporary replacement in the car until the 3.5 L engine build has been completed.

Here are the bored blocks. N42 on the left, V07 on the right. The guy that did the boring said you could hear that the diesel block was thin while machining the bores. Both blocks were machined to 89 mm (actually about .004" under that). No break through to water on the diesel. Still looking for a place that can do the furnace brazing. Thought we got lucky with this place only about 30 minutes from Bryan, my engine builder, but they are shutting down and in the middle of moving the equipment to SC.

Finally got the LD block (V07 casting) bored to 89 mm. And, would you believe it didn't break through to water? Crazy I know. But it is obviously paper thin at this point. We'll be doing some more cutting on it to explore what we are dealing with. We're thinking brazing the liners in is the way to go now. So, looking for some assistance locating someone who can furnace braze the LD block. If you have leads, please send them my way. This is not a common thing these days.

Congrats Mark! A couple of questions: 1. Looks like all of your exhaust valves were hitting the pistons (looks like hitting them hard). Did you conclusively determine the cause? Was your timing chain off one tooth, like happened to me? Or, were the Ex. valves hitting the pistons for another reason? I have learned that the Sunbelt cam we are both using (the .565" gross lift one) was developed for use with titanium valves. My engine builder knows the guy that owned Integral Cams and worked on the development of our camshaft with Jim Thompson (formerly of Sunbelt). As you know, the AVG3E-L6SPR spring from Jim Wolf Technologies is the correct valve spring for use with the cam, and it has a very light (by comparison with most others) installed and max compressed loads. This spring is handling the additional weight of stainless steel valves, and chrome moly retainers if you are running those. Perhaps valves were floating and hitting the pistons? 2. What ever happened regarding the "reversion" area of the rpm band? Were you able to address it at all? When I was trying to do my dyno pulls (chassis dyno), the operator was telling me to go full throttle from 2k RPM in 4th gear and the engine simply wouldn't do that. It would just choke up and go dog rich. Same thing in third. How were you able to do "full range" RPM pulls to get your power charts, and do you have any of the AFR charts for those runs? 3. Are you running stock main cap bolts? My engine builder doesn't care for them. He says they are too big and don't stretch like they should to achieve proper fastening. 4. You are still running race fuel, right? 5. And I guess I missed it, but what was the most direct cause of the latest engine failure - debris sucked into chamber #1? Garrett

Daylight between cylinders is proof positive that the block won't take an 89 mm bore. What is the engine number on the plate? Maybe we can get Speedtripper to tell us the number on his as well.

Yes. NZ is where I have been looking to source them. Any chance your sonic tests aren't accurate? And just so we are on the same page, 85 mm is the stock bore, correct? 3.5 mm and the requirement to run no less than .120" inch wall thickness means you couldn't bore that block more than about .010" inches? Just seems to fly in the face of logic that it could take so little.

I just heard back from someone that a sonic test on a V57 block showed 3.7 mm of wall on a stock bore. That's bad news for using a V57 block. You seem to have the only block that has taken a 89 mm bore!

Ok, it is time to start an engine build thread for my next engine. My last engine blew up spectacularly at Road Atlanta. Very disappointing. This one will be off the well beaten path, so there will be risks. So, here we go... Block work is stalled for now, but the N42 head is getting some attention. Per the Frank Honsowetz book, the cylinder head was bolted upside down on a block with a spacer to pre-load (bend) the head. The spacer used was 0.040". The welding is not done - this is just the start - welding rod was 40/43 I think. I will correct that if I find out differently. A few pics: Engine block will be a LD28, either a specially sourced V57 casting (one Hybrid Z member claims he has one that took an 89 mm bore and left 0.120" or more of cylinder wall), or a one off, custom liner design will be utilized. Garrett