dts300z

That looks great! Good job, I love the idea for the air hat!!!

Yes sir the pistons are no longer the weakest link, I have passed it onto the rods. hahaa Hopefully it will hold to at least 500 rwhp. I still have the aforesaid spare for the ALL forged setup coming to a Z near you in 2010 as long as my wallet is forgiving enough.

Thanks! I just figure the more stuff I try the more I learn and when I make a mistake its a good lesson learned. Hopefully it will run good! hahaa

WOW! that thing should be peppy. Good luck!

Alright! So I got the block back from the machine shop along with the rotating assembly and I went to town... I gapped the top rings at 0.025" and the second at 0.024". I plastigauged all the bearings and all the mains were right at 0.0025" across the board and the rods were from 0.0025" - 0.0030". After assembly and torque everything to spec I put a torque wrench on the end of the crank and it took about 25 ft. pounds to start rotating and about 15 or so to keep it going. So far so good!!! Yea I'm kinda a messy builder and I'm very liberal with the moly... lol

Alright! So I got the block back from the machine shop along with the rotating assembly and I went to town... I gapped the top rings at 0.025" and the second at 0.024". I plastigauged all the bearings and all the mains were right at 0.0025" across the board and the rods were from 0.0025" - 0.0030". After assembly and torque everything to spec I put a torque wrench on the end of the crank and it took about 25 ft. pounds to start rotating and about 15 or so to keep it going. So far so good!!! Yea I know I'm messy. I'm also very liberal with the moly too. loll....

I'll make a strong effort over the next few weeks to try and track him down.

I had an old opti laying around so I took it apart and set it up on TDC and took various pictures. Anyways hope that helps. It looks like the largest window is #1 and is is open for approximately 21 camshaft degrees.

I started a build thread that is linked in my sig. You can post any additional comments in this thread and I will update both as I go. I have got the short block in the truck along with the rotating assembly ready for the machine shop tomorrow. I ended up going with a set of 0.030 / 21.1cc dish pistons that should put me around 8.7:1 CR with the stock heads. Hopefully if all goes well it should be up and running by the end of February.

Very nice build! Can't wait to see some more video's

Looking good! If I could only find the guy here in Jacksonville that has done the LSx swap into his Z32. I'm pretty sure he used a little friendly persuasion on the firewall and modified the oil pan quite extensively but he got it running.

Ok just an update to show you where I’m at… I’ve got some goodies in the mail over the last few months and the engine is going to the machine shop tomorrow. So far I have everything for the bottom end build minus the cam. I’m still waiting on the new 36-1 wheel but I got the new alternator bracket I drew up and it fits pretty well. I still need to wait till I get the engine together to build the spacers to line up the pulley but you get the idea. I’ve also installed the new shifter… going with an ole turbo 350 to take some stress off the R200 and axles in place of the T56 I previously had. I got a wild hair and threw together a side exhaust that exits out of the lower front quarter. I have always wanted to do this… I took an old magnaflow muffler and cut it down to about 8†from its original 12 or so. I took great care not to screw up the packing and overall it turned out great. I revised the engine mounts just a touch centering the engine in the bay within 1/16â€. I made the new down pipe to connect to the muffler and cleaned all unnecessary wiring and fuse blocks out of the engine bay. I relocated everything in the car under the dash (easy access). Incase you are wondering about tire clearance between the exhaust there is plenty from lock to lock. This is the block off plate I made for the clutch master.

I've seen a few people use spacers as mentioned above to get the engine to sit lower and further back. The shifter location is kinda trivial, thats something you can make work like Paul said... thats actually what I did on my first swap attempt. There was a guy here in jax that just had the oil pan modified to clear the rack and cross member to set the engine a little lower and further back. The biggest problem is clearance for the radiator and fans and thats why people usually modify the dash for this swap... thats the main reason I did because I had a problem cooling the car before the last attempt. I consider A/C and heat trivial also because if you really want the swap and A/C and heat you can just get creative there too. For example you could find an old air box assembly out of a civic or another lower profile setup and adapt it to fit... its extra work but it also solves your concern with A/C. You could always go dry sump and that would give you a little help. Just some ideas!!! Also keep in mind when you lower the cross member you also change your steering geometry and that has to be fixed in the process.

Ok her it goes… some of this everyone has seen but I wanted to put everything in one place with a few comments to help others out. I have been back and forth with engine swaps in this car for a long time. Since 2003 or so I have done 3 swaps in this car and I have finally made a good choice with the LT1. I actually initially started with the LT1 and then took it out and sold everything off to put away money for a house. I then dropped a turbo 4cyl. in it thinking that would pacify my needs (well that did not last long). So here we are again with the new swap (back to the ole LT1). The first time I did this swap I really did not plan anything out and pretty much just threw the setup in and wired it up… it turned out pretty shitty to say the least (but it was a lot of fun). So this time I really thought things out and just dove right into a huge project. I first started with tearing out the inside of the car and cutting some big ass holes… lol. I got excited after cutting the hole and forgot to take some good pictures so here is the new tunnel in rough stages. I pretty much took a sheet of 16 gauge for the fire wall and cut out a nice radius and tangent legs to wrap underneath the car. Then I used a sheet of 22 gauge to create the tunnel. The 16 gauge piece on the firewall acted as a guide for putting the tunnel in and just kinda fell in place (with a little persuasion of course). Then I broke out the good ole body filler and sander and went to town. Ahhh amazing what a little bondo and paint does… Now its time to fab up some mounts. First thing is first lets see how far back we can shove this engine and center everything up. You have to center everything up tack it in place then build your mounts. Don’t do what I originally did and wedge it in and weld it… lol. Take you time and be sure everything has clearance and nothing will interfere with the engine rocking from torque and settling in place with the new mounts. I’m not a pro just a DIYer so don’t take everything literal. So here are the engine mounts and how the engine sits. Here is the tranny mount… kinda beefy. Gotta have reinforcement. Now you gotta figure out the wiring. Its pretty simple if you do your research. And here is the first fire up. Ohh and don’t forget everything else like exhaust, driveshaft, radiator, fans, fluids, filters, etc…. And when naturally aspiration is not enough you gotta build a home made turbo kit. And this is what happens when you don’t tune the car and just turn up the boost without adjusting the timing on a 130k engine that has overheated a few times due to a bad fan relay… lol. Blown head gasket and broken ring lands on pistons 1 and 3. I heard the detonation on the final dyno pass. I get excited when I start making power and well I’ll turn up the boost until something happens… woops. http://videos.streetfire.net/video/Turbo-LT1-300ZX_158121.htm Its amazing when you have a ton of time to figure things out cause your broke and you have nothing to do but think of ways to spend the money you don’t have. So instead of just replacing a few pistons and the head gaskets might as well go the distance. Now I’m working on installing a MSII engine management and Ford EDIS-8, injectors, forged pistons ARP hardware and a bunch of other goodies. Here are the pictures of the progress with the EDIS stuff. This is from design to finish.. well almost finished. This is a bracket a I came up with to hold the VR (variable reluctance) sensor… and it bolts right where the opti used to reside. Here is the wheel after getting it back from the EDM. Man it turned out good… Here is everything mocked up on a timing cover. Well I ended up adding a revision to the design. I got a ATI balancer hub and now where I decided to key the factory hub is not going to work with the ATI. So since this happened I decided to make the wheel concentric to the ATI hub to minimize runout. But I still mocked everything back up so I could get everything lined up and ready to go. Although this is not the final 36-1 wheel you can get the idea. There will be more to come!!!!

Thanks Pete! I hope to have the new wheel in the next week or so. Then all I need is the rest of the engine parts, but I've had plenty to keep me busy with all the rewiring of the front half of the car plus all the prep work.

OK finally making some more progress... I got an ATI hub to mount everything on and unfortunately the indexing is different than I planned for the factory hub key way so I will still need to get another wheel made. Since I have this one I went ahead and set it up with the spacers and the rest of the hardware for visual aid and to be sure everything is going to clear properly. Also in case you are wondering the new wheel will be hub centric to the ATI hub so there will be minimal runout... Enjoy!!

wow!! that is jam up!

Sure thing. I'll shoot you an email.

I wish I had some to share. I am slowly putting together the parts and I'm also working on quite a few other projects on the car that I will share. I am really waiting on the fundage to roll in. I'm going MSII and EDIS-8 plus I'm rewiring the front half of the car for a cleaner look. I have pretty much finished the wiring and its going to be pretty clean under the hood compared to what it was. No fuse blocks or scattered wiring... man I can't wait. I started another thread when I found out I broke a few piston ring lands. I guess I should have kept everything together in one post... sorry for the confusion. Also if you look in the MS section I am working on a trigger wheel setup for the EDIS. Here http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=137277

Its not in the wrong spot. As long as its reading metered air it really doesn't matter. You could put it in front of the turbo inlet but then you would have to recirculate the BOV so you don't get a rich condition and possibly stall the engine. So essentially you can run it in both spots its just easier to plum it in where its at and avoid more fabricating.

great looking Z and congratulations on the runs! That thing is moving!

Thanks! I'll probably finish mocking it up and be sure I have it nice and true. I hope it is close because there is no wiggle room up and down just rotational for timing adjustment. I will surely stick it in a lathe and get it straight for safety sake though. Hope its not too far out...

So I would have to say this is coming together really well! The next two show comparison between the ford wheel and mine. Turned out really well. I mocked it up to show how everything fits together. Its been a slow process but it is surely turning out well.

alright!!!! got the VR sensor bracket back. I designed it to bolt in place of the opti. Here are some pictures of it. You will notice there is plenty of adjustment up and down for spacing off the wheel. Here it is mounted and with the VR sensor attached. Plenty of room as you can see... woohoo man it fits good... I can't wait to get the trigger wheel back to see how that fits. I should have it back next week sometime. This is just a mockup engine excuse the mess!

Check out my photo album here http://s164.photobucket.com/albums/u17/DanShields_2007 that should get you started. No one makes a kit that I know of but I could be wrong. If you want to take a look at what I did you are welcome to stop by.