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Just some progress on my crossmember and tank. Link to my blog http://southbronxspeedshop.blogspot.com/

Another little update here. Friday night I brought the engine and trans to EvilC's shop. I had an hour to kill so I stripped the wiring harness, power steering pump and AC pump off of the engine. That's a nice 30 pounds off of the engine! I brought the mounts there as well. Car should be moving in the next week or so. I also cut the mounting flanges out of the 350z tank. I'll be bringing them to my shop and cutting my my 240z tank up this week.

Yeah, I got lucky with the parts. That said, I'm still considering doing the harness service. I figure I'm gonna want to get a flash tune at some point for the mods (no cats, plenum spacer, intake, exhaust) and to allow WOT at all times which the car doesn't do as stock apparently. Those tunes run in the $350-500 range, but I could put that towards the harness service /NATS removal, and save time and effort and only have to hook up 4 wires. It's tempting but I haven't decided for sure yet. Yeah the tank will be pretty involved. If my car was fuel injected to begin with and i had a pump, regulator and fuel injection tank already I would just stick with that. Lacking all that this should work though. The mounts are mckinney. I ended up coming across a great deal on a used set here on HBZ with the shorter shifter mount. The pricing i got for the mounts came to about 200-300 anyway, which didn't make too much financial sense. I priced it with a water jet and laser cutting. Yeah I have a good idea what needs to go from austin's build. I actually lucked out with the exhaust. EvilC is doing a new exhaust for his V8 car now that he will have long tube headers. I was helping him pull his engine and realized that I could pretty easily adapt his old exhaust and cutout into my car. I'm going to buy his full 3" dual to single exhaust (with electric cutout) and hang it in my car once the engine is mounted, then the plan is to get some tubing bends and some V-bands and adapt it for VQ manifolds. Hopefully that shouldn't be too painful. The exhaust already has a resonator and I can't imagine the vq trans is substantially larger/lower than the T56, but I've got my fingers crossed.

I finally got the dash harness and BCM. This is gonna be alot of wiring to hide in the Z dash! I'm gonna have to look into what I can trim out of the harness.

I came across this video on Jalopnik. There are quite a few old Z's and skylines in it. Just thought I'd share. http://vimeo.com/58849310 Edit: Link went bad for some reason. Try this.

I know EvilC has a set he'll be parting with soon to install his longtubes.

Just a little update here I have the pump and tank in the same place now. As it stands it looks like the tank is about 11" deep at the top. The pump can range from 8" to 9" with the spring loaded base, so it looks like I'll be sinking the mounting ring for the pump a couple inches into the tank. This works out for the best anyway because it'll allow me to make a nice channel for the wire and fuel line to exit the area. I'm going to be using a 240z tank because the guy I was going to buy a 280 tank from stood me up, wasting a half day of my time and a bunch of gas and toll money. I'll probably make a couple of baffled boxes for the pump and secondary draw tube to sit in. I also found an extra crossmember so I can start chopping that up before I tear my car apart.

Got the 350z tank and pump. The pump assembly has a spring loaded base that acts like a little surge tank. I haven't looked at it too closely, but it seems to be locally fed as well as fed by a line hat runs to the other side of the tank. The spring action gives an inch or two of play with the mounting height, and running that other line to a baffle box should avoid any starvation issues, the fuel pump itself draws from the surge box. The tank is thankfully metal so welding in the flange should be straightforward. Looking good so far.

350z gas tank and pump are on the way, I hope to cut out the mounting flange for the pump and weld it into a baffled 76 tank I'm picking up. The rest of the wiring and bcm from the same car as my engine are on the way as well. Finally, I also have mounts now. Getting there!

Repeating the boxed rockers you had on the 260?

Having bought one from clive and seen one I sold pop up again I can vouch for that.

Wow, that seems awfully quick for a stockish LS with a 100 shot. Congrats!

I've actually sold the triples and E31 head to a local guy here in NJ to pay for most of the engine. I've still got the L24 and zx 5-speed to sell though. I've also changed tack on the wiring. The guy who I got the engine from is sending me as much of the wiring as he can strip out of the car, so I will at least attempt to get it running without spending ~$1200 on the harness, but we'll see. Once I have the BCU and the dash harness I *should* be able to get it going, but I've been stumped by modern car security systems before... The fuel system plan has changed as well. I found a 350z gas tank including the pump on ebay for $100. The plan at this point is to cut out the mounting ring from the 350 tank and weld it into the stock tank with some basic baffles. This would make the fuel system setup VERY easy, as the pump assembly is internally regulated, and because it's a dead head system there would be only one fuel line and two wires to run to the pump. The only concerns are the depth of the pump vs the depth of the tank and welding it in without blowing myself up.

I just ordered a 350z gas tank with pump and all for $100 shipped. I'm gonna try to cut out the flange and weld it into the 240 tank I've got. I'm a little worried about the depth being correct, but we'll see when it gets here.

Yeah, I've got the Key, nats ring, and pedal as well as the engine harness and ECU now. He's sending me the dash harness and whatever else he can reasonably strip from the car I hope that means the BCU as well because I apparently need that as well, but I'm getting this for free plus shipping cost so I'm trying not to be too demanding.

Ok, the guy is sending me the dash harness so hopefully I can get this running without the harness service, I can risk $75 to save $1100...

The guy I bought the engine from is still using the car so I don't think I can get the dash harness from the donor. I suppose i could find a harness from a different '03, but it does seem like alot of wiring to hide in a Z. I really only got the NATS because I could but I'll have to think about whether I want to try to swap it in without a harness service. I was looking into various test pipes and many of them come with an extension with an 02 bung that is out of the exhaust stream to keep the car from throwing codes, but the vast majority of guys doing these swaps don't bother so I imagine it can't be that big of a deal. The more I think about it, unless I stumble on a cheap 75-76 tank, I'll probably just put together a compact surge tank setup. I've got a mech pump car so I suppose I'll have to run a lift pump. Did you leave the fuel rail as dead end?

Oh nice! I'm coming over soon!

Hey guys, I just wanted to drop in here and say that there will soon be a new VQ swap here on the HBZ. I was going to build a mild L28 and triples, but I recently found a deal I couldn't pass up on a VQ pullout and will be assembling the car over the next few months. A guy building a drift 350z sold me his 80k mile VQ, harness, pedal, ECU, radiator and fans, trans, driveshaft, NATS and key, and a pair of leather seats for $1700 delivered to my door! I'll likely be building my own mounts using the cad files another member here posted. I'll probably leave the harness building to Zfever or McKinney, The only real variable at this point is whether I try to find a fuel injection tank for my 240 or build a surge tank, but I feel like I've got a great head start on this project. Luckily I've already laid all the groundwork for the swap with frame rails and subframe connectors, coilovers, and AZC Wilwoods all around. In any case, VQ here I come! I'd also like to thank you all in advance for answering the numerous questions I'll inevitably have. Thanks

Hey guys, I just wanted to drop in here and say that there will soon be a new VQ swap here on HBZ. I was going to build a mild L28 and triples, but I recently found a deal I couldn't pass up on a VQ pullout and will be assembling the car over the next few months. A guy building a drift 350z sold me his 80k mile VQ, harness, pedal, ECU, radiator and fans, trans, driveshaft, NATS and key, and a pair of leather seats for $1700 delivered to my door! I'll likely be building my own mounts using the cad files another member here posted. I'll probably leave the harness building to Zfever or McKinney, The only real variable at this point is whether I try to find a fuel injection tank for my 240 or build a surge tank, but I feel like I've got a great head start on this project. Luckily I've already laid all the groundwork for the swap with frame rails and subframe connectors, coilovers, and AZC Wilwoods all around. In any case, VQ here I come! I'd also like to thank you all in advance for answering the numerous questions I'll inevitably have. In fact, here's the first one: I assume the 350z has secondary O2 sensors after the cats, is anyone still running these sensors? I imagine the car will throw a code without them, does it pull timing or anything if it doesn't detect them? Is anyone running a Check engine light? Thanks

I'm pretty sure the vintage air systems typically have a wire that will run the clutch. Personally I'd just run it and see how much the rpm's dip when the compressor is engaged. I'd venture to say that a smallish compressor on a big LS wouldn't be drawing enough power to dip the idle that much. No harm in waiting to see if that is a problem later.

You know, this is a reasonably easy thing to try yourself. I recently did something similar with my rashed and cracked SV650 plastics. It turned out pretty nice when all was said and done. The vinyl's look decent and will certainly be more flexible for installation, but CF isn't that hard to work with and ultimately looks better. Alternatively, I could give it a shot on some spare plastics I have lying around and if you like the results I could do a set for you.

Wow, That's moving. I'd love to see that video. Must have been a huge amount of pressure on that hatch to pop it open, and frankly I'm surprised the sudden change didn't upset the car.

Looks like the LY head to me. I've never seen a turbo one before though. Beautiful car.

Absolutely, I'm always happy to read an update on this unique project!