CasperIV

I love this swap, nice work. I was strongly considering going this route rather than SR20DET. Hopefully if I ever get around to building either a Roadster or 510 it can have an F20C in it.

Color me jealous. If I had one of the tools available I would be able to be much more accurate. Usually I have to use a piece of cardboard and a tape measure

I wasn't really directing it at anyone in particular, I was just stating that it can't be a determining mindset. If you can, getting an exact maximum size by measuring what backspace you have and what width you can accept is best. Most people think it's a matter of guessing at wheels sizes when really they should be measured just like everything else. The first diagram outlines the details you need. The correct answer to the situation is that you should buy a professional tool... then let me use it http://wheelworksinc.com/ I'm going to just try to make myself a tool here one of these weekends. Looks simple enough and I actually want one that doesn't have a tire involved. I will just make it expand to the overall diameter and width of the wheel and tire combination, then math backwards.

One consideration I haven't seen mentioned in this topic yet is backspace. You can gain some backspace (I think you have roughly 4.5" stock) by going coilovers with the smaller springs. With a lot of coilover kits this can mean gaining about an inch of backspace which means an inch of wheel/tire if you compensate with offset. The backspace changes with wheel width and offset combined, so don't assume if a 16x7 with 0mm offset fits a 17x9 with 0mm offset will fit. When I started this build on my 73, I grabbed a cheapish 18x8s & 18x9.5s set off ebay to use (I went to 5 lug with my brakes and needed something in 5x114.3 so I could at least roll the car). They aren't my preferred style, but getting wheels in offsets for these cars is quite a pain in the a** so I grabbed what was available.. I'm trying to find the details on what the offsets were, but I am pretty sure the fronts were 0. I would have preferred smaller wheels, but the problem is that I needed clearance for the brakes, but also performance tires are getting hard to find in non-low profile. I grabbed some 225/40ZR-18s for the front and 235/40ZR-18s for the rear (the rear are stretched a bit to help with clearance, but I'll be going wider on the final set). These wheels/tires gave adequate interior clearance, but like others have said, 8's push out of the fenders. Here is a couple pics of them with stock fenders, and a couple after the flares were on the car: When I get my final set of wheels they will probably have to be custom (I want a nice flush look, but also to use every inch of back space I have). At least these are generic muscle car enough, in 5x114.3, and an old school offset that I should be able to sell them off to someone with an old Mustang or something pretty easily.

I would be interested to see any pictures you have or to hear what you thought of the kit you used. I am thinking more and more that I might light to do one of these universal systems later this year if they work well. Partially to get AC, partially to give me a chance to design a new control unit to free space up on my dash if possible.

Gollum did a good job summing things up, but I just want to throw my 2 cents in. Choosing an engine is very much about the use of the car. If all you want is more power, every option will work. When I was running the math on which engine to use for my latest Z build, I ended up with an SR20DET. I can't tell you it is the best choice for your application, but I can outline why I chose it. The engine moved the weight behind the front axle making the car a front-midship layout that improved balance. The SR20DET has one of the largest parts markets of any engine with the exception of something like the LS. The SR20DET is capable of over 400HP with mostly OEM parts, and the block is good for about 1300HP (My plans wouldn't be pushing the limits). The weight savings of the SR20DET for the power is only rivaled by a high comp aluminum v8. SR20DET engines are relatively cost effective for what is included (already boosted, power head room out of the box, etc). The SR20DET can produce good MPG with proper tuning. Now, the purpose of my car was to be a daily driver that I could track on the weekends. If I were going to be racing in a series or autocrossing competitively, I probably wouldn't have gone this route due to class restrictions/classifications. I was looking to build a Z for the cost of the S2000 I was replacing it with, and trying to build a comparable car. Just getting the engine into the car is the easy part, it's how well it's packaged and sorting out all the details to make it feel like it could have been an OEM setup. I can make anything fast with enough money, but that doesn't mean it's what anyone would ever want to drive. I built the car for my purposes. For your application, you may be better off going KA24DE and then turboing it later on or just snagging a complete L28ET from wreck and swapping that in. It really depends what you want from the vehicle.

I was hoping to find a good picture of the AC unit on the engine so I could remember where it sat exactly, but unfortunately I don't have many of my engine and finding pics online with all accessories in place didn't work out in the short time I tried. Based on this single crappy picture I took when the engine was first picked up, it looks like the AC sits pretty darn low. It would also depend if you were trying to retain the power steering pump or not. If not, you maybe able to build an extension bracket to angle it up more into the PS pumps position.

There are a lot of little benefits to a more modern tank, and I'm hoping to be able to avoid needing a surge tank (although the new box area replacing the tire well would work quite well). I am also going to gain a fair amount of room to access the diff with the tank in place. I'll post some pics when we get back to working on it. The plans are always in flux as we just pick through the parts around the shop and see what fits where the best and what makes the most sense for the rest of the designs.

We actually just decided after looking at the changes to get the Z32 tank to fit it would be much easier to use a 240SX tank. It actually ends up sitting nearly in the perfect position and seems to line up with the factory strap positions. The car should be coming back from the other shop next week so we can get back to fitting things. If all goes well, the 240SX tank would let us convert the spare tire well into a small tool box area, gain a few gallons of tank volume, and use the stock 240SX fuel pump assembly (or upgrade to whatever solution we want).

I used the McKinney cradle as well. It was well made and a simple design. I personally just bought the engine and transmission mounts from McKinney, and had a local shop fabricate the driveshaft.

I think it should fit, but I don't have the car in front of me. Here are some pics I took right after the engine was bolted into place for the last time, I wasn't taking pictures for this purpose, but these might help: Hope they help.

I'm really curious to see your results. My latest Z project is more of a driver/weekend racer, but I would really like to do what I can to improve aero (without ruining the look/streetability of the car) and have been following all these threads. I know there were a few people that had talked about doing something like 1vicissitude showed in his post (on the first page) where the air is entirely ducted through the radiator and out the hood, but I never really saw results. Did anyone go through with it? My car has a ton of room up front since I swapped to an SR, and I am looking to experiment with the space. Now that you have played with shaping ABS plastic, how do you think it would handle this duty? Do you think it would get too warm near the radiator/engine and deform or does it take pretty significant heat to lose it's shape?

What part of fuel delivery? Are you talking about tank and pump, lines, or under the hood? We decided to fabricate in a Z32 300ZX fuel tank, and use the OEM Z32 TT fuel pump. We are trying, not sure if it will work yet or not, to use the stock hard fuel line to the engine bay, another feed line as the return line (so they are equal sizes), and just a decent FPR at the front. If it doesn't work out, we will start tweaking things. My biggest concern was getting enough fuel forward, at a good pressure, and getting it back out since the old line sizes were for carbs not FI. The car got hung up in paint. The guy doing the work had some personal problems that set him back on his schedule, but hopefully I will be getting more updates posted soon. We ended up having to respray the undercoating to fix some overspray and other issues from body work, so we did that right before we set the engine and transmission, bagged it, and sent it off for final paint.

Sorry for the long delay. My virus scanner kept blocking me from coming to Hybrid Z and I was so busy with work I took it as a sign that I should be doing something else. Here are some more update pics of the build. I decided to paint it white again, but we will be doing a large center stripe with two narrow stripes to each side. Ed Hubbs will be airbrushing some subtle Asian themed scene down the stripe using the similar methods that you would for ghost flames, then the whole car will get hit with another House of Kolor Crystal coat to make it all pop. The engine valve cover will be getting painted after we set the engine. We don't want to worry about scratching it with the chains while we are dropping it in.

It actually fits really well. I will post some pictures once we have everything back together. Paint was delayed due to work/other projects, but I have a bunch of pics to post today. The quality is excellent on the pan. I used new mounts, but the original mount holes. The new mount is just a simple bar that has a bushing block on top for the end of the transmission to rest on, then bolts up into the original mount holes in the body. There are two mount styles depending on the years. Some cars had mounting bolts running veritcally, some had bolts running horizontally. Here are pics of each (I have a 73 so there is overlap and I got the wrong one the first time):

Just a few more pics of the car after it was primed and the engine bay was receiving paint. Hopefully I'll post a few pics soon with the engine in place (then we will finish paint... we voted to not move the engine/transmission across fresh paint).

I like Haltech, I was just thinking I would try AEM EMS2 this time around. The Haltech Sport 1000 is the closest comparable price wise to the AEM EMS2 and is on my list to look at when I get closer to placing an order. I was planning to use the AEM disc, but using factory might be nice. The price difference is negligible, but I would be dealing with the patch loom again (I think). The AEM 17x21 (LoadxRPM 3D) map size is actually good from what I have seen, the Haltech we mostly filled more data for the mapping sake rather than tune (but it did make me feel better having the detail). I don't know, I may end up doing a 180 and going back to Haltech. This time around whichever I choose, I want to use the EMS to control a boost solenoid rather than a separate EBC. Here's a fresh set of pics with the flares on the car:

Well I ordered an ISIS intake manifold to try out and an eccentric throttle wheel for it. We will soon see what the quality is like, hopefully it just needs threading cleaned up and maybe slight adjustments. I also went back and updated my parts list now that it has changed. I already received my Circuit Sports stainless oil pan. It certainly got the thumbs up from all of us, here are a few pics:

Just another teaser update from the body shop...

As a quick update the engine clean up has begun. It appears the engine modifications/upgrades were done correctly which is a good sign. The clutch is an ACT performance upgrade which is in good shape. The flywheel appears to be OEM, but in good shape, so it will get a resurface. As soon as I get a chance I will get some good pics of the Circuit Sports oil pan... the quality appears to be excellent and it looks like it will be a nice upgrade.

Wow, I don't even know if Z2000 is still around. Most of your questions are generic to all engine swaps so I can tell you what I did on my SR swap. Mounts: There aren't many of these swaps so you will probably be best off making your own. Wiring: You will most likely have to do what we did with my SR and wire it up as a nearly separate system. We basically had a junction block to power the engine and accessories while running the Z components on the factory wiring. Speedo/Tach: My solution was to use SpeedHut gauges. I used a GPS speedo and a 10k tach because I wanted better accuracy at high speeds as well as simplicity. If you want to use the stock speedo you will need a translator of some kind the same as the tach. Something like http://www.abbott-tach.com/cablex.htm and there are similar units for the tach depending on the direction you head. After crunching numbers I decided it would cost enough that I might as well get the better SpeedHut speedo and tach, which encouraged me to replace the 3 other gauges as well. Differential: Even the R180 will hold the F20 power, but you might as well take the time to move to an R200. Personally I went the R200 open diff route so that I didn't have to spend about a grand on a mediocre LSD. After testing is done, I will be rebuilding it with a Quaife... but that is not a cheap solution. You can also go the Subi R180 route. You might get some good ideas from the little web page I started throwing together about my SR swap (http://www.sr240z.net). I have a bunch of links back to HybridZ, but it's all in one place for you. I think a major consideration should be your budget. This is a spendy endeavor you are looking at undertaking.

Yeah, power goals are typically what ruin cars. I know I have ruined several cars balance with too much power simply because I wanted to say it had x power. My autocross 240Z that was routinely won local events did far better at 200HP NA than any higher power configuration. This car on boost will most certainly never win class due to the constant struggle between traction and boost... not to mention that due to the engine swap it will be against fully prep cars most likely. That's why I think I'll keep my goals to making this one a well balanced driver. Somewhere between 300 and 400 whp is probably where the limit will end up, but I'll build for more to avoid breakage. I am planning to move to the VE head if I end up going down the Full Race path, especially if I end up going top mount with something like an EFR 7670 twin scroll (I don't want to go too big because even the over sized EFRs will lag). The flow alone on the VE would be worth it even without all the extra perks. The weak point of the oil system would be the next concern for me with that much money into the engine and accessories, so I think I would really like to move to a dry sump system (either name brand like Mazworx or a DIY). That way I would never have to worry about the system having one of the all too common SR killing starvation moments (although it should be unlikely with my increased oil volume, upgraded pickup, and better pan). If all these changes end up in the pipe line I will just drive the car for the year, get my suspension and drive train dialed in the way I want, then come back and pull the engine and do all the work. At that point I won't really care if the RAS caused any minor issues because I'll be replacing the whole head. If I don't go VE I will be doing a whole head rebuild and machining anyway, so I can address issues at that time. Have you used one of the ISIS intake manifolds before? I have been hearing that they are just as good as the Greddy's as far as durability and require very little cleanup/modification. If that is the case, I think I may toss $200 at one to see how it works out... at a quarter the price it's hard to not just spend a couple hours cleaning up the casting/adjusting mounts. I would be replacing it if I go VE within a year and probably moving to be bigger TB setup at the same time, so the price point is just that much more appealing. As far as tuning systems goes, anything can be learned and tuned, but why be the car someone learns on? The AEM will give more accurate tuning RPM band wise, some more features, and be a self contained unit. I may still decide to go with Haltech for even more tuning ability, but I doubt I will decided I want less control. I think this time I will actually have the AEM handle boost control as well. Just feeding wide band readings in is fine when you are tuning for a weekend race car or extra toy, but I like my vehicles like this one to be ready to drive 2,000 miles, race for fun, and drive home without any more worry than I would have with an OEM. When I come back to making my next car for experimentation/abuse I think I may go the Nismotronic route. Do they only tune in 500 rpm increments or can you get down to the 100 rpm level? I remember the last time I looked into them I think the big negative was the detail at which you could dig in the map that made me shy away.

Nothing specifically other than typically if people running extra down force are talking about fuel efficiency racing which rarely involves an NA SR. The wing it's self doesn't directly correlate with the NA reference other than the oddity of the pairing. The gist was that I wouldn't have even tested the mileage before having removed and sold the wing.

The 550's weren't for much boost, they were just going to give me a base, but since the plans changed for power goals, I will be going much larger. I don't mind running injectors at higher duty cycles because I also typically use the supporting modifications to help protect against failure, but I wasn't planning to push them much beyond 80% unless I was completely comfortable with the system. In fact I prefer over duty to leaking over sized pairings... but that's a discussion for a whole different thread. As of right now I doubt I will go with a piggy back system. Saying that they do "all the capabilities" of a standalone is a serious stretch. Haltech and AEM EMS systems are extremely detailed tuning vs piggy back systems as they directly control the components rather than adapting a signal and have much faster/more accurate processing. Nistune and NismoTronic work well enough, but you will be leaving power and reliability on the table if you don't match parts to them extremely closely or spend a lot of time compensating for that which can't be tuned out. You are also dependent on an additional part for operation, which is one more (old) part that can fail and tied to the other factory type parts. There is also a major limitation to who can do your tuning. My goal is to tune it very accurately and get the car running like a factory vehicle, just more powerful. If I decide to scale back for some reason I may reevaluate a piggy back solution and NismoTronic will be high on the list of considerations. People debate the rocker arm stoppers endlessly. The reality is that you shouldn't be hitting the stoppers on a regular basis... otherwise it means you are being stupid and should fix the person controlling the throttle first The stoppers should be there to prevent them from escaping due to a mistake, not constantly smash into the components to keep them in check. I will be using the stopper as a safe guard, if there is excessive contact I will upgrade the springs, retainers, etc. The general performance plans are changing too. Initially I was going to just go basic with a 2871R and call it a day, but that was before I decided to make this car a little more high performance. I'm now leaning toward a Full Race manifold with an EFR 6758 and building around that pairing. So intake manifold will be changing as will several other aspects. I may even go twin scroll EFR... need to do some measurements and reassess once my drive tests are done this summer. I don't want to over build and ruin the cars balance.

I'm interested in seeing this beast come together. Good luck with the build.