BLOZ UP

[BLOZ UP]

I personally hate those glass fuel filters with a passion. Don't know how easy they are to break but I would hate to find out.

 

I'm about ready to take it off. I just had it to protect my new fuel pump. Now that I've replaced the tank, it seems to stay pretty clean. Just need to find straight piece to join the two ends.

 

The glass is pretty thick though. The plastic hose ends are crap; they need tons of pipe tape to keep from leaking. It was $10...

[josh817]

Are you using that plastic fuel cell you had in your garage?

[BLOZ UP]

Are you using that plastic fuel cell you had in your garage?

 

Nope but I don't have it anymore either. It's not track legal for most sanctioning bodies anyway.

[Montezuma]

I got brand new Nissan Fuel Injectors Old Stock NIB. If are interested drop me a PM. These are for your car.

[josh817]

Didn't know you were making a track legal car? If you're doing Drivers Edge or a PCA driving school they have lax safety standards... If you wanted to do some sort of club racing or SCCA/NASA I think all you have to do is make a metal box for the plastic cell to be contained in. Actually, all those cheap metal cells you see at Speedway are exactly like that. We have a 12 gallon one for the BMW and when I took it apart to make brackets the plastic cell pulls right out.

 

*takes a breath*

But I guess that's netiher here nor there now that its gone.

[BLOZ UP]

Got and installed some used 6-1 headers. Ordered a muffler and some bends and got to work on the exhaust soon after:

 

 

This is to adapt the 2.5" header out to the 3" from then on. I plan on having a VG with a 3" collector later, hence the removable adapter. Flex pipe is so I can play with positioning bit later on since I'm eyeballing the entire thing.

 

 

I prefer to tack the outside and then weld the inside of the flanges. Itty-bitty weld.

 

Yes, I know I need an actual table top. They were out of the SS sheet I wanted when I made the rest of it.

 

 

All complete:

 

Turns out this exhaust is loud as hell. I hate it. Sounds "OK" at idle, but unbearable at any other speed. Really, really, resonates at high load and RPM. It sounds like one and a half civics with fart cans.

 

So, I ordered a 24" straight through "resonator", and I will see if that helps. If I still can't stand it I'll but a chambered resonator on it.

Edited March 11, 2011 by BLOZ UP

[clutchdust]

I feel your pain on the gas situation, bro. My car sat for some 14 years with a 1/4 tank of gas before I got hold of it. Like you, I thought very hard about just replacing the tank all together it was that bad. I had it cleaned FOUR times by shops here in town, not even counting the times I had it out and douched it myself. Just in the last couple weeks have I finally gotten it more or less cleaned out. I am using one of those clear glass strainers too, at least until this problem is fixed. At least it's easy to see when it gets clogged and easy to remove and clean it.

[BLOZ UP]

I installed the resonator. So, I ordered a 3x24" "straight-through" resonator from Summit. They say it's on BO and won't ship out till later this month. So I build the exhaust above. The next day, I get a notice saying that it had shipped out the previous day. Figures. It arrives in the mail, and it is not exactly "straight-through". Which actually is what I wanted, I suppose. The car needed to be much quieter.

 

 

It is still quite loud. Part of this perception might be because this is the first non-turbo car that I've owned in a while--with a modified exhaust. I think that Magnaflow isn't helping muffle anything, really. Probably amplifying the drone. I need to add a couple more hangars and a final muffler tip (mostly to bring the exhaust away from the cabin--a problem I've heard of and now experience first-hand), but otherwise it's done.

 

This spring break I am going to get started on something special...

Edited March 11, 2011 by BLOZ UP

[josh817]

This spring break I am going to get started on something special...

 

If it's what I think I may be doing the same......

[BLOZ UP]

 

Spring break started so I got started on the VG S30 project. I took a perfectly good running L28 out, and started to put in an oil spewing compression missing hag of a VG. I decided to use another member (Dman) on the Z31Performance forums method for mounting the engine, with some modifications. Besides being completely solid, my motor has a forward mounted engine mount bracket that I can use, but the passenger side will be similar to his. The hardest part of this so far, is making the mounts and mounting the alternator. Dman's alternator bracket/engine mount seems ideal. I would like to have timing belt covers, so I will do mine a little different. I'm also trying to get my hands on a VG33, but hopefully I won't have to modify much from the VG30.

 

 

I left the A/C components in, but it doesn't look like I will be able to retrofit (futurefit?) them to the VG--while keeping tubular manifolds and a front mount turbo--without anything short of a miracle.

 

You can use the S30 transmission isolator and the S30 crossmember on the Z31 71C transmission:

 

Maxima intake clears the hood. It's close though.

 

Here you can see how close the driver's side is, but the passenger needs a little more fabrication:

 

1-1/2" S10 stainless butt welds will be used to construct the exhaust manifold primaries. As discovered by the other few people who've done this swap, the stock manifold and definitely the turbo do not fit. You either have to move the turbo, or move the steering arm. I'd like to modify/molest the least amount of stuff possible.

 

The passenger side will require a down, up, down snake, for 2,4,6 respectively. 6 will need to go pretty low especially. I am curious as to how the 3" downpipe will fit. I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

 

Here you can see where the oil cooler sandwich (VG30ET was originally in an automatic Z31) plate makes the oil filter stick out too far. Perhaps it would "fit", but you would have to tilt the engine to do an oil change. This is not desirable. The oil cooler adapter will have to be removed. Exhaust primaries will fit here without much of a problem. In Z31s this isn't the case as the power steering pump is in the way (bracket still attached in this picture). Also note bashed fuel vapor and feed lines. Oops. Minimal damage though.

 

The shifter is lined up quite well:

 

And it looks like the 280Z 4 speed main drive shaft fits also:

 

Got started on the driver's side mount:

 

Plenty of room. The front ride height on my Tokico springs has been compromised. Can't do anything yet really until I have all the accessories and liquids in the car.

 

The heater core and coolant send and return lines look rather easy to hook up. As is usually the case, I went a little overboard with the sawz-all. One of the heater pipes runs in to the firewall and needs to be cut. I will need to cut the unattached piece down and reweld.

Edited March 14, 2011 by BLOZ UP

[BLOZ UP]

I have the hard part of both motor mounts complete. I have almost completely welded the passenger side mount as well. I just need to finish welding and make a hole for the crossmember bolt. The driver's side needs to be closed on a couple more sides and welded.

 

The stock ECU is out, and as soon as the car no longer needs an engine crane, I will be able to work more on the wiring.

 

And perhaps later this week I might acquire a VG33. It would definitely be better than the Exxon Valdez here (or Deepwater Horizon? Too soon?).

[BLOZ UP]

The engine is finally standing on it's own. Both batteries for the drill died while drilling the holes for the driver's side, but it's not going anywhere sitting in the garage:

 

Close up of the passenger side mount. It can be lightened a bit, I make sure to cut larger and then I can grind down to the correct size.

 

Driver's side:

 

Alternator attached. I will have to grind down the mount a bit, since it won't go as close as I'd like it to the head. A custom thermostat outlet pipe will need to be made or found from one of the VG variants. The belt will hit.

 

My GF removed the L ECU. Plenty of room for Megasquirt:

 

Getting a little ahead of myself:

Edited March 16, 2011 by BLOZ UP

[BLOZ UP]

The engine sits about 1/2" or so too low, guessing from the angle of the driveshaft output, and the oil pan. Annoying, but not too difficult to fix. Except my hood clearance may be compromised and I may have to saw the throttle body off and reattach it at a downward angle. This has been done on Z31s, but I didn't expect to have any hood clearance issues with this swap. What I really need to do is measure...

 

So, rather discouraged about that, I decided to hold off on mount modifications and work on some of the numerous other facets available. The L6 harness was cut and I removed the tape surrounding it. All black and green wires! My first--okay, and second--Megasquirt installs in Z31s used all yellow, red, and black wires. I don't feel so embarrassed about that anymore.

 

Most of the Z31 engine harness. I don't feel like replacing crappy wires with somewhat less crappy wires. I just want the injector and a couple of other connectors. I will be replacing the other pigtails with weatherpaks.

 

Snaking under the brake and clutch masters is my Megasquirt harness. 12' of color coded and labeled wiring, all pre-connected to a solid DB37 plug. Worth every penny from DIYAutotune.com.

 

Quite a bit of extra wiring. Since I will have no (rear) crossover pipe, and exhaust primaries on the front, left, and right sides, the most logical place for the engine harness to jump is from behind. Will look a little cleaner too.

 

ZR8ed said the Z31 pedal fits. I saw an easier way using the 280Z pedal...

 

Problem solved:

 

Since I have a few different intake manifolds laying around, I tried fitting the various throttle cable brackets on it. Turns out the one to use to keep the hood clearance the same is off of a later maxima. The one with the two throttle bodies side-by-side. Of course, it will have to be chopped nearly in half and another hole drilled, but it maintains a nearly perfect angle with the throttle:

 

The radiator cap will need to be replaced. It cannot be removed with this intake. I may end up fabricating a plate with an offset bleed screw of some sort. The main cap will be on the radiator.

Edited March 18, 2011 by BLOZ UP

[BLOZ UP]

Started the manifolds. This is the driver's side. Initially I tried to sneak #6 close to the engine and below the other two primaries, but there wasn't enough room for a downpipe. So, everything has to go up and over to make sure that I can actually have a route for the downpipe to go through.

 

The only mods to the engine bay (so far) to get this to fit, is to cut the brake heat shield in to two pieces, a lower and an upper.

 

The passenger will be similar due to the alternator, but I will have more room to work with. I will need to pick up some ~2" pipe and vbands soon.

[frankist]

very cool project, looking forward to see it all done.

[BLOZ UP]

A little more progress on the driver's side manifold.

 

 

It's nice to have not only a spare head, but a spare engine to double check clearances. With any luck, number 6 (the back-most cylinder on this side) will cut under the other two and be the first to enter the collector. I'm "trying" to make them equal-length. Since I have at least 240 degrees of separation between any two cylinders on the same bank, I am doubtful this is actually worth the effort. The weird design is because a) I'm trying to avoid cutting any bends, mainly because I don't have a bandsaw, or room for one for that matter. To make the collectors I will need one; The downpipe needs to exit here--and the oil feed and drain are also on this side as well; c) they're my first manifolds completely designed and fabricated entirely by me (by "designed", I mean "eyeballed"), and, c) because I can.

 

With solid mounts, bracing and supporting the turbo will be easy. The passenger side manifold has just now exceeded the stock cast manifold in weight. Not that the stresses on the flange are the same given the length of the runners.

 

I have about 10" of length of free room in front of the engine. I intend to use it all.

 

That's it for a while. I have a ton of school work I have to catch up on.

Edited March 21, 2011 by BLOZ UP

[BLOZ UP]

Well, I have some midterms coming up so no real time to work on it. However, I did get some 1-1/4" SCH10 straight pipe, and with a little cleaning and slight grinding, it will fit right in the flanges I have. This is good so I can weld on the inside which is preferable, and only do partial welding on the outside.

 

So, next week I will order some 1-1/4" pipe fittings and eventually start from scratch with the manifolds. I have enough straight pipe to start on a pair of 3-1 merge collectors though.

 

In other news, I removed the A/C components a couple days ago. Apparently I disturbed something because today I found a large pool of brake fluid sitting on the frame rail. The paint there is ruined. My MC has apparently been leaking in to the booster. And the booster gave way. Luckily I never completely flushed the fluid when I got the car and it had already absorbed water. So, the paint is bubbling but not coming off as easily as it would with fresh paint. For whatever that's worth.

 

When I remove this VG30 for the VG33 I will have to repaint it there.

 

I've been trying to get a hold of a VG33 long block with no luck so far.

[BLOZ UP]

I got some 1-1/4" butt weld fittings. They fit perfectly. A little porting on the head, and they would line up perfectly. I regret buying so many of the 1-1/2", but I was just going off of what I had had before, and what a few other people had used.

 

I also picked up a VG33. It was out of an automatic Frontier, and that's all I know. I fear a few bent valves, as I took the timing cover off and noticed some remains of a previous timing belt--there were teeth stuck in some crevices. The belt that was on it was also not tensioned properly (or really, tensioned at all).

 

 

I was planning on removing the current VG30 and replacing it with this VG33, but it looks like a rebuild of the VG33 would be prudent. I know the VG30 in it right now will run, albeit at various compression levels. I had another VG30 I was planning to rebuild--and I tore it down. Wish I hadn't done that now, as it was in much better condition than the motor in the car right now. Oh well.

 

The oil filter thing won't clear the crossmember. I need one from a Pathfinder, that points the filter straight down.

 

The result of a leaky brake booster:

 

I have a reman booster and master waiting for me to get the motivation and time.

 

How I am going to fix the alternator problem:

 

New radiator that's been waiting 5 years on a shelf:

 

It needed some support tabs:

 

All done (well, except there are holes to be drilled):

 

Only one of the 12" fans I have fit. Either a larger fan or a shroud is going on it.

 

The intercooler I plan to use:

 

It just barely fits:

 

The plan is 2" from the compressor outlet to a 2-2.5" silicone reducer on the intercooler (passenger side). The other side of the intercooler will be 2.5" to the throttle body. This way it fits within the stock radiator support holes. I had to chop off the air filter support bracket, or at least part of it. And remove the front bumper supports--although they could be modified to fit. You would need to remove the horn mounting brackets.

 

That makes 2 modifications to the S30 so far: 1) Heat shield pieces, 2) Air filter box support removed.

 

Not too bad. I don't plan on removing or modifying anything else.

 

I could cheat some bends, but then I got an idea! Batteries died on the camera, but the outlets were chopped off and will be placed on the next higher face of the intercooler ends. Not as efficient, but it was either that or cheating bends like I mentioned, sourcing short radius aluminium from somewhere, or getting a smaller intercooler.

[BLOZ UP]

I got started on the wiring this weekend. It's nice to be able to get stuff done on the car without getting covered in oil. A nice change of pace. I got quite a bit done:

 

Megasquirt is powered and grounded and working. I have the CTS hooked up (using the CHTS on the VG30E, as in the Z31 it came out of), CAS, and TPS.

 

A mess:

 

A somewhat tidier mess:

 

The relay above is for the fuel pump. I am using the stock S30 relay for megasquirt and sensor power, but the fuel pump relay wire coming out of megasquirt is to ground the connection. The stock relay, as convoluted as it is, doesn't really have a way to connect the ground just for the fuel pump circuit. So, I have that relay to switch +12v to the stock relay's fuel pump circuit when grounded. So it's a relay to turn on a relay. It was either that or forego MS's fuel pump wire and have the fuel pump be on whenever the ignition is on.

 

 

Since most (all?) of the Nissan harness connectors were broken, I replaced them with weatherpaks. I have a Bluepoint weatherpak crimper, and it really just barely does the job. I can't see myself spending 80 dollars on a new one, so this will have to do, you just have to be careful when crimping the connections.

 

 

I have a feeling I cut the harness too short. Not a huge deal, I can add length to any sensors that need it (TPS, most likely). Measure zero times, solder twice.

 

 

I have some 550cc precision injectors, I just realized the Z31 connectors don't fit, but I found some cheap new ones off ebay that should be in soon. They are low impedance, and rather than try out my MS2's flyback circuit, I will just use the L28's dropping resistors. The stock wiring is really dumb in some places. The power for the injectors and ECU isn't on a fuse (this appears to be a PO's modification), and the injector power wires go from the battery, to the driver's side firewall hole, to the main relay, out the firewall to the dropping resistors, back inside the passenger compartment only to loop around, and then out to the injectors. Another couple feet and they could have skipped the dropping resistors as the resistance of all the copper it had to go through just to get to the injectors would be equivalent.

 

 

Inbetween wiring spurts, I welded up the intercooler I had chopped up earlier. The 1/8" thick cast end tanks were near the maximum my little TIG could muster, and I had too small filler as well. Good thing no one will be able to see it easily.

 

This fan, although a little small in diameter, fits easily between the intercooler and radiator. Flipping the blades over converted it from a puller (as it was on my Z31), to a pusher. Less efficient this way but I don't see cooling being an issue. I also drilled holes and properly mounted the radiator.

 

 

 

Closing shot of TunerStudio working:

Edited April 10, 2011 by BLOZ UP

[BLOZ UP]

Finals are over. Did a few things.