My Need For Speed

A bit of an update here now finally got around building my pistons

So first thing is first was to double check the work of the machine shop



Everything turned out well with the tolerances, thank goodness lol so next step is to determine ring gap. The pics pretty much the repeated steps i did until i got the right gap







Building Piston Time!!



Once there all together now time to set the piston rings according to their cylinder



So putting the oil rings on when it came to the top compression ring i noticed the ring was getting stuck between the grooves. The side i grinding on made an edge making the one side "sticky" Simple fix with a small file



So thats as far as i can take it for i am still waiting on parts. In the mean time i finally got a plan with my head. Im gonna send out to a shop since i dont feel comfy doing my own porting lol So starting putting the cams and covers back on for shipping!

 

Just a minor update on how things are going

1)Some parts ended up getting mixed up which is leading a further delay to get started on my block. Man that sucks since shipping takes forever for this car

2)Good side though my head is being built so i still have a 6 week prep time to finish up the block before the head arrives

3)My front diff has seriously been the death of me (feels like it anyway) with the stupid amounts of home made shims and then gears not meshing has driven me nuts weekend over weekend. That should be getting wrapped up withing the next couple weeks

Cheers

 

Well time has come to start putting the bottom end together!

The story why everything took forever was because i ordered new OEM main bolts instead a month later OEM head studs showed up. Was not impressed…. So rather then waiting another month for the proper part i forked up the cash for ARP hardwar at 3 times the price…. Anyway lets begin

Oil squiters to go in first



Next is to drop in the crankshaft and check our clearances. To whoever is mechanically incline should have heard about plasti-gauge which is the method im using to check my clearances





Once checked we got 0.0015" which lands in the middle of the regular tolerances. So thats fine with me and we torque everything back up



Spun the crankshaft a few times and it spins perfectly smooth. With that said time to install the pistons!





So i eventually got all of them in with the help of a friend. Time to check up on clearances on the connecting rods with plasti-guage.





Once again 0.0015" which is on the loose(er) side of the regular tolerance which is fine with me. Once everything is torqued up is was hard to spin with the pistons in now but everything spun smoothly with no bidding of any sort.
So with everything all said and done with a solid days work gone by this was the finaly outcome

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So aside from the getting the block on the go finally got all the right shims for my diff. Here's an example with what was done with a blueing dye.

So in the pisture below you can see the pinion gear was to far and we didnt have that optimal mesh with the gears meshing in the midde of the teeth





So bumped the pinion gear ever so slightly ahead and here's what we've got now





So managed to get the teeth perfect despite the amount of custom home made shims haha glad i found all my right thicknesses now so i can order the correct size of shims!

 

Looking great! I'm very impressed

 

sub

 

Nice work!!

 

Thanks, there's still ALOT to do so plenty more to come

 

Latest Update here
Now its been an easy 2 months and still waiting for my head to arrive. They've had a 2 week delay due to valves being out of round so hopefully in the next coming weeks it will soon arrive to my door!

Still continued to little bit i can with my block with some baffle plates and some accessories

The difference the cleaning can do!


Then installed


And now where the block has stayed at



So in the mean time ive been making my permanent shims for my front diff. Gotta love my old man teaching me how to use the grinding table


So once they were all finished up it was time to assemble everything for the final time. This time without forgetting to install all the seal and o-rings! Even put in a TOMEI baffling plate for those launches and hard corners!



Couple of hours go by and next thing i know its all together ready to go!

 

Here's a good update. Lets start with a bit of assembly on the car

1)New intercooler! New vs stock



Assembled on the car with new intercooler hard piping to replace the old rubber piping & painted bumper bar



2)Relocate power steering reservoir! Basically cut the old hanger off



and "jb weld" the old hanger for the charcoal canister uses to the front of the power steering reservoir



Then simply test fit *Mental note for a longer hose needed when the engine goes back in*



3)Start slapping parts on the block!

-Tomei oil orifice for the head! Simply punched it in on top of the OEM one


-Water pump install!


-Last but not least the diff/oil pan can go back on!




Some decent progress anyways, im STILL waiting for the head to come back. Maybe someday….

 

Love this build so far

 

Well it sure has been a while for an update. Good news though! I finally received the head after 4 months… cams already installed and pretty much good to go



So with an inspection of the head i found there was a gouge in the corner of the head where the valve covers sit. Easy fix on my part but with the cash ive spent on it figured it would have came here perfect condition.



Anyways it was an easy fix either way, filled it down close and stoned it back flat with the other surface. Good to go for putting it on the block after cleaning and putting ARP studs in. (yes there's a TOMEI MLS headgasket intalled too)



So then thats one day gone out of the weekend. and it lays like this till tomorrow

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The next day i woke up pretty early eager to get this engine rolling, so spent quite the morning and afternoon getting the turbo's ready for install and wrapping up the headers and down pipe.



Once i got back to the garage temporarely installed the valve covers and installe the new cam gears.



after this was done on come the headers



Then this was pretty much rest of my day installing the turbos with all the new oil and coolant hardlines As well hard to tighten up one of the nuts on the manifold holding the turbo. Here comes some home made tools.



So it ended bing quite a weekend for me with quite a bit of progress. The only thing i didnt do yet was install the turbo drains because i meant to drop a bit of oil in where the bearings lay. Probably go get a syringe or something for i can do that so there not completely dry even with them beaing a ball bearing turbo. Next up the timing belt, but thats for another time!

Just a note if you guys are wondering why i keep every possible hole blocked, its to deal with dust. Im not at my parents garage all the time and when they have to move any of the cars, tractors, lawnmowers etc to do some chores around the house its picks up the dust ALOT. This is just a preventative thing i do.

 

Awesome rebuild man! That's crazy the front diff on the oil pan. That last pic makes me hard.

 

Thanks, yeah I don't know why nissan engineered it that way, or can get pretty schechy when you really start blowing diffs in pieces

 

Here we go again, and i mean this in a bad way…… Long story short i found a bump in the sealing surface of my head through the other gasket so the turbo's and head had to come off…… ugghh was not impressed with this AT ALL



So you can see that its on the edge of a coolant jacket. Sure i could have left it but when i measured this bump it was 0.005" which puts the head right out of spec. So stoned this one back down and got it under 0.0015" with my smallest shim and puts it back into spec. I'm sure it will be fine but jeeez, make me nervous.



Back with putting the head on again, with a new gasket



At least now with that solved we can really get this engine on the go now. Turbo's were no problem with all the lines still there, had to modify the drain with the fitting because of the turbo's then came the intake side of things. The intake manifold got installed then the fun part….. (sarcastic here lol)

The way nissan engineered this engine makes it look like the vacuum and coolant lines a complete mess and figuring out where verything goes is not the simplest task. Had to grab a friend and go through the manual quite a bit to get everything right. The picture below is just a start of it.



Next thing you know the instake is on with the belt and crank pulley.



I wasnt kidding about this mess under the intake plenum lol i do plan on doing some kind of "smoke" test just to make sure all my lines are sealed before dropping it into the car



With the engine looking pretty it was finally time to get this off its engine stand but there was one catch….. I have either misplaced my flywheel bolts or they never got returned to me from the machine shop. Either way i cannot find them here at home so instead i ordered a new set.

So this is where the engine sits for now until those come in. There are a couple of things to take of first before fitting it to the transmission because of the clutch i have for it. Requires a bit of modding on the bolts themselves and on the shaft of the transmission. With that there's a connector to be replaced so i'm gonna learn how to solder in the next couple days lol should be interesting

 

Back at this once again with the flywheel bolts coming in! Funny though the first thing I had to do with them was trim them down because of the aftermarket flywheel. Did not expect that!



So that went fine with my dremel and few cutting disks later. Time to go install it on the engine.



ooooo, that twin plate goodness! borrowed a friends alignment tool to line up the clutch plates and torqued down the cover.

So the next step reading in the instructions wanted me to modify the shaft cover in the transmissions bell housing. By modifying they mean more cutting! Another one I didn't expect to do!



So all went well and I never did touch the main input shaft. So now comes the next part of the fork lever. Pretty interesting what OS GIKEN did here to make it a pull converted to a push style.



Now came the fun time of trying to fuse the two together



Spent a solid hour trying to get the two together. Man what a pain trying to get that. I did manage to get it and ive got myself my drivetrain 80% together!



That was some good progress now time to play around with my broken wires. The soldering was a hell of a lot easier then what I expected and so everything turned out pretty good.



Now I know its not a OEM style of plug but I just needed a two way, this will work fine once its all wrapped up and protected from moisture. Had to do the same thing on the solenoid wiring in the car. So for now that's how things are going to stay till I can get a hand to put the engine back in the car. Dropped the car back on its 4 wheels and let it sit till next time.

 

Engine Drop in!











Closest thing i can get without a timelapse video haha! Anyways with the install i manage to break the very fragile plastic tube connected to my heater core….



Thats gonna be a bg job to replace but that will be for a later update once i do get the new plastic tube! Other then that it was time to start hooking the harness together below the intake plenum but the only issue with that was one plug was way to short so i had to extend the thing….



Sweet now that wasnt to big of a deal once i got it all tucked in nice and properly, so we can move on with the oil cooler hoses and the fuel lines under and beside the plenum as well





I had to leave on line disconnected for i can prime my oil pump. Until then the line stays as is but can surely mount the oil cooler itself!



That will stay as is until i get ready with the oil to fill up the cooler and the engine. Time to move on to the front of the engine with the pulleys. Here comes more headaches…

The new ATI damper i bought was not making my OEM pulley fit to well. The OEM pulley was to wide and just did not want to go whatsoever.



Figured it would be a good idea to trim it down in a lathe, that was not the best idea haha turned out like this



That lip that made the pulley to wide was what was holding the whole thing together. Great now im out a pulley! Later with some investigating there was suppose to be a aftermarket pulley supplied with this damper.

Next job the fuel pump. The headaches dont stop haha
My pump was soo much thinner then the OEM one that it would not fit in the original sleeve so had to go get fuel resistant gasket material to make up the space



With that solved came my second issue with this pump, normally a sock would fit on the end of it but because engineered this differently to make a frame to hold the pump instead and sock would not go to the bottom of the tank. Had to make shift a fitting to fit on it, now i can now fit the hose coming from the sock onto the pump. Once that was all good. shoved it back into the tank.




So with the many issue i ran into i had to take a break before i'd loose my mind, there's more to come i encoutered that i didn't show yet. They will be coming with more updates! Stay tuned

 

Back at it again!

This other issues i encoutered are recirculating piping problems, no longer have a recirculating B.O.V so i had to plug off a couple of hole for the hard intake piping kit



Finished off my fuel pump since the cover was driving me insane last update



My new water pulley pump came in the mail and it now fits like a glove once a got another SHORTER belt than OEM since the ATI crank pulley made it an under drive from the oem crank pulley.



Brand new radiator to drop in!



Had to farbicate a new clutch hard line since the OEM one was kinked, that might explain why my clutch was stiff last summer…. haha



Then came the fun part (sarcastic here) the heater core has to come out because of that one broken plastic peice of tube! so out came the ENTIRE DASH.





Eventually i got it back in but man how time consuming that is. Not that its difficult but you'll easily kill a day with that job.

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So the next day came rolling around and it was now time to prep the car for its very first start up!! Don't have pmany pictures of this process but its pretty straight forward. Before we go this going i had to reset the throttle bodies for the new plenum



and then simply change out the coil packs for brand new aftermarket ones!



Now with that done, i didnt install the coil packs not even the sparkplugs themselves. Firstly I had to prime the engine full of oil. Simple and pre-filling the oil cooler and lines then filling up the engine. Cranked it over numerous amount of times and had to refill the oil once the oil made its way throughout the galleries. While we cranking it over just for curiousity we did a compression check.

The numbers came out were pretty interesting??

Cyl 1 - 120 PSI
Cyl 2 - 150 PSI
Cyl 3 - 135 PSI
Cyl 4 - 135 PSI
Cyl 5 - 145 PSI
Cyl 6 - 130 PSI

I didn't think of it much because the rings arent even started to seal up yet so we carried onto the start up. Starting it had me nervous just because it was a fresh rebuilt engine. It was cranking over fine and it took a couple of tries to get it running but after a couple hesitations she fired up right away! VROOOM!

Simply ran the engine up to temp leaving it around 2000RPM's~ for about 15 mins so it can break in the new cams. Everything went well, then came an oil change and it was a good day