Wow i'm lazy, will this ever get done?

Well I have forgotten to update the blog, but lets be honest not allot has happened in the missing months that were worth mentioning.

Lets see, what have I missed.

I have picked up some random flanges and parts required, but still lots of things I  need to get.

I got a cheapo soda blaster and started cleaning the little things, like the TB etc. This will come in useful once everything is done, so I can soda blast and paint it.

The intake manifold modifications were completed. Here we have the standard Vq30det top intake manifold-
modified for a drivers side TB / XF 65mm TB  / lower sitting.

To make more room at the front I have been experimenting with the clutch fan setup. A sr20 and Rb25 clutch fan will protrude the same distance, however the Rb25 fan is much thicker. My aim was to have the fan sitting closer to the engine, without doing a thermofan setup. You can mount the fan on the other side of the clutch hub, however its still not good enough. My answer was to use the Sr20 clutch hub with a wd21 Terrano/Navara fan. As you can see the fan mounts perfectly, but sits way further toward the engine.

In this picture the black fan+hub is the rb25 unit, the other hub is a sr20 one
white fan closest to this hub is the Sr 20 one and the white fan furthest away is the Navara/Terrano Td27 one.

As you can see the Td27 fan is pretty similar to the SR fan, however it has more blades and a different mount position. This is actually a secondhand spare for my D21 Navara, so its a bit dirty. I plan to have a new one before the car is ready to go.

As for the radiator, I have selected a Holden commodore radiator as it will provide the closest inlet/outlet fitment. you could run a Z32 radiator, however it is quite tall and skinny. The actual vq30det radiators are to long to fit in a s13 engine bay. I found the commodore one to be the closest fitment. I have an aluminium one on order, but it has not arrived yet.

I am hoping once the radiator arrives to have the car sent to the workshop to have some piping made up.

This should give me the inspiration to do the wiring and finish up all the small bits that will need doing.

Hopefully there will be an update soon, with some shinny pipes - but we will see!

Vq Update : Still going....

Well, it's been quite a while since the last update and unfortunately it seems like not much has happened in the last two months...

I have been playing with the car, but not allot of time spent turning spanners. Have been doing allot of research online, to try and find out the best things that will work for my setup. Most of the engine bay wiring has been removed, along with the dash so the car is looking quite sad.

One of the main issues was the intake manifold. The Y34 neo engine has top feed injectors and the intake manifold won't accept the side feed rails as the mounts are different. I have since acquired most of an intake setup from a y33 with the side feed injector rails etc.

Test fitting fail - I had a vq30de Maxima intake manifold sent over from QLD. I was hoping it would bolt in and sit low enabling me to close the bonnet without it fouling. It turns out, with very little work it would bolt in, but it crossed over the passenger side cam cover, not the driver's side one as expected. On the A32 Maxima this manifold will cross over the 'driver' side but on the turbo intake manifold its goes over to the 'passenger' side.  The runners are low, but also being quite long it is not desirable for the turbo setup.

I have decided to use a Falcon XF throttle body, this is a really simple design. This has a reverse throttle linkage and 65mm butterfly, so it will suit the VQ setup nicely.

The intake manifold has been mocked up and it is with the fabricator (along with a few other things). This has been shaved so it is shorter, and the throttle position moved to the driver's side.

 

The cam cover with the oil filler has been modified, so the oil filler neck is much shorter, as it was so very close to the bonnet.

Once the car is close to running I will be having all the covers cleaned and painted up.

I have also decided to mount the intercooler inside the radiator support panel, so it will have much sorter pipe work. As the Vq is quite short, there is plenty of room to space the radiator away from the intercooler and still run the clutch fan. I have been doing a mock-up with a s13 radiator and a z32 radiator, but will most likely end up using a modified r32 ally radiator.

 

I'll leave the update here for the moment, but hopefully I'll be getting a shinny intake manifold shortly, so ill post an update then..

Jully Weekend Progress

Yesterday (Saturday) I picked up a Vq package.
This consisted of :

Y34 Vq30det + Loom and Ecu
Y34 Intake + Loom and Ecu
Modified S13 crossmember for s2 R33 engine mounts
Gearbox Mount (for Z32 gearbox)
Z32 bellhousing, machined down for adaptor plate
Vq30 to Z32 Gearbox Adaptor Plate
Custom Flywheel to suit stock Vq starter motor and rb25 clutch
Z32 gearbox shifter relocater, shorter with solid mounts.

Pictures

 

At my house

 

First things first, I got to work on the gearbox. To change the shifter setup you need to cut the stock shifter linkage and push out the bearings. The bearings are then reused in the new setup.

This is the old setup, with the old linkage (cut)

 

Old vs new

New linkage

New setup with shifter

 Backyard work area

Once this was sorted it was time to changeover the bellhousing. Due to having a gearbox adaptor plate I needed to install a bellhousing that was machined down. As you can see there is a slight height difference :

To change the bellhousing you need to remove a few things and tap it off. Once this was done I installed the adaptor plat and gearbox onto the engine. I did not install a clutch, as i will be putting it in to 'Test fit'. Once absolutely everything is sorted it will come out, get a proper clean and paint and go back in.

The z32 gearbox has a hole for the starter motor that is not used on the Vq, so a cover will need to be made for this.

This was the end of the first day,  first thing Sunday morning I set about changing over the crossmember. This is the modified one.

 

Then it was time to drop the engine in

The front of the sump rested on my sway bar, so i had to remove this to get the engine to sit correctly. The engine sits quite high and there is going to be a fair amount of work required to make everything sit nicely.

Fitment pictures

 
I test fitted a old sr20 radiator. I plan on using a alloy r32 radiator with modified bottom outlet. It appears there is heaps of room to retain the standard clutch fan setup.

The below picture shows the placement of the shifter setup. As you can see one bolt fouls the body. I am going to put the stock setup back on and see if we can move the shifter back.

When s13 people put z32 gearbox's on their s13 motors the shifter linkage sits way behind this hole. This kit i got was to return this to the correct position. As the Vq is sitting a far bit further forward than a Sr20 the gear linkage appears to sit to far forward. This is something I will have a play with another day.


The stock intake setup has two butterfly's that are just a tad over 4Cm each and the connecting pipe merges these two into a single ~7.5 cm Od opening. My plan would be to remove the stock Throttle Body and replace this with a TB that has a single butterfly.

To work out the potential flow rates we would need to know the area of the butterfly...

The Area of a 4 Cm circle is 050.2 Cm squared, so 100.4 Cm squared on a twin setup.
The Area of a 6 Cm circle is 113.1 Cm Squared

The Area of a 7 Cm circle is 153.9 Cm Squared
The Area of a 8 Cm circle is 201.1 Cm Squared
From what I understand :
Non turbo s14/15 Silvia's use a 6cm Butterfly
The N15 N1 pulsar uses a 7cm butterfly.. possibly some pathfinders to...
Vh45 Tb have a 8cm butterfly and 9cm OD

I don't want to get an overly large TB as the cams etc will remain stock for some time and there is no point having an over sized TB on a stockish engine (will also create issues for any tuning). I will do some more research on the matter and see what would be the best upgrade.

Ideally I would like to place a single TB on the passenger side, but i will have to talk with a fabricator about this work. Here is a mock up picture with a 50mm Sr20det TB:

 Mechanic Kitteh Approves

 

.... that's all for this weekend

Z32 Gearbox

The long search for a gearbox is over...!


Found a Z32 manual conversion on the Aus 300zx forums ( aus300zx )
Sent the guy a message and it turned out he was close by!
Everything (except tailshaft) is from a 1990 Z32 halfcut, the tailshaft is from a NA and was made for a similar diff to the one the 180sx allready has.

Scheduled to pickup an engine package later this month, so will provide some more updates then.

Sr20 is out

Howdy,

Removed the Sr20 on the weekend, as it found a new home with a new owner.

 

Will be checking out a few Z32 gearbox options this fortnight and picking up the new VQ30 shortly.

G'day, Introduction to 300sx

Howdy fokes,

I have created this blog to track the development of my most recent project.

I will be placing a Vq30det from a nissan Cima into my Nissan 180sx. We have codenamed this project '300sx'.

Currently my 180sx is running a s14 SR20DET motor with basic mods, including exhaust, intercooler, larger injectors and PFC computer.

This is what it looks like currently :

I will keep this blog updated with any progress that has been made.