Six_Shooter's Money pit/Time Vampire

[Six_Shooter]

The Next Day

So now it's Saturday morning in our story.

After contemplating what I was going to do about the trans mounts over night, since I discovered that there is a physics issue with the transmission and the car itself, only one object can occupy the same space at a time. The trans is just freaking HUGE, compared to the old trans. I decided the night before to cut out the old mounts and make new, since I didn't really have a choice, and even trimming the old ones wouldn't have been enough. If I wanted to leave the engine and trans more forward I could have made it work, but that just wasn't an option to me.

I get the grinder with a cutting disc out and start cutting away the driver side mount.



Point of no return:



I spent most of the day designing and fabricating the new mounts.



Sunday, Bloody Sunday

I then moved onto boxing the old mount brace and then tying the new mounts to the old mount brace.





New mounts tied to old mount brace:





Notice that the right side tie in plate has a notch, yeah, that's to clear the VSS, and if I hadn't put that notch there, the trans would not have fit. It's THAT close to the brace. I'm contemplating notching that brace a little more to give a little more clearance, just for peace of mind.

More lift and support

Happy with how the trans mount has turned out, I move onto the front mount. Now here is where I break from conventional wisdom in a typical longitudinal layout. Most people would make some plates that attach to the side of the engine block and then tie them into the existing mount pads, or a new crossmember. Not me, nope, I'm going a different route.

Go back to how the LX9 is mounted in a transverse application. There is a mount attached to the oil pan, just below the crank pulley. I like this idea because I can remove the mount pedestals from the crossmember and open that area up for other things.

I had planned for this weeks ago and bought a universal Energy Suspension mount that looked like it should work. I had fabricated the plate that attaches to the oil pan a few weeks ago, in preparation. Now to finish it off and make something to attach it to the car...

Some time later:








Comparison of modified crossmember to original crossmember (With steering and lower A-arms still attached):


And the engine supported by the car.



Tomorrow I will be making some struts to keep the engine upright, since I only have the two mounts holding the driveline right now.

Here's that Tight VSS clearance.



Here is a picture of the engine to trans adapter I made, remember this is the second one, the first one will become wall art, to remind me to make proper measurements and calculations. lol

[Six_Shooter]

How it was sitting as of Sunday night:

[buddrow]

I need to dig up the pics of the LS/260 conversion my brother and I did. I really like your v6 swap, might have to look into that for the next one. :)

Buddrow


Edit:added photo

[Xfirez51]

Boy this really brings back memories. I owned a 73 Z in 1974 having traded in my 72 Corvette coupe for it. I was impressed with how smooth the straight six was when compared to the SBC. And it didn't run out of breath past 80mph.
It was the same color combo as you have here, however it was a manual w a set of "phony" wire wheels.

[Six_Shooter]

Looks like I got way behind on updating this thread, I'll get it updated soon.

[tayto]

updates?

[Six_Shooter]

updates?

Yes, it's time to add more to this thread...


Some detail of the front mount:




First attempt at a support strut, but the strut tower proved to be weaker than I had thought it was going to be.


This is what I ended up doing, but will probably replace it since it's not perfect, and would prefer something with some rubber/urethane bushings.


So then I moved onto some turbo plumbing work, turbo mounted:




Support bracket for the turbo:


Headers and Y-pipe basically done:

[Six_Shooter]

So then I moved onto some other detail work, starting with the crank trigger.

A little crank trigger mount modification, This is the same basic set-up I used on my Jimmy years ago, but I moved the base of the mount forward to clear the oil pan. In the Jimmy I was able to hammer some clearance, which I didn't like at the time, but it was my best option. This time I decided to move the mount base and shorten the slider.


I also pulled the oil filter adapter off, originally to see about adding a port to it to feed the turbo, but I found a better solution for that, half way through. Anyway, while it was off, I decided to make an improvement.

Original:


Smoothed out:


Added a flex joint to the Y-pipe:


I changed the oil pan to one I had modified for oil drain back provisions, and was happy to see the bottom end was as clean as the top had been.


I was able to get a clutch in the car as well.

I ended up using the entire clutch from my L28 in this set-up. I originally thought I would have to use, or could have used the pressure plate from my Jimmy, but it would have been too tall. So I found that there was a 2mm difference in diameters of the bolt patterns for each pressure plate. I decided to drill out the holes in the pressure plate larger and then added a couple dowels made from some bolts to help keep the pressure plate located properly.


I then moved on to finishing the bellhousing modification I had started a few weeks ago to clear the starter:








I'll add more in a day or two.

[Six_Shooter]

Update for anyone interested...

This is the part of the day where I actually laughed, possibly even chortled a little.

I needed to come up with a custom driveshaft for this set-up, since the new trans uses a very different and much larger output spline than the original trans. I did some preliminary measuring a few weeks ago, going off outside dimensions of some driveshafts I had, one that fit the trans, and a few that would be either original or some vehicle between. It seemed that the closest match would be the original driveshaft and the driveshaft that fit the trans, I had no idea at the time. So today I decided to cut apart both driveshafts and see what it would take to get something working. The pilots for both driveshafts are the same, or at least so close that it was a snug fit to slide the new yoke, into the old driveshaft. The other great surprise is that without cutting the driveshaft shorter, it was the right length, though it could be about 10 to 15mm longer without issue. I do have about 60mm of yoke engagement as it is, which is over half of the overall length of the yoke.







After this, some magic happened...

When I turned the crank with a rachet, the rear wheels turned as well.

This was the part that I thought was going to cause a long delay on getting the car mobile again, but it turned out to be easier than I thought.

While I had the trans out, I also made some additional room for the VSS, by slicing the mount brace and then hammering the plate to move into the brace, and then finally welding up the slice.

Fitted the starter. It seems that I didn't measure quite right for the starter position when I was making the adapter plate, but I did plan ahead and left enough material that I could open up the area under the starter if need be, and it was. I also made the clutch cover plate, that will be installed between the oil pan and the adapter plate, much like the OEM would have, and also my "clutch inspection hole" cover. This is actually a hole on the side of the trans that would be where the Nissan starter bolted to in the 300ZX TT, but is a great way to look at the throw out bearing and clutch.

I'm a tad worried that I may not have enough movement of the clutch fork to disengage the clutch. I have about 14mm of movement of the throw out bearing in total, after the throw out bearing comes in contact with the fingers of the pressure plate. If I need to, I can get a 300ZX throw out bearing and use the longer throw out bearing collar from my car to gain an additional 5mm. This would place the bearing just about against the fingers of the pressure plate at rest. I'll try it how it is first.

A shot of how it sat at this point in the story:

[Six_Shooter]

It was exhausting

I have the exhaust finished, it's a 3 piece exhaust now, where as the previous exhaust was one piece. I had to do it this way to make servicing components on the car easier. It snakes through areas pretty nicely, and will get the job done. I was hoping that I would have been able to make the exhaust two piece. Basically addiing a new downpipe into the old system, but this proved to be more complicated than it was worth and would require taking apart other parts of the car to get the down pipe in and out, which I do not like. When I build cars, I try very hard to make them easy to service, even for the less common/less frequently serviced items, because, why not? It will make my life easier in the long run, and it's usually no harder to make a vehicle this way than it is to just keep stacking parts on top of parts.

Started at the downpipe flange. Plasma cutters and flap discs are wonderful things


This is where I got to when I discovered that I couldn't put the one flange where I wanted, the downpipe just wasn't go to be able to be installed with it this length. I really liked how it fit though.






Tacked together from one end to the other, next up, weld it solid...

[Six_Shooter]

Time to take charge and cool it

I started on the intercooler piping at this point. I wanted to change how the IC piping was routed through the rad support while I was at it. You see there are 4 holes in the rad support, well, there are more, but one is filled with the rad, and the others are just simple wire pass throughs or bolt holes. lol Anyway. There are two holes about mid way up on the rad support that are about 2 5/8" or so, and fit 2.5" tubing just nicely, but are not ideal to get piping through, due to the inner wheel well being very close to them, but not impossible. I had some intake piping through these holes originally, back before I put the IC in (I just had a tube there taking it's place). Anyway, once I actually made my IC, due to where the tubes were, it was easier to just remove the vent boots from the upper holes and use those holes. They are larger and just easier to use. Many people that install turbos in these cars use the upper holes. These holes as originally fitted are for some vents that allow fresh air into the cabin, and they DO make a difference, so I really wanted to change the holes used for the IC piping.
A couple years ago, I basically rebuilt a friend's 240Z for him and went through some considerable effort to use the lower smaller holes to pass his IC piping through, though we used 2.25" tubing on his car, so it made it easier. The IC he had, also allowed me to have some distance to curve the tubing just right, even though I did have to pie cut the bends to make them tight enough to fit exactly how I wanted them. It was worth the effort, it looks clean, planned out and not hacked looking. So I really wanted to get this going in my car as well. The difference, I'm using a very different style IC, his was a crossflow design, with the inlet and outlet both at the same height near the top of the IC, mine is a vertical flow design, with one inlet at the top and one at the bottom. In the end this design worked out very well for me, as I will show in pictures. He was using 2.25" tubing, I'm using 2.5" tubing, his tubing was stainless steel, and mine is aluminum, his was much easier to weld...

Anyway, back to the point...

I started that night trying to get something that would work to get the tubing through the lower holes. I was working towards keeping the IC on an angle and then pie cut some tubing for one of the tubes, and really did not like how it was turning out. I was also planning on welding tubes to the IC, that passed through the rad support in those holes, and had one side tacked together that did this, or would have once I tacked it to the IC itself. Since I really didn't like how it was turning out that night, I went home.

first attempt at getting the IC tubing through the lower holes in the rad support:





New mount tab, to use an existing front facia/grill support:


Adding some more before test fit:



One more time

So the next night I decided to tackle the IC piping and was determined to not leave until I had something that was at least tacked together and would work. I succeeded. All tacked together, still needed to be welded. I ended up with somewhat of a hybrid of what I was thinking of previously. I ended up welding elbows onto the IC, that are pointed at angles, that once some IC piping is passed through the rad support will allow me to use a short coupler on each end. Right now I am down to only 4 couplers in the entire system. One at the turbo compressor, one at the TB and one at each end of the IC. It took some real effort to get this to work, but I like the end result, and once the vent boots go back it it will look even better.

Looks like a good spot:




I decided to add the BOV directly to the IC tank. I did this on my friend's car, and liked it. I also think it keeps the IC tubing looking cleaner overall.






All painted up:


Mitsubishi Eclipse BOV installed:

[Six_Shooter]

All's well that oils well

I also started on the oil drain back. With the turbo mounted so far forward, and all of the tubes and pipes that are pretty much in the way, the -10 AN that I used previously was not going to work well. It would have worked, but there would have been a chance that the drain would not have been on a downward slope all the way to the pan. So I've come up with a plan to use some tube, and a drain flange that was original to the turbo, but will take some modification, and some additional tubing. I'm shooting to make it one piece all the way to the elbow into the oil pan, and use just a short piece of rubber hose to connect it.

Getting all lubed up... and down

Well, The oil drain back from the turbo took a bit to decide on just exactly how I wanted to do it. I've ran -10 braided hose on my last couple of turbo installs and while it worked it can get expensive and the piece I was using was getting old starting to seep a bit of oil. I hate leaks, and so I eventually decided on a solid tube to a rubber hose coupler at the oil pan. But then I had to decide just what route I was going to take, after some trial fitting, I came up with this:



It snakes in past the Y-pipe and then on a downward slope to the fitting I have at the oil pan.


Springing into action

I knew the weak point on the LX9 valve train was the stock springs, and truth be known, I believe it's been this way for a long time. I used stock valve springs on my Franken60 that used small port 3100 heads, and believe they were a major part of the limiting top end on that engine. I didn't want to take any chances this time and want to rev it to about 6500 RPM or so. I installed a set of Crane Cams valve springs.

Comparison shot:



I used a handy tool that an engine builder friend of mine had (I also bought the springs from him). I was able to remove the stock springs without adding an extension handle, not so with the new aftermarket springs.


No Heat For You!

At one point, while I was under the car, I looked at the block heater and really didn't like that it was still there. I mean I needed something there to keep coolant in the engine, but I will never use the block heater, then it hit me, vehicles that don't spend their lives in Canada (or Northern States) probably don't have block heaters fitted to them, so there should be a plug option. Off to the dealer I go, and sure enough after some searching we find it. Has to come from the states, which wasn't surprising. I think I found the same plug at Car Quest the other day, though, which would have likely been cheaper.



Clutching At A Solution

So with the new trans there were some clutch things to sort out, one being that while the original clutch slave could be used, it has to move to a new position relative to the car. It's mounted lower on the bellhousing requiring a different flex line or some other solution. I came up with my own solution:

I decided to make a short extension piece, and a new bracket to anchor the flex line:

[34blazer]

Looks great Six

[RobertISaar]

this thread makes me realize how much my fab skills need polishing.....

[Six_Shooter]

Looks great Six

Thanks.

this thread makes me realize how much my fab skills need polishing.....

I'll take that as a compliment. To be honest though, I feel the same way when I look other some other people's builds.

There are some things that I did less polished in this engine swap than I wanted to because I was trying to get it done in about 13 days. It took me 14 to swap from the Turbo L28 to the turbo LX9. I was trying to get it done for the annual Zfest that happened on August 14th last year, but I didn't get it done until late in the day of the 14th at which point ZFest was long over. :(