I've mentioned my current project a few times already, so i figured it was time to post some stuff that you guys could see.


So, I searched FOREVER to find a nice, clean, rust free s13 coupe that hadnt been ravaged and crashed like the usual s13... I finally found a nice one in miami. I drove it around here in florida for a month to see if it would hold togeather, then me and my dad drove it up to his shop in NY.

My dad knows a few people that do salvaged cars, so he had them find a wrecked 350z for me. We finally found a wrecked 2008 touring coupe with the 6mt, with only 8600 miles on it! It cost about 6 grand, but i should be able to sell off a lot of the parts...

 

Anyways, me and my dad started ripping both cars apart... got the 240sx all stripped down, and got the engine out of the 350z.

The next step was to fit the engine into the 240sx. Lucky for me, my dad has an awesome shop, engine lift included. So we dangled it from the lift and lined it up to see how it would fit in.

We decided that inorder to have safe clearance everywhere around the engine, we would have to modify the crossmember and move the steering rack down 2 inches. Dont, worry, i plan on modifying the spindles to get the correct bumpsteer. Before all is said and done, i plan on modeling the front suspension in 3d so i can see exactly what im working with... but by my current methods, i dont think dropping both ends of the tie rod down equally affects anything other than akermann (it increases it because of the angle the spindle pivots at... straight line bumpsteer is the same and bumpsteer while turning is only a subtle difference as far as i can tell)

The main clearance issues are obvisouly you cat have the engine too far back or youll hit the firewall... the oil pan is also close to the anti-roll bar, so we trimmed off a couple useless aliminum tabs on the block.
The pinion housing part of the steering rack is also a very tight fit against the starter motor. Because of this, the engine is actually mounted alightly closer to the passenger side... the engine mounts are slotted for easy install, but i think its about an inch closer to the passenger frame rail than the driver frame rail.

We re-used the 350z engine mounts, and i must say, they seem pretty stiff. Because of the tallness of the engine mounts, the plates they rest on actually sit down in the crossmember a bit, you can see in the pics. It actually required a slight clearancing of the lower control arms to get it to fit, but it works!

 

awesome project.. might as well add GTM's HR TT kit while you have the engine out.

 

nice...gimme the taillights off the z!

 

Price on tail lights, PM me please.

Nice project, many great usable parts. Those brakes are also in demand, good upgrade for people with 03 to 05 brakes FYI

 

+100 Boost it!!!! do it now!

 

Good winter project. What part of ny did you get it from it looks very familiar

 

I would LOVE to twin turbo this thing.

thats in the plan for 2013 haha. I dont know about a 'kit' though. Id be spending a LOT of money on parts that wouldn't even fit.

Maybe if it comes out nice i can talk one of the companies into selling me a partial kit or something. Either that or i'll work something out myself...






i got the 240sx from Maimi, and the 350z came from somewhere in eastern NY, i dont actually know. I was in florida when my dad found it, so i didnt even get to see it right away. Actually, the picture i posted in my first post was probably the first I saw of it.

I got lucky too... the radiator got crunched back to within about a half inch of the VVT solenoids... so if you take into account that the metal probably sprung back some, it was probably about 1mm away... that would've probably costed a bit to fix.

But, lucky me, the car started right up with one turn of the key and idled just fine. of course, i had to turn it off after like 10 seconds because theres no coolant in the thing...

 

Cool project. I could use the stereo and the rear brakes.

 

PM sent for parts. Local Pickup

 

Nice!!

 

I will start a thread for parts as soon as I get everything sorted out.

I'll get back to you on the rear brakes.

I intend on keeping the stereo, though.

 

I almost forgot to mention how EASY the engine fit into the 240sx. If youve ever looked at how your 350zs steering rack fits underneath the oil pan, you'll know its a pretty tight fit. Now, theres less than inch of clearance infront of (anti roll bar) and behind the engine (firewall), so i didnt even have much of a choice as to where to mount the beast. Somehow, the steering rack on the 240sx ended up in the same exact spot. It almost seemed like god himself wanted me to have 307hp and 286ft-lbs of torque...
(I guess its a matter of perspective, though... I think SR20s fit in easier haha)



So, after the engine was mounted, it was time to mount the transmission.

We shimmed the tranny with a much of wood blocks to get it in the proper position and then crawled underneath.

the s13 transmission mount would have been a pain to modify to fit the vq tranny, so we decided to build our own.

we started off the stock rubber mount, and fabbed up some square stock to capture both sides of the bolt. Its one of those crazy weighted vibration dampening bolts, but im sure the extra 1000 grams wont slow me down too much... We positioned it heightwise and tacked it. FYI measuring is a pain, and if you can just tack it while everything is in place, that's the way to do it.

We also realized that the 350z diff could be mounted into the 240sx subframe with some hacking and welding... The 240sx has a much shorter gear ratio, and and the 350z also has a limited slip, too. the front bolts are spaced further apart, so the subframe had to be notched, and the rear mount was different as well. we stole a random bushing from the smashed front A-arm for the 3rd bolt, the one in the back of the diff, and mocked it up. I was a little concerned that the subframe would be weakened too much by the amount of material removed, so we decided to add a brace under the front mounting points to prevent the subframe from flexing. Props to my dad and his fabrication skills for getting this **** to fit!

Anyways, here are some pics... hopefully they help the crap I just wrote make more sense....

EDIT: before anyone gets confused, the subframe photographed bottom side up. The last pic is clearance made for the breather.

 

wow nice work!!!

 

Another point of serious concern was the halfshafts.

I picked up a 5 lug conversion on zilvia, off an s14 including rear hubs and front hubs and spindles. cant argue with OEM quality. also, the spline count on the hub side of the 240sx is the same as on the 350z.

As some of you may know, the 350z has one longer halfshaft (passenger side) and one shorter halfshaft (driver side)

well the 240sx is the same way. on both cars, the long one is about 1 3/8 inches longer than the short one. I measured hub-to-hub one the 350z and the 240sx, and then i subtracted. the difference was 2 3/4 inches. now, if you divide by two, you realize that the 350zs short shaft could be the 240sx long shaft if someone could just shorten the 350z long shaft by 2 3/4 inches.

so, we called up the driveshaft shop and told them what was up. they suggested we order a new center section of the shaft, which they said was rated for 500ish hp. you can see the shafts in these two pics. the driveshaft shop piece is very beefy and totally OEM quality.

skinny one = first pic = 350z.
fat one = second pic = driveshaft shop.

 

Lookin great!!

 

fking sweet project!

 

Thank you for the kind words



Anyways, I think i kinda forgot to mention why i got an entire wrecked car, as opposed to just an engine and transmission.

As you guys may know, the VVT on these cars is pretty complicated. Last time i checked there was only 1 aftermarket EMS that supports the VVT, and it costs a couple grand. So, I decided to go with the factory nissan computer. Unfortunately, due to modern electronic madness, you also have to have a second computer for the ECU to work. its called the 'body control module' or something like that. These two togeather would probably cost atleast $1000, unless i got lucky... and then i'd have to deal with some other crap, like getting my 240sx cluster to work with the 350z harness etc etc...

My plan is to simply make the 240sx think that its a 350z and avoid 99% of the hassle. The plan was to bring over the guage cluster and steering wheel, but when we got the two cars apart, we realized that the 350z dash might fit into the 240sx.

we trimmed off the end pieces of the plastic dash, the ones with the little window defogger vents IIRC, and then put it into the car. fit pretty good. like, surprisingly good.

we bent up a piece of sheet metal to connect the main 350z dash tube to the stock mounting bolts, and lined it up. once we were satisfied with the feel of it, we tacked it in.

looks like this:

 

my plan was to just cut and weld the shifter mount shorter, but my dad felt like showing off his milling machine skills, so he replicated the stock design with a custom piece of his own.

we also shortened the shift linkage to the minimum possible length. you can see that theres also a 2nd hole in the u-joing linkage piece. this allows the linkage to me mounted slightly further forward, and helps get the shifter as far forward as possible.

asctually, we did this before we tacked the dash in its final position, because we wanted to make sure the shifter was in a good position relative to the steering wheel. i think the shifter and wheel ended up being like an inch or two back from the stock position (even the stock shifter is near the rear of the hole, its misleading)

Then we made a bracket to hold the other side of the dash. I used my dads milling machine to make some little slots so there wouldnt be any fitment issues...

 

this is sick. good work man. i did something similar back in the day with an old N13 pulsar chassis and a vg30dett.

subscribed, can't wait to see final results!