***Before everyone jumps me on the plasti-gauge, it’s not sitting next to the plasti…so it’s sorta decieving how it reads right there!

 

Been doing some research and I think I’m gonna stick with the .0025” main bearing oil clearance.

Started gapping the rings - got the top rings gapped and put them to .025” +/-. I can get the 2nd ring done tomorrow.

Waiting on the pistons to coated and I can resume the build.

 

Dont even know where to start … this post will be scattered

powder coater had my pistons and I had nothing to do except balance the g35 pistons / rods, play with the q40, and throw the ball for the black labs …

I did get top and 2nd comp rings gapped and checked … a little fatter than I typically would want (somewhere between .028 and .03)…

been waiting all week on my dearly arias pistons to get back from the powder guy … I dont know why but I sorta have an emotional attachment to these pistons … they got a clean bill of health from my machinist and I think that my pauter rods and arias pistons are the only original built block components that are still alive … (rev-up oil pump is still alive & will but will be going to the g35 when I put the boundary pump in).

Had a few disappointing conversations with the powder guys that the pistons werent done and they were likely going to be wrapped up either today or saturday, worst case scenario Monday … I stressed the importance of getting them back today and the main guy was onboard and wrapped them up - called me around 4pm and said they’d be ready. Zipped over and grabbed them.

I dont know if I mentioned but I bought a rod balancing table & scale and I immediately balanced the piston set (rather easy - previous shop did a great job) and moved on to the rods and they were easier than I anticipated … With everyting within the 1/10th of a gram I was able to start assembling. Got cylinders 1 and 2 done. I calculated oil bearing clearances and everything is falling between .002 and .003 and verified with plasti

I hope to have the majority of the block assembled by the end of the weekend -



Archive:
Mains Journals(Spec 2.3622”)
First: 2.3507 (.0012 under)
Second: 2.3599” (.0023” under)
Third: 2.3587” (.0035” under)
Forth: 2.3599 (.0023 under)

Rods Journals(Spec 2.0472”)
One: 2.0458” (.0014” under)
Two: 2.0461” (.0011” under)
Three: 2.0466” (.0006” under)
Four: 2.0455” (.0017” under)
Five: 2.0459” (.0013” under)
Six: 2.0482” (.0010 over)

Pauter Rods (Inside Diameter) (bearings occupy .1182”)
Dot 1 / P50 / Cyl 1 / 2.1662”
Dot 2 / P15 / Cyl 2 / 2.1665”
Dot 3 / P57 / Cyl 3 / 2.1680” (spun bearing July 2021)
Dot 4 / P28 / Cyl 4 / 2.1660” (spun bearing October 2018
Dot 5 / P19 / Cyl 5 / 2.1663”
Dot 6 / P47 / Cyl 6 / 2.1665”

Big End Rod Clearance:
Cylinder 1: 0020”
Cylinder 2: .0020”
Cylinder 3: .0017”
Cylinder 4: .0018”
Cylinder 5: .0021”
Cylinder 6: CHECK

Pistons:
1. 408.1g (-.5g)
2. 407.8g (-.2g)
3. 407.6g (low)
4. 408.0 (-.4g)
5. 407.7 (-.1g)
6. 408.1 (-.5g)

Rods - balanced
1. 441.6g (low)
2. 441.8g (-.2g)
3. 442.4g (-.8)
4. 444.2g (-1.4g)
5. 441.7 (-.1g)
6. 441.6 (low)

Rods - Total
1. 643.0g (-.2g)
2. 643.5g (-.7g)
3. 642.8g (low)
4. 643.4g (-.6g)
5. 643.8 (-1.0g)
6. 643.8 (-1.0)

 

Some decent progress last few days.

Nothing crazy or unexpected as it relates to the rebuild. Got most everything assembled by the end of last night, applied a bunch of break-in oil and assembly gel to moving parts, and was able to put about 10 turns revolutions into the motor and everything felt good.

I torqued the heads down to 105ft-lbs … she’s a tight one!

Excuse the messy garage … I have too many things going on…






Might run two oil pan spacers … maybe?


Thinking about cutting this part of the upper oil pan off to make room for a rear-exit exhaust - currently this is a pinch point.

 

You still using the L19’s for the VQ?

 

yea - might have to retire them after this torquing…took them to 105 in 6 sequences. Mostly fearful that I rip the threads out of the block.

 

Yeah I would avoid that 😂 but you can always go to the VR38DETT L19’s like I did. Even at 100ftlb it was super solid, didn’t feel like anything was stretching

 

I dont know how I feel about taking the OEM stud holes to 1/2” … not gonna say no but I think that in and of itself can bring compromises. The L19s are plenty strong for my goals.

I’m waiting to see how yours does!

Rinz - Any harm in cutting out that section of the upper oil pan? It normally just has that block off plate.

Also re-fabricating a fuel line manifold … It’ll have a AN -12 inlet, three AN -6 outlets (one for each rail and then one that’ll be capped and used if I need to drain the gas tank) and then two NPT ports for a dial gauge and my fuel pressure sensor. My previous one (although hidden) was sorta janky, I was in a hurry and I put too much heat into it.

 

12mm actually

as for the oil pan I don’t think it will be a problem as long as you don’t compromise the sealing of the oil pan and don’t expose the flywheel, might be a good idea to look at it next to the transmission and flush it to the shape of the bell housing?

yeah I’m waiting to see how mine turns out too 😂 just about ready to reassemble the engine, just waiting on the heads to get back from the machine shop.

 

nice progress!

 

Ahhh … 12mm -

I taped everything off and cut the oil pan … looks great but when I put the transmission on there was a smaller bolt that I cut out. Too late now. It did free up some space but the bell housing has a small bulb-out that will be the next thing in the way … You can tell this is for a starter and I might etch where I can safely trim the transmission bell housing and weld a cover to it.

More progresss … basically got the engine 100% buttoned up and walked-over to the other garage, off the stand, flywheel bolted on, clutch/pressure plate attached and transmission bolted-up. I was pretty late(early) 2am’ish and I was tanked, so I called it a night.

I’m considering abandoning the OEM filter setup and going to a Peterson inline filter with their cellulose filter element … sorta pricey at $60/filter but would simplify and remove one possible failpoint on the oil system.

Evening update:
One thing I wanted to establish is a series of compression tests along the way of this rebuild … tonight I hooked a spare battery to the starter (grounded out on the block) and then a set of small of 10ga wire to activate the solenoid.

Multi-purpose test, because I can not only check compression but I can prime the oil system - two birds one stone! Running on the starter I got about 30-35psi of oil pressure.

I know that cylinder #4 is going to be low … when I was inspecting the valves seats I could see the smallest of flicker of light when I did the flashlight test to see how the valves were sealing. I went back and forth on this - my options were to swap my valve train to another set of heads (which I dont know if they need machined), run the current heads and see how it does, or buy new heads and swap everything over. I decided to clean the valve and valve seat as best as I could and in reality both the valve and the head are going to expand due to heat and will shrink this gap up.

I had a freak-out moment where cylinder #2 came in at 70psi…I completely was deflated and wanted to throw a hammer at the wall. I messaged my buddy and we chatted about it and I thought ‘check it again’ … so I hooked it all up again and it came in better.

For the Archive (fresh cylinder hone, minimal oil presence, .005” cylinder to wall clearance, and cylinder #4 intake valve not sealing perfect):
Cylinder 1 - 105psi
Cylinder 2 - 100psi
Cylinder 3 - 102psi
Cylinder 4 - 92psi
Cylinder 5 - 95psi
Cylinder 6 - 108psi

Got a few more things buttoned up on the block and hoisted it into place … “shimmy’d” it down into place and wasnt too too horrible. Landed it on the engine mounts, bolted the tranmission in, bolted the engine mounts down and called it a night.

From here on out it’s just legos.

A few things on the horizon …
-figure out the new turbo setup … how does the intake work? Will the cold side need revamped? How does the exhaust work? Coolant & oil fees should stay the same.
-figure out the radiator?? Is it staying in the trunk? or move it back up-front? Whats the plan for gaining airflow?
-How will the oil cooler situation work?
-finalize the stainless steel fuel manifold

 

Lots of progress…

Engine & accessories are just about 100% and I’m working on buttoning up the small stuff, connecting coolant lines and electrical connectors.

I cannot believe how bad the OEM harness asthetically looks and I started rebuilding certain sub-harness … all are the 0-5volt sensor or on/off sensors and I’m gonna go from there…Also going to slightly re-route the vacuum line setup a little differently.

Going to ditch the peterson oil filter for now … a little too much trouble and something I didnt consider is the filter doesnt have a backflow / oneway valve. I actually have one that would splice right in but its becoming too complicated … I need less complications.

 

Just been stupid busy with everything last few weeks …

wrapped up everything and did a good job making things look pretty … had a poo poo coolant leak that cost me a few hours on the driver’s side head where it connects to the hardpipe. Got that sorted and then found two fuel leaks … one was a simple tighting of my -12 feed line near the transmission and the other was a PITA where my fuel-block-manifold had a tiny tiny hole in one of the weld beads and I was still having a tiny leak leak at on of my fittings. I used a small amount of thread sealant and its holding for now. I re-ordered a -12 to -12 fitting and I’ll change it out at some point.



I ordered two boxes of fire sleeve a little while back and with my fuel feed lines off I installed 3/4” fire sleeve on the lines behind the engine …



Small fix on my fuel pressure regulator - the FPR used a 1/16” NPT and I mistakenly ordered an AN-3 fitting a few years back and I rigged a 1/4” hose to it and just made it work … quick fix was to order a 1/16NPT to AN-4 fitting (easy enough) and re-did the sleeve & nut on the line.



My last setup had 1/4” aluminum vacuum lines sorta all over the place … I didnt like it but it was installed and I had the chance to re-run the lines out of sight (under the plenum and along the drivers/underside drivers and moved my wastegate lines and boost control lines underneath the headers - required a little work but I think it came out well. Did this with the BOV line too. Also installed a vac block for the boost reference. I may revise this and buy two matching vacuum blocks to make them look the same - I think it’s far cleaner than the AN-4 Tee I had before.







I havent 100% decided but I may fabricate 1/2” aluminum hardlines for the coolant for the turbo - in my brain-haze I think I ordered the materials but I cant remember…the steel braided hose is really close to the header and crank pulley and sorta goofy -

And surer-than-**** - my turbo scavenge line doesnt drain efficiently … so I will proabaly have to cap my -12 fitting on the passenger side and install a bulkhead fitting on the driver’s side … which, it 10,000% clear and has zero obstructions! Not sure why I put it on the passenger side in the first place but oh-well …

I also may look into a oil feed manifold … Something that comes off the block or after the filter and I can feed the turbo off one port and have (now) three or four oil pressure / temperature sensors off of and then the engine supply would flow through the manifold block (and not off a port). I have a few ideals… I think I’m going to ditch the OEM pressure sensor and install an AEM pressure sensor and re-pin those wires to a dephi setup.

As things are progressing I’m trying to clean up wiring and use best practices. One thing that has needed attention are my ‘rescue sensors’ … the connectors are in rough shape and they’re not really servicable so I ordered a bunch of replacement conntectors (for reference they’re delphi GM 3pin - common connector). The connectors came in and I replaced every one of the older style. Also cleaned up the wiring and switched everything over to tefzel, double-nylon sleeved, heat-shrink’d accordingly. I tried to add a few extra feet of wire to each so that I can use these moving forward with a revised harness.



Seems overly complicated but I also added plastic split wire loom over the nylon sleeve on wires that are under the car - doing my best to keep the nylon sleeve nice/clean…

Needed a little fenagle’ing on the water pump - re-situated the pump and bought a short 10” piece of flex radiator hose and it all worked out.

One big hot mess was how I wired my cooling fans … I ran them straight off a add-a-fuse with a 30amp fuse after burning through smaller fuses and I’m lucky that it didnt do any damage bc even the 30amp fuse was near-melted … I was able to keep most the wiring for the fans and I added a relay to the trunk area and replaced the big 12ga power wire with a 20ga relay trigger wire. My buddy Reilly at Unknown Performance is going to make me a fan shroud. I think I’m going to modify the hatch lexan as well and really open it up to direct air at the radiator.




Saw these on amazon and not sure if they’re a step in the right direction or if they just look jank?? But it does clean the battery terminals up and has a easier / practical use for quick disconnect.



My gauge cluster was sorta a hot mess with all the wires and hoses running every which direction. Re-plumbed my boost reference gauge and the boost/vac gauge and I eliminated the lights within the gauges (which I might bring them back) and re-conceived how I am powering the gauges as well. Before I had a few add-a-fuse wires for the widebands, and another for the other sensors. I kept one and upgraded it to 12ga tefzel to power a power/ground block and running each component off the power block.




I hate to do this but as days / weeks / months go on I think I have to jump over to e85 to really get the most out of this engine … I bought a set of 1050x injectors and I am gathering that 1050cc (and really they are 1065cc at 43psi, which is more like 1100cc at 52psi). Deatschwerks fuel calculator says 900bhp is achievable with 1160cc/min on e85 which probably equates to around 700whp?? Had a small chat with Moncef and he said, safely 1050x are hitting 600hp …

So I may sell them and upgrade to 1300cc/min …

with that being said - I need to order two AEM 340lph pumps and isntall into a fuel basket (automotive engineering) at some point in the near future.

Lost a day chasing a throttle body / electrical relay issue … I wish there was a better option for a replacement IPDM. I ‘may’ revise this and do a fuse block / relay block for just the power items I need.

With all this done I was able to get the car up and running - and aside from a VTC issue and a dead wideband the car is doing alright. I was able to run the car for about 5minutes and I drained the ‘flush’ oil - I am pushing around 50 to 60psi of oil pressure at idle pre-filter - this sorta scares me but I dont know if it’s more of a function of the upgraded oil pump and it’s flowing more or if I have other issues?? …

After 5minutes of idle run time I drained/captured the oil in a clean tub. I’ll visually inspect here at some point over the next week. I did remove the filter and cut it open and I do have ‘some’ bearing material and aluminum debris - I dont think it’s enough to freak out but I will make further assessments and determinations upon inspecting the engine oil and future oil changes. Also - I had 15-20 cranks/no starts trying to figure out the throttle body relay/IPDM issue so I wonder how much this impacted the debris in the oil filter.

I subsequently added 7quarts of driven break in oil and a new filter.

 

I just gotta stop … I cant take this f’n wiring harness …

Cut the harness open and was able to untangle a handful of circuits that were already cut or disconnected and no longer is use … all four o2 sensors, AC pressure sensor, MAF sensor, etc … chased these wires back to the ecu and left a small pig-tail on them and heat-shrink’d them off. Each circuit had a ground and a 5v power supply so it was pretty straight forward.

Gonna do a poor-mans wire tuck for the time being - leave the wires exposed and just put plastic split loom on each. Make sure the car starts/drives and as time allows I’ll be making each sensor/input/output/etc nice and pretty. In the meantime, the harness is just a tad less complicated - I think I was able to remove about 24 strands of wire.

 

Still on the stock plenum and throttle body? Have you been tempted to upgrade or mod either (beyond the spacer I see)?

 

He very much dislikes the Kinetix Velocity manifold :-( maybe oneday he'll join the dark side OR he'll convert to a LS intake.

 

Because its been shown time and time again that the Velocity manifold doesn't make much power and is prone to cracking. Oem intake really is the way to go, with a spacer.

 

I dont intend to change the OEM plenum … I have considered fabricating my own but I dont think I can do much better than OEM. I do have ideas in my head but I am stupid busy these days and have limited time on the car.

I think I have created a 87mm throttle body jumper harness that is plug & play and I may switch over to the 87mm TB at some point in time. Big picture, the OEM plenum and TB are not my limiting factors so it’s a low priority

Yea, I think the kinetix is mostly worthless - it’s lighter than OEM?? … I will prove this in the coming days/weeks/months/years but for the time being sticking with the OEM

I think nissan did an optimal job designing the intake runners and no one can really improve on them … but we’ll see …

Got some minor progress on the wiring … a big soup of hot mess … all things considered it went really well and I was essentially able to sort each sensor / input / output / etc. I am not messing with the ignition coils until everything else is sorted, up, and running - I think I messed it up last time so I am gunshy to make changes.

Plan will be to take each circuit, wrap it in plastic split loom and re-path it to its desination. Once I’m complete and can verify the car is still functioning like it should I will start re-making the individual circuits. I am pretty happy with my progress and it seems less daunting with where I’m at as of today.

 

I agree, I've not seen any plenums in the market that are a good return on investment. I like the idea of a lighter intake setup (as you pointed out), but not for the cost/inefficiencies. You can see why Nissan switched to plastic for the HR+.

I was more curious about enlarging/shaping the neck for a larger TB, but sounds like you're already thinking about it. I'm in the process of port matching and opening up the volume a little on my plenum, but admittedly it's small potatoes for an FI setup. Mostly being OCD...

Loving the build, btw. The front mount turbo is awesome.

 

Really the only intake that will flow better is the cosworth and people are selling them for $2k to $2500 … I can appreciate the intake but I can’t justify paying that much for the gains. If I can pick one up for a deal I will definately do it but not for gains for the opportunity to own something from Cosworth.

Made some good progress tonight … essentially finished sleeving all the wires in plastic loom (and for the record - I hate this stuff and this is very temporary) but I must stay that for how easy this ‘really’ was it makes a huge impact!

Also removing wires really helped and I can’t wait to build a custom harness and this is probably the best way to do it - one step at at time, having a practice set of wires to experiment with. Having real-world lengths to dial in…it’ll be good