After having to modify the oil pan to clear the steering, the motor finally runs.

 

does that do anything to the plenum? why did u do that?

 

When the car was built there is a cross member under the front of the oil pan and to get the engine to fit I had to machine off the stock 350Z front of the pan and weld in new material. The bolts that were on the inside of the pan at the front are now on the outside of the pan and the pan only comes down about 4" below the base of the block. Since I do not run the stock oil pump there was just an open area there anyway.

 

The bellhousing is from a 3.0 Pathfinder that is modified to fit a Jerico 5 speed.
I have had this bellhousing with VQ30 and VQ35 engines and they all bolt up.
I use a ring gear from a 3.0 Pathfinder and with a 3.5 oil pan the 350Z starter bolts right up.
Since the motor sits so low in the car, I made a scaled down tooth wheel for the CPS and mounted it to an aluminum front pulley.

 

What bodywork is on that chassis and I assume you race this car in the Pacific Northwest. Stock or race engine? I ran a 300zx bodied VQ powered car for 10 years in the Northeast. Sold it last year. Going to build a 240sx bodied VQ powered car this summer for next year. Was going to go Mazda but came across a deal on a set of Nismo Race heads w/Cp pistons for 25 cents on the dollar new. Just when I thought I had broken free, they sucked me back in. That and I had 2 race short blocks left over.
Chris Howard

 

I have a fiberglass 350Z body on it. It is not the Nismo body, My hood and nose is all one piece. I will have it together this weekend and take a few shots of it.
I mostly race it in ICSCC at Portland, Seattle, Mission BC, Spokane, and this year a new track has opened in Oregon which looks like a blast. The first race is the 25th in Portland and with how fast the stock motor was with the cams not even working, this motor should just scream around the track. I also see that a friend has his VQ35 powered 240Z ready to race.

 

That is a very interesting plenum. I've never seen one modified quite like this before. How does it work?

Looks like the OEM VQ throttle body.

I'm curious whether you modified this plenum or bought it some where. It looks very interesting.

 

Rebello fabbed the intake. It looks a lot cleaner than the one on their site. The motor dynoed at 426 HP and 399 HP with the inlet restrictor so I think they have it figured out. They have built several of these motors now and it looks like they keep refining it as they go. It is a stock 3.5 throttle body. Because we have to run the restrictor they have come up with the setup to try to keep the velocity of the air as high as possible and so the heads are not hogged out in the intake ports. I am going to run it in one class where I have to run the restrictor and the other class that I can run unrestricted and when I run the restrictor I unplug the exhaust cams. Apparently the exhaust cams make a difference of 6 HP and 10 lb/ft of torque in the unrestricted version but the cams hurt HP in the restricted mode.

 

I'd be interested in any info you can share on mating the jerico. Is the pathfinder bell housing and ring gear used because they are a smaller diameter? What clutch and flywheel do you use?
I am building an open roadrace car(silver state classic) that will be a VQ powered tube chassis.
Christian

 

On this setup the trans. side of the bellhousing mounts to a plate at the firewall and this also becomes the motor mount. An adapter ring was made to align the bellhousing to the nose of the jerico. I use a Quartermaster throwout bearing and 7 1/4 2 disc clutch. There is a GT-2 car that has a custom fabbed bellhousing that has an aluminum tube behind it to move the tranny back closer to the driver and uses the small starter ring gear but I heard it cost $12000.00 to build.

There is probably a rear wheel drive 3.5 bellhousing you might be able to find but at the time this was built they were still running the VQ30. If someone made an affordable flywheel ring gear setup like for the 280Z Then I would probably switch but there is not much out there for us to use. The starter ring gear is fairly light and makes for an easy way to start the car and if the starter goes out then a 350 Z starter is easy to get.

 

The quick and simple way to adapt any engine to use a Jerico or any other Chevy based transmission is to make an adapter plate that you sandwich between your engine and some chevy based belhousing. I use a Tilton ULGC belhousing package with a rear mount starter and then make an adapter ring to go between the Nissan crank and the chevy bolt pattern flywheel. It takes a little thinking but makes the conversion cheap. The car I am building now, I got a used belhousing package with 5.5" clutch for 450.00 off Ebay. I make my own adapter plate and have a local machine shop make the crank adapter. I can then use any chevy based, Jerico, Tex racing, Gforce, Lenco ect... tranny as a simple bolt up. Plenty of places make driveshafts. You gotta think outside the box.
Chris Howard

 

Interesting, with your restrictor you have very nearly the crank hp I have, would like to see what is in that engine!