Maruku

Thanks Duncan, I started the project in June 2021 so it took a while but also I did push it a bit and ended up being annoyed by the amount of work. But it's almost done 😄 Promised video 20221120_130131_1_1.mp4

Hey, just a quick update. I drove it over the weekend and it's mental! Loving the V8 sound and the torque 😆 Have had a problem with the MAF connection, I did not have the newer 6pin but the older 5pin MAF. There was a change in ECU connectors between 2004-2005 on the Infiniti M45 that I used as reference but Nissan Cima F50 never changed the ECU connector so both schematics confused me. Now the engine is running well but still showing P0113 so will do some measurements and check the live data to see what is wrong. Apart from that I had issues with VDC off and SLIP when turning, that ended up being the steering angle sensor that needed resetting. Nearing completion after a longer break from this project so hope I get it on the road soon! Will pop over a video later of the Skyline on the road. It's been a long project this one and lot's of stuff I have learned, mainly not to attempt something like this again! 😅 Way too much work to get it done alone.

More progress. I found a online filter cfm calculator, not sure on the math but the filter surface area calculation proved to be quite useful as well as the pointer from Duncan that the stock panel filter will allow 280bhp. To put some numbers into perspective: Stock panel filter is approximately 281x168mm which should be 472cm2. Got a proram cone filter 150mm diameter and 125mm height. That equates to 578cm2. So here is my intake solution for now. And also got all things sorted in the engine bay, just minor details with the electric fan control and that's it! Hope to start the engine this weekend, get it up to temperature and hope it won't leak any fluids If not I will have my first test run!!!

Standard throttle body but standard airbox from the V35. I only had a part of the stock intake duct that came with the Cima engine, connected to the TB with all those resonators and stuff. I ditched all of that cause it will not clear the strut turret. I am hoping to make a bit more power with the much much free-er flowing exhaust and 4-1 headers. Came across some intake filter calculator and it seems the V35 panel might be a bit too small. With the minimum space left in the engine bay my only option is a CAI style intake with a cone filter somewhere behind the bumper. Wonder if I need to worry about getting the filter wet? The CAI might give me better low-mid range torque as the duct would be quite long. At least that is how I understand the post TB duct working in that way. Short is better for top range. With the stock V35 airbox everything is a bit too tight and had to chop off a portion of the box as well. Might be too much of a bodge.. If anyone has any experience with n/a intakes or any pointers? Thanks!

Quick question or rather thoughts. I am about to connect the stock airbox with a standard panel filter to the TB. Luckily the throttle body outer diameter is the same as the MAF so no worries there. I have slight concerns that it will not flow enough, to be proven by measurement later. Just want to get the car running but it looks kind of silly with the short odd shape intake duct that I need there. Might look stock though Ideas?

Bit of update. Got a propshaft joiner made up in a machine shop to connect the shaft pipe to the new flange. Got the runout down to 0.3mm so quite happy with that. FSM specifies max of 0.6mm. Jig I made up to get it done: I will see if the prop vibrates at high speed cruising, if so I'll get it balanced. Changed the bearing and I expect the donut coupler will dampen some slight imbalance. Found a leak on my transmission sump so need to change the gasket but looks like I am almost there. Will post some more photos later this week.

Got it, so probably some heat shield to protect the floor then, thanks for the good info!

Thanks for the tip, but isn't the cat working properly when at correct temperature? Hence they are fitted as close to the engine as possible and come with heatshields from factory with some insulating fibre in between. Reason I want to wrap them is that they are way back from the stock position so to pass emissions testing. What I heard is that the cats will melt if running too lean which would mean very high EGT. I might see how it will do with emissions testing, if it may struggle then I will consider wrapping but could do some EGT measurement and see what temperatures will be present. I believe the honeycomb structure is ceramic with deposited rare metals on the surface so I can determine the melting point.

Some updates, finished the exhaust and fitted the dual fan assembly on the radiator (very snug fit!). Going to fit two extra o2 bungs for a wideband sensor and heat wrap the cats for emissions, if it helps. Now need to fix some tiny rust spots and finish up the suspension so I can test if it moves, well once I get my propshaft 😄

Haven't heard about the tesla screen tbh, but not a fan of big screens anyway. The TFT I have might be 7" actually but has touch as well so I can control the phone via the screen. I'll share more info about this later when I get it installed and working. Just wanted to share this option here as well.

Not sure if any of interest but I am in the process of re-fitting the original display for a 6.5" TFT with better resolution, remove all of the old nonsense and use a raspberry pi with "crankshaft OS". Then you can mirror your android phone over bluetooth or USB and use your phone satnav, play music etc. Fit's over the old display bezel but needs a custom PCB which I will work on later, need to finish my engine swap first 😃

Thanks for the info mate. To be honest I haven't delved much into that but the puny got even punier cause I went with a Nismo oil filter. NS4 or 15208-RN011. I only imagine the smaller one will need to be replaced sooner cause of the size, not worried about this at the moment. But that is what they recommend on the Cima F50 which my engine is from.

20220528_145726_1_1[1].mp4 😆😆😆😆😆 I am well chuffed!

Well I unintentionally ended up in that "engine out" scheme. Depends which gasket 😄 but to put bluntly and oil replacement is doable without taking the engine out 😄 Seriously though, the engine is so tight in there that I struggle to remove the spark plugs on cylinder 7 and 8, no chance to remove exhaust manifolds without removing the engine. Let's say rocker cover gasket is also an engine out job but I have done that now. The engine has 42k km's so I do not intend or expect to do any maintenance except the usual stuff anytime in the near future. The Nissan V8's are awesome engines, very underrated. Must have been a hell of a job considering the Z has the same amount of engine bay room? I am finding that it is quite the task 😄 Got an oil cooler for the A/T. I am not too far away from getting everything ready and starting the engine!

Test fitted the radiator today just to see how much space I got available, not much... Also plan to fit the OEM dual fan assembly so it will be a super tight fit, had to push the radiator a bit more forward by cutting material from the composite front panel. Going to weld the water inlet so it is a bit lower. Next up is tidying up the wiring and vacuum lines, figure out how to make an airbox if I can find space for it! 😅

The flanges are from the stock manifolds, about 6mm thick. Also I have never attempted to make my own until now so wasn't aware how much distortion occurs. The professionals use a big lump of aluminium to soak the heat and keep the flange straight, I tack welded the runners to the flange on the engine but still got some distortion. Because I needed to deal with a few low and high spots I wanted to try a diy method so had an engineers straight edge and added material with my tig welder. Had to be slow to allow to cool down so I don't warp it anymore than it already was. Then got a handheld belt sander to get it flat, did the immediate flattening of welds with a flap disc on an angle grinder and then used the belt sander. I did use a bench top belt sander at my work but that was just painful to keep holding the heavy manifold and keeping it flat, since it was too short it made some valleys in between the ports as you will see on the pictures. But I am happy with the result, got down to less than 0.3mm as FSM specifies. Now a machine shop would probably quote £35 per hour if they can find a way to bolt those flat on a mill, belt sander was £85 and a few hours of work with some tig welding to add material. Not sure which one was cheaper but at least I got a new power tool in my garage 😄 Oh and engine back inside! The water inlet needs to be shorter, although it clears the bonnet now it looks a bit funky sticking out so much, once I fit the radiator I will determine the height.

So a bit of an update, although I did finish the headers when I got to fit them I wanted to check how flat the flange is and found a problem. It seems the flanges warped much more than I expected to see, somewhere 1mm gap! So going to try to fix this. In the mean time I removed the coolant filler from the engine inlet and welded that. Once I have the engine in I will determine where the radiator highest point is and may have to shorten it more. Also made a heat shield for the starter and shortened the oil filler neck which broke off during shipping.

Yup 😄 Ain't got mains in my garage, live in a flat and just had to deal with it. Funny that it started a year ago all because of leaky valve stem seals on the original VQ engine. Also needed some fun stuff to do during this annoying pandemic.

Never attempted to build my own manifold so it was also a learning process. The manifold on the steering rack side has to be squashed more towards the engine block, the other side has the starter so that has to go a bit away from the block. I got lucky that I did manage to run the desired runner diameter of 48mm and have some wiggle room. From what I have read the main bottleneck on these engines are the intake and exhaust. Not sure I can do much on the intake side yet but the stock exhaust manifold is a "wavy" log style manifold with very tiny ports. If I recall they were 36mm I/D. With that in mind, I decided to get as much horsepower out of it as possible, which lead me to the 48mm and that will be connected to a dual 2.5" stainless exhaust. Goal is 400bhp. I want to be super sure the exhaust will not leak as with the limited space, the manifolds are not removable anymore. It's an engine out job now! 😆 Cheers mate, not really pursuing the "difference/uniqueness", but rather making something that (initially) seemed more economic and factory looking. Being such a big Nissan fanboy I felt the underdog V35 series Skyline did deserve a more respectful build 😀 Did some progress today and wrapped the exhaust. Need to make a heat shield out of aluminium for the starter motor, to protect it a bit more since the exhaust is only 1cm away from the starter body. A few more things to note: VK45DE stock wiring loom is way too short to reach through the bulkhead inside so needs serious work! Which means lengthening the whole loom with quite a few wires 😂 Japanese F50 Cima's had a hydraulic powered coolant fan with the speed operated via a solenoid by the ECU. The V35 IPDM controls the electric fans so that requires a CAN message to operate. The VK throttle body uses drive by cable which is strange cause it only operates a built in throttle position sensor and not the actual valve, but also has a motor to operate the valve as a drive by wire would have. So that meant using the throttle pedal position on the V35 instead and then it works as any other drive by wire.

Just finished the manifold welding today. Going to do a leak test tomorrow, finish the VHT paint and heat wrap them. Really keen to get the engine in and do all the preparations now to start it! 😆

Oh that's just an old photo to give people an idea how much needs to be cut out. Have sorted it with some new sheet metal.

Thanks for the comments. Yes it is a DE engine, I thought I'd use Romraider to do some adjustments but I am not sure if there is a definition map for my particular ECU so will look into it later. Thanks for the tip on Uprev, will check it out. I have tried to get any information on the VK swap into a V35/G35 but there are only a few posts on forums with not much detailed information, some garages claiming to do it but not disclosing any info and then there is Smokey Nagata One thing that you might find interesting is the weight difference as I did see some people rant on forums that you mess up the weight distribution. Well I got some empirical data here: VQ35DE weight: 141kg CVT weight: 115kg!!! VK45DE weight: 209kg AT5 weight: 86kg So looking at the totals you have 256kg for the stock setup and 295kg for the VK setup. The CVT is a heavy bastard! Giving you a difference of only 39kg. Then I corner weighed the original setup and later the VK once I had the engine mount and transmission mount ready. It's a rough measurement on the VK since I did not have everything mounted/assembled in the engine bay but gives a good idea. Sure the weight did distribute more towards the front but in my opinion not something to be too concerned about. Also attached a few photos of the engine bay preparation, crossmember modifications and anti roll bar relocation. Cheers

Hey folks, Been browsing the forums for a while, good information around. I just wondered if anyone here would be interested to see some progress on my VK45DE swap that I have started a year ago. I'll post some more photos later but I thought I should save the information somewhere so if there is anyone else silly enough to attempt this, information could be found. I own a PV35 350GT-8, the engine had about 160k-ish miles when it started to burn oil. In the end it was the valve stem seals, since I did not want to just fix it but do it properly, rebuilding the engine did not seem worthwhile considering the mileage. So the next best thing was a new-ish engine ideally with a transmission as the CVT would eventually puke out on me. Surprisingly it worked very well. Anyway, got very reasonably priced VK45DE (Cima F50) from Japan with the 5 speed auto box that I intended to use. I like the paddle shifters on the CVT and can't be bothered with a manual for driving around and long road trips. So plan is OEM-ish build with the factory ECU with a couple of mods to get a few more horses released. Really brief requirements to fit the engine inside: Firewall has to be modified to push it in as far as possible (did some preliminary corner weighing which I will mention later) Engine crossmember needs modifications (scallop a bit from where the oil pan sits, relocate the mounting holes for the engine mounts by a few cm's) Transmission crossmember needs to be modified as the A/T sits way back (that includes the gearshift selector rod) Anti roll bar will not clear the engine so had to relocate it, more on that later Oil filler neck and coolant inlet will not clear the bonnet so needs shortening Propshaft needs shortening I think that are all the snags to get it in. Lot of work on the wiring as I want to use the factory ECU, that includes the factory TCU and NATS. Got to mention that the NATS is a huge pain in the rear as it uses a fob key but managed to get it working (well as far as the fault codes confirm), haven't started it yet 😄 Also used the factory fuel pump control module, same as on the R34's and such, just a dropping resistor switching between the two different voltages. Had to change the speedo cluster as the CVT one is specific to that model and does not have some wires leading from the TCU. On that note the CVT TCU works completely separately from the CAN bus, interrogates between the cluster, shift selector and ECU directly. The Cima uses the more conventional ECU, cluster and TCU comms over CAN. I think there might be some more bits I have forgot but so far the electrics are seemingly working, the big test will be starting the engine which is going to be soon. Need to finish the wiring loom in the engine bay, exhaust headers, coolant inlet and replace some gaskets and I am ready to start it! It's been a long project but hopefully near the final details to get it running! Cheers