Slow 180sx VQ30DETT

[MBS206]

4 hours ago, 30ed32 said:

Lots of sanding and polishing and touching up the welds to get the smooth look.

Thanks, I wish a had a magical source as well.  The more I work on this thing and the more custom bits I make I really just wish I could buy some of this stuff off the shelf.  It would make more sense to spend the money on something rather than the huge amount of time it takes.

Yes all tig welded, I also have a gas/gasless mig which is also setup for flux core at the moment.  It's good for the more industrial stuff and it's a lot quicker as well, too bad it's so messy and a bit annoying when you have the clean the weld if you want to weld over a section again.  A bottle and .6mm will definitely be a step in the right direction, tig is too much of an investment unless you're going to be using it all the time.

I can see one huge thing that you have that I don't... Patience... Ha ha ha

I'm a hit it with the flappy disk, smash a quick touch of the scotch brute disc over it (if I have one) and send it

if I had a polisher on the bench grinder then I *might* consider polishing otherwise too much effort ha ha

[30ed32]

4 hours ago, MBS206 said:

I can see one huge thing that you have that I don't... Patience... Ha ha ha

I'm a hit it with the flappy disk, smash a quick touch of the scotch brute disc over it (if I have one) and send it

if I had a polisher on the bench grinder then I *might* consider polishing otherwise too much effort ha ha

It really is a test of my patience, when I first started this project I was pretty fast and hard but I thought I should do it right and do it once.  I don't plan on selling it or making money or whatever so I'm just doing it all as best as I can for myself.

[30ed32]

Progress update pic

Plan is to do intercooler and piping next

[30ed32]

I moved onto the radiator and intercooler, seeing as my turbos are at the front a radiator wouldn't fit in the stock position so I got a universal radiator that fits under the radiator panel.  It's a fairly small radiator but it obviously needs to be to fit under the panel and it's really thick and dual pass.  I chopped off the filler neck, had to weld some legs on the bottom (it now mounts into the stock AC slots using stock skyline lower radiator rubbers), also had to weld some tabs on the top so I could mount some rubber mounts on the top.  Don't really have any pics installed except for the last one here showing the intercooler but it fits nicely and makes the engine bay look a lot cleaner.

I still need to tidy it up and clean the tabs I cut off the bottom.

This is more or less my first time welding aluminium so don't judge me too much.

 

My new core + ends tanks (one is missing as I already started welding it)

A few hours later and I have this

Mock up install, I test fit the front bumper support as well and it's a close fit I just need to trim about 20mm where the intercooler sits as it's too thick, the width is what I was more concerned about where I have the 2x 90 degree pipes up the top, there is about 10mm clearance between them and the brackets for the front bumper support so everything is good.  You can't tell from this picture but the intercooler is on quite an angle, the angle follows those headlight motor supports so the bottom is tucked in quite a bit.

I have been working on the intercooler piping as well, I'll update this next time when all the piping is complete from the turbos and to the inlet.

Edited March 8, 2020 by 30ed32

[30ed32]

Intercooler piping time, excuse the mess around my car.

I will acid and clean up all the welds and polish the pipes a bit but that will happen much much later.  This is mostly it for the intercooler pipes, I still need to roll a bead on the end of the pipes for the silicone joiners, weld on flanges for the blow off valves and weld on bungs for water meth injection nozzles

[30ed32]

Small update.. I actually have been doing some work on this (although hard to stay motivated at times) and have a lot of photos of things I've done so I'll update soon.

So I currently have a cd009 gearbox in the car, but I decided that was too easy, too few gears and I like making life hard for myself so about 1.5years ago I bought another gearbox.

Some of you will know what this is..

For those of you that don't it's a 7 speed dual clutch transmission from a BMW m3.

Adapter plate (in progress):

Crank to input shaft adapter, the gearbox has no clutch or torque converter:

On a nismo flywheel of course:

Got that big boy spline:

And lastly, here's what an $8000 gearbox attached to an $800 engine looks like:

 

Edited May 11, 2022 by 30ed32

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

Man what is with these Nissans? All they do is rob you of time and money lol

 

[Kinkstaah]

They rob you of time and money by installing a BMW part?

I kinda want to install the 7 speed DSG behind my LS, for huge amounts of money for questionable benefit, definitely less reliability and arguably less fun but cooler somehow while throwing the best manual gearbox in the world in the bin (???)

Okay, Nissans definitely rob you of time and money.

[30ed32]

On 5/11/2022 at 10:31 PM, Dose Pipe Sutututu said:

Man what is with these Nissans? All they do is rob you of time and money lol

 

Tell me about it, I'd rather give up Nissans and take up cocaine.  The amount of times I've questioned myself for spending money and time I don't have on this old piece of scrap.. I don't know man

On 5/12/2022 at 3:38 AM, Kinkstaah said:

They rob you of time and money by installing a BMW part?

I kinda want to install the 7 speed DSG behind my LS, for huge amounts of money for questionable benefit, definitely less reliability and arguably less fun but cooler somehow while throwing the best manual gearbox in the world in the bin (???)

Okay, Nissans definitely rob you of time and money.

After I went for a drive in one friends Audi and another friends Mercedes both with their own version of a dual clutch, I just fell in love with them.  No need to piss around trying to find some perfect clutch that isn't too aggressive and all the rest.  I still enjoy manuals but a DCT is much cooler, especially with paddle shifting.

Should be an easy swap for you, there's a few DCT to LS adapters out there, and for most engines actually, I was just thick enough to choose an engine with no support.

[Kinkstaah]

I have a T56 magnum and the other side of things is I have a V8, RWD, Manual skyline so it's very driver focused and all that stuff in a formula that is pure blablablabla (it is very fun though)

When I bought the Magnum the kits were only just starting to be developed, and couldn't get any info on the dimensions of the thing (i.e would it fit better? worse? but how much?) just wasn't known vs brand new warrantied 933hp transmission with excellent feel and all that.

Then I see this -> 

 

[30ed32]

I guess at the end of the day it comes down to preference and your bank account.  There’s plenty of support for these boxes and it’s easy to get upgraded clutches that will handle whatever you want to throw at them but of course with a huge cost.

 

This is the sort of thing that gets me excited:

 

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

On 12/05/2022 at 8:10 AM, 30ed32 said:

Tell me about it, I'd rather give up Nissans and take up cocaine. 

You sound like every other jaded and cynical Nissan owner, this is why a M2/3/4/5 makes so much sense. Throw on semi slicks and you'll carve out sensational lap times with a chai latte in one hand, classical music on and climate control regulating your race environment.

My car is finally kind of done, and I don't want to even drive it now. In 3x months I've driven it 5 times, shit box.

[30ed32]

On 5/12/2022 at 11:26 AM, Dose Pipe Sutututu said:

You sound like every other jaded and cynical Nissan owner, this is why a M2/3/4/5 makes so much sense. Throw on semi slicks and you'll carve out sensational lap times with a chai latte in one hand, classical music on and climate control regulating your race environment.

My car is finally kind of done, and I don't want to even drive it now. In 3x months I've driven it 5 times, shit box.

You are right, even though I’m a Nissan fan boy I can’t argue with that at all.  A m4 would be nice.. probably the next logical step.

 

i probably won’t drive this much if it ever gets done, but there’s a part of me that never wants to let it go.

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

On 12/05/2022 at 4:53 PM, 30ed32 said:

i probably won’t drive this much if it ever gets done, but there’s a part of me that never wants to let it go.

I'm guilty too, I whinge and whinge but the heap of shit is still parked in the garage with a felt car cover and a CTEK on it 😅

[30ed32]

I turned my attention to the fuel system which I thought would be maybe a 1 hour job at max.  Pretty straight forward plan: replace in tank pump and install a bosch 044 inline.

When I pulled the fuel pump hanger out, it looked like this and I thought there's no way I can put a new pump in and leave the hanger looking like that.  So I cleaned up the hanger, but still wasn't happy, there was quite a bit of pitting from the rust and I was looking into zinc plating options but they were all pretty expensive and the hanger would eventually look like this again one day.

So I decided to make a new hanger from stainless so that can't happen again.  I don't want to admit or remember how long it took to me measure all the angles and heights for the level sensor and low level switch.

Obviously with the fuel pump hanger looking like it did the inside of the fuel tank probably won't look very good either, luckily no rust but with fuel sitting for around 10 years it doesn't look great.

Outside of the tank really wasn't too bad either, but I wasn't going to leave it like that.

Cleaned the inside and it came out pretty good.

Cleaned and painted the outside.

[30ed32]

Got my 2x 25 row oil coolers mounted, it took me a while to figure out where to install these.  At first I was thinking between intercooler and radiator but they are too big.  There is almost no clearance around any part of these, the bottom of them pretty much touches the inside of the bumper, the backside is a few mm off the intercooler piping, the fittings are also really close to the bumper (I got the lowest profile fittings I could possibly find, another few mm taller and they would hit something) and the hoses are almost touch the headlights when the swing open.  On top of all that I had to find a nice creative way to mount them as well.  Learn from my mistakes if you can and just don't do any of this.

Anyway after all that I got the right side cooler plumbed up which is for the engine, this goes back to a thermostat block which mounts on the factory oil filter location.  This block also feeds oil to the turbos.

The left side is for the gearbox, I'm just waiting on an AN adapter which connects to the gearbox.  I have a thermostat block for this as well.. the one the everyone running this box uses apparently.  It's supposed to bypass the oil cooler when cold (90% bypass) and then at temperature 100% goes through the cooler, as per the image below.

I'm not convinced to be honest.. looks like the oil has an easier flow path to the cooler.

Edited June 2, 2022 by 30ed32

[30ed32]

Might be the end of the road for this project...  I'm moving to Australia and have just been quoted over 10k to import and register it and it doesn't even sound like it's a sure thing due to be "heavily modified".

I have some thinking to do.

Edited July 13, 2022 by 30ed32

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

Read into personal imports, the rules are a bit different.

[30ed32]

On 7/14/2022 at 11:19 AM, Dose Pipe Sutututu said:

Read into personal imports, the rules are a bit different.

I've had a look into this and looks like I'm ruled out of that option completely as well.  You need to have owned it for 12+ months and used it regularly in that time and it needed to be able to be used on public roads in that time.  While the car is registered it isn't road worthy and hasn't seen the road in probably over 8 years.

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

Damn, only option now is to reshell. Take all the good bits out, pop it on a pallet. Find a 180SX shell here and apply the parts on it.