Project "Redux" STAGE 2, new shell |
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- - 8/20/2006 - - First fitments
of the VQ into the 510's engine bay. I know I want the bottom of the oil pan
to be 5in off the ground (with my current 510 it's 4.5in), and I know I want
the frame rails of the 510 6inches off the ground, so I removed the front
suspension and set the car and engine to these heights and checked out the
views. Note the last picture even has a wheel placed to you can see I'm not
exactly dropping it into the weeds.
- - 8/24/2006 - - I decided to go with Jim Wolf Technology cast iron exhaust manifolds and they were ordered today. They are cast iron, I like where they place the turbo and in my opinion you can't fabricate tubular ones that will be as reliable as these for anywhere near the price!
- - 8/26/2006 - - The 6-speed arrived today. 40in stem to stern, 11in across most of the width, and 11in high not including the bellhousing. A quick check into these measurements in the shell at least initially have it looking like the shifter will be in about the same place that the VG30DETT 510 with it's 300ZX engine and transmission (view that here)
- - 9/06/2006 - - JWT's exhaust manifolds arrived on the 27th, here's how they look off the engine:
I don't have any pictures of them on the engine, as the exhaust manifold bolts require some modification for them to fit, and I also have a spare 510 shell (not the grey one previously pictured) as use for cutting and mocking everything up and it is currently parked next to the grey 510 in my small garage, so there's no real room at the moment to get a "this is how everything will look" picture. In other news the GT25R turbos (aka JWT "530BB" but I purchased from another source) arrived yesterday, so yes I'm a little anxious to connect all those items and drop them into the 510 to see where the fitment issues are. - - 10/01/2006 - - I finally got the exhaust manifolds mounted - it requires shortening the exhaust studs which took longer than the 10 minutes I expected. The turbos need to be reoriented (reclocked) as well. At this point I still need to reoriented to get the center section arranged so they get proper oil feed, but at least I can see how they will line up as far as turbine and compressor plumbing.
- - 10/04/2006 - - I took today off work to work on the car, or more accurately, to get placement of one turbo and a wastegate! I also removed the wiring harness from the engine - that was an adventure, all the connectors except the two cam angle sensors work identically, the to cam sensor ones took me probably 30 minutes to figure out how they worked... Initially I thought I would orient the outlet of the drivers side turbo the same as my current DETT 510, so I "clocked" the turbo appropriately and mounted it up (pictures 1 & 2). Then I discovered I needed to mount the wastegate on that turbo for checking clearances once dropped into the car. The existing wastegate solenoid brackets don't work with the turbo oriented how I want it, so I fabbed up a "quick and dirty" wastegate bracket, and it turns out to the the lever arm to have a proper angle to the wastegate arm I need to reorient the turbo - compare the compressor outlet on picture 5 to pictures 1 and 2.
Here's my 3yr old pointing out
an important part of this swap.. - - 10/27/2006 - - Some interesting developments. Putting the engine in the car with the turbos and manifolds, you can see they sit very low and very far back.
To see what I could do for clearance, I flipped the passenger-side turbo manifold upside down - and since the VQ is symmetrical here and it has 4 stud holes per exhaust port, it's actually conducive.
Below is a little trickery with
wood adapters, but it shows proof-of-concept that simply adding height I can
get away with moving the turbos back. The turbos are up off the manifold
about 2 inches but there's still no issues with hood clearance. |
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