Yet another SR20DET Swap-66

[Alvin]

very nice….love those gauges!
boost gauge?

[SABLT194]

Alvin,

The dash gauges are Classic Instruments 5 gauge set + clock. I had to make a larger OD polished stainless bezel ring for the clock. I made that yesterday, and installed the clock. It actually looks pretty natural in there. I also bought a recorder Stepper Boost and Wideband Analog gauge (for an Innnovate) from SpeedHut as well. I'm planning on doing a Radio Delete and putting the Boost and WB gage in the console. That being said, my 1st attempt at filling in the radio holes in the console faceplate was pretty much a disaster. Actually, it was a total disaster. I'm getting another faceplate to start round 2. Still not sure how I'm going to fill in the holes without warping the daylights out of the flimsy plate. Tack welding inserts in is (ahhhh) not an option.

Regards,
Steve

[SABLT194]

Drivers Side Door gap taken care of. Hood and Deck lid are out being dipped to get the crap off of the underside. Ordered a Radiator, Intercooler, and started fabbing the Turbo Exhaust manifold. Treadsone makes a very nice investment cast stainless header flange for the SR20's I'll shoot some pics of that with my header construction.

[SABLT194]

I thought I would post up a pic of what a Classic instruments 2 1/16" clock looks like in the big clock hole of an early dash. I made a bezel spacer ring out of a piece of stainless from my old patio grill. I thought it would look worse actually.



And the Treadstone Turbo flange




Regards,
Steve

[SABLT194]

I haven't posted for a while but figured it was time to share some updates and photos on my project. Most of what I have done is an adaptation of Michael's theme and his info and ideas have been invaluable. That being said there are a few notable things that I have done that may give others some ideas as well so here goes:

I decided to mount the turbo straight and parallel to the crankshaft just because I think it looked more natural that way. I had to move the turbo about 3/4" forward on the log manifold to have room to snake the down pipe thu everything and still have good air gaps. I also rotated the turbo out away from the block a bit to help make more room for the wastegate actuator and give things a bit more room to breathe. I'm using a Synapse BOV and 1 1/4 crossover pipe. I am able to get the crossover pipe tucked in behind the waterpump pulley. It runs nice an parallel to the world, but did require a little zig-zag to clear a part of the engine block. The turbo to intercooler tube runs up the fenderwell like others. Mine is 2" all the way and is connected to the intercooler with a 2 1/2" to 2" transition silicon elbow and connected to the turbo with a standard 2" silicon elbow. I'm hoping the 2" pipe isn't a significant restriction.

I'm going to try to hard line the water and oil to the turbo by reusing the OEM banjo fittings with some new 1/4" and 5/16 cunnifer tubing. Just starting that project so no pics yet.

Entire hot side: header, turbo housing (hot side), and down pipe will be ceramic coated inside and out in a further effort to manage those underhood temps

The top water neck was saw cut right in the middle of the oval area, flipped 180 degrees, tigged, ground , and bead blasted. This gives it a better angle toward the Davis radiator and looks like an OEM configuration. The waterneck also has a 1/2" spacer behind it to move it out away from the block a bit more. The spacer is tapped with 1/8 NPT for the temp sender for the Classic Instruments temp gauge. This also then provides a handy spot for a crossover tube hanger bracket.

One word on the Ron Davis Radiator- Please be aware that if you are doing a pre 67 1/2 car, you may run into hood clearance issues with the radiator cap. To get more clearance, I had to do a number of things. Machined some off both the steering box and Idler casting mounting tab, added spacers to the body mounts to raise the body from the frame by 1/4", and had to put on a hood from a 68. The later hoods have a hood scoop that is about 1/4 to 3/8" higher than the earlier hoods. It's been said that all of these cars are different. Mine was a real booger to get hood clearance over the radiator cap, but it all fits now.

Here's some pics-enjoy








Regards,
Steve

[notoptoy]

Crazy mad skills in fabrication. Great work and nice documentation.

[Ed Mason]

I'm having feelings of deja vu looking at your progress. Michael S is the man. Great work. Your lucky, I still have all of
my outside body work to do, but that is my favorite part, thanks for sharing. What brand is
that blow off valve? What are you going to use for boost control. I went with the Turbo Smart
in cabin manual control.

[SABLT194]

I'm currently planning on using the OEM Nissan waste gate solenoid & I'm going to run Nistune for programming. I'm hoping there are some boost control parameters in Nistune to manage the solenoid duty cycle. I haven't used Nistune before but have worked quite a bit with GM ECU boost tables on a few Ecotecs so I'm pretty knowledgable about the fueling and boost strategies used. If the OEM Nissan ECU and Nistune don't offer enough control, I'll have to regroup and do an aftermarket boost controller I suppose.

Regards,
Steve

[spriso]

Steve,

Things are really coming together on this project-- I am impressed.

One thing to comment on is the intake tubing from the air filter to the turbo. Nissan MAFs can be sensitive to turbulence from the turbo charger (or even the air intake) and can cause running issues on turbo cars. The general rule is that you need 12-15" of clearance from the front of the turbo to the MAF. This is one of the reasons that we typically will have a "S" bend in our intake tubing to add a little length and to break up any potential air turbulence. Anything you can do to increase this length will help-- I realize that packaging all this stuff is a challenge, but you can do it!

Here is a shot of James' intake plumbing (during the build process) to show what we did:



Michael

[SABLT194]

10-4 got it Michael. I looked at the MAF. It looks like some kind of pressure differential type. I'm more familiar with heated wire stuff. I'll let it rip with my short straight tube and let everybody know if it gives me fits. I was really trying to figure out a way to get a square flat style air cleaner out front in clean cool air but there's no friggen room left out there.

Regards,
Steve

[SABLT194]

Started splitting out ECM wiring. Took 4 hrs to get the wires separated from all of the foam goo removed at the firewall boot. What a friggen mess. Looks like s14a and s15 had provisions for aux electric radiator fan output to be kicked on with the AC relay & coolant temp input to ECM. I'm thinking I should be able to use that output to manage my fan and eliminate the fan temp switch in the bottom rad hose. Anybody try this yet?

Regards,
Steve

[SABLT194]

Woooo Hoooo It's ALIVE!!

Finally got the ECM IO and relays sorted out and low and behold - It fired up.

The motor seems to carry good oil pressure and has no nasty bottom end noises. Seems to have a lifter that has bled down sitting for 3 years or so, cause it has a pretty good valve tap. No oil smoke so I think the rings are still pretty decent.

I have a few water drips to track down but generally everything seems pretty stable.
Gonna try to get my ECM controlled fan relay working next, then on to the task of full wiring and cleaning up the spagetti mess. I bought a Painless 6 bank relay set and an 18 circuit universal fuse box. The relays worked out Ok, however I had to repin the supply side of the contacts. The jury is out on the universal fuse center. It does have flashers and horn relays built in but it's really big and doesn't have any flexability in terms of switched vs unswitched fused outputs. Clearly it was not intended for more modern ECM controlled vehicles.


Regards,
Steve

[notoptoy]

OK, great for you, how about pictures or video so we can hear it too!?
Congratulations!

[SABLT194]

Actually I did take a video but the valve tap was so loud it was embarrasing so I decided not to post it. Kinda sounds like gramps old 61 Buick.

[gboone]

Started splitting out ECM wiring. Took 4 hrs to get the wires separated from all of the foam goo removed at the firewall boot. What a friggen mess. Looks like s14a and s15 had provisions for aux electric radiator fan output to be kicked on with the AC relay & coolant temp input to ECM. I'm thinking I should be able to use that output to manage my fan and eliminate the fan temp switch in the bottom rad hose. Anybody try this yet?

Regards,
Steve

How did the fan switch work out?