Sunday, February 27, 2011

Step One: Get your shit together.

So I thought that I'd have enough time to simply jump right into wrenching on the 510, but sadly life comes right at you as it always does. Just to fill you in on some background info I am a nissan nut. Obviously and quite sterotypically my favorite engine is the SR20, though I also love the way the RB sounds and the VQ is amazingly advanced but sadly they are both too pricey to get into. This is why I started off with the SR20 as my first turbo project car.

I bought a black 1991 Nissan NX2000 with 101k miles for 1500$, paint was fading but it was clean in an out. I had bought this car as an experiment to test out the sr20 and use it as a daily driver.


My first few little mods were little things like replacing the cracked dash, replacing the seat, installing my stereo system and relocating the battery and some other little things.


 After a while I got bored was wasn't ready for the commitment for a full project car like the 510 this blog will mainly follow. So naturally I got the boost bug and turbod it!

Turbo and intercooler get installed in 1 weekend.
Fit nicely with all stock parts!


Since the SR20 has a stock turbo at 7-9 psi in Japan, its extremely easy to source some OEM JDM turbo parts for dirt cheap and have a fun little budget boost build. I spent about 1500$ more on a stock turbo, piggyback SAFC (this would come back to bite me), intercooler, exhaust, and gauges brought me to 250whp for 3000$ invested. Not bad I thought.
When I first went down the block I shit myself, I needed new tires! And soon, I would need new engine mounts!

I drove it daily to school and to work everyday for two years and it served me well. Until one day I made the mistake of playing around with too much boost and too much timing on my stock ECU with 9.5:1 compression, and blew the motor while messing around with my friend Stephen and his Eclipse. (he is pictured on the right)






Step Two: Fix the Daily

Once the Daily broke, everything got put on hold and I sourced as I rushed to source a new engine. I picked up this wrecked NX2000 stuck in the dirt in the middle of the Orange groves up in Mount Palomar. For 200$ I couldn't say no, even though it was much more than just an engine. I yanked it outta the dirt with my friends F150 and started on my mission to PART THAT SUCKER OUT!

The car was amazingly clean with a low 75k miles, automatic (meaning likely not beat on) and probably garaged and woman owned from what I could see (perfect rubber in tact everywhere) If the left framerail wasnt crunched in this car I'd feel terrible about parting such a beauty out, id do a 5 speed swap instead!
Over the next coming week I ripped into her as hard as I could, with the help of a friend or two!










The Engine came out swiftly, as it was the main goal of course, and I soon realized that I had no room for another car and had parted out the front suspenion so it was not longer rollable! What to do!?







Thats when I grabbed my sawzall and called a friend and we both ripped it apart and cut it into tiny peices until we could load it into the back of Stephens F150, which we took to the scrap yard the next day.
About half way into it



An empty garage? what?! Not for long. Now that I had the room I could swap my engine. It was coming up on my 2 year smog check anyway so I didnt feel too bad about taking the turbo out at all.







New engine and turbo engine side by side
Out
And In!

FINALLY it runs and drives good, and I can get back to the 510...
Look out for my next update!

Fresh from japan with 50k miles, I pulled the valvecover and was a little disappointed, but I guess thats the risk you take

40 comments:

  1. nice thats awsome! do you have any other project cars? other then the ones you've already posted?

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  2. That was a great read, same question as THEFROG, do you have any others OR have you done any others?

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  3. Not sure if you guys will read this but yes to answer your question we also have a '69 Datsun Roadster will ill make a post about is it will be for sale soon, also today I just bought a '70 Datsun 521 pickup that will be restored

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  4. Wow, i almost feel like i could do that myself now after all that detail, nice work.

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  5. sweet project and thx for the pics and explanation.

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  6. $1500? thats a steal !!!

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  7. Nice car. Hope you do a great job!

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  8. Wow I cannot fathom the information and intelligence it must take to do this kind of job

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  9. this is some amazing stuff man!

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  10. i am really inspired by the work youre doing here

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  11. My buddy blew his engine the same way. There's a fine line between pushing it to the limit and past the limit.

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  12. the limit is all in the tuning with these motors...

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  13. Another good post. I remember when I was in high school I had a Ford Probe GT. Being the stupid high school kid that I was. I bought a CAI for it and put it on. About six months later it rained really hard and on my way to school in about 2 inches of water a truck went by at around 35 mph. Right after that my engine locked up. Shot a rod through the block, because water doesn't compress and such. Lol.

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  14. you are so skilled!! amazing. your garage must smell funny, lol.

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  15. this is excellent! good to see it going so well!

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  16. That looks like A LOT of work, I wouldn't have the commitment for a project like that

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  17. Great find on the 200$ car. Wish I were that lucky.

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  18. Make a time lapse repair video, heh.

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  19. looks like hard work, i will follow your progress :)

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  20. That looks cool, i'm interested in how to change these parts on a car but i know somehow i would cut my hand off.

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  21. Awesome, great work. Looks tough but it sure will be worth it.

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  22. this is soo siick! you got a great deal there

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  23. Quite an adventure, looking forward to more.

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  24. Nice! I did a KA24DE swap on my 510 Wagon a few years ago and drove the piss out of it. Very fun cars to work on and fool around in.

    Have you checked out ratsun.net? Lots of information on the cars, SR/KA motor swaps, etc... I'm WagDatto on the forums, if you look up my old build thread, it's a nearly identical swap as far as "how to" so it may be helpful!

    http://garagezoku.blogspot.com

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  25. Wow, keep up the hard work man, it will all be worth it!

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  26. wow, thats pretty cool i wish i had the time and money to build a project car.

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  27. Wow, you really have a great skill here. I'm the same, only with computers and audio! I really enjoyed this post and the pictures too.

    I am looking forward to more posts from you! :)

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