[project] Nothing To Do With 205's, But Behold!

[Bonzai 2]

that throttle linkage looks brilliant! what car is that engine originally from then, i cant think of a v8'd nissan?

[welshpug 1,657]

These V8's were in vehicles that didn't make it to the UK, the Infiniti Q45, and the Nissan President, Leopard and Cima.

[M3Evo 0]

They sound like awesome engines straight from the factory. Seem to recall the guy saying then can run reliably to 9000rpm in standard trim!

 

 

Okay, had a bit of a clear up in the kitchen and went off to the machine shop to pick up the block, crank, bearings and gasket set. Cost a little bit less than I had thought it would too which is nice

 

Here's the block with it's new increased bore size:

 

 

 

 

Gave it a paint too with some engine enamel I bought last time but was too lazy to use

 

 

 

 

And here's the crank....which has been polished:

 

 

 

Finally got around to doing a trial fit of the 5 stud conversion bits too! I say trial fit as the special nut is ever so fractionally too small to go over the E30 stub axle. Should be easy to modify on the lathe and I think that's the only remaining hurdle!

 

Here's the two parts of the adaptor. The lower part (which is about 15mm tall) is a modified stub axle from an E36, and the upper part with the hex etc. is what I had made:

 

 

 

Here's the two bits on the E30 leg, a quick measure suggests that pretty much all of the E30 stub's thread will be used by the adaptor which was kinda the point

 

 

 

And there's an E36 hub on the E30 leg but not quite screwed down

 

[M3Evo 0]

I've had great fun with the car today!

 

Started off by making the necessary adjustments to the hub adaptor. You can see it screws onto the E30 spindle properly now! The tolerance on the bearings and spindles boggles the mind!

 

 

 

And so with a great sigh of releif, the hub can now be screwed on. Just need to make a locking mechanism as obviously there's no deformable collar with the new nuts.

 

 

 

So here's the offset adjusted wheel perched in it's new home:

 

 

 

I've obviously measured something a bit wrong at some point along the line as there's only about 4mm between the rim and the strut now! Not sure if that's gonna cause a problem but it's not too difficult to adjust if it does:

 

 

 

And now I need to order up the material to make new caliper brackets

 

 

 

Started work on building the engine today, I'd forgotten how long it takes to clean out all the threads and all that gubbins! Also needed to adjust the end gaps on all of the top rings by about 0.15mm which is tedious to say the least

 

 

 

Still, all the rings are gapped properly and assembled onto their pistons ready to go in

 

Gonna finish off cleaning the block and crank tomorrow and hopefully install the crank, rods and pistons!

Edited November 29, 2008 by M3Evo

[cybernck 402 1 Cars]

aren't those wheels the ones you were planning to use on your GT6?

 

and what size discs are those?

[M3Evo 0]

I did breifly think about using the wheels I bought for the GT6, but the offset is just too far out Those are the wheels from an E39 etc. 5 series Beemer. Of course, BMW have to use a bold pattern that nobody else uses at 5x120 so you're pretty much tied to BMW kit.

 

The discs are from an E46 330Ci and are a decent 325mm in diameter. Think they fill the wheels nicely

 

Oh arses! Spent the morning cleaning the block, oil ways, crank and it's oilways, popped out to the shops to get some crappy mineral oil for the bores.....went to get the main bearings out and noticed (thankfully before breaking the seal on the package!) that they're for the M50 which has a different design of cap for the mains

 

Not to worry, I thought, I'll make the oil return attachment for the sump. So I start milling away but all of a sudden the motor slows right down on the mill. So a couple of hours of head scratching later I decide that it's the little gearbox that's at fault (it's the only part which has moving parts but no ball bearings) so me and Dad decipher the instructions and find a way into the gearbox. Sure enough, the selector was bone dry so that's been greased up and it seems to run better than ever.....but by that point I'd almost had enough for the day.

 

About the only thing I started and finished today was cleaning and polishing the jackshaft....which isn't very interesting

[Dom9 2]

It's all looking great mate - I am liking those wheels, a lot!

 

Looking forward to seeing the new engine built up and installed.

 

You may well need some spacers in case there is som flex in the strut as 4mm clearance does seem tight... But there is only one way to find out!

 

How many little jobs are left now? When is the first fire-up scheduled? This should be some beasty - The workmanship is fantastic, as always with you!

 

All my projects are on hold as usual while we wait for them to finish building our new flat... I have some cahs burning a hole in my back pocket, but i expect Lou will end up spending it on furniture instead Oh well, I guess I will have to continue to live vicariously through you!

[M3Evo 0]

Cheers Dom, much appreciated

 

I'm guessing the wheels will be subject to some deflection too so that 4mm may well be too tight. I'm not ruling out the possibility of using the same design of wheel from the Z3, but that completely loses the dish unfortunately

 

There are still over 50 things left to do on the list! And the list itself probably isn't all that comprehensive

 

Gonna build up the engine and get all the ancillaries mounted on it while it's easy to work on, prepare the shell in tandem and then combine the two....or that's the vague plan anyway

 

He heee, new furtiture? You need a carbon fibre bog me thinks!

[Sandy 191]

I know you've gone to a hell of alot of trouble with all the turbo gear.... but I set up a 2.9 stroked M20 on schrick cam, custom inlet and TBs this week and it sounded fantabulous, one of the nicest sounding engines I've ever heard. I know what I would do!!

[M3Evo 0]

Bet it did sound awesome Only trouble is that it'll probably struggle to top 220bhp which, as the brown car demonstrated, just isn't anywhere near enough to be entertaining

 

By and large though, I'm just interested to see if I can make this twin sequential system work.

[Sandy 191]

I'm sure it'll be worth it with the work you've put in!

[M3Evo 0]

He heee, if it all works!

 

Got some brake caliper brackets and a pulley through the post today:

 

 

They're very well packed as I think it's gonna take some time to find the pulley and brackets under all the metal

 

Also got an M21 oil pump and drive stick brand new from BMW, together with some lovely pressed and enamelled wheel centre badges and the little needle roller bearing which goes under the gear that drives the pump.

 

 

Looking forward to a weekend of engine putting together and machining now!

[DrSarty 90 1 Cars]

Got some brake caliper brackets and a pulley through the post today:

 

 

Hmmph. They don't make 'em like they used to.

 

[Rippthrough 98]

Hmmph. They don\'t make \'em like they used to.

 

 

Nah, they\'re better, look - you get free portions of chips when you're unpacking them:

 

Edited December 10, 2008 by Rippthrough

[Spiky 37]

what material is that pully made from?

[M3Evo 0]

Me, or Rippthrough?

 

The chunk of metal I've got for my pulley is aluminium

 

Just ordered the driven plates for the clutch! Crikey, £248 all in! That's for Tilton Ceremetalic plates which supposedly engage nice and smoothly!

 

Might look into getting one of the clutch delay valves from an E36 M3 so help smooth things out a bit more as the Tilton one costs about £150!

 

Final thing to take care of is the release mechanism. Thinking either a Saab concentric release bearing perhaps, or modifying the standard release bearing to be a bit more durable.

Edited December 11, 2008 by M3Evo

[M3Evo 0]

Oh bollocks, it's been a couple of days of annoyance!

 

Got the driven plates for the clutch. One's right, the other one's in the right box, but has the wrong spline pattern so that's gone back.

 

Worse than that though is the main bearings I exchanged on Monday have a bloody shell missing! And the pack had obviously been opened too as all the bearings had finger prints on them and one was f***ed!

 

So, as again I can't put the engine together, I do some machining. Only to find that the head of the mill is kinda slowly falling over! "maybe the locking nut's undone" I think to myself....tighten it and the thread strips! Luckily only in the nut, but it's a pain to fix it and takes about an hour to sort!

 

Next up, the tilting of the head means that one of the holes in a caliper bracket is now at an angle and about 1mm from where it should be so that doens't fit and the part needs remaking

 

Luckily though, there's enough meat on the other side of the billet to start again without scrapping the material so I've not got two brackets which can be bolted to the calipers properly.

 

What a day! Should say though, that once the mill was fixed it worked great! But what'll go wrong next?!

[Rippthrough 98]

If the bracket's scrap let me know and I'll run you one up next week, I've got loads similar sized on the shelf.

[Jon_Bmw 13]

Good work Alex!

[M3Evo 0]

Cheers Rippthrough (what's your real name by the way dude? ) Luckily the billet could be drilled from the other side so it wasn't scrap, just annoying

 

Cheers Jon

 

 

Hooray! Actually made some pleasing progress today!

 

After yesterday's faffing about, everything except my brain was working today

 

I was looking at the sketch I'd done when measuring up the original Wilwood bracket and spacers I had....and just couldn't see where some of the numbers had come from. There were measurements from the edge of components to the edge of holes but marked up as being to the centre, and I'd mysteriously added 6mm to the diameter of the disc too....for no apparent reason.

 

Anyway, this is why we check drawings twice before making things so this is the end result

 

Facing off the billets:

 

 

 

Billets machined to accept caliper mountings:

 

 

 

 

Cutting the rebate for the strut's fixing lugs:

 

 

 

The finished brackets:

 

 

 

And the bits in place

 

 

 

[Dom9 2]

Looking good mate - Those brackets are chunky!

 

Measure twice and cut once - LOL!

 

Do you have some time off over Christmas? I am looking for some good progress before the new year!

 

I have been talking to a guy about making me an adaptor plate and clutch/ flywheel to mate a certain engine to a certain transaxle, for an engine conversion I am considering! I think I need to enlist your talents!

[M3Evo 0]

Cheers Dom, yeah they are a bit on the bulky side. Think I'll bung them in the FEA thing and see where I can remove some material at some point

 

I do indeed, so with any luck (had a call from the machine shop this morning to say they've ordered another set of main bearings for me!) I'll be able to get the engine mostly together

 

Ooooh, sounds interesting What'd ya have in mind dude?

[Dom9 2]

Try an dget all the parts together before Christmas so that you can get some pictures up here - I expect my Christmas with the outlaws will be quite dull and I will be browsing the internet almost continuously... This has to be about my favourite thread at the moment! i hope they devote a whole copy of PPC to you when you are finished!

 

I will probably switch to PMs to discuss my conversion... But I will maybe do a bit more research before picking your brains... I am pretty happy that I have space in the car for the new engine and associated equipment but what I know next to nothing about is the ECU and mating the cars systems to a different ECU and all that OBD11 nonsense... I am more than happy that i could have a running engine and a working car, I am just not 100% thrilled at the idea of losing all the dashboard functionality etc... Even if you are not up to speed with all that, I think we could have a useful discussion about some other aspects!

[M3Evo 0]

No worries dude, from my experience it's pretty easy to wire up an ECU from scratch. It's a little more of a head scratcher to splice one into an existing loom, but there's not too much in it

 

Gimme a shout when you need anyway Dom

 

 

Today, we had a lie in, and then made a pulley!

 

Start off with a sketch based on measurement taken from a crank pulley and the water pump which is what the pulley's for:

 

 

 

Machine a rebate for the hub of the pump:

 

 

 

Cut the Vee for the belt:

 

 

 

Drill some mounting holes:

 

 

 

And the finished article:

 

[Dom9 2]

I have swapped to PM's for reasons that will become apparent

 

You are the master of heavy engineering! LOL!

Edited December 16, 2008 by Dom9