Almost-a-Kouki 180SX

[zeppelin101]

320lbft

You'll be waiting a while, I'm just doing odd jobs at the moment while I try and scrape some money together! I would like to be able to fork out for pistons, bearings and gasket kit by the summer and get the block put together in the warm months. I'm not bothering with rods even though it's a mid-life block so it has the smaller rods in. That ties up better with it staying NA to keep the mass down so it won't mind revving out to ~7k or more. The heads will take a lot longer, I need to get them flowed properly (I need Cf numbers rather than volume flow for my GT model) and get the cams measured. Then I can fine tune my model and work cams out. I have a couple of options I've put together but the right choice rather depends on how the heads flow out the box and how much of an improvement I can net without going to the effort of pulling the whole port throat up into the injector cavity. I'll put a pic up later that will explain better.

I don't think I will be able to fit equal length 4-2-1 exhausts in without doing something drastic in the car even with the 1.5" primary size I'm thinking of. I can probably work out how much of an effect that will have once I know where I need to compromise.

[zeppelin101]

I stumbled across another solution to the crank pulley using the belt and a big ass bar extension. It was 2m in the end

None the less:



Then the belt came off too. Now I can tackle the water pump and everything else to get the heads off. It'll be down to a bare block in no time. What I need to do first though is get hold of some bolts that are long enough to go through my engine stand and into the block because the standard bellhousing bolts are very short.



In the meantime I got hold of a little bit of 2mm sheet and braced up the rod brackets. I put 2 passes of weld around it - I was running low on gas and got some porosity so wound it up a bit for the second pass.



Then I took the flapwheel to them and dressed them. Looks like this:



Quite pleased with my first attempt on something that actually matters, it turned up pretty ok I think!

[Dastardly]

That bracing looks good, good to hear the crank pulley is off.

[zeppelin101]

As a side project, I've been looking into suspension geometry at the front. I had a couple of ideas namely:

• Look at what the geometry is at the moment - how bad is roll centre specifically and what other implications this has
• How much do the stock components weigh?

I've weighed most of the important bits:

• Upright = 6.1 kg
• R33 Caliper = 3.8 kg
• S14 Lower Control Arm = 2.2 kg
• Tension Rod = 1.5 kg
• LS400 Caliper (for reference) = 5.1 kg

I kept hold of the LS400 calipers because they take a bigger disc and pads etc are cheaper with a good selection available - they appear to be popular with the Supra boys as an upgrade. I'm wondering now though if I should be looking at ally Z32 calipers and not worry about cost of pads to benefit from a weight perspective. Here is the two side by side:



I've started drawing something up in CAD for the upright using 6083-T6 (7075 would be nice but is more expensive and a little unnecessary) as the material guideline just to see where I get to. In terms of weight, I'm looking to halve the weight of the uprights which I think I'll exceed because having put together the main body with caliper mounts it was ~800g with the steering arm and balljoint section to add on. I've calculated; very approximately with a tolerance of about 20mm, that I would like to move the lower balljoint by approximately 75mm - which is a huge amount! The implications of doing that are quite huge with respect to scrub radius etc so I need to spend a bit of time thinking about how best to set the geometry. To be clear - I'm not interested in returning the car to "stock" because it has a completely different engine among other things so the boundary conditions for CoG height etc are a bit different to what they were. I have options this way to consider how to make the steering manageable in the event I remove the PAS to facilitate fitment of sexy exhaust manifolds because it's on the drivers side where space is tightest.

If my calcs are even close to right then the front roll centre (assuming the arch sits 45mm above the top of the wheel) is just over 1 meter below the ground which is not entirely unbelievable, even for a not very low ride height when you look at the arm angles. Imagine how bad it is when the car is sat on the deck tucking tyre!

This is hugely overkill and I'm just keeping myself busy so it might come to nothing. I could be out in the garage playing with the V8, but my oven decided that cooking was no longer its top priority so I'm all out of cash now replacing that At least this is free!

[zeppelin101]

I've been busy today: water pump is off, both heads are off and I'm almost ready to flip the block over and start pulling the bottom end apart.

The cam pulleys were as much of a twat as the crank pulley bolt was. I ended up getting creative with the old timing belt to hold the cams in place while going at it with the homebrew 2m extension bar again...

Water pump off:


RH cylinder head with the cam cover off. Looks pretty good in here. Almost too good actually...


Scissor gears to drive the exhaust cam off the intake cam (meaning only one pulley at the front - more compact) are real nice.


RH heads all apart. Next job will be measuring the buckets and shims and starting to tidy a few things up.


LH head is nowhere near as nice as the RH side.


The carbon deposits are really baked on...


Combustion chamber. It's not too bad but...


Ideally the side squish would be removed and the intake shrouding (bottom frame) would be pulled back a touch. The squish on the exhaust side is very aggressive, probably a negative impact on exhaust flow.
[IMG]http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a400/zeppelin101/180SX/V8%20Swap%20and%20Refurb/combustion%20chamber%20top_zpst***cxaw.jpg[/IMG]

Bare block ready to get the oil pan etc pulled off it.


There are a ton of carbon deposits everywhere from the intake manifold onwards. A better advert for taking the EGR circuit and throwing it in the nearest skip you will not find as far as performance goes.

It's quite a nice engine to work on so far. Looking forward to getting stuck in on the bottom end.

[-ghost-]

thats a bit grubby

Are you going to do the 2mm bore?

[zeppelin101]

Going 0.5mm over to 88mm in theory. Want to get them measured for ovality to see if that will be enough. There isn't any difference in cost between the bore size pistons so that isn't an issue and the rebore costs are the same regardless of size. Going too large without significantly better ports though won't net me anything because I won't be able to fill the damn things

Looking into the prospect of fitting VVT heads with the VVT mechanism removed/locked so I get better flowing ports out of the box. Info on that is vanishingly small though because people seem to get hung up on the VVT oiling - but I don't care about that because I don't want it anyway.

[-ghost-]

Im just buying a pair of 1uz vvti heads for my early 1uz non vvti

they bolt up and I was under the impression that they was the same bud or that minimal work was needed.

just got to find head gaskets that fit.

[zeppelin101]

If you pick them up you should put some pics up to compare. I thought the block architecture was almost identical so they should bolt up apart from the VVT oil feed. Should be able to get hold of a VVT head gasket set?

[-ghost-]

Yeah im hoping its a fairly straight forward fit I want to use the other heads and intake on something new and been twin turbo I think the stock vvti will be fine for the 500 mark.

Its hard to find headgaskets that arent stock sizing. The ones I have now lower the compession

[nattman]

Wow, just read from start, quite an adventure. 😀 Be keeping an eye on this.

[Ross.]

Been busy dude, looking good.

[zeppelin101]

Wow, just read from start, quite an adventure. �� Be keeping an eye on this.

It got out of hand real fast I have way too many projects on at the minute but I'm hoping I can keep updating this fairly regularly.

Been busy dude, looking good.

Almost sounds like you're coming round to the idea of a V8

I'm not going to bother head swapping. Sure, the ports and **** and it'll make life more difficult but if I go off on any more tangents I may as well flog the bits for it now because it'll never get finished. Rebuild with pistons and daft cams will have to do, it'll make some power and I'm sure whatever it makes will be plenty.

[-ghost-]

Just add a turbo save money,time abusive language and make more powers

[Ross.]

Almost sounds like you're coming round to the idea of a V8

I wouldn't go that far

[zeppelin101]

Just add a turbo save money,time abusive language and make more powers

Absolutely not - heat, weight and driveability will all be a million miles off where I want to be.

[zeppelin101]

Finally got round to tackling the bottom end yesterday. I had taken the sump off a week or so previously to be greeted with:



Wrestled the timing pulley off the front of the crank with a couple of M6 bolts and some grips. Came off a little easier than expected. I then managed to pull the oil pump and stick it on (another) layout table. I'll be getting a new pump I think, but it's likely I'll modify it slightly to ease some of the edges and try and improve flow a little to give me some extra oil pressure.





I was going to measure the block and rods for thrust, however decided against it and having taken the rods out I'm wondering if even a shot peened standard rod is really going to be enough to live with the tensile forces involved at higher RPM. I had a quick look at the small ends on the crank and they look good, but I need some measurements before ordering any bearings in case one set of bearings does not give me the right clearance. I'm planning on opening up the clearances a little bit and running slightly thicker oil which should help with bearing temperature and help avoid some of the failures that occur at higher RPM on these engines.

Caps off:



Small end for cyls 1/5


Small end for cyl 2/6


Small end for cyls 3/7


Small end for cyls 4/8


I then went after the main caps to get the crank out. 6 bolt mains! I don't think there is a more robust main cap installation out there which is remarkable since this is a luxury engine. But NVH and balancing for such an engine is king so individual counterweights and robust mains are the way to go. Supposedly it was originally designed as a race unit but the larger capacity 2UZ (4.7l) was adapted for this instead IIRC.

Mains off:


Crank out, all laid out on the bench:


I then started pulling the main studs out. ARP don't do an off-the-shelf kit for it (despite various places selling them) so I guess the studs for mains and head that are available are probably pinched from other units. The head studs are just 10mm units which is fairly common, I imagine there is another Toyota that shares the length/diameter/pitch, I'm in contact with ARP about main studs.

Having investigated a little the places in the US that sell a lot of the UZ bits, I'm not getting glowing reports about any of them (TTC Performance, Supra Store and XAT Racing) so I've engaged Ross Pistons directly to make some units up; they actually list the application on their website (at 8.5:1) whereas CP do not and I've heard good things about them. I've got my eye on some cams, I'm just waiting for some money to clear then I can get those picked up. They are very silly, much sillier than I was originally intending and they drive me to a fairly silly compression ratio of 12.5 - 13.5:1 If you're going to go NA may as well do it properly!

[-ghost-]

advoid TTC IMO I tried to buy a intake and they was trying there best to be as unhelpful as possible then I found some reviews of there stuff that wasn't the most positive.

I always go with CP Pistons as they will build anything you want.

go 14:1 ratio with E85 and a really good map.

[zeppelin101]

E85 is not readily available and I want to be able to drive this anywhere without needing anything too exotic.

13:1 will be suitable for ~98 RON with the cam in mind to get a small raise in dynamic CR over stock. Although I'm having a rethink about the ports and chamber at the moment which may lead me to a different cam choice.

CP cannot compete with Ross on price for the pistons and Greg at Ross has been exceptionally helpful so far.

Seems like Steve at Soarer Sanctuary might have a spare head for me to cut up, so thanks for the pointer

[zeppelin101]

I think I need professional help...

I've purchased a spare head to carve up, the intention being to see what the limits are for milling and porting. I had an idea I pinched from the US guys running old SBCs which I want to investigate, namely milling the fire face of the cylinder head at an angle rather than flat. What this means is that the port direction is directed more downward into the cylinder (which ultimately can improve flow) and the compression ratio can be raised without needing a hideously domed piston which usually causes more problems than it solves for combustion.

Usually on DOHC head this would cause all manner of headaches and generally isn't done due to chain/belt dynamics and cam timing etc, however since I'm carving most of the engine up already it's worth investigating I think - the fact that there is only the one pulley on the front to drive the cams helps matters in terms of dynamics and just leaves me with a subtle change to cam timing, likely to result in a little more advance for both intake and exhaust.

It may well come to nothing but I'm keen to buy compression ratio outside of the piston in any way that I can, especially since I may need to do a lot of work on de-shrouding the valves. Hopefully the sacrificial head will tell me a lot about that when I put together a very rudimentary flow bench.

This has gotten way more involved (and interesting) than I originally bargained for, but it's very useful.