My rb25 kouki kinda build

[feito]

Andres here from texas. Been contemplating this swap for almost 2 years. I had planned on doing it on my old s14, heres a pic:

but when i had a chance to get me a kouki i couldnt let it pass, so I bought it and then sold my zenki.
All the work will be done by me and also most of the fabbing.
Here's the bay after a bottle of simple green and a high pressure wash


Engine i bought from jdmenginecorp from dallas, only 4 hours from my location and really good prices but, basically its a hit and miss (a lot of bad and good reviews) and their warranty's really crappy. I had originally planned on getting my engine from jhotimports but they closed down in dallas. I wanted to pick my engine myself so this was my only option. I dont recommend buying from here.



First things first, a mounting kit, but hey, i have an arc welfing machine at home, so wth! place the engine/tranny at a desired position, got a bunch of metal plates in different thickness, cut, tacked, then cut some more and welded everything together, final result:






Not the best nor prettiest welds, but they'll hold and will get the job done.

here's where the engine was sitting at first




I had it sitting on these

was just gonna add some angles to them to help for support, kind of like the mckinney ones but then i realized my oil pan was sitting way too low, sitting about an inch and a half lower than the crossmember and though it could be dangerous. It was also a little bit crooked and to fix it I was gonna have to do everything all over again, so i decided to go a different route. raised the engine about 1/4 of an inch higher than desired, hold it with the hoist in place, bolted the metal plates to the stock mounts and tacked them to the crossmember, removed the crossmember and weld the real plates to it with plenty of lateral support. End result:






now there's enough clearance between the crossmember and the oil pan and the bottom of the pan sits about the same as the crossmember.
But now my tranny, where the starter goes is hitting the tunnel, but its bearly touching it so no biggie, i'll just bang it a bit. I removed my dashboard and the blower and evaporator box to be able to see whats behind the tunnel where i'll be bangin the firewall and to be able to install and remove the harness with more ease.
Driveshaft was something i couldnt build so i went back to where i had got one from before and never had issues with: thedriveshaftshop




Also bough a z32 to do a full brake swap. Got my fully functional rear brakes done:

will resurface or buy new rotors later depending on how bad these are. The rest of the swap is gravy, im just wating on my repair kit for my fronts 'cause it looks like they were leaking a little. Also im wating on my new front hubs i ordered from nissan. Will be swapping the booster and the bmc as well, then a downgraded z32 with rear 4 lug and s14 brakes all around will be for sale, oh yeah, and a bad head gasket lol.
So i wanna know if all of this is worth, my warranty has already expired and i dont even know how good the engine runs, time to face my most feared part of the build: wiring!! Not enough write ups out there for rb s14, at least not that i could find, but this one help me a lot http://media.sxoc.com/contributors/s...S14_Jan_10.pdf along with motoralldata. No pictures for wiring, the most boring part anyway. Some say that if it takes you more than 2 hours you're thinking too much and shlt, but this took me forever, adding all the hours of work i'd say it took me around 24 hours, and this was for the engine harness only. im sure i could do it a bit faster if i only wanted the damn car to move but i was trying to get everything right, wipers, wipers amp. I might even get the cruise control working.
tranny harness wasnt that hard, same guide and motoralldata again, only took me a whole afternoon to do it :P that i do have a picture, not much to see here:



So i put a ka oil filter on in, some cheap oil, some gear oil in my tranny, put in my super badass new harness, put a u pipe from my turbo to my intake, cranck it and this is what happens, click on it:



a lot of fuking smoke thanks to all the oil i had put in it to pressure test it. It stoped smoking after a while but there was still a little miss, well my #1 wasnt working, i wasnt getting any pulsation at the injector connector, i got to work on it and turn out to be a bad contact at the computer. Start it once again and this is what happens, click on it:



So apperantly my engine's running alright and hearing refuels me with more energy to work on it.
i still gotta remove the whole thing to bang the trans tunnel where the starter goes and where the vss goes. But before i got some custom lines to build, for the power steering and for my a/c, yeah a/c, gotta have a/c in texas. So i measured, test fitted, cut and test fitted again and marked, take everything to my work saturday, weld it, come back home, test fit again and this is what i end up with, oh yeah, did i mention i'll be using the stock clutch fan? :


All of this didnt happen in a couple of days, my full time job sometimes drains me and its hard to come home and still work on the project. Not to mention money...
I also had these but sold them a couple of days ago to make some money to buy some r33 gtr rims just so the damn seller would flake...

Right now i got the engine and tranny down, this time i removed it from the bottom, proved to be a lot easier than doing it from the top. This swap would be a hell lot easier with a car lift, something my dad and i have tough of buying more than one time. I already have a full exhoust system, an apexi n1 style, forgot the real name of it. Have a knock off cat delete pipe and an sr20 downpipe which i gotta re'weld for the rb25, also gotta figure out my intercooler piping. I already have a fmic with the in and out on the same side, which turned out to be huge, way bigger than i expected, would require me to cut or remove the bumper support wich i dont want to do, Im probably gonna use it witout bumper support until i find a welder who can modify it for me, or get a smaller one. Until then, laters and thanks for watching. Positive and negative feedback welcome.

[skvngr]

Very nice start to the build! Cool to see custom mounts being done, my brother has a similar type of mounting system for his rb20. And awesome purchase on the kouki, mine is originally the same color (LS1), but it was repainted a lil more purple. Rare color for sure. Maybe you can get a smaller intercooler to fit behind the crash bar. I have an ISIS m-spec IC and I got it to fit behind my crash bar with a lil bit of trimming (just the lip of the bar),and its by no means a small intercooler. Looking forward to more progress!

[feito]

thanks. I though i read it somewhere that it was a rare color but wasnt sure. Clear's kind flaking on the hood and roof, i just might end up repainting it the same color. A new fmic would be bad ass but i just bought this one brand new, might as well try to modify it.

[feito]

i got my clutch pedal installed, resealed my oil pan and modified my turbo elbow to clear my steering shaft.

Also got my smic and exhaust hook up, heard my engine running quiet for the first time. It was magical...:

My exhaust system turned out to be pretty quiet and deep sounding, hopefully the tone doesnt change much underload.
Im trying to figure out why my engine is kind of taking too long/cranking a lot to start when its cold, im checking my aac, ficd and air regulator tomorrow.
Ordered one of these a few days ago:

Also received these the other day:


I might be getting new wheels tomorrow. Nothing fancy, just some work kai replicas, cant seem to find a good deal on a good used set of 17x9 anywhere, and when i find one the seller flakes..

[trainkiller]

finally updates lol, nice build keep up the nice work

[feito]

oh shlt, sorry here's that video:
VID_20111119_224953.mp4 video by andres14oj - Photobucket

[rb20240sx]

Damn wish I could have kept my stock clutch fan. Guess I need to learn how to weld. Great job it might get closed here though some of the zilvia mods have a god complex and there's a rule about unfinished build threads. Hope they don't though I want to see more of this.

[feito]

working inside tonight. Sand blasted calipers at work today, brought them home, took them apart, cleaned them really good with carb cleaner, took them apart and just have to put them back together with their new parts. Cylinders and pistons look ok, so honing needed here.



engine sits like this right now, havent figured out my hard-to-start-when-cold problem, checked all my valves and they r all good, my tming seems to be good too and have enough fuel pressure, anyone has any experience with something like this? No vacuum leak either.


Oh yeah, and i worked on this at work today, this fellow mexican guy who bought it doesnt even know what he bought.

[feito]

all done, will paint them tomorrow, and of course they'll be red!

[feito]

[Yellow4g63]

The hard to start problem could be the ecu is not getting the start signal to the ecu pin.

[feito]

Originally Posted by Yellow4g63

The hard to start problem could be the ecu is not getting the start signal to the ecu pin.

s14 f3 plug pin34 (start signal, orange cable) hooked to rb25 ecu plug pin43 (start, gray/redstripe) right? I double checked that one and its good, running out of patience here..

[Smurf_240SX]

Nice build

[feito]

thank u all for the input. rb20240sx, that car in your sig remains me a lot of my old zenki, gonna get some glass stain to paint my corner and bumper lights on this one too, all clear front end aint much fun.. u may not have to use a different mount/bracket setup, ive seen some guys running some aftermarket setups running the stock clutch fan, all u have to do is mount the fan blade on the back of the clutch instead of the front and shave a little bit of the blades to clear the crankshaft damper and u should be good!

[HPKMotorsports3]

nice work so far... welds could definitely use some work but hey cant beat the price of diy lol

[feito]

Originally Posted by HPKMotorsports3

nice work so far... welds could definitely use some work but hey cant beat the price of diy lol

No shlt they could be better, but wont get any better if i never practice, gotta master this little machine before i upgrade to a better machine. Im sure the weld will hold, if they start cracking i'll just take them to a pro shop to re-weld them.
Well i figured my hard to start problem. Turns out it was my start signal, i had it right but i had a short on my ecu connection. Fixed it and now it starts right up! Gotta put my interior together, fix a few details and i'll be on the st in no time.

[feito]

up and running. Just got a few issues. Its kind of bogging at higher rpms, gotta do a boost leak test and get a bigger intercooler, sr20's is really restrictive, Planning on getting me one of this:

Charged my a/c system but could get the compressor to kick in, apperantly i didnt wire the ecu to to a/c system correctly so i gotta work out some wiring, hopefully i dont have to remove my dash again.. suspension is all loose, whoever owned it before though it was a good idea to buy ebay adjustable arms, so im buying stock suspension parts now. I dont like a car with so much details, im not really enjoying it too much and the screamer pipe isnt helping either... so i got plenty of work still, this time on a running car.
Few pix.
Oh yeah got a carbon fiber hood to replace my faded out stock one:


Really love how my engine bay looks, completely stock looking!

[feito]

been running for a couple of months now, figured out a little missing problem at higher rpm's, turned out to be a bad maf.
Lowered the front a little bit more and painted my covers:

unfortunately i didnt have a new t-belt or any replacement parts too replace but it's still a pretty easy procedure so, whatever...






im considering a paint job, probably the same color, ls1 purple to keep things simple.
Here's a few ext shots

[s13silvia_R]

The valve cover looks pretty damn good.
Keep up the good work, all that thing need is some proper wheels and a front lip.

[Shop_Seven]

Awesome build! Love the color of the car, cant wait to see more updates! Keep up the good work.

[feito]

thanks guys.
I got r33 gtr rims on my plans

[fliprayzin240sx]

Have you considered moving the TB to the front of them manifold? Alot of folks in Japan does it to clean up the piping and eliminate the piping going over the top of the engine.

[Canked]

nice build so far keep up the good work love that valve cover

[silviaks2nr]

Nice job with this build man. I like seeing people get their hands dirty rather than just buying every part off the shelf.

[Vicious Beaner!]

looks good bro . definately liking this ! defiantely putting on a clutch fan and shroud on my rb.

[feito]

thanks everyone.

Originally Posted by fliprayzin240sx

Have you considered moving the TB to the front of them manifold? Alot of folks in Japan does it to clean up the piping and eliminate the piping going over the top of the engine.

u mean like modifying the stock upper plenum? Kinda like this?



i heard that its not a very good idea cuz some pistons run very lean.
I really like greddy intakes on rb's but i read that u can actually loose power when installed with stock turbo and no tune, which im not ready for, so yeah, intake's gonna have to wait.

[S14Serge]

I totally dig your build bro! Cant wait for more updates!

[feito]

been running for a few months now, running perfect for about a month. Really liking it now. In the market for some wheels n good rubber.
few pix

[Piggy]

Very cool, reminds me a lot of what I had to go through. About what you said on the intake manifold, you're absolutely right.

[SnakeKack]

The Spanish version Fast And Furious Supra vinyl sticker is pretty unique. And I say keep the color. It's different in an OEM kinda way, which I think is good.