SR20 in A31 Cefiro

[3v1Ls14]

So I had a SR20DE and Nismo 6 Speed gearbox laying around from when I pulled the lot from my S14 Facelift (for RB20DET conversion).

This rolling body was bought for the motor to drop into..






These are literally the photos that were on the auction

Previosuly RB25DET so I had to remove that loom and ECU first. Already been converted to manual, R32 handbrake conversion, front strut brace aswell as an RB20DET gearbox for my S14 build. Has the Nissan BBS 15s as well which are hard to find, but not bad for standard wheels.




To get the motor in I just used the subframe that I took out of my S14, (bolts straight up to the Cefiro) and had to modify the gearbox cross member.
The shifter was in the perfect spot (as you can see). I had read on the internet (obviously by people who just guessed and didn't REALLY know what they were on about haha) that for this conversion the shifter may not line up properly... Load of crap, looks perfect to me...?





I had to modify a factory A31 gearbox cross member to fit but that was simple. I just drilled 2 plates out to match the holes on the under body, then lined them up and welded them to the factory cross member.

That is literally how simple it was just to get the motor bolted in!

Note* I had to bend the power steering hard lines to clear the sump but that took 2 minutes

The next step was mounting everything else to the motor.
There were a few things i had to make or modify, eg. accelerator cable bracket, radiator mounts, some hoses needed modifying to be out of the way and functioning. But that is pretty much it

I simply cut and welded the bracket for the cable to suit the A31 cable


Made up some brackets to hold the radiator (only temporarily as I am sure the engine bay layout will change soon), but they work for now




The SR bottom radiator hose was still perfect in length so I just used that, but for the top it needed to be a bit longer, I went to pick a part and grabbed the top hose off a VR/VS V6 Commodore as the have long straights in them and just cut it to fit. I have now wired the factory SR A/C fan that mounts to the radiator as the electric fan for the engine to get rid of the viscous fan. Again, the radiator setup is only temporary for now, as the engine bay will change soon im sure with turbo etc
The SR-RB heater hoses are different diameters, so i just used the SR hoses from the motor and cut them behind the cylinder head at the firewall and used plastic Gates hose adapters from repco to put the smaller rb hoses on, in order to connect them to the heater core (to keep heater)






I used the RB hose from the power steering resivoir to the pump as its shorter, and i just used a bracket to secure the high pressure line so it wasnt in the way.

When I had everything in the engine bay, i noticed that I could still stand in the engine bay even with the motor and the radiator in there! Soo much space!





The drive shaft was also pretty straight forward, I used the rear half of an a31/c33 drive shaft, message me if you want to know what front piece I used as there is a secret to the 6 speed box (has a different yoke to all other manual boxes).

The wiring side of it was pretty basic, I simply used the S14 loom (without the SR interior plug or wiper plugs - I hade to split the 25det loom to take the wiper circuit out of it and put that into the SR loom so the wipers still work) I wired the appropriate wires to the corresponding wires inside the car where the factory interior plugs are so it can be easily removed later by unplugging the plugs. (more info on wiring, send me a message) I used the RB temp sensor so the dash will read the correct temp. The lower loom just all plugged straight in as it often does with Nissans.




I will hide ECU at some stage as well

First turn of the key and it cranked and started, ran mint and everything worked fine with no leaks or anything, it was charging and everything. Success!

I ran it a couple of times in the drive while i was still finding a drive shaft front piece. Swapped the blue front bumper that had been cut up for the drive shaft front piece and $50. Car came with 2 spare ones so I just put one of those on, which will get painted soon.

There you have it, SR20 and 6 speed into an A31 Cefiro


CLICK HERE to see it running after its first drive up the road and back 8)

[tunermt]

interesting swap but way to make it happen!

[3v1Ls14]

It really was soo much simpler than i anticipated. I have no idea why there isnt thousands of these out there, the car swings out sooo easy and is much easier to control with the better weight balance

[jdmlivin]

Very cool swap i like good job bro.

[3v1Ls14]

thanks bro just cant wait till I turbo it and finish the rest

[uraznfriend]

everytime i see a non turbo SR20 i always think its an MX-5 motor weird

[DoinThangs]

So dope. Keep it up.

[3v1Ls14]

Bought a turbo for it last week. So.. the plan (for now)is:

Stainless top mount manifold (IF the piping will clear the dizzy as they poke out a lot on DEs otherwise low mount)
Not a big fan of stainless but i will put a flexi in the exhaust and if it does end up cracking i will just swap to a steampipe one.
t3/t4 turbo
colder plugs
greddy e-manage - to tune fuel injection
fmic
fuel pressure reg
DET injectors (or slightly larger)
wideband gauge or reader
braided lines etc
and a good catch can setup

may be more that i cant think of right now.
and hopefully that setup will allow it to run the +T setup safely(ish) haha
I know its not the same but Ive heard of a guy in NZ running 22psi on a +T making almost 280rwkW and still hasn't blown up (2 Yrs).

It'll be interesting thats for sure, but turbo project wont start for a few weeks maybe couple months yet

[3v1Ls14]

Wooo, Turdbo has arrived

[tookie]

Will be watching this project! Have a sr20det cefiro as well.

[3v1Ls14]

Originally Posted by tookie

Will be watching this project! Have a sr20det cefiro as well.

you got a build thread? il be keen to see how you go and what you do aswell.

[tookie]

Originally Posted by 3v1Ls14

you got a build thread? il be keen to see how you go and what you do aswell.

No build thread but can start one. I've had my sr20det in the cefiro for 5 years now.

[3v1Ls14]

You must be one of the cefiro sr pioneers then! sweet man sounds good ill be watching.

[3v1Ls14]

So, i put more gas in one day and then it decided not to start, unless it had jump start (ether mix) sprayed into the filter. fuel pump magically stopped working. Relay shat itselt, so I wired in a new one. Pulled injectors and they were injecting, not very much though

Noticed when i turned IGN to ON, pump just kept going, it didnt just prime.
I rigged up an inline fuel pressure gauge with some fittings and a gauge I had laying around, to check what the pressure was.




Turns out, with the pump that was already in the car, the gauge gave me just 22psi.



I swapped that out with a brand new pump and it jumped to 40psi. But when i cranked it over, the fuel pressure showed that it was dropping when cranking (as no power to pump during cranking, only on ign ON). so i tried constant voltage to the pump from a battery sitting in the boot and with power while cranking the pressure stayed even during cranking and it started straight away.

Im not entirely sure what has happed. fuel pump was crap. relay shat itself. now pump wont prime, stays on. and wont start unless constant voltage to the pump during cranking

at least i got it working again i suppose haha... for now

[3v1Ls14]

Today I rewired the fuel pump from the ecu to relay, turns out the pump wire from the ecu had far to much resistance in it by the time it got all the way to the boot where the relay is. so i ran a new wire to the relay from the front and that seemed to make it function properly, prime then click off etc.

Then i needed to make the exhaust from the s14 fit the cefiro as it was running just from the front pipe before and it ran like crap.

I just had to extend it a little at the back as the cefiro is a tad longer. I cut the muffler off and just welded in a pipe about 200mm or so long with the angle I wanted and it worked perfectly. As you can see there's a big kink in it but I used larger diameter so the pipe actually runs inside the join so it doesn't flow quite as bad as it looks haha. and il need to remake exhaust with larger diameter piping when it gets its turbo anyhow so not fussed about it right now.


JUST got it in and welded and just 1 hanger hook welded in place and then my mig wire ran out at least I got to drive it down the road though felt like I was back in my s14 again haha









Here it is on the car all mounted

[Luvs2slide]

Good stuff man. Know I know what needs to be done pretty much if I wanted to SR my c33 laurel. Basically the c33 and a31 are brothers haha. Right now I have a rb25det in mine.

[3v1Ls14]

yeah they are basically the same car really. This one had a series 2 rb25det in it previously. this really was such a simple swap and it feels so light. kicks out realllly nice aswell. especially with the lockie haha.

i have wiring info aswell if you decide to do that just send me message for more in depth details

[3v1Ls14]

I should really start a build thread for my S14, the following is for the S14 not the cefiro but I will be doing basically the exact same thing for the cefiro when i turbo it.

for some reason i have this theory that having the wastegate in the rear housing of the turbo is an excellent place for it. So it can be exhausted at the very last place it can before the turbo rather than somewhere random in the manifold.

So... I took the rear housing off the turbo, and drilled a 38mm hole (ended up being slightly over 38mm)



I then cut a small section of 38mm tube i had to place in the hole, creating a neck





Welded it on



Welded up the internal gate hole and ground it flush



I have not yet welded the flange on to the neck because i want to sit it all in the car first and then decide what angle i want to put the gate on etc before i weld it in place. but you can see roughly what it will be like





I also had to cut one of the heat sheild bolt holes off the exhaust manifold for the turbo compressor housing to clear the manifold



thats what i did today

I'll do the same thing but on a standard RB20DET turbo for the SR20 in the cefiro. I will also have to cut off the t2 and weld on the t3 flange to run RB turbo on SR

[3v1Ls14]

has all new intake now pics soon. painted bootlid over weekend and got rid of all the sand marks in it from previous owners home paint job attempt. just matt black for now and needs a wetsand but looks much better surface wise. colour will change to maybe grey/gloss black for the whole car.

[ziptie]

so jealous of NZ and all their ceffys. If you dig up any exterior front and rear window surrounds and stock rear side pods ill buy them off you in a heartbeat.

[JDMpurest]

Your going to turbo an NA SR? Bad news!!

[3v1Ls14]

Originally Posted by ziptie

so jealous of NZ and all their ceffys. If you dig up any exterior front and rear window surrounds and stock rear side pods ill buy them off you in a heartbeat.

Im after a few of those myself. They are quite common in NZ but parts are still pretty steep, hard to find a lot of the good bits now, if I have anything for sale i will post it.

[3v1Ls14]

Originally Posted by JDMpurest

Your going to turbo an NA SR? Bad news!!

Yup, I am

[3v1Ls14]

Okay so heres the photos from the last few things i have done.

first, the intake. I got rid of the ugly standard plastic pipe the goes across the front of the radiator and i used a bunch of silicon hoses and aluminium pipes I had around. I had to drill a hole in the 90degree pipe straight off the throttle body to keep the cold start. I got a brass fitting with a nut on the end and put it in the hole and tightened the nut, sealed it up with some industrial pipe sealer. Then simply put the cold start hose onto it.

no more ugly black piping


new piping setup




I also painted the boot lid. the last owner painted the car really badly and left sanding scratches throughout the entire paintjob so I simply sanded with 180 grit, then 320 grit, used 3 parts filler primer to 1 part thinner, whacked it in the spray gun and gave it 3 coats with that. sanded with some 800 grit sandpaper, then 3 coats of matt black. It wont stay matt black that is just a very temporary colour.





came out sweet. Just needs a fine wet sand

[3v1Ls14]

Yesterday I continued on with getting it painted.. I stripped off the bonnet and the guards and painted them, as well as the grill.



Also put some rust treatment where there has been some rust starting behind the guards




guards off and sanded





bonnet sanded and ready for filler primer



I used filler primer on everything to fill the sanding scratches from when last owner horribly prepped before he painted over the deepest scratches, works perfectly, then just a matt black finish for now











primed and painted the rest treated area behind both guards









also a little patch near the screen



heres everything just after last coats







Now back on the car, matt black front end haha.

I will hopefully get the rest of the car done in one go, then wetsand the whole lot and possibly clear coat? we will see what happens.

[Luvs2slide]

Are you still using the standard fuel pump?

[Drifting Kalamari]

Looking great!

[codyace]

Looks like your 115 mig gun can't penetrate the cast well. I don't mean to be debbie downer, but I dont' see any penetration on the 'wg mod' at all. More weld atop of poor weld doesn't make it 'better weld' ya know?

I do like the setup, something different!

[3v1Ls14]

i think we have found a mr. obvious!

Originally Posted by codyace

Looks like your 115 mig gun can't penetrate the cast well. I don't mean to be debbie downer, but I dont' see any penetration on the 'wg mod' at all. More weld atop of poor weld doesn't make it 'better weld' ya know?

I do like the setup, something different!

ah duh. if i were to use that i would be an idiot. it'd fail straight away.

it was simply for mocking something up. my plan has now changed also.

exhaust housing is cracked inside anyhow, but thank you for your observation.

[3v1Ls14]

Originally Posted by Luvs2slide

Are you still using the standard fuel pump?

for now, yes. as im still running the sr20de. when it is turbo then i will upgrade. car now off road and is track dedicated. will have fuel cell with big external pump. undecided about sr at the moment. i want to go with either genuine det or a vet setup as i have seen what they are capable of and im impressed at their outputs

the standard pump could handle a 25det in standard form, the 52mm pumps are the same throughout most nissans of similar era