2nd gen GTR swap on the way

[bruce95fmla]

Originally posted by Project323
Unfortunately we didn't take pics of the engine swap. SO good looking for Bruce. I'm sure everyone appreciates it.

Like i said before if ya want all the pros and cons of swapping the GTX, PM me or call corksport. Derrick would be more than helpful on telling you everything if you are seriously considering the swap.

the funny thing is...
I never went into the details of modifying the wire harness. It's not easy to explain, mush more easy to do in person. I don't even want to imagine trying to wire up a GTR..

[PseudoR]

ok. the shipping company couldn't ship the front clip to my house because their small-scale equipment couldn't handle heavy loads. so they told me i had come pick it up. what fags. they delay the shipment 3 times and then come to the conclusion that they can't deliver it! so i had to go pick it up somehow when i got back. but first, i needed to get my car back to dallas.

wednesday: what a crazy day
i spent all day getting my car back. i originally had a uhaul tow-dolly reserved, but it turned out that the ball on the tow hitch to my parent's van was too small, and uhaul didn't have any adapters to make it fit. so we tried towing it back with it chain chained up to my van.... that worked for about 2 miles. heh. it was bumper-to-bumper traffic heading out of austin. with only ~3ft btwn my car and the van, this way just wouldn't work. our final decision? drive it back with only 2 working gears... traffic was moving at less than 40mph anyways.

it's about 200miles btwn austin and dallas. the plan was that i would drive it as far as my car could take it and then call for towing service when it broke down. luckily, one of my other friends had at&t as his provider on his cellphone which came towing benefits. logically, we traded phones, and my other friends went back with my parents, while another friend and i would drive the protege back. we departed at 3pm.

i started out driving at 50mph at 5K rpm in 2nd. i drove for 30mins and decided we should full up on oil as a precaution. we stopped at a gas station and bought a quart of mobil1 synthetic and filled it up. i've been using mobil1 and now was a good time to test its performance. so we continued on our journey.

15mins into it i started to smell burning oil... 'damn! it's over already?' i thought. so we pulled over to check things out... it turns out i forgot to put the oil cap back on! DAMNIT, IT'S OVER! there was oil all over the right half of the engine bay, and i didn't know where the oil cap was. FORTUNATELY, we found that it was still in the engine bay. so naturally, we capped it, checked the oil level (it was barely on the stick) and went on our way... we were just barely outside of austin, lol.

we continued driving on service roads at a nearly continous 5k rpm until we hit waco (half-way there). it took us 3 hours to get there. thank god for cruise control. stopped 20mins for dinner and kept on going, but this time the service roads ended and onto the highway we went, 55mph @ 5.5k rpm... whoa.

3/4th's the way to dallas, we find a walmart and decide to stop and buy some more mobil1 to make up for the losses... so i decide i don't need a funnel... not a good idea.... i spill some oil onto my valve cover which drips down to my exhaust manifold, sizzles, and flashes into fire! ! we stand there stuipified, not registering what just happened... 'uhh... my engine's on fire... MY ENGINE'S ON FIRE!!!' my friend rushes into the car and grabs what's left of his drink and dumps it onto my engine... we hear sizzling, cracking, and popping...but no more fire. we decide to wait for the engine to cool before we continue. so 5 mins pass until we screw it, and hop back into the car. we agree that if there's another fire.... we'll have to piss it out since we're out of water. lol.

Finally make it to dallas! 6 hours and still counting. 30mins to home, so i decide to push the engine a little harder... 60mph @ 6k rpm. we're within a reasonable towing distance.... why not?

Amazingly enough, we make it back home in one piece! we got back at 11pm. it took nearly 7 hours of driving from austin to dallas in 2nd gear... there's no way the engine could have done that without sustaining sometype of damage. we'll see tomorrow. but making it back with the engine still running is an incredible feat in itself... i'm a firm believer in mobil 1 now...wow.

[PseudoR]

thursday: thanksgiving
nothing was open today including the shipping comany. so we compression check the engine and it turned out FINE. no busted piston rings or anything of that sort... this engine simply amazing! i ran a 75 shot nitrous system a year or two ago and detonated once. aside from a screwed up sparkplug, there was no damage to the engine! like i said, this car has sentimental value... haha.

we installed the walbro rx-7 fuel pump. we found that the inlet and outlet of the pump were on opposite corners of the pump, whereas the stock one has the inlet and outlet on the same side of the pump (still opposite ends). this didn't allow us to use the stock mounts and we had to do some modifications like rotate the filter at a funny angle inorder to have it fit in the tank. other than that, it wasn't too hard. the rest of the day we just chilled.

[PseudoR]

finished product... (excuse the image quality, i used my camera phone.)

[charles]

When you did your fuel pump, did you have to empty the gas tank first? I tried with half a tank, and when I took off the lines, gas came squirting out. (Even though the pressure was relieved).

[PseudoR]

friday: picking up the front clip

so being the busiest shopping day of the year, i decided to pick myself up a 3 ton engine hoist for $150. good deal! i won't have to worry about renting and returning it in time. and i can swap my engine into as many protege's as i want or need... haha.

so after our purchase, we head out to home depot to rent their truck. $20/hour, not a bad deal since you don't have to pay for gas. we head off to the shipping company and i finally get to see my precious. all wrapped up nicely with seat-pads and a beatup honda hood to protect my engine. nicely packaged. we load it up into the truck and find out that the ramps are supposed to come with the truck aren't in it... so we call up home depot and the nice lady apologizes and offers to reset our time when we come pick them back up. home depot is awesome! i got a free 75mins of truck rental! so we make it back to home depot and pick up the ramp only to find that they're wooden ramps (my friend moved a front clip like this before, but he had aluminum ramps). so we had to figure out how to get the clip off the truck.

this is a shot of the clip from inside the truck:

[PseudoR]

our solution.

[PseudoR]

good ol' celica

[PseudoR]

we actually had to drop the ramps to between the bed and tailgate so that the front clip wouldn't push the ramps off the edge... it was a 6inch drop! so pulling it off was kinda freaky...

[PseudoR]

i didn't want to remove all the wrapping until i got the engine into my garage. so we went out to look for my transmission, but didn't find the right one (the guy said he had a 95 tranny when it was actually a 96, "same thing!" he said.) so no luck with the tranny.

i couldn't wait til tomorrow, so i pulled off the hood.

[PseudoR]

the 4 letters i was looking for that sent my heart haywire:
this was off the throttlebody. proof that it is a genuine gtr motor.

[PseudoR]

saturday: moving it into my garage

we spent the afternoon saturday figuring out how to get the hunk of junk into my garage. an amazing stroke of luck came. i had snow tires for my van for when we lived up north. they were 5 bolt pattern wheels, so we decided to try them on. THEY FIT!
after getting both wheels on, 4 of us were able to push/pull the clip into the garage without any problems. so that solved the daunting problem of the weekend. easy!

talk about wheel-rubbing ownage. lol.

[PseudoR]

so that concludes my thanksgiving break. i won't be getting around to doing anything until beginning of next year. i found the flywheel i need from a 91 escort. i have someone else picking that up for me.

i thought this picture was kinda funny... my camera blurs at the amazing speed of the GTR, even at a stand still. (this is the sr20 friend, trying out RHD for the first time, haha)

[itzkcatz]

Looks awesome, good idea using the tires

[PseudoR]

oops, here it is...

check out those racing pedals