[speedfoos]

How are the stock pistons when it comes to boost? What's the compression on them?

 

[The Other Mike1357]

I'm not sure about that. I'm running CP low compression pistons right now.

 

[Vegeta_SS4]

Digging the turbo build so far.

 

[The Other Mike1357]

Thanks. Here's a little teaser with the new parts. Intake manifold should be in tomorrow. Still have to buy injectors, find a crank, get new main bearings and a timing chain guide then put it all back together. Thinking about looking into some MSD ignition goodies. Luckily the tuner down the street has already made a conversion harness to run a Frontier on a 240SX ECU so that will open up a lot of tuning options for me. Not sure whether I want to rebuild my current turbo or go bigger. Either way it's going to be crazy.

 

[Vegeta_SS4]

Thanks. Here's a little teaser with the new parts. Intake manifold should be in tomorrow. Still have to buy injectors, find a crank, get new main bearings and a timing chain guide then put it all back together. Thinking about looking into some MSD ignition goodies. Luckily the tuner down the street has already made a conversion harness to run a Frontier on a 240SX ECU so that will open up a lot of tuning options for me. Not sure whether I want to rebuild my current turbo or go bigger. Either way it's going to be crazy.

Very NICE!

 

[speedfoos]

Details on the harness?

 

[The Other Mike1357]

I don't know a lot about the harness adapter other than it allows you to run the truck off of a S13 ECU plug and play style.

Pics:

Intake manifold came in today and I ended up putting some larger profile tires on to make it look a little better as well as hopefully hook a little better.

 

[The Other Mike1357]

Updates:
Painted the intercooler black. Saw the video on mighty car mods of the temperature difference so I figured I'd try it out. If anything it'll make the intercooler more low key and less people will pick up on it being turbo.

This is what I found inside the motor. Needless to say I'm disappointed, but I can't do anything else other than rebuild.

The timing chain guide decided to break into a few pieces that I found in the bottom of the oil pan. This explained where all the metal shavings were coming from and the reason I've had to replace so much. Yes, those are the timing sprockets welded to the old Crower cams (which were Altima cams so the cam degreeing was weird). Basically, from what I've been told, the previous owner tried degree the cams based off of the timing on a 240? Turns out the cam journals were pretty badly grooved and it was recommended that I buy new cams so I went and purchased a new set of Brian Crower stage 2 turbo cams which have identical profiles but very different degreeing. Also the tops of the ARP studs were lopped off, why I have no idea, so I purchased another set of those as well. Looking to buy a Cosworth head gasket for it and possibly some Z1 Motorsports valve guides and seals.

 

[redv6]

wow thats not sketch at all

 

[The Other Mike1357]

Picked these up for the truck over the weekend. Something a little different. This will probably be the only visual modification for the truck. I'm really trying to keep it a sleeper style build.

 

[The Other Mike1357]

Tried my best to get my hands on a Cosworth head gasket but I couldn't find any available. I ended up ordering another Cometic just so I can get this build going again. In also trying to find an OEM L28 oil pump instead of the stock frontier pump. Supposedly the L28 oil pump flows a higher volume of oil. It's just a matter of time before this thing is running again.

 

[The Other Mike1357]

The motor is back together and I had the chance to bolt on some of the goodies I've had on the shelf for a few years. Now to get injectors and put it back in the truck.

 

[The Other Mike1357]

After having the truck sitting for a long time, I was able to do some work to it in late 2018. I had a local performance hose maker make a new drain line for the turbo. I made a few temporary lines for the fuel system that I will hopefully have made properly as the budget allows. I ended up dropped the fuel tank and replaced the fuel pump while I was cleaning out what remained of the old gas left in the tank. After putting the engine back into the truck, I realized I had clearance issues with the wastegate I purchased rubbing on the steering shaft. After some measuring, it appears I need to go with a Turbosmart Ultragate 38 in order to clear the steering gear without modifying the manifold. I still need to double check my injector wiring against the FSM to make sure I have the right wires going to the correct cylinders and then clean up the rats nest that is left. The truck is in very rough shape cosmetically but I'm not terribly concerned about it as I can just swing by a salvage yard and pick up most of whatever I need to make it look right again. Once this is all said and done, I am thinking of picking up a rear end from one of the v6 supercharged trucks of the same vintage as I've heard those have some sort of viscous LSD or a locker of sorts. Hopefully it won't be so many years before I post another update.

 

[The Other Mike1357]

Well, I was able to do some work on the truck today. The truck is in quite a sad state as it appears that a squirrel took up residence inside the engine bay while it has been sitting. I was able to install the Turbosmart wastegate and install a coolant hose on the intake manifold that I found the part number for on some 240 forum. I also decided to purchase a fan shroud from Rockauto, as I have never had one for the truck, and buy some new radiator hoses. Being that I am taking the truck to a fabrication shop on Monday, I figured I probably needed those things so the fabricator can see what will be in the way of the charge piping. I'm tossing around the idea of picking up the CXRacing intercooler kit; it will have most of the piping I need and the routing will be much better in terms of servicing the truck down the road. I was going to bolt down the new turbo I bought but it turns out I only have 2 bolts for the turbo. I'll be making a few phone calls on Monday, maybe swing by Fastenall to pick up some bolts, and hopefully everything will fall into place. Fingers crossed.

 

[The Other Mike1357]

Dropped by the fabrication shop yesterday to test fit some of the parts I had picked up and to properly clock the turbo. The 90 degree boot I got to make the corner into the intake manifold seems to fit almost perfectly. Unfortunately I wasn't able to pick up the last few pieces I needed yesterday due to so many places closing with the virus and all. Maybe in the next few days we can make some headway with the build, maybe everything will go to hell in a hand-basket, who knows.

 

[butterman2473]

I hope everything turns out perfectly! ??

 

[The Other Mike1357]

Well, after getting it back from the fabricator and wasting a lot of money to have parts modified to fit (that still don't fit), I do have it somewhere where I can work on it regularly. I ordered a really nice split loom kit so I can tidy up the engine harness as well as the lower harness. I'm thinking tomorrow I will try to perform the wiring repairs that I need to do to the engine harness right before the ECM connector, provided that the skies don't open up on me. Maybe once I have it running I can get it over to a more reputable shop with folks who actually know how to make things fit. The more I think about it, the more I want to pick up a clean unmolested truck to swap everything over into when all is said and done. There is damage in some places I didn't notice before and I'm not really married to this chassis, just the build.

 

[The Other Mike1357]

Took some time today to work on the truck some more. Stuffed myself into the passenger footwell to fix all the wires on the ECM connector that had missing insulation or needed to be reconnected. Ordered a nice split loom kit last month and today was the day to de-spaghettified my lower engine harness. I'll have to tackle the upper engine harness once I figure out what plugs go where and install the new connectors to match up with the S13 throttle position sensor. Also finally cleaned out the 5 years of leaves out of the bed. It's not much, but it's something.

 

[silverarrow27]

Nice build. Why don't route the cold pipe down the battery tray or on that side somewhere instead of running it back across the front of the engine?

 

[The Other Mike1357]

Well, the plan was to purchase a pre-made kit to keep fabrication costs down (but that backfired). The other reason was I wanted to keep the battery in the stock location and still make things on that side of the engine easily serviceable. The piping that was on it before went down and through the wheel well like you were mentioning, but the whole thing was just a mess. It's a compromise of sorts. Maybe in the future I will change it, but at this stage I'm just trying to get this thing running again.