Sr20 Conversion To Ke55 Plus Rebuild Plus Pimpage

[JDM55]

That fuel pressure issue will more than likely be the gauge. Dad had two of them in his 1600. The water temp gauge reads 10deg higher than it is and the tacho lasted 3 months.

 

Looking awesome BTW!! On the road soon?

 

yeah i had read some where that the cheap gauges read higher than what it actualy is before , hmmm ah well looks ʞ©$ɟing pimp hahaha ,

on the road, aww stuart its killing me! just stuck on a few things and need like another 1500 bucks to totaly finish every thing and engineer it,

so close but the money side is holding me back ,so i can't realy put a time on it ,just will happen when i get there lol,

[stuarth24]

how thick was the steel you used to make the engine mounts?

[JDM55]

how thick was the steel you used to make the engine mounts?

 

 

3MM plate steel , i just got the engine in position and made up some cardboard templates and then cut them from the steel , and bent them to shape ,welded them on , theres pictures somewhere in the thread ,don't ask which page tho theres 40 pages of pictures lol have a read mite find them ,cheers

[JDM55]

well that suxed, spent all last nite and the hole of today trying to get the speedo to go, in the end i made up an adaptor to fit the cable drive to the speed sensor, had the car jacked

up and turned the wheels by hand and i could see that the adaptor was in fact turning around ,so by rights it should have given me the frigen speedo back,but it failed.

so now ive tryed the speed sensor by it self, didnt work, changed the actual speedo in the cluster, re checked the wiring about 50 times, and today made up a contraption to adapt the

cable drive to speed sensor ,but all has not worked, so I'm left with no speedo ,which at the moment means no oil in the gear box which means no driving :(

frustrating stuff specialy as I'm very close to finish, realy i just need this speedo issue sorted then i can look at the rear suspention and last but no least the seats, ..... thats nearly it!!

3 years plus and its nearly there , just geting held back , i need cash for my suspention and a working speedo!! jesus not too much to ask for, :bash:

Edited May 19, 2012 by JDM55

[JDM55]

stoked ,last nite i got my speed working :) had to make abit of a dodgy set up , well its not realy dodgy just would have been better if i coulda have stuck the speed sensor in the gear box like a normal person , but the it just refused to work so had to make a contraption of an adaptor ,pic soon, but it works ,went for a cain first time) o the road too last nite with a bottom half of a seat zip tied to the floor(don't try that at home kids) lol and was great to see the needle moving ! so now ive decided I'm going to throw away my big plans for fixing up the corolla seats, which would have taken me several weeks and a abit of cash to do them , and just going to put them back together as is and put them in the car so i can drive< mite have to try find some seats that wont be to hard to mod and fit them for the engineers ,more money tho ,!!! keen to get on the road and see how it goes,maybe later today ill get a chance to do that,

[dbr11k]

good shit i bet youre more keen than a jar of mustard to get her on the road finally !!

[JDM55]

haha yeah was stoked, and yes i am keeennn, actualy ive put the front seats back in and seat belts ,will be hitting the road for the first time sunday! hopefully all will go well,mite get a vid

[JDM55]

 

this is just before it went out for a test run!

 

 

 

 

 

 

ok guys story time!!

 

well yesterday i decided that it was nearly time to have a road test, put the seat belts back in , which have to be changed to brand new ones for engineers later,

and the old seats which are surprisingly cumfy for 30 year old seats! a bit torn up but the pading is still very good,

i think that I'm just going to put some seat covers over then and that will be that,

 

 

 

 

so today was the first proper run on the road!!!! exciting stuff!! :)

a few mates came down and followed along just in case it decided to break down or do some wierd shit,

 

first ill talk about the bad things which arnt to bad realy,

 

first i have a oil leak coming from the rear seal in the gear box, but I'm pretty sure i slightly over filled the gear box oil,so hopefully i can just release the excess

and that leak may stop,there is a brand new seal in the rear of the box so it shouldnt realy leak, but yeah

 

second was a bit worst ,after giving it abit of a hard cain, smoke came out from under the car, and a fair bit too, shit my self and

qucikly pulled over , turns out the smoke was coming off the exhaust wrap just behind the cat, very strange as that stuff isnt spose to catch fire!!!

but there was a fair bit of smoke coming off it, mite be that the after the cat the heat gets very high and is heating the wrap to an extreme level,

I'm not realy sure to be honest, but it scared the shit out of me cause i thought it was on fire! scarey stuff, any way once it cooled off abit, i could carry on,

may have to remove that section of wrap,but not to keen on doing that as i realy don't like the look of my amazing welded up fifty million pipes ,

 

so that was the bad stuff for the day, now the good stuff!!!

 

well its a beast ! overall I'm pretty dam happy how this has turned out :) :) :)

 

ill talk about a few things here that i realy liked,

the front suspenion, is amazing , its so smooth ,no jaring or boucing around,its very firm ,there is zero body roll!!

feels realy strong , thought it mite bounce alittle bit , but no its realy awesum , happy that i spent that extra money and built the coil overs,

highly recommended!!

 

brakes !!!!! these are frigen amazing ,ive never had a car with brakes this good! the hilux calipers are the ones!!!

done a few brake tests like a slow one and one at 50 kms and one abit fast than that ,can ease them on nice and smooth or just

jump on them and the car pulls up extremely fast :) just about go thru the windscreen lol, so on the subject of braking ,there

realy good and its good to know that if i need to pull up quick ill be able to :)

 

went for a drive for about 30 mins to an hour and every thing seems to work nicely, the engine is amazing,it purs like a kitten ,

then roars like a lion when you chomp it! ,can't get over how smooth it idles and goes,

getting 10psi on boost , and it boosts up very quick, also surprising how the little t25 turbo can produce that much power,

the ride is very smooth also !! between the seats and the suspenion little bumps in the road are hardly there ,hard to explain

but its great!

 

another thing i thought mite be an issue was the position of the gear stick, having it way back from its original position,i would have thought

it be a little bit to far back like your reaching backwards slightly to use it, but its in a perfect position,and the gear changing is also very smooth,

 

the rear end tho deffinatley needs changes, kinda feels like the front end is a totaly differnt car to the rear end,

having all new bushes and parts makes the front so tight! comparing to my stock daily 55 is a joke haha,

the camber also makes major changes to the steering , about 2 inchs of movement on the sterring wheel will pull the car over very quick, its something

ill have to get use to as I'm use to turning the bus steering wheel in my daily like a full turn before it responds lol

 

the rear leafs definatley need some attention and the rear shock tho still working fairly well, could be alot firmer,

when you put the pedal down the power is deffinaltey there but it seems to like to tramp a fair bit,

so keen to get the leafs reset and and make the caltracs and id love the koni adjustables but 300 for rear shocks is just to far outa my reach :(

 

dosent seem to be any rattles or strange noise or wierd things going on, and even the speedo set up was workng well, I'm just not

sure that its accurate so may have to look into that ....

 

heres a crap photo of the custom speedo set up! hahahah yes its a bit dodgey but realy seems to work well,

 

 

basicly i got a steel tube that fitted over the speed sensor shaft,this is held on to the speed sensor by a screw and at the other end of the pipe i welded

in a small piece of steel to slot into the cable drive end,then its all held together by a steel bracket, if that makes sence to you then your doing all right haha

 

 

so what else, the steering is very responsive, it runs realy smooth and strongly, the blow off valve is very loud and was getting a bit of flutter at lower speeds,but this

will be pluged up soon for engineers and i may leave like that ,as it seems to drop reves alittle bit when it releases the air...

ummm the braking is excellent, the power is certainly there but not over the top,definatley drivable ,

 

the clutch is mega stiff and a bit hard to hold down for long times, another thing ill have to get used to i guess,

 

 

bar the smoke pouring off the wrap and the small oil leakage , it was a pretty succesful test run, and my mates loved it !!

Edited May 27, 2012 by JDM55

[oh what a nissan feeling!]

cool, very good news for a very well built car. Top effort.

[JDM55]

cool, very good news for a very well built car. Top effort.

 

cheers man ! finally getting some satisfaction from all the work done!

[_FNQ_rolla_]

Your thread is such an inspiration to all, (I should really get a move on with mine). I like how you have shared the good and bad points of your build so others can learn.

 

Well done, you should be proud of what you have achieved. Keep the pictures and updates coming.

[Xon]

Totally awesome build, it's amazing to see the quality you've put out of a garage!

 

Could the smoke not be related to the leaky gearbox seal?

[JDM55]

Totally awesome build, it's amazing to see the quality you've put out of a garage!

 

Could the smoke not be related to the leaky gearbox seal?

 

haha thanks alot man , ive worked dam hard on this car and feels rewarding to realy see the thing coming to life!

 

as for the smoke i thought the same thing at first , but the leak is just a small dripping i don't think there would be enough to cover the entire section of exhaust,

i spoke to some one about it today and they seem to think when the wrap gets realy hot it does smoke abit then settles down over time,

not sure if i believe that or not , but it sounds like a wearing in process maybe,

Edited May 28, 2012 by JDM55

[JDM55]

Your thread is such an inspiration to all, (I should really get a move on with mine). I like how you have shared the good and bad points of your build so others can learn.

 

Well done, you should be proud of what you have achieved. Keep the pictures and updates coming.

 

haha thanks man ,appreciate the comments, ive tryed to share as much as i could ,its a shame there were alot of bad points in the journey,but it goes to show that things

don't always go to plan,but if you keep at it and stay determined you can get past the hard stuff and come out on top! well mostly haha but your right in saying theres good and bad for others to learn, part of the reason ive posted up the thread,was to share what i knew and also what i learnt along the way ,I'm hoping that even if some one isnt doing a sr conversion theres still lots of info here and at the very least a few good ideas ,

as for being proud about the build , to be honest about it ,theres still a few things to go yet be fore i will be happy about the whole thing , i guess when you work on the same car ,every day ,nites,weekends holidays etc , it kind of turns into another full time job , and i don't think i can realy be satisfied or proud realy untill it is at least 99% finished, maybe because i know how much works been done and how much work i still have to do to get it to a point where I'm reasonably happy about it ,right now I'm still looking at it like its a full time job,make sence? hahaha probly not but at least the bulk of the build is completed,

and some of the things ive done I'm pretty happy about,

at the end of the day this was a budget build with maybe abit more detail than say the average car build,theres still alot of things i wish i had the time and the money to have gone and done , but reality is i don't have much money and I'm getting to a point where 3 plus years is enough and i want to gain some of my life back!! hahaha you know some days stuck in the shop when its like sunny out and a nice temp,perfect for cruizing ,id just have to keep working ,so ive missed out on alot of outings and hanging with mates and sacrificed pretty much most of my spare time,not sure how many people would be willing to give up all there spare time to just work on one car ,lol but any way thanks for the comments , i most definatley will have more posts,this is by no means the end of the build, just a test drive and now i can fix a few things and figure out the next steps to take , heading towards getting it engineered is my main goal, i want this legal on the road , with no hassles from cops just becasue its an older car or what ever, the cops are very strict here and vic roads are very strict and the engineers are pretty tuff to deal with also ,well at least the ones ive had to deal with,

feels like climbing a mountain but you just can't quite reach the peak ,lol but we WILL get there!!!! I'm still determined even after 3 plus years of hard work!

[dbr11k]

Ive used heat wrap before and had the same issue, mine was the sort of wrap that goes hard after the heat goes through it, than after a few good drives it didn't do it again, but obviously I didn't see how much smoke it was making so ya never know