Sick! I'll be keeping my eye on anything you post. I love your little hanging valve cover

 

What rebuild kit did you buy and what all exactly did you do to it? I see you're already spraying it so I assume you've already completed whatever internal work it needed

 

Went with the kit from Rock Auto. Original plan was to bore it to 91mm, but all my play money goes to the XRunner in the background. The only thing the kit is really missing is the timing belt tensioner and I'm currently trying to source a set of headers. Heads and water pump are on. now to clean up the timing covers, oil filter housing and exhaust.

 

Beautiful. I'm jealous. Let us know how the rebuild kit works out. I've been buying more and more stuff from RockAuto lately. So far I've had luck with everything I've sourced from there.

Looking good!

 

Cool - how'd you go about measuring for the bearings and rings? Or did you just go with standard size replacements?

I've always wondered how good those Enginetech parts are. Did you use the pistons it came with or re-use your stockers?

Any pics of your actual teardown/rebuild? That's the kind of stuff I like to see

 

I took the block, crank and heads to a local machine shop. Everything checked out with no machining needed. So I ordered stock sizes. I checked the bearings with plastigauge to make sure the clearance was within specs. I also used the pistons that came in the kit. As for early pictures those might be in another thread. The teardown was years ago in another state two moves ago.

the kit seems to be legit so far. Oil pump was filled with oil and sealed. Pistons were machined nicely with no defects. Biggest complaint was no timing belt tensioner or head bolts. my bolts were fine right up to the point I read the specs for VE motors. So I ended up ordering a new set. luckily I didn't damage the head.

I thank god that I bagged and labeled everything those years ago. I've. Also somehow managed to not lose anything important. Work is slow as I'm cleaning and painting most things as I go along. trying to go to school for Bachelor's, work/traveling, car shows and helping my daughter with her car. I really only get one day a week to work on it.

 

Here's a couple of early pics. Here's what happens when you use VE torque specs on a VG head bolt.

Dug through my Facebook pics and found a few. I had some help putting the bottom end together.

 

If you like engine **** so much, here's what I work on. EMD 16 cylinder two-stroke diesel. I may have been breaking up the monotony of a long day lol.

 

Very cool. That's cool you can get brand new oil pumps for the VG still. I'm very jealous of that.

When I built my VE in 2015 I really wanted a new oil pump but they're not available. So then I tried to just get my hands on new oil pump parts to rebuild it but of course those were no longer available either so I just had to re-use my oil pump. Kind of annoying considering everything else was brand new.

I remember one of my timing chain sprockets on the front of the engine for some reason I tried to tighten it down with the wrong bolt mistakenly and it stretched and snapped on me when I torqued it. I couldn't believe I did that and was so relieved it came back out without issue lol.

Are you gonna go with the hard break-in method? That's what I did

 

I'm loving all of the pictures. Thanks for sharing! I have not seen too many full VG30E rebuilds with fun pictures to look at like this. This is something I'd like to do in the future but my skill level and experience are nowhere near yours.

Everything looks so clean! You'll have a brand new Maxima by the time you get it all put back together again.

Loved the picture of you goofing at work

I bet your job never gets boring. I wish my own job was in a field that would benefit me in the garage

It looks like you have plenty of help! I'll be watching this thread and your future posts. Thanks for the quality post!

 

Not much this weekend as i had to order a new timing belt tensioner. The kit comes with a new belt but not a tensioner, so I ordered a new Gates kit to be sure (the kit belt doesnt have a brand label that i can see.) Plus I've been fighting off a bad cold for the past week. Timing is done and the lower intake/thermostat piping is being washed. I lost the woodruff key for the harmonic balancer so I'll have to order one.

 

Sick. Looking good dude.

Harmonic balancers are pricey new. About $300. I've had good luck finding them in junkyards though, if you are open to that. I recently got one from a junkyard for $110 in my area.

 

I still have the balancer just missing the woodruff key.

 

Geez, $110 for a junkyard VG crank pulley is insane

 

Getting closer, need to get me a torque wrench that goes lower than 20 lbs-Ft. I know I can borrow from a parts store, but this is how I expand my tool collection

 

Is it? It was the first time I had to hunt one down. I was a bit desperate because I couldn't seem to find one anywhere.

The junkyard that had it was one of those junkyards where they won't let you pull parts yourself. They were "required" to pull it for me. They had a hard time doing it too, apparently. I had to keep nagging them and they had to drag the wrecked car up to their shop to pull it.

The good news is that it did the trick. My 3rd gen has been back on the road since last week. New timing belt + other timing related goodies, waterpump, theromstat, battery, and 3 new injectors

I have have one that is in inches-Ft for this sort of thing. I use it a lot more than I thought I would!

 

Think I'm going to repaint all my pulleys, though that may change if I get the red lightweight crank.

 

Pretty!

 

nice thread, good luck w the project

 

Well got some more stuff installed. I'm thinking to replace all the injectors, the car had a 120k on it when I pulled the motor. I'm waiting on OBX headers from ACmax92. I have a work trip coming up in a couple of weeks. I'm getting the upper intake and power steering pump cleaned up and will hopefully get the pump installed before I leave. Finally have to do some research on switching to R134a. I seem to remember reading that I only needed the larger accumulator from a 94 and the lines.

 

Coming together nicely man, loving the updates! Glad to see some of us are still at it!

 

For what it's worth when I went from R12 to 134A i believe all I did was had the fittings changed on the low and high pressure sides from what i remember and had it vacuumed and charged on the machine and never had any issues at all over the years. I originally did it because my condensor coil was no good and i had no ac at the time. If your still interested in new injectors I have a set of 6 jecs remand injectors I just put in last summer. They are complete still in my fuel rail with fuel pressure regulator and all. Pm me if your interested.

 

this was the first car me and the wife bought after we got married, been with us since 2002. Almost sold it to some friends of ours. The wife was fine with it till we drove away on a test drive. She couldn't sell it. I pulled the motor with plans to bore it out and turn it into a autocrosser. Life happened but we kept dragging it with us everytime we moved. I've got some nice nostalgic goodies for it too. Ravin muffler, Koni shocks w/ eibach springs, Brembo slotted rotors, Mr.Gone mandrel intake.

 

I love how clean everything is. You don't see that very often these days with these cars being as old as they are.

 

Easy when you have access to a industrial parts washer. It's not my OCD level of clean, but the fact I know it'll be under the hood I can overlook the little bit of dirt left.

I have a few things left to order to finish out everything. With that said this will be the last assembly update until spring (I will post pics of parts as they come in). By the time I get the parts here winter will be in full effect and the garage is a bit chilly. So I spend the winter time working on projects around the house (where it's a lot warmer).

Right now I have the following stuff planned.
- Headers and crank pulley from AC Max 92
- New belts
- New clutch
- Remove engine from the stand and mount the transmission.
- New rear motor mount
- Have engine bay detailed in spring (I would do this myself, but I have a buddy who owns a detail shop, he'll be coming by the house to prep my truck for car show season anyway)
- Hack the fuel pump and purge the lines of any leftover fuel, new filter
- Install engine/trans
- Replace injectors
- R134a fittings and new dryer/accumulator
- Finish assembling the small parts left over
- Final touches before startup
- New tires
- New battery
- Register the car
- Emissions test and AC charge

So there is quite a bit left to do, expected finishing time is Apr/May next year. $$$$ and work dictate how fast I can things done.

I also have to decide on a new stereo, sold my JVC years ago. There are some 8"s in a custom box hanging around from the wife's Xterra. May have to install those.

 

Just had a box dropped off on the porch. It'll be awhile before it's all installed.

 

Sweet, it's looking good! I got rid of my 3rd gen after owning it for 12 years. I wish I could come across a mint one... Glad to see someone keeping theirs on the road.

 

 

Well the engine is back in, had to fight the rear mount and header. Things really got interesting when I lowered the cherry picker and it ended up pinned under the car. I had installed the Koni/Eibach combo after I had pulled the motor. Didn't realize it would lower the Max that far.

 

 

 

The tidiness of your garage is obscene. Did you just move in?
Thanks for sharing all these pix, they brought memories of my long gone VG and a smile.

 

No all the parts were packed away and I had to pull everything out. As stuff is being installed the garage is getting cleaned up. Plus the garage really isn't big enough to hold all my tools.

 

I like the blue!

 

I see all the power packs have been removed! I spented a few yrs working on V12 quad turbo diesel and 8 speed Allison automatic transmissions on Oilfield fracmentation units...lots of bigs tools required and too big for me personally I went back to working on aircraft that require small torque compared to those big engines that require big tools, hoist, and lots of muscle.

 

I've moved on to smaller stuff. Easier work for more money, though I do miss that job. Traveled a lot and the work was actually fun.

 

Blue pulleys? You might wanna ceramic coat those headers....and weld the area between where the two secondaries merge!!! They will leak there!

 

So the car is driving, but there's some age issues going on. At almost 30 years old she's starting show her age... a lot. I'm tossing around the idea to strip off the performance stuff and have a huge garage sale.

 

Issues like what?