Yeah.. I've thought about designing a one piece mount for the front.. 99% of my customers simply don't go this extreme. For everyday driving, and weekend warrior status, it works out pretty well. But, I definitely see where you're coming from, and will most likely build something solid for Barry's car.

If you want to spend some coin, Cattman's VQ30DE header/y-pipe combo works VERY well. It's equal length, and has decently sized primaries. I'd like to see a 2.5" y-pipe, with a 3" merge, but, I don't think they offer it. I usually build one-off y-pipes if I need bigger.

Travis

 

BTW, you sound pretty knowledgeable, but, if you have any questions, or need any help, feel free to ask. I know a little bit..

Travis

 

Just an FYI on Barry's car, and most likely due to the slicks and 7k launches, because the mounts holes are offset in the solid mounts, they are rotating to line up with the force vector.

Designing mounts that would drop the motor 1-2 inches in the chassis would make a huge difference all around, with CoG, and the fore aft weight transfer in hard acceleration.

 

After talking with someone close to you guys.. I see what's going on here..

Good luck with your build, Joe.

J, I'll talk to you in person when I make an event up there.

Travis

 

Thanks Travis - drop by an event sometime. We're also running a lemons car at the grand bayou in may.

 

Oh.. sweet! I'm only 30 minutes away from No Problem Raceway.

 

11:1 Wiseco 96mm pistons on the way.

Thank you Wiseco.

 

Today we get the heads back together with the HR stuff. The wisecos should be in Monday and the block should be back by Weds/Thurs. Justin is wrapping the headers/y pipe. It's all coming together. Z1 said we can use a Z33 ecu and harness. And we're going to start work on lowering the motor/cg

Also got the new BR sponsored coilovers in. Custom valved/spring rates. These are schweet, cant wait to get them dialed in!

 

Hmm so using the Z harness means you can use the osiris reflash. Ill definatly be checking back up on this thread.

 

The biggest thing is the B15 Sentra doesn't have the "intelligent distribution" power box for all the relays and stuff. The B15 chassis is hard wired to switches with the chassis harness. All we need is MAF, injectors, colis, 02 sensors, throttle pedal and position, AIT, coolant temp, CAN wires w/ limited hook ups, crank and cam position sensors, to run the motor and dash cluster.

Race car vs. street car, we don't really need much to work.

Everything else that needs to be powered with battery voltage, coils, injectors, fuel pump, can have the signal wires (usually just a switch to ground via the ECU to activate a relay) tied together and run to a switch to power them up. Head lights, wipers, horn, etc are all hard wired through the chassis harness on the B15 Sentra, not the distribution box, and can all still work w/o the extensive CAN integration that's found in every other Nissan vehicle. Fans will just need a temp switch wired to switch the fan relay to ground at a set temp. Nothing too hard, just a lot of staring at schematics.

I have the Pro Tuner version of Osiris which will do things the Tuner version won't, like delete MIL criteria (check engine light) and disable NATS. I have it from being involved with the development of Osiris for the B15 Sentra and from doing some work on a project car for Nissan Sport Magazine. If I can figure out a fix to swap an older Maxima to a 350z or Frontier, or other Nissan ECU I'll let you know. I don't know how easy/hard it would be to just run two ECU's in parallel tapping the main harness with a 350x ECU patch harness and use the stock ECU to control A/C and body functions, and the tunable one tapped into vital stuff for controlling EFI functions. Might work, but might pop codes for everything know to man. For emissions you could run strictly off the older ECU and then go back to parallel config for a tuned ECU. But all the body functions would still work, IDK, sounds like it could work and would be easier than a full out swap. I think the throttle body and accelerator wiring is different between the older and new ECUs. It'd take a little tinkering, but doable.

 

pistons showed up

 

first obstacle, on a 350z the front of the motor (crankpully side) is furthest away from the ECU, on a Maxima it's the closest

 

The short block is at Pro Line getting bored 20 over and assembled. Should be ready on Thur or Fri. While we were there we saw a couple Gallardo motors, GT40, VQs and a some nice trick stuff. Most of the motors range between $14K to $80K. With Underground's Gallardo going for $110K. Nice place!

This one had $11K billet intake manifold - one piece, no seams or welds. Oh and a pair of turbos..

 

Beautiful pistons!

Thanks for the update on teh Z33 ECU/harness swap. So the normal Osiris Tuner can't disable codes or NATS?

 

Not sure, I got access to the program doing by working w/ UpRev for development on the B15 Sentra and working w/ Nissan Sport Mag on a project car. The pro version will do things the regular tuner version won't.

 

The machine shop we dropped the block off at was INSANE.

Crunch time, got the harness stripped down and pulled back to individual sensors, power feed and grounds. Going to be bypassing a lot of relays and tying everything in to a main power switch and common grounds. Should have the car wired up to with a flip switch.

Some how we have to get the motor in, wired up on the old ECU and running, 500 miles break in miles, 350 ECU in and running, dyno'd and tuned, corner balanced all by the weekend of the 13-14 or March, lol.

 

Have faith! It will get done. Dont forget about the custom xmember, suspension testing, custom camber mounts, zeus fasteners for the bumper, etc, etc, etc.

Haha

 

I ended up stripping down the harness and labeling everything.... It'll be wired up one sensor/actuator at a time until the harness is all laid out, soldered and trimmed.

time for a wire tuck maybe?

 

I'm sure J will post a couple pictures but we have most of the harness done. Every wire was trimmed, repinned, soldiered and wrapped. The new FWD 350Z harness looks better than OEM. The only motor sensors we left off were the VIAS and EVAP.

We should have the motor in the chassis tomorrow with the dash harness connected. The 350Z TB is a match to the FWD. The acc pedal was repinned (6 wires). Later in the week we'll start tuning with Osiris. This is a complete stand alone engine management tool except with the OEM ECU.

If we put down 270whp, that should net us a pwr/weight of 7.4 to 1. Better than a Lotus Exige, on par with a C6. And we are racing 2 classes down from a C6.

 

you math is off, we'd be looking at a 10.9 for our weight and with the max of 257whp. With a 270whp tune and a comp weight of 2600 we'd be at 9.63:1

 

You calc power to weight based on crank hp..not whp. So its apples to apples to OEM

 

ain't nothing OEM about a high comp cammed Maxima VQ35 powered Sentra w/ a tuned 350z ECU, lol.

on a chassis dyno........ the old numbers were 15.28:1, HUGE improvement, lol

 

We accomplished lowering the motor in the car for better CG. J will elaborate, but it came out nice.

 

 

 

 

Very nice!

 

We tried to lower the motor 1.5", but there was all this stuff in the way, like the sub-frame, and power steering pump, wasn't happening. We did manage to get the motor down a good bit.

The stance on the new suspension is awesome. Getting the car on the corner scales will tell the tale on how the CoG and front/rear distribution changed. We're exhausted and it's really just a matter of wrapping it up.

So tired, hot bath time.

 

The y-pipe will be rebuilt, away from the oil pan. I'm very happy we got NWPs spacers to fit perfectly without having to lose the strut bar or clearance the intake (a problem on SERs). I think we could still rebuild the front mount and shift the motor 1/2" back. It may be difficult with the VTC cover and Max OEM front mount, but we'll take a look at it.

I cant wait to get the wiring finished.

 

I'm glad the Spacers are going to work with the strut bar. On the Maxima, it's not usually a problem. But I know things can get cramped in the Sentra engine bay.

 

The cool thing is, to get the motor to drop 1", all you need are hardened spacers/longer bolts found at ACE. The install is a snap. Every SER VQ should be installed this way. The motor location is a huge improvement over the previous height.

Wait till you see the wiring harness. Its trick

 

I'm going to start lowering the engine in my swaps, and I'll probably offer parts/instructions for my customers who want to do this. I honestly never really thought about it.

Looks good, Joe.. can't wait to see/hear it in action. You still coming down for the Lemons race?

Travis

 

It's super simple. We used 3/4 steel spacers (you could go longer) and longer bolts for the side mounts, and then changed the crossmember mounts. If you used the nylatron mount bushings it would be just as easy as re-drilling the holes and adding spacers to your current setup.

Just a simple mod. You could go 1.5" but that would put the oil pan lower then the crossmember, our car sits LOW as it is and we liked the extra clearance.

Part of what makes it impressive is, the intake clears the strut bar by 3/4" even w/ 1/2" of spacers stacked under it, usually it's right up on it.

 

The harness looks pretty good. Everything we didn't need got de-pinned and any resulting MIL can be disabled, mainly EVAP, secondary O2 sensor garbage, a/c, CAN errors, trans and body control module errors, and other stuff.

We'll have access to ignition timing, cam timing, fuel, throttle by wire, cold start enrichment, injector scaling, target AFR tables, MAF tables, individual cylinder fuel trim (not going to need it), fuel compensation tables, real time tuning and map trace, pretty much everything to tweak out power (or tune it back to be class legal) We can store 5 different maps on the ECU.

 

Only a couple more to figure out. ROFL!!

 

Tonight I put the car on the scales to compare the difference to last year with the QR25DE.

Couple things, I didnt try to corner weight it for balance, these are raw numbers. The intake plenum, radiator water, trans fluid and wiring harness were not on the car (30-35lbs)


With the QR25DE and me in the car, it weighed

Right Front (RF) 780.1
Left Front (LF) 837.0

Right Rear (RR) 517
Left Rear (LR) 570.0

Cross weight: 1350 v 1354lbs near 50/50
Total weight: 2704


Since then, we removed the heater core, blower and ac controls. Thats it

Now:

Without me:





With me




Less weight on the front axles.

 

Nice, really nice.

Still got some weight to lose w/ the EVAP canister and whatever else we can lose from the chassis.

distribution front to rear is 60/40 +/- 1% as it sits. So far we're at 173lbs of ballast needed to make minimum comp weight 2800, if we can put the weight in the middle of the car round about, we should be able to get the front/rear closer to 50/50, and the more weight we can concentrate near the middle the better the car will rotate in the corners. We're allowed up to 250lbs of ballast.

Might need lighter springs in the rear to help it feel "settled".

 

The real number, and hardest to calculate is CoG height. You have to put the front of the car up 10" and take weight front to rear, and then the rear up 10" and take front to rear again, and then calculate a vector.

Even at the same weight, CoG height has a direct effect on roll couple, which is the distance of the CoG from the roll center. The greater the difference, the greater the leverage arm, the less the less leverage that translates into roll.

Car is going to be on rails.

 

Its a 48.5% to 51.5% cross weight as it stands, uncorrected. I can get it 50/50

A balanced fr axle (like it is now) is horrible on the track due to the corner weights being off.

Point is, this motor didnt add weight to the axles, it shifted some in front of the axles. Not much.

Its a lighter car. 2430lbs, 310-320 crank hp, 7.5 to 1 power to weight. C5 territory.

 

you'll loose maybe 10-15lbs from the LR when the carbon canister gets tossed