I've owned many Nissans over the years, '77 200sx, '82 200sx, '87 maxima, '96 maxima and a '88 nissan pathfinder. I've really liked them and especially the cars with v-6 engines. With that said my daily driver for the last 10 years was a '86 mazda rx-7. I've loved the Rx-7's handling but it is low on power and became unreliable and parts were costing way too much. I came up with the crasy idea to combine an rx-7 chassis and a nissan motor. Great handling with the engine I like. Long story short, after about a year, I did it. I drove it for the first time yesterday. Still lots of odds and ends to do but it looks like it will work just great.

Here is the basic parts that went into it.

-Engine 2000 nissan maxima (including intake and wiring harnes) Auto, Calif.
-ECU, Key, IMMU 2000 maxima GXE Federal 5-speed
-Trans 2003 350z 6 speed manual
-clutch 2001 maxima (manual obviously)
-Starter 2002 Nissan pathfinder (auto)
-motor mounts from various VQ nissans
-Alternator 2001 Maxima
-AFM 2001 maxima
-Slip yoke 2004 Infinity G35
Other misc parts.

See my post at the link below for pics.

http://www.torquecentral.com/showthr...953#post199953

The 350z trans bolted to the maxima block but attaching a starter to the mess was a problem as the oil pan for the maxima does not have the needed mount. Substantial modification was required for that. I also had to make major adjustments to the Rx-7 subframe, steering linkage and firewall. The 350z shifting linkage would have had the shifter in the back seat so I had to ditch that and made a shifter from scratch. The drive shaft was a HUGE pain as there were no aftermarket slip yokes available. I had to buy a complete driveshaft and then have the drive shaft customized to fit the rx-7. I spent more on the driveshaft then on the motor!! Well I got a sweet deal on the motor. I also cut the intake into multiple pieces and glued it backtogether with the intake pointing to the front of the engine instead of the rear.

It's been a fun experience though it has tried my patience at times. I wouldn't really recommend this swap as it was difficult but I think it will be a fun car.

What do you think? Nuts or a good idea?

 

Wow, nice job

I think thats awesome that you can take the VQ and put it into a completly different car. Let us know how well it does at the track!

 

wow awesome job man...

 

Thaniel

 

Nice job. Definitely keep us updated on it.

 

Wow! Thats crazy! Its great to see someone has the ingenuity to take on a project like this, big thumbs up to you

I'm sure you'll be able to surprise plenty of the non turbo guys... and probably give the TUrbo2's a run for their money

 

Wow! I thought the thread topic was a question and I was going to recommend against it, but since you've pulled it off, no you weren't nuts at all. Very cool job!

 

I' m confused (story of my life, lol), did you put the Nissan engine in an 86 RX-7 or a 91 RX-7. I thought the last year of the RX7 before the new generation 1993 version was 1990.

How much heavier is the car now relative to stock?

I have a 1985 RX7 GSL-SE that I use as a commuter/go to the store/foul weather car and have owned two 1979 RX7s.

All the RX7s I have owned have pretty well 50/50 weight distribution so I question how this car will handle without beefing up the suspension.

How many hp did the engine have that came out of the car. I believe the 86 was a 140 something and I know a 1990 GXL version is more like 160.

Interesting project. How much has it cost you? How many hours involved not included in the cost?

 

Very original!
That car should scoot rather quickly with such a light chassis abd the VQ powerplant.

 

Nice job, why did you ditch the rotary though?

 

Why would it be heavier? The VQ's aluminum block is very light. And 12As and 13Bs are not that light (though very small). The VQ engine is 100lbs lighter than the 3-gen iron blocked VE30DE.

Most of your other questions can be answered simply by clicking provided link.

 

the ENTIRE VQ30DE-K long block is lighter than just the VG/VE block and crank!
http://www.mattblehm.com/pics/engine...G/IM001275.JPG
That's a VG30E block, crank, pistons, water pump. oil has been drained. Add another 35lb per head to that for the heads, 15-20lb for the intake manifold, and another 30lb for exhaust manifolds.
So yeah.. it's 100lb lighter, easy. and that's the VG30E.. SOHC! Go to a VE30DE or VG30DE, and you're looking at an additional 150lb or more due to the heads being twice the size.

 

Well that's just awesome. You asked if we think it's nuts, and the answer is yes. But awesome too.

 

Wow, very innovative. The amount of work and planning going into something like this is just amazing and way out of my league. It'll be interesting to see how it performs.

 

Any issues using a FED-spec ECU with the Cali-spec engine?

 

any plans to build up the motor? turbo? all motor? i ask this becuase its your daily driver, it would be so hard not to see how fast it can go.
good work
(and you owned the other guy that said the engine was 378 lbs with that pic of you and your bro lol.)

 

Very nice and impressive....

 

wow then you can go vq30dett and complicate things more but im sure it should be real quick.

 

I did the swap on a '91 that I bought specifically for the project. I've been driving the '86 until last month when the engine croaked.

Car is likely to be lighter than stock. Rotary engines are small but have 3 large steel plates (aprox 2" thick) in the engine. The trans is much heavier than the rx-7 but is set far back so weight distribution should be great.

The 91 came with 160 hp. The VQ30DE-K is rated at 220 HP with way more torque than the rotary (turbo rx-7s came with about 180 hp). I got about 4 feet of black off my tire squeel yesterday (maybe 2500 rpm and didn't even side step the clutch). Same thing out of my rotary powered car would have requried dumping the clutch at 5,000 rpm. I think it will be a tire roasting monster.

money so far....I think I am about $2000 but I still have to finish the exhaust. I've been buying parts when I see deals. I got the motor from a salvage yard for a really cheap and thanks to some of the org members parting cars I gotten parts at some good prices. I also sold rotary engine parts of the car so the chassis was almost free. I've also done pretty much 100% of the work so that keeps costs down.

As far as number of hours....I don't even want to think about it. I started it as a hobby. but this last month it turned into an obsession. I've been having fun so I don't worry about the hours. The time has been spread over about a year so I don't feel bad about it.

 

My rx-7 has 160,000 miles on it. It just blew it's second motor. First motor was replaced prior to me buying it at aprox 98,000 miles. 2nd gen rx-7's are notorious for flooding. I could never back the car out of the garage and shut it off. It would flood. If started the engine must be fully warmed up before shutting it off. I heard this from the dealer after I flooded mine the first time. From my experience it is true. kind of an annoying feature. Also the rotaries have no torque. They can be quick but they don't like to launch hard or do burn outs (can be done it is just much harder than with other engines). I wanted more power and more reliability. To get power from a rotary takes lots of $$ and I though it cheaper just to change engines. Rotaries are smoot and rev like they are never going to stop. It will be interesting to see if I miss that feature.

My pathy has 209,000 miles on the original engine and runs great and is super reliable.

 

That thing is going to be a rocket. Nice work man

 

very original and impressive keep us up to date.

 

very well done.

 

It does not seem to be a problem. The cali spec has wires that the fed spec doesn't need (swirl control and additional o2 sensor). I stripped out the auto trans and cali spec wires from the wire harness when I was re routing the MAF wires and a few others. It is not throwing codes for any of the cali spec parts I removed. (I am showing codes for some fed spec sensors I haven't bought and some that aren't hooked up).

I actually cut the swirl control solenoid off the intake as I needed the clearance.

 

Yah I was surprised with how light it was! Pretty cool.

If after I drive it for a while if I find it is too slow for me I think I'll put a super charger on it. Superchargers seems pretty well proven on this forum and lots of support for it. I'd probably put in a front mounted intercooler as I have plenty of space in the nose. There really isn't room for turbos due to the exhaust routing. I could bolt right on a maxima supercharger and with a little custom plumbing I'd be good.

 

Very cool project

 

Thanks all for the compliments. It's nice find some people who appreciate the project.

 

that is so awesome.

 

Damn thats sweet as hell

 

Finally...some RWD DE-K power! Much props. GHope you get the bugs worked out. Peace_

 

wow......

 

holy crap... that's fukin sweet

 

Amazing, what an innovative project. Good Job!!!

 

That is JUST awesome.

Taking a FWD engine and putting it in a RWD application is definately not easy. Did you consider using the VQ30DET (rwd version) from Japan? It would have been more expensive than using the VQ that you got for cheap, but it would reduce the amount of fabrication you'd need to do..which may offset the higher cost of the motor.

Also, what's a slip yoke??

I was just thinking for hte past few days that I'd like to put a VQ into a 240SX.

 

very cool project. i'm interested in seeing what kinda times it can put down in the 1/4.

 

Four pluses at least: no flooding problem. As you say, if you shut the rotary off before warming it up completely it can be a biatch to start. Last time I had to take the plugs off and clean them. 2. Likely reduced oil consumption. 3. Would expect significantly better gas mileage, particularly in town as my 13B engine only gets about 15 mpg on a commute that my Maxima gets 18.5/19 on and my RX7 only gets about 21-24 mpg on a decent highway trip when my Max could get 28-31. Offsetting this is the rotary should run on 87 octane. Higher octane is not good for it, believe it or not. 4. Lucky if you can get 25,000 miles out of a set of NGK plugs, distributor cap and rotor for the RX7. Consequently tuneups are more frequent.

 

SO when is the TURBO or SUPERCHARGER coming?

 

One word, Amazing.

 

Congrats, and nice work. I'd like to know a little more about how you delt with putting the FWD engine in a RWD platform as far as the engine mounts and the problem you had with the oil pan/starter and the modification you had to make to deal with the throwout bearing. I'm planning on doing something similar to a 240Z.

BTW, this pic is hillarious!

 

RX-7 + Engine swap = Perfect candidate for Modified Magazine

Very cool