Well since the I30 forum kinda blows, I thought I'd make it more interesting......

Back when I had my Z31 I remembered reading about guys tearing down VG's with 200k+ and finding the lower ends completely withing spec, and I didn't doubt it, Nissan V6's are ****ing ill! Motor was pulled from a '96 I30 A/T, the head gasket eventually blew because the water pump was never done and it kept getting refilled with straight water, it was overheated many times. It should also be noted that the last 50k of it's life was hard to say the least, lot's of burnouts and highspeed chases, ok only one chase, but it went on for awhile and the car got HAMMERED, however it always had all it's oil changes on time by both owners........



Ummmm.......rusty cams........


cambearing WELL WITHIN SPEC! NOWHERE NEAR SERVICE LIMIT!!! Decent amount of wear, ie the overlay is hurtin' for certain.......


damn, those main caps were tight, I reversed the tourqe sequence for removal, and as soon as I got to 4, 3, 2, 1 I started having trouble......

 

Nothing the grinder can't fix........ (side note, I was extremely drunk, but I still had my safety glasses on, and it was 3:30 AM, damn my neighbors are cool)


Ouch....bolt #3 want's to be even more difficult! Thank god for craftsman......


Rod Bearing barely WITHIN SPEC!!! but still NOWHERE NEAR SERVICE LIMIT!!!


Main Bearing WITHIN SPEC AND NOWHERE NEAR SERVICE LIMIT!!! Showed excessive wear just like the cam bearings though....

No wonder these motors are so strong, 4-bolt mains, a RIDICULOUSLY heavy-duty main girdle, and a windage tray, kinda makes me want to go do a brake stand without even warming my motor up.....

 

Nice work man.

 

dang nicely done

 

Katrina style FTL...

jk... This thing does look like it's had a ard life. Awesome to see what condition it's still in though.

Gettin ready to drop in that VQ35 you have?

 

VQ motors are very well built as you can tell. If only our 5spds were built as well wed have a bullet proof car!

 

Ohh... Fun, fun, fun, FUN!!

With 4 bolt mains the VQ definately ain't no joke... Just another benefit of Nissan engineering.

That motor is rusted and corroded to fuccin hell though... I don't know how you east coast guys can live with that ****. I mean rust on the cams?!?

 

East coast aint got **** to do with the cams...unless your a complete idiot (which alot of people are)

 

east coast=high humidity + salt in the air. high humidity + salt in the air=things rust & oxidise MUCH quicker and worse. The rust on the cams is flash rust, even flash rust won't happen anywhere near as quickly in the 0% humidity that colorado has most of the time. and I30ds is only a partial idiot, so chill out.

Just kidding devin, yeah I guess you have to be a little more redneck out here, if I was rebuilding that motor I would have polished those cams then spec'd them out. Besides, not everyone want's their car to stay brand new forever, besides, I'm going for the "oh, that's a pitted to crap 10 year old 4-door sedan, no way that thing runs 12's" look. no tint, no drop, keeping the 15's.

to the tranny comment, that's what is going to hold me up on getting this swap done, I'm out of funds for the moment but all I have left to buy is y-pipe gaskets and a fpr, stupid stuff, but my tranny needs to come apart again, I have an o-ring that leaks and my dif. seal started leaking again, wtf, I'm pissed, anyone have a six-speed or a vlsd and having trouble making there monthly payments?? It will be in the bottom of a lake in 8" chunks within 3 days???

 

Ok fair enough, but am i right that most east coast cars that are cared decently for dont have this?

 

oh definitly!! This motor was sitting outside uncovered for close to a year, long enough for all of the oil to slide off of the cam's

 

When Zack342 got his blown up I30 parts car I took the motor. Needless to say it was very neglected:





Looks like the oil was never changed and the RMS leaked which makes me belive the car ran out of oil. The thing got so hot the KS melted. Cylendars 1 and 2 are compleatly screwed. The rod of one got smashed by the bearing cap of the other. Its wedged in the crank. Both pistons are busted off, one with the wrist pin torn out and the other with half a rod still attached. This really massed up the crank and then tore apart the mains

 

wow, awesome addition to the thread, that's crazy, I can't believe how nasty that coked oil on the girdle is. yeah the ks from this motor looked identical, if not worse. You want what's left of this motor for free?

 

no im all set thanks

 

Maybe you're the complete idiot? As usual, its apparent you have NO idea what you are talking about. It all comes down to humidity and mineral content of the air, and its well known that the NE suffers from rust corrosion more than most other areas of the country.

I popped the valve cover off of a 97 Sentra engine that sat outside for well over a year with no rust on the camshafts... there was not even rust on any of the outside areas of the motor... Thats the difference between CO and the NE.

 

Maintenance has nothing to do with it. Basically, if you drive the car you will not have rust on the camshafts. You could change your oil every 10,000 miles and still, no rust would form.

Also, all the maintenance in the world will do nothing for the outside areas of the engine. Just existing in that envrionment will cause rust corrosion.

 

Zack told me that you guys dead lifted the engine into the back of a minivan.

The shift rods, pedals, and clutch lines from that car live on in mine. I spent forever grinding the rust off and then painting the shift rods and the pedals... thats right, the pedals had rust on them... I was like WTF.

 

Oh yea 3 of us picked it up, pretty easy. When I got home I put it on the engine stand alone, much fun. I rolled that motor over just after the Tobin bridge in Boston.... and almost crashed into the walls. Not cool. 70-80 mph in my moms van on that turn..... I had all 4 wheels screeching.

Rust is all over the place in the north. Its just the different climate. A dry camshaft will rust pretty quick with any moisture. But there should be oil on them so they wont rust.

 

Yeah, I could see a VQ30 causing some havoc on the interior of a minivan on 70 mph turns!!

 

looks like fun. I have a problem with tearing things apart and not putting them back together. Trying to break myself of that habit on this car.

 

What does this mean exactly "4 bolt mains", and how is it better than other V6s?

Sorry for newbie question. Just wanna learn.

 

aw hell no man, it's all good. alright, so all these muscle car v8 guys like to brag about 4-bolt mains on there threefifty smallblocks like it's the shiznit........ first, learn the basics of a 4-stroke engine here
basically, it's the way in which the crankshaft is supported, the "main bearings" aka, the bearings that support the crank as it spins in the block, have two bolts on each side of the 'cap' . It's really hard to explain without showing you in person, but basically picture a set of bicycle pedals, the part attached to the frame (the set of bearings) in the middle of the crank that stay fixed to the frame are held to the frame (block) via a 'cap'. but on heavy-duty motors these 'caps' (usually 1 'cap' per two cylinders) is held down by two bolts on each side instead of 1 bolt per side, these are known as "4-bolt mains" aka, each main bearing cap has 4 bolts instead of two. this might help, but probably not, google "main bearing caps"

 

so if you look at some of the above pictures you will see what is cald a "stud girdle" basically look at Jsutters very first picture, there is a peice that is broken that has 16 bolt's on it. this "stud girdle" makes up the four "four bolt main's". Underneath every 4-bolts (two bolts on each side) there is a round peice of metal that helps hold the crankshaft to the block. The Nissan VQ comes with this spiderwebbed looking peice of alluminum known as a "stud girdle" which is basically a 'tie' between all four of the main bearing caps that hold the crank to the block.

 

Exactly. I circled the 4 bolt main bearing caps in green.



4 bolt is stronger than 2 bolt, and stronger is always better. Just another feature that allows this motor to take 13 psi of boost with out even having to touch the internals.

 

Hey, thanks for the explaination!