Hello All,

Just completed a swap of engines in my 2004 G35 6MT Sedan. The original engine had a bad gouge in the cylinder wall that was leaking oil into the combustion chamber and fouling the spark plug (compression was still fabulous at 185 lbs!), also ruined the driver's side catalytic convertor.

Went online and located several engines - chose one with a claimed 59,000 miles on it from a wrecking yard in Pennsylvania, had it drop shipped to my house, and we (my brother and I) swapped the engines in my driveway. Replacement engine looked like crap on the outside compared to my never-seen-snow California engine (had lots of corrosion and oxidation, being a "back East - snow belt" engine that had seen it's share of road salt and bad weather), but the inside looked great so we cleaned up the exterior with WD-40 and a wire wheel on a drill, swapped most of the exterior bits and pieces, installed the engine and we were good to go. Replaced the driver's side Cat with one I acquired used from a fellow G35 Driver, took it in for a smog check and we are officially good to go!

Replaced this engine in my suburban driveway with hand tools and a winch, and despite the directions given by the factory we didn't even evacuate the A/C system, just kept everything hooked up and charged and worked around it until it was all back together!

Another G35 adventure - how many of you have pulled your engines?

Thanks, DB

 

That's awesome! Good job

 

Awesome!! It's great to hear about other people wrenching on their own cars. I have found the G to be one of the more "DIY friendly" luxury cars. So far, I've installed my coupe springs on new struts, coupe mid-pipe and new muffler, and all new brakes right here in the driveway too, without a lift or a compressor.

I've also been crazy enough in the past to strip and build two cars in my driveway with a few buddies. Fortunately, my neighbors were cool! Here's a few pics of those projects -

Donor car stripped -



New car after rear axle and front suspension swap -



And the engine going in -

 

Impressive, both you lads! Some have the skill sets and tools, some don't.

 

I've done enginer R&R's before. Just not on a G.

 

Here's a couple of pics...

 

Awesome pics!!! Any issues once you put the cooling system back together, with getting the air out?

 

YES, same issue I've had every time I've drained the coolant - have to "burp" it several times, over the course of a couple of days, before I get all of the air out of the system. Drove it for 30 minutes straight after I fired the (replacement) engine with no problems, then suddenly (when I'm 30 minutes away from home!) the temperature gauge spikes almost to the red zone in the course of 30 seconds or less. Pull over, cool off, take radiator cap off and then open the purge valve near the heater inlet on the firewall, squeeze upper radiator hose until coolant squirts from the purge valve. Re-close the valve and refill radiator and overflow tank. Repeat as needed (about 3 times before I got all the air out).

One thing we DID do, though, was maneuver everything so that we could remove the engine without evacuating the A/C system, which saved a lot of time and hassle too. Just had to top off the coolant and she was good to go!

Will probably rebuild the original engine and reinstall it sometime in the future, maybe bump the compression ratio a bit and install more aggressive cams (but there really isn't a whole lot of improvement you can make to these engines unless you go with forced induction of some sort - supercharger or turbo).

 

Pretty amazing. I can't even imagine trying to do that myself. Props!

 

It's even scarier when you tear down the engine itself - with 4 cams and 10 timing marks to line up, it's a recipe for disaster if you don't get it back together just right. We tore down my original engine last year and had the heads redone when the car inexplicably "ate" a valve, and when we were reassembling it we saw the gouge in the cylinder wall that we knew could be trouble. Engine ran strong - like a scawlded dog - but it smoked a little and I knew then it's days were numbered. Got another 15,000 miles out of it before she git so bad I had to replace it with this other engine last week.

 

Here's some more from last year - I live in a suburban area but I'm a shade tree mechanic from the country. My neighbors can't believe we do this stuff in our driveway (but we get in and get it done quickly, no wrecks up on blocks for days on end).

 

The neighbors are always amazed when the damned thing starts and runs after we've been working on it - they think we are crazy but we are just a couple of farm boys having fun tearing down engines, although the G engine is a bit more sophisticated than the small and big block Chevy and Chrysler drag race engines we've built and maintained in the past.

I'm a real estate Broker, and my brother is a construction site Superintendent for a large commercial construction company, but this is the stuff we like to do on weekends. I'm a little more cautious than my brother (or maybe that's just because it's my engine), but his attitude is very basic - this engine was designed and built by a human being, I'm a human being, therefore I can build this engine - case closed!

We are pretty impressed with Nissan's engineering, though. Thinking maybe we'll put the extra G35 engine in my wife's MGB - now THAT would be a kick in the ***.

 

That looks like fun too! I bet your neighbors look at you like you're crazy too - most just can't understand how we can consider this FUN (and we can't understand how they can NOT do stuff like this, eh?). Good show there, my man!

 

Me and my dad just finished mine but are having some problems. Anybody have any answers to what may be going on. I'll reply here in a second with what's going on with mine. Here's some pictures of it