nice nice fvcking nice!!!!!

 

the HR is the latest generation nissan motor with dual throttle bodies, it's the VQ35HR as opposed to the earlier nissan engine which was the VQ35DE. the HR is the same motor that the g37's are based on & is also the same motor that the GTR engine is based on, although it is much more beefy in the GTR. the HR engine is higher reving & is much improved over the earlier DE engine, it is a lot stronger, the DE's max out ~the 450whp range where the HR's are seeing ~600 & still living...

I chose to go with the HR over building up a DE engine, but the computer control is pretty different & the whole computer system communicates thru a can buss so integration is a bit of a challenge electrically & computer wise between the vehicle & the engine computer... there are several computers in a car like this & they all need to communicate & play nice with each other... that is probably more of a challenge than even building the turbo setup in the first place...

 

wow now that's incredible! If i ever need work on my car I'm bringing it to your shop.

 

I'm not a mechanic though, only a body shop I did this motor swap without a lift, just on jack stands & really don't normally do any mechanical work at my shop

 

Great work! Cant wait for when you turn it on

 

man, one year ago was where this thread stopped. one year ago I thought I'd have the car running in ~3 months, well one year later it's not running. I had a pretty screwed up problem that ruined my headers & all the work I put into building them.

after I got the car back together as you see in those pics in my previous post, I took the car out of my shop & I then sent the headers out to a professional to have them all completely tig welded. the damn headers were really nice, they fit perfect & all I needed was for them to be welded up good & they were done.

I sent them to a good friend of mine, older guy, been building race cars since the 60's in his race car fab shop, I looked up to this guy since I was a kid & I didn't question him at all when I asked him to tig them up & he said sure, I can do it for you no problem. 2 weeks later he calls me & tells me there done. I go pick them up.. they look ok, not awesome, rainbow bow colored drop dead gorgeous stack of dime welds, but they at least looked welded... he says he did the best he could to try to get a good weld without penetrating too much, tried not to make a mess inside... I say thank you & take them home.

I started to look at them better & I notice that the insides of the welds that I can see, there is like little pieces of crap at the insides of the welds. at the time I didn't even really know what it was or what to think about it, I thought it was what they call slag? I then try to chip some off & see that some of it I can.... I start to research about this & then is when I started to learn ALL about the in's & out's of welding stainless steel. THEN is when I started to learn that stainless steel MUST be back purged when welding, or it will sugar up inside the welds... THEN is when I started learning about how this sugaring is no good on a turbo manifold, THEN is when I started to learn about all the guys with crappy welded headers who will wind up with turbo failures from this sugared up welds... what happens is this sugared deposits can & will break off as the headers heat cycle to 1,200 1,300 or more deg, & any little pieces that break off can damage the turbo impeller... a large piece can ruin it right away but even s small piece can do enough damage to know the impeller out of balance... turbo's spinning 80k-90k rpms, bearings get toasted when the impeller looses it's balance...

these sugared up welds were all throughout the headers at each & every weld... I kept looking through the headers with my bore scope & the more I saw the more sick I was... I bought a bunch of flex hones & tried everything I could to grind off what I could but it was kinda hopeless, could never get into all the bends & at every weld. I talked to the guys at extrude hone & they said they couldn't even help this situation, the extrude hone process may knock off some of the really loose big pieces but will just kinda polish over the rest, still leaving it there & still susceptible to breaking off & damaging a turbo....

so what to do now? put it together like this & take my chances? then what, it eventually takes out a $1,500 turbo?... put another one & keep my fingers crossed it don't happen again? always going to be worrying about it because you know it just ain't right?... I just couldn't do that, & there was no fixing the existing headers, they were way too far gone... can't even cut them apart to grind all the welds & then weld it back together because that would change all the exact dimensions & nothing will fit anymore... headers were garbage & I sure couldn't go bring the car back into the shop, pull the engine again & start from scratch, that's for sure. cutting & building these headers was a bitch, motor in & out many times for fit up... what the hell do I do now?? I hit a brick wall.

spent the next few months weighing all my options, realizing what's done is done, gotta figure out what to do from there.... I even spoke to a few people about just having someone else build these headers for me, I got quotes in the $3,000 range up & even at that I still couldn't find anyone to build them the way I wanted them to be. friend of mine owns american racing headers in long island, coulda had him build me a set of headers but he would have done it with 304 16 ga tubing, not thick wall pipe like I want. he also wouldn't do equal length headers in mandrel piping either, he wanted to bring the fx into his shop & redo everything & do unequal length thin wall stuff.... everyone keeps talking about equal length isn't that big of a deal, blah blah blah, but there is a difference & it's what I want... I started to realize that no one would really be able to give me what I want no matter how much I paid, so I realized I had no choice but the redo them from scratch myself.


I was thinking my biggest downfall & what really tripped me up here was the fact that I can't tig weld stainless myself... I started to think that the best thing for me to do was to get a tig welder & learn to tig weld. I could then do my headers & then I could weld aluminum too... if I had a tig welder I could build my own intercoolers... I could finish everything on my fx 100%.... I convinced myself to go out & buy a good miller dynasty inverter tig & learn how to use it.

I also bought & built some other equipment to properly cut & bevel all this stainless pipe. the first time was a nightmare with just an abrasive chop saw & a grinder & a dremel... I was more burning through the pipe than cutting through & the chop saw would grab the piece of stainless & jam sometimes too, breaking the blade & flinging pieces of stainless steel through the shop. it was crude & dangerous & when I finished the headers the first time I said never again... little did I know that I was actually going to have to do it again

this time I built a nice liquid cooled cold saw & I built a beveler to make perfect edges on the stainless pipes to allow me to do nice welds, I also redid my whole garage at home & put a whole new electrical service into the garage built a nice little fabrication shop in my garage at home. spent a lot of time learning to tig weld things,steel aluminum & of course this ss pipe... it ain't easy, I thought it would be, I was very wrong.... joined a welding forum & spent months learning practicing, cutting pipe & welding it back together, over & over & over.... must have cut prepped & welded over a hundred joints so far, I'm now good enough to redo these headers....


few pics from this whole fiasco:

the camera view of the ruined headers







this is what sugaring looks like on the inside. the metal is not solid, it's porous, almost like Styrofoam





pictures of my first test welds done with a back purge, means the gas is also filled inside the pipe so oxygen can't contact the molten metal inside, not a perfect weld but you can see how the inside is smooth & solid, looks like it was welded inside too..

 

on to new header construction:

built a jig to clamp the weld el's for precise angle cuts





















beveler I built, the more perfect the edges to weld are prepped, the less heat needed to be input to the weld, stainless overheats very easy & it's chemical properties are actually damaged, called carbide precipitation... trick is to get a good weld without putting too much heat into the metal.... beveled edges help a lot

first one I built from an air die grinder





now I can get factory perfect edges



the more perfect the fit up the better the welds, it's a lot of work to build a really nice set of properly welded headers





then, keep cutting rings, beveling & then welding them back together again, over & over...











































then we get to about where I am now, which is pretty decent at least, got 100% penetration & a good solid weld without overheating the stainless. I'm finally ready to finish re building these headers

 

wow!!! great work bro!!!

 

I'm about ready to build my headers, started on hammer forming the collectors & I think my welding is up to par enough to be able to do a more than adequate job... once the headers are done I can pick up where I left off in getting everything else together to get this thing running....

in getting closer I really started thinking again about what has to be done after it's running, my thoughts keep coming back to the tranny again. this engine will easily make 500hp & more, 600hp and more will probably also be very achievable with the right tune, the stock auto will fry itself pretty quickly once I start pushing even 450whp, so I guess at a minimum I should do a shift kit... that should tighten everything up & maybe allow me to go to the 450whp ok, maaaybe go near 500? well with 600 & better potential that would still be the weak link & still be something I'd be likely to break. I ain't building this thing to look at it, I'm the kind of guy that's going to fully beat the living crap out of it when it's done. the tranny is the biggest problem with building up a powerful awd...


I keep going back to the thoughts of wishing there was a transmission that will handle everything I can throw at it and that will keep the awd functional, I really love the nissan attesa awd & decided long ago that I won't give up the awd just to be able to have more power. anyone who's beat there fx in the snow or even got on it hard in the rain knows how awesome the awd system is....

so I started researching GT-R transmissions, I mean when it comes to high hp awd nissans the gt r's are the king... of course nothings going to fit directly, but maybe something can be made to fit?

in all my research I learned that first of all the new r35 gt-r tranny is really not an option, the r35 uses a rear trans axle assy which would require major vehicle reconstruction & still require like $30k+ in parts alone, r35 complete drivetrain swap won't be practical for a lot of years simply because in the end it'd be cheaper to just go out & buy a gt-r

so now next best is what? well the r32, r33 & r34 skyline gt-r's... these things were beasts, it's common to see these things running 700, 800 900 & yeah even 1,000hp & more on the streets of Japan & Australia... the gt-r's were as legendary in there power handling capability as the toyota supra twin turbo's were... earning them the nick name Godzilla

more research & I learned that the r32 & the r33 both used about the same transmission for there stick awd, it's a 5 speed tranny & it's pretty strong, it's pretty much accepted that 700-800 hp is still ok with the 5 speed, but, when a skyline is built to really make a lot of power the most popular swap is to the r34 transmission...

the r34 transmission is THE tranny to have, it's a 6 speed & made by a company called getrag, & it just happens to be the exact same transmission that is in the toyota supra twin turbo's too, the guts are the same & are even interchangeable between the 2. these trannies are regularly paired up with 1,000hp or more builds... now that sounds like a tranny that would be perfect for my fx... there rare, hard to find & expensive, but there legendary in where it matters most, power handling..

well searching around & reading around, the more I read the more I knew that the getrag 6 speed is the ultimate nissan awd tranny & the more I really really wanted one...

anyway, I winded up finding one... also found a 5 speed so I now have the getrag 6 speed and the nissan 5 speed sitting in my shop. the fun just got funner funnier?, oh well, more fun at least



the one pictured test fit against a g37 motor I also bought to mock up the bell housing is the 5 speed, the one above it is the 6 speed getrag unit...




heres 2 video's that kinda show what these trannies can do



on the first video, watch the way this thing power drifts starting around the 1:30 mark... I want my fx to be able to do that




on the second video the car is launching on awd, notice the slicks all around, but you can still control the center diff & leave it open for a burnout

these transfer cases differed from ours in that they use a hydraulic clutch instead of an electric clutch that we use... hydraulic can give more clamping force & is why these things can survive a full on awd launch even with big power...

 

these early attesa systems were really cool. they use a hydraulic clutch for the front drive engagement, similar to like a brake caliper in function. there is a hydraulic pump in the rear of the car to pressurize it & apply this clamping force & it's controlled by a computer, but intercepting it is not hard.

with no pressure in the system it's rwd.... then, depending on how much pressure there was fed to the transfer it could lock the front anywhere from 0% full rwd, all the way up to a full 50/50 lock, which is 100% locked awd. there was even a gage on the dash showing reading real time 0-50% front lock which was pretty cool too.

some drag racers have gutted the whole computer/pump system & instead use an emergency brake lever connected to a hydraulic cylinder, like a master cylinder or a clutch cylinder etc... do the burn out in rwd, then pull the lever to engage awd lock, then after launch mid track the awd can be released too by pushing the lever back down...

now there are a lot of options for aftermarket stand alone programmable center dif control computers available to control the factory hydraulic pump too, do luck was one of the first to do one in japan I think back when these cars were new & there pretty cool. you have a few dials & switches, you could switch from rwd to automatic sense awd to full lock awd right from the dash. in auto sense mode you can also dial in the engagement depending on a lot of factors like g force & various other inputs... you can actually dial in understeer & oversteer of the car depending on how much fwd engagement there is.... this is fun

I will probably have to use a stand alone center dif control anyway because there is no such thing from nissan as an HR powered stick shift vehicle with AWD, don't exist, so the "correct compatible " ecu for my application is non existent. unless I can get one of the ecu programming guys to merge the awd logic to the stick shift rom, I'm most likely going to have to just run a stick shift ecu & awd will most likely now need to be separate stand alone control. in a way that's cool because I can now have full control from the dash like the do luck controller has... theres one controller out there that uses the wrx dif control **** too, custom center diff control computers are big in the subaru crowd I think

so now I need to get a bell housing that will line up with the HR engine, & then cut the front part of it off. I'm going to then need to cut the front off of the stick tranny & weld the front of the HR housing to it. because the only stick version tranny that's available for the HR engine is the 6mt & it's bell housing is also part of the whole transmission housing, this means that I needed a whole 6mt tranny from an 07 & up g or z just to cut the front of it off...

there is also the possibility of using an automatic transmission bell housing. the automatic transmission bell housing does unbolt from the automatic transmission & is a separate piece, but I winded up getting a whole used auto tranny to take the bell housing from too, I'll have to do a lot of measuring & calculating to figure out which bell housing is best compatible with which stick tranny but at least now I have all the pieces I need to play .


so now it seems I have a total of 4 transmissions, that I will eventually attempt to cut up & turn into at least one, but hopefully 2 custom awd stick shift transmissions, to be compatible with nissans latest large bell housing bolt pattern. this is pretty cool, imagine even a late model awd m or g with FI laying down power like the old school gt r's & getting all attesa like with a awd stick like a poor mans gt r why hasn't this been done before?

 

now the hardest part is to decide if I should do the tranny swap right away, as I complete the fx & get it running for the first time, or weather I should get it running as an auto first, then swap out the tranny later... I can see benefits & drawbacks to either approach...

I'm afraid if I finish it all as an automatic & start driving it then I'm not going to want to ever take it back off the road for the tranny swap... might be better off doing it once & just getting the tranny in there right away from the beginning, also be able to do a better initial tune & save myself from having to do a lot of things twice

 

first time I ever seen this thread and went through it all...glad to see your still at it, the work youve put in to make everything perfect is amazing! Keep up the good work, can't wait to see what else you do

 

that's some serious work!!! congrats on doing all of this yourself

 

Amazing .

I grew up with my father and then my brother doing stuff like this.
I'll be looking forward to see what you do next.

 

that's some nice work on the welding.. must have took u a lot of measuring