Yes thats what im sayin i dont get why the LS would be that much if i can weld my own mounts and fab most of my parts, but what do you know what type of wiring job that entails? do they make a car-specific harness adapter maybe?

 

There are numerous companies that build cross-platform harnesses, but its not cheap. Another option to look into is a Painless harness. Or, do the wiring yourself. Since you're an electrical engineer this should be a cake walk. Look around for the schematics for the G's harness, and the schematics for whichever vehicle you use an engine from. Then its just a matter of mating the harness's together. Or creating an entirely new one. Putting a different engine into a car is a cake walk. You can put any engine in any car with some ingenuity and welding skills. Getting the engine to run and have everything work properly is the tricky part.

As far as weight distribution and weight in general is concerned, if you're not going to track the car than dont worry about it. yea it will have an effect on the cars handling, but not enough for most people to notice on any street application. Is the RB25/26 heavier? yes. Is it relevant? ehhhhh, maybe. from a speed standpoint no. its a solid engine and easy to make great power with. Realistically, if you make much more than ~250whp ( what the average lightly modded G makes) you wont notice the weight at all.

If you plan on doing a lot of track days with this car than go with a built VQ or an LS. Otherwise I vote RB. It would make for a really cool car. RB's are an awesome engine. A lot of people opt for the RB 25 because of affordability. The 26 is a much more "high strung" platform and from a tuning/driveability standpoint it can be more difficult to deal with. If I was going to do an RB swap I would go the extra miles and build an RB30. They're incredibly bada$$. The LS would also make for a really mean car and theres a reason everyone is using them nowadays. Easy power, gobs of torque, parts availability in the US. But, everyone is their mother is putting LS's into their cars as of lately and its a largely un-impressive swap. I get kind of tires of walking around car shows and half the cars there sound like silverados....

Just my .02.

Swaps take a lot of dedication and willingness to adapt to the situation. whatever you choose, good-luck.

The question is how dedicated are you to the budget? and how long can you afford for the car to be out of commision?

 

Wow, lotta hate in some of these posts. Just remember, we all started off at this same point.

Best thing you can do at this point is to plan these things:
- Initial budget for swap
- Overall goal (power, suspension, etc)
- Anticipated downtime of car
- Budget for unseen problems (I factor 60% of initial budget for this)
- Location for fab work (where will you weld and can you build jigs if needed)
- Location for car during downtime

After that, start researching engines and what's needed for them to fit. Getting the engine in the car is easy, getting all of the sensors and other peripherals to talk to the ECU is the challenge. This could take MONTHS to figure out if you can't find a plug-n-play kit.

 

It would be interesting to see more people swapping RBxxDETT's into G35 Coupes. It's been done, if you look around on youtube you can see some videos. A first gen G35 Coupe 6MT weighs almost the same as the R33/R34 GTR's anyways, but since we aren't AWD (at least in a Coupe), you lose some of that advantage of being able to just rev to the moon and dump the clutch off the line to keep it in boost. It might take some serious work and driving ability to get it to come off the line cleanly with such vehicle heft, a smaller-than-stock motor (less torque pre-boost), and only RWD. An LS-swap makes more sense given the weight in this situation so at least you can have a hefty amount of torque to play with and a more balanced power delivery. I hope you're planning on putting some meaty tires and wider rims on there too because you'll need at least 275's in the back to try to keep the rear end planted.

 

Id even go bigger with FI... at 400whp I was running 275's and Id still spin out all of 2nd.

Now @ 600whp I am running 295 R888's and 305 MT ET Streets on weekends, and I can still peel out all of 3rd gear if the tires are heated up...

If they are heated up Ill grab all of 2nd..... Biggest SMIRK ever when I do that haha.

*Speed Giggles*

And as for Original Poster.
Dude, if you can weld, which you say you do, and if you can wire.... You can build a STOUT LS build for peanuts. You can find a LS1 for $1500 if youget lucky and search.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/LS3-CHEVY-EN...70849307163%26

You got yourself a Wild car for $16k if you DIY install.

same price as your RB25 swap.... haha

 

Just for simple reference I bought my LS1 with ecu, 6mt trans and harness for 2700 from a local junkyard from a wrecked 01 camaro SS. had about 94K miles on it, but ran like a beast with heads and cam.

 

Put the stock motor back in your car.

On to the next thread...

 

1J with tune. Cheap, powerful, reliable. Done.

 

B18



Lol