****Picture heavy heads-up.

My G finally gave up the ghost on 9/11 via snapping the bank 2 intake cam @277k miles (was hoping to hit at least 300k...): https://g35driver.com/forums/g35-sed...m_content=post Motherfreaker still starts and runs (barely) and was able to pull it into the garage haha

Started weighing the options and decided to bite the bullet and just get a fresh drivetrain from one of the JDM outlets that appeared to have fairly decent reviews. They claimed around 50k-sih on the engine/trans, but i was skeptical. $2,400 later this showed up at my doorstep in about 3 days after ordering.



They sure did a very nice job degreasing it. I still have a puddle of degreaser sitting under the lower intake manifold lol Decided not to mess with it. However, hit a snag right away as cylinders 5 and 6 spark plug wells were full of oil. Thankfully I had a brand new aftermarket cover for the driver side and the passenger one from the blown engine was installed last year. Swapped those in a few days after finding this leakage.





Was really strange as both valve cover plug seals were mint, unlike the ones on my blown engine, so no idea how all that oil got in there.



Blown *** seal was still not leaking LMAO RTV fix for the mfing win!



The plugs looked decent and appeared to be stock:






Valvetrain did look very fresh:







Blown engine, for comparison:



Lower intake ports did look a bit carboned up, but my daily italian tune-up should take care of that. valves themselves looked very nice and i could see some pretty cylinder cross-hatching thru some open ones.



Out with the old. Took about 4 hours with the full front disassembly (was me an my two homies going at it). I think we've spent the most time trying to disconnect those a/c lines at the condenser (stubborn biatches). Once the front was off, it took under 10 mins to pop 'er out:



Disgusting state of affairs after years of various leakage:



Took some elbow grease to get her to this state now. KBS clean for the win! Also popped in a low(er) mileage G37 rack in it. Totally forgot the inner tie rods are different (why, tho?!) and kind wasted some time today, but got the correct ones in tonight, so hopefully will eyeball it to the old rack after the engine is in.



Wasted a ton of time trying to figure out how to compression test the new guy last Sunday. Started looking online, but the only guy with a similar issue didn't have a resolution. Tried different kinds of ways, but was only able to get the motor spinning without the bendix engaging. Resolution: hook up negative to starter body/bolt, positive to positive stud, and then use a jumper wire from the starter s-terminal connector and touch the positive stud. That's it. All cylinders showed around 170ish compression. This was on a cheapo gauge i had to buy from Oreilly's (AZ one was busted and OR didn't have the right connector), so was mainly looking for uniform readings.



Started swapping the parts around (more on that later) and my ***** dropped when i saw this crusty coolant near the weep hole... I had instant flashbacks to when i did this job on the blown engine 30k miles ago. Wasn't terrible, but with all the time i've already put into this swap, i just couldn't see how i'd pull it off. This is my daily (but thankfully have a spare car), and the prospect of it being down another week or two extra was out of the question. I started looking around and checking stuff and noticed the RTV on the front cover appeared much newer than that of the rear (pics below) and the crank pullet bolt was definitely out at some point. I figured they must've replaced it at some point, or at least had the cover off for whatever reason.



RTV appearing much newer than the other stuff around it:



This def. didn't look like a factory RTV job:



Even tho this engine is "warrantied" for 30 days, i had to find a way to pressure test it. The pictured setup below was then born lol I've used every which way to plug all the coolant outlets and fab up a pressure port for the compressor. Had to retighten and fix leaking unions, but in the end, it held pressure nicely. Definitely no air was coming out of the weep hole. I did some online reading and various car brands had new pumps weeping every so slightly (and sometimes more than slightly) when new. The way this was crusted over told me it was a very slow accumulation. After swapping a new A/C compressor on the blown engine last year, i started seeing some gooey green buildup on the bottom of it, but kinda brushed it off, as nothing ever made it to the floor. Pretty sure that was the OEM pump still weeping ever so slightly after I did the job back in 2022. I just could never see it on the crusty old compressor lol I checked that area now and it did appear a bit wet there. Interesting stuff.



Here's how she's sitting as of tonight. The plan is to hopefully pop it in tomorrow afternoon and go from there. Still need to finish setting up alignment, but that's the job for after.





Now for some differences between the JDM and USDM versions.

Exhaust manis appeared to be the same. I've measured out the driver side one and the JDM one was like an 1/8" longer, but that's so minute... Still, decided to keep the old manis and reuse the gaskets that came with the new engine. Oxygen sensor connectors are different, tho.

JDM on the left in both pictures:




JDM unit has the oil cooler, but i decided to take it off as i hate the car's cooling system with a passion as-is lol Just another coolant/oil leak waiting to happen.



Mounts are different. Judging by the tranny code (3EX2B), this VQ is out of a Nissan Fuga, which, i guess, is an M equivalent here.

 

*Continued

Wiring harness stuff. I got lucky when browsing fb marketplace and a guy was selling a complete harness out of a G for $50, so got that for easier R&R. It came with a hacked up harness, but a lot of the stuff is the same, so it will be nice having some spare connectors on hand when/if needed. Since it's RH-side over in JP, the main power/ground wires are flipped on those cars. Also, the serp tensioner is different. 3/8" drive vs 1/2" drive on ours. No idea why they thought Americans couldn't retract it with a 3/8 lol All the pulleys and everything else is the same (p/s, a/c, alternator).

Returning back to cooling. As said earlier, i freaking hate the setup. All the lines and the octopus on the back of the intake manifold have got to go. i'm just going to run a line from the nipple on the back by the coolant sensor to the one on the driver side and delete the TB coolant lines altogether. Will run a T from the evap thingy to the TBs and call it a day. Ain't nobody got time for dat... Going from like 25 connections just waiting to fail to 2 is a win in my book. Will post a pic of this setup later, but will look like something like this:



This is it for now. Will update tomorrow, hopefully.
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Nice work so far.

 

Holy cow, man! you've been around since the OG G days lol 22 years + on the forums - that's awesome to see!

We got it back together Saturday. The engine-in part took under an hour or so and the rest of the misc stuff another 3-4. When trying to compression test it, i must've burnt up the starter as it wouldn't shut off when we were priming it. still, for whatever reason, decided to start it up and, of course, the starter just kept going... had to shut the fuel pump off to let 'er die out. swapped the old starter in (major PITA trying to fish it thru the opening) and she fired right up and ran great!

Was finishing up random stuff today and wrapping up the steering rack. Pulled it out of the garage and heard some crunching noise from suspension when turning right. The outer tie rod was rubbing on the wheel. WTF?! My stupid *** didn't check the tie rods before putting them on... I had L and R mixed up lol What's another hour to get it back on the road, right? Swapped the tie-rods and eye-balled the alignment and off we went. Holy cow! She was eatin'! Felt like I was driving a brand new car. Didn't help that i was putting around town in a 4 cylinder N/A Subaru for a couple of weeks now lol She was lighting up tires in second gear! I don't know if this TCM is still learning or what, but it felt way more aggressive than the old drivetrain. Alignment was manageable, but definitely need to get her on the rack. Will hopefully schedule something for tomorrow.

How she's sitting now:

 

You still have stock air boxes? WOW!
So, how is that Fuga engine running?
That coolant could be from previous water pump failure OR after someone opened the front of this engine.. Did you crack it open to check since you had it all in the open?

 

LOL stock airboxes with Z1 pipes (stock ones disintegrated), but this is still a true cold air intake vs some of the ones having the filters in the bay. not like it's worth shelling out $200 for 2hp (if that).

nope, didn't want to mess with the front cover. she's pulling strong. was going to get it aligned, but a coolant leak sprung up when i got to the place. ended up being the top hose clamp was worn out, so took care of that tonight.

was tricky figuring out how much trans fluid to add, but i think i got close tonight. will re-check again in the coming days. found this while under the car tonight. thought it was kinda cute lol

 

Got her aligned and a/c recharged earlier in the week. Then the plastic bleeder decided to take a dump on me. I've reused the one from the new engine, as it looked much, much better than mine (was seeping some coolant already), but looks like the plastic was no good on this one either (it would crumble if pushed on). Got some aftermarket aluminum one from amazon. The other side already had a metal union installed when we were putting it back together. Never use plastic in your coolant system... Also replaced the upper and lower radiator hoses.




edit: didn't want to create a new post, so going to add this here. My ebay cats left the chat a while back (about a year after purchase) and i was getting the p0420/430 code, so decided to "fix" that today. Bought the non-foulers and went to town. The driver side was cake, but passenger side O2 was not budging and rounded off... got a set of bolt extractors from autozone and it popped right off, but the old O2 got destroyed in the process. Had a spare narrowband from my other car on-hand and rewired the plug to fit the G. Seems to be working just fine. We'll see if we can trick this ECU.

Picture of the carnage:

 

Wow! real nice work doing all this stuff!!

 

Sold my Green G for $4,300 to a pack of horny teenagers..

 

Wonder how long it will be before it's trashed....

 

oh, as soon as tomorrow. The kid told me that hes gonna straight pipe it and tune it. They arrived in a 2025 Mustang with straight pipes.. GOSH! That thing sounded so horrible, worse than a Carolina silverado squat truck!! But hey, what can you do..

I went back to my V8, got tired of waiting for gear changes from the V6 so i rescued a 2015 Jaguar XFR-S from good ol Kalifornia auto auction for 7k, did some work to it (a lot) and now i have a Jag that's shiner than a Black Diamond in a goats a$$!
I had a 2015 Jaguar XF 5.0 SC, tuned before the G and it was nice but it wasn't it. So i found the it one and I made episodes of it in my YT channel if anyone wants to see how rare Texas cars get used up..
2015 Jaguar XFR-S at IAA auction in CA.

2015 Jaguar XFR-S At my house, after shedding itself of all the crap from Texas.

 

LOL at the kids. Not sure what your issue with these trannies is, but i never had slow shifts in it. Always been crispy for me, but i drive it exclusively in manual mode... lol

Bank 1 non-fouler wasn't long enough, so had to get a 90 from walmart (out of places lol). apparently, epa or whoever is cracking down on these things and they're nearly impossible to get here in the states. china, of course, doesn't have that issue lol Pretty nice piece for only $10 and a free 2-day delivery. Seems to be working better (it's not oscillating at hot idle anymore).

 

Well, 18 and 19 year old are still kids and i'm glad i got rid of it.. Now, i can feed my powerful black cat and never worry about 'trying to break traction"..

Wouldn't be easier for you to just contact Seymore in CA and have him disable 2 downstream O2 sensors? I never had good luck with those extensions, the car ran without CEL but fuel economy was horrible and power wasn't consistent.. I tried that in my 02 Maxima, 05 Minivan, 07 G..

 

do you know how much they charge? i'm sure it's in the hundreds vs paying $20 for these lol

 

Here, contact Seymore4 as he tunes these. Talk to him and he should help you out.