Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - My 1990 Nissan Stanza Rebuild Project. Warning HUGE post

- Tilted Motors (https://thetfp.com/tfp/tilted-motors/)

- - My 1990 Nissan Stanza Rebuild Project. Warning HUGE post (https://thetfp.com/tfp/tilted-motors/85036-my-1990-nissan-stanza-rebuild-project-warning-huge-post.html)

Quote:

Originally Posted by merkerguitars

Well the reason of it being a Nissan Stanza is it was one of the all of a suddend finds. I was browsing through autotrader and found it for only $200 and I talked to the guy and I figured for $200 plus him sticking $150 in it awhile back for a new radiator I couldnt' really go wrong. I'll admit the car isn't the greatest looking car in the world but hey it will be a nice cheap reliable car. Now I figure it will be a grand total of $1500 I'll have into the car, but I won't have to deal with car payments, have cheap insurance and have peace of mind. A 240 would of been nice but wouldn't of made a good daily driver, since it's rwd it wouldn't of worked out in the Wisconsin winters as well as a fwd car. And since if I want to have a car with balls to the walls performance, thats what my mustang is for.

I hate driving FWD cars in the winter, if the back end gets loose your done for. But thats just me!

Well this morning i'm hoping to get the following progress done. Find and hunt down that oil seal I need, I'll literally drive 100 miles one way just to get it. I calling Melling (The company that made my oil pump for the car) and The seal wasn't supposed to come with the kit...damnit. So i'm calling a nissan dealer, if not I'll call more nissan dealers...grrr....I did at the least ordered my Optima red top for the car, some spark plug dividers, and an external transmission filter kit :)

kick-ass little custom stand. Will it help mounting the engine in the car too, or is the engine going in through the hood?

Keep the updates coming. Your car threads rock.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mazagmot

kick-ass little custom stand. Will it help mounting the engine in the car too, or is the engine going in through the hood?

The engine and transmission get installed at the same time through the top of the hood. The stand allow me to set the engine close to the ground, which allows me to put the flywheel and starter on. Eventually later on this week I will make an transmission stand and I will have casters on both so then to mount the engine to the transmission I just roll them together to mount them. For what I'll have into for time into the engine and transmission stand it will make the job alot easier, and if I ever have to pull the engine/tranny again. It will make the job go much much smoother the second time around.

so the engine gets lowered through the hood, then set on the stand? I can see where a set up like that would make mounting a tranny *much* easier. :D

Looks awesome.

Quote:

http://www.oldweakandpathetic.com/me...assembly16.JPG

Sounds silly, but I find something sexy about an engine in the bare state where you can see the chain and fully assembled head. It's my favorite view of the process

Quote:

Originally Posted by merkerguitars

Well with gas prices getting higher and higher I decided to fully rebuild the engine in my 1990 nissan stanza.

This is a truly inspirational post!

Kudos to you.

soundmotor

Well more updates..good and bad news...

Well found a kid that has a stanza like mine with a bad timing chain guide he's willing to get rid of for free or $100, I haven't talked directly to him, just his friend.

And now I managed to get pink eye. And the bulk of the stuff I need to do requires welding...and my eye is sensitive to light...so yeah..i'm screwed for a little while.

Wow you are diehard making your own stands.

This is awesome. I can't wait until you get this and the Mustang running.

You're F***ing Awesome Merker

With the current level of human/auto abuse going on with body kits and other such and such, it's good to see somebody working on something not meant to impress white trash. I have found that almost any car of decent workmanship can be found respectable if given the internal personal touch. Too many people today have a trashed car with a damn wing on it, or a NOS sticker. Keep it up Merker, a clean car is a sweet car.

"Took the distributor off, the cap was shot, but they are cheap and I wouldn't reuse it, that would be like reusing a condom."
i totally agree, anything worth doin', is worth doin' right

Neat project! I can't help but wonder, how heavy is that workbench of yours?

Friday's list of stuff to do to the nissan.

redo ground connectors on intake manifold

Get/find tranny motor mount bolts

Get/find motor mount bolt (upper)

Get/find torque convertor bolts

Good to the engine back in the car. Lookin Clean

You've put a lot of dedication, time, and money into this car, and it's going to show when you're finished.

Thanks everyone for the postive comments.

Just a little update.

Today i was able to get some stuff done to it. Mostly hooking up wires and sorting out lines. What is holding me back is some special and really hard to find parts. The first parts I needed are called pintle caps. The are the little plastic caps that fit over the end of the fuel injector. I was luckily able to find a guy that sells them, I need 3 but I ordered 5 of them (always good to have spares) and they where $6 for 5 with shipping. The other was a funky egr valve gasket that I was only able to get at the dealership. Pretty much all I have left to do is mount the fuel injectors, put in the battery tray, hook up the egr valve, install cv joints, hook up hoses and put in fluids. Hopefully by saturday I should be able to have video on the net of it running :)

I'm not a mechanic, so my question may sound stupid. Did you just clean the engine, or did you modify it in any way? Is it more powerful? If it is, by how much.

Great job otherwise. This is rocket science to me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LoganSnake

Well I overhauled the engine from top to bottom so it's pretty much like new. It will have more horsepower than stock and probably about 15 hp more which is really sad. My current car is a 87 cadillac deville it gets about 140hp and gets 15mpg. The nissan after being rebuilt will have about 150-155hp. The reason it will have more than stock is when you have an engine redone they usually have to bore out the cylinders, this makes for bigger pistons. The next thing that happened is the previous owner warped the head really really bad. So they had to mill it or "shave" it down. which will increase my compression ratio = more hp.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CrazySaturn

Neat project! I can't help but wonder, how heavy is that workbench of yours?

I'm not exactly sure about the weight of it, but the top is made out out of cast iron and is about 6 inches thick, it does have holes in it. The bottom part is a steel frame, to move it around the shop we usually use a forklift, just makes it easier that way.

Ok so far it's been pretty slow progress. I did get the cv joints in and some more misc bolts installed, I also did get my upper intake plenum installed. I did get my egr valve gasket....$7 fuggin dollars...and my other parts should come soon. Pretty much what I have been doing is just hooking up hoses and such and figuring out where stuff mounts, heres the current pics of the car as usual.

http://www.oldweakandpathetic.com/me.../enginein1.JPG
http://www.oldweakandpathetic.com/me.../enginein2.JPG
http://www.oldweakandpathetic.com/me.../enginein3.JPG
http://www.oldweakandpathetic.com/me.../enginein4.JPG
http://www.oldweakandpathetic.com/me.../enginein5.JPG

Wow coming alone really nice. My question is are u going to paint the car at all?

If so what colour?

Looks good Merker, i love a well done tasteful car, i'm thinking of reoing my engine after seeing your process.

Ok...good and bad news of all fuggin sorts...

Ok getting it ready to run we put some transmission fluid in, then it started to ooze out all over the shop floor :( It was coming from the cv joint seal, I panicked I worried, but all the problem was is that the cv joint wasn't in all the way so no big deal.

Plugged the battery in, all the lights and gizmos work, awesome, the brake idiot light is on, the master cylinder is fugged up. No big deal, cheap and easy to do. Then the brakes lights are on all the time, the brake light switch is shot, no big deal.

Ok crank her over...pop pop vroom she sorta runs, it still has some bad gas in her so she won't idle down.

Then this is where the shit hits the fan, all of a sudden my coworker notices a coolant leak. We look oh shit, its coming out of the water pump housing. So my roomates tightens the bolts, and he's like wtf its getting worse, so we tore the water pump housing off and here is what we found, it broke.

http://www.oldweakandpathetic.com/me...rokenpart1.JPG
http://www.oldweakandpathetic.com/me...rokenpart2.JPG
http://www.oldweakandpathetic.com/me...rokenpart3.JPG
http://www.oldweakandpathetic.com/me...rokenpart4.JPG

At least I can get it welded by my coworker so not to big of a deal.

And here is what it looks like in its current state.

http://www.oldweakandpathetic.com/me...almostdone.JPG

And here is a video of it running, kinda rough..any suggestions?

http://www.oldweakandpathetic.com/me...ir/startup.avi

It cleaned up nice, I think my Beretta needs that sort of love as soon as I find the time/money (I love my 3100 MFI because it's so fuggin tough, but I don't know the entire maintenance history and I want to make sure it's in top condition before I try to get more power out of it).

Hard to say why it's running so rough. Check that the intake gasket is sealed properly (use an unlit propane torch) and make sure the timing is properly adjusted. Is it backfiring or doing anything else that might give some clues?

As to the water pump, if you're gonna have it welded, make sure that the guy doing it knows what he's doing. If it's not a good weld you may have trouble getting a proper seal. Were it me, I'd just get a new one.

Good job merker, now you just have to work out the kinks, and then, on to the mustang.

Hehehe i'm so happy I could and might crap my pants :D

Well I thought my finals where today, got to school at about 7:30 and found out oh no they are on tuesday. So I decided, well i'm up bright and early might as well get the car ready to run.

Hooked up the Throttle position sensor, calibrated it, filled it with coolant, turned the key and vroom, runs like a champ.

I also decided to replace that damn master cylinder since I had so much time, so I went to the autoparts store, that master cylinder was $45 but the core charge was $50 so I am broke, I have to tear the old one off yet today and get my core money back so I can hopefully get a back tire on it. Otherwise all I have to do today is top off the coolant again, bleed the brakes. put a little more tranny fluid and drive it around the block just to make sure everything is ok.

Ok a little more done, well it runs great a little loud, I might have an exhaust leak but that doesn't really bother me. I replaced the master cylinder. Alot more work then expected. I went to bleed the brakes and when I was working on the last brake (drivers side rear drum) the bleeder screw broke off, doh! To no avail I could not get it unstuck. I'll just have to spend $20 on a wheel cylinder if they have any in stock in the area. Then I have to rebleed all my brakes again due to me running the master cylinder dry=air in the lines. But at least its now piddly stuff.

I just read through the entire thread..amazing stuff you're doing. I admit, I don't have the slightest idea about what you're doing, but I must say that I am truly impressed. It makes me wish I had the know-how to do the things you are doing. Keep it up!

Wow. I wonder what kind of education you've had in order to be able to do this type of work?

Any advice on where a layman can get the kind of know-how to rebuild an engine? I think there's a community college that offers courses nearby, but I was a little intimidated by the prospect of taking auto repair classes.