so I've had this lowport DE sitting now for about a year after I lost oil pressure in the leaky, burning highport that was in the car when I bought it. I finally had some time to tear down the lowport and do some gaskets and seals to give me some confidence that this thing will last me a few years. This motor supposedly has 100k or so on it. It was pretty dirty when I picked it up but after a few cans of foamy engine bright and a little pressure washing it's looking respectable. I'll be hosing it down in aluminum toned engine enamel for a lustery look in the next couple days.. I can't paint much until I get my front cover o-ring from Zimbrick but they're taking for god damn ever to get it to me along with my main seals. I will be using GregV from now on as I've heard nothing but good things.

Hoping to have everything back together, cleaned and painted in the next week so I can get our shop at home cleaned up and prepped for the swap. If anyone is interested in helping, I'll gladly offer a number of beverages of your choice and do a grill out. we've got a kick ass fire pit and a hot tub too if that seals the deal

I really just want to get the thing back on the road so I'm not stuck with driving my gas guzzling 4.3l s10 once I go back to work in a month as I have a ~60 mile round trip commute daily. It's not LSD so I'm not planning on doing too much with it but I'd like it to be respectable enough to take to a meet or two.


my improvised engine stand



not super clean but it could be worse.. I cleaned it up a bit

I have an extra o-ring if you need one. Lets see this thing get back on the road.

Were are you located?

Nick- yes please! I've been waiting for DAYS.

businessman- I'm just south of madison.

What year is the G?

it's an early '93. It's charcoal with black leather. The interior is a little beat up but all in all it's not that bad. It needs some body work tho, the rear passenger door is rotted along with the truck lid but both of which I have new parts for. They are just the wrong color grey..

If this car was a 93.5 it would have been a g20t but alas, not the case. The only option I wish it had is a sunroof. No pics of the car until it gets hosed off!!

Making some progress since I have my crank seals now and there's room in the shop to work again! I pulled the intake cam from my highport and checked it out. The lobes actually looked cleaner than the exhaust cam out of the lowport.

I was putting all of the parts back in the head (cams, oilers, caps, etc.) and found that getting the timing chain on is a little more of a project than I had anticipated.. The intake cam gear is so close to the aluminum casing of the head that I had to install the timing chain onto the gear then install the gear on the cam.. I figured this out after I torqued the gear bolt I had to pull the timing chain once or twice to get it on correctly but it finally worked out. I'm looking for a little confirmation on how it currently is. I checked the colored links and lined all of them up to the corresponding mating marks on the gears but I'm still not sure that it's kosher...



crank is at TDC with the mating mark @~5 o'clock. what is that peg just above the crank gear? right in between the chain guides..



I first installed the gears without the chain and let them sit where they were comfortable in the aprox. places they needed to be. I lined the chain up and put the tensioner in. The tensioner unlatched and put tension on the chain but there was a bit of slack in the chain between the cam gears. I turned each gear with a wrench and the tensioner came out an extra click or two and then everything looked good.

DOES THIS LOOK ALRIGHT? I can hear it building compression when I turn it over by hand but I get nervous with this sort of stuff

update:


The cams could finally be reinstalled. I had the highport cam out of my other motor waiting. I polished the cams lobes and rocker arms before reassembly. The lifters were all bled and reinstalled and SAE 50 was applied to all cam and cap surfaces. I also opted to inject a little oil down each passage in the head just for security.



I didn't notice until I had almost everything prepped that I had a broken exhaust stud, seen just to the left of the SR20 stamping on the block. Luckily, the big tool box comes equipped with some MAC brand easy outs. A little action with the right sized drill bit and 10 seconds with the easy out and I was back on schedule to keep painting.



Kinda hard to see but it's in there.



a close up of the easy out doing it's thang.



I never did find out one way or another if this alignment of the chain is correct but I'm going to go with it unless I hear otherwise.



a pic of the rotating assembly with the motor flipped while on the engine stand. I used to use a green rubber pad on the angled die grinder to clean up mating surfaces but I've found that 3M pads work rather well on aluminum. Just don't grind in too hard



Roo.

cleaning up of parts:



The power steering pump was pretty grimy. Nothing a little disassembly/foamy engine bright/plastic scrub brush/medium pressure wash/prime/engine enamel can't fix!!



a shot of the front of the PS pump. the brackets and such were all corroded and rusty. it's amazing what a little sand blast action can do to make something paintable.



The plenum needed to be stripped in order to be prepped properly. The injector/knock harness was removed and all sensors/vacuum nipples were covered.



The injectors were all pulled so the factory rail could be prepped and painted as well. caps were reinstalled with paper towel stuffed into the injector cavity. the injector openings on the bottom of the cavity were also taped off being as that surface needs to seal to the rubber grommets located in each runner near the head.



the coolant lines that run around the motor were pretty gnarly as well. Again, the openings to all of the pipes were taped off and all rubber hoses were removed and cleaned. The assembly was then sand blasted and blown out with compressed air before being painted and blown out again before being reinstalled.



I also went so far as to paint the idle control valve as well. I pulled every hose and cleaned it off with a rag spritzed with armor all. I will most likely replace many of the hoses anyway as I hear some particular hoses are prone to failure.

Motor and parts prep:



here's the plenum with the harness removed. all that is left to do is remove the two rubber hoses and prep the surface. I did take the time to clean out the plenum as well. It should be common policy as I've read on other forums. It's common for gunk to build up between your throttle body and your valves so I made sure that all the inner surfaces were as clean as I could get them without going too crazy.



a pic of that massive chunk of cast iron that attaches to the front of the motor to hold the alternator. Notice the indicator on the small bracket that connects this piece to the upper oil pan. It specifies ^'up'. You tend to run low on blinker fluid if you re-install this upside down.



a shot of all of the rest of the cast iron parts that have been sand blasted and will be prepped for black gloss paint just to add a little contrast to things.



the motor on a friend's stand. I'll have to get one for when I tare down my 350ci small block chevy. You can see the T-5 trans that will be going behind my chevy 235 I6 sitting on a 'custom' wooden cart. Also, be sure to pay homage to the almighty graffiti van in the background.



The bottom side of the aluminum oil pan was pretty nasty. I used a wire brush attached to a power drill. Took maybe 5 or so minutes to get the following results...



a little bit of scrubbing with a scotch brite pad was needed too to get into some areas that the wire brush couldn't get to.



it was nice to be able to flip the motor to ensure I was able to clean up all the nooks and crannies. my custom front crank seal protector is a roll of scotch tape tunneled out so it's in the shape of a funnel. it was even water tight with the crank bolt tightened by hand!



again, being able to get at the bottom side of a lot of these ribs ensured I got that block as clean as I could with the tools that I had. The oil was drained well ahead of this point for those of you who would probably inquire



I got 'er flipped back over and double checked that all the tape was still holding on after the last bath and blow down it received.



Exhaust side of the block prepped.



The floor was sprayed down with water before painting to avoid kicking up any dust.

Motor parts painted:



The first round of parts that were sprayed were all done in high temp enamel.



The second round had the cast iron parts as well. The black was nothing more than krylon flat with some clear sprayed over it. we'll see how it holds up. I made the mistake of painting the exhaust EGR tube in black as well.. I give it 3 hours tops before it's all flaked off!! I may ditch the EGR once this setup is installed and running.



a shot of some of the parts after a couple coats and the block after 2 coats.



Gyeah. Get one.





final few coats of clear have been applied. You'll notice that I used the old valve cover gasket and painted right over it. I opted not to paint the valve cover seeing as I'll be reinstalling my Infiniti cover once I decide on how it'll look. I also chose not to paint the lower oil pan as it's got a couple dents in it. I think the one on the other motor is in better shape. I did RTV this one on however, just to make sure nothing was able to get into the motor that shouldn't be in there.

motor reassembly:



runner's are back on along with the motor parts. It's looking like an engine again!



Front side. I did end up painting the crank bolt black. It would look way better with a new valve cover gasket and oil filter..



Distributor is back on along with the plenum.



got that foamy engine bright cap keepin' the dirt out my intake!! really tho, coolant lines are back on. They look a little nicer than that rusty zinc plated garbage that it used to be.


AND NOW FOR A FEW PICS IN THE SUNLIGHT..



I'll admit, I didn't think too much of this enamel until I looked at the motor in natural daylight. It's a metallic but that's not easy to make out on a rough cast surface. I'm happy with it.. for now



for now, I plan on retaining the EGR. I'd like to make the motor run how it should before I go modifying things. I don't know what hoses go where for the three small lines in this pic. The one on the top of the EGR vacuum valve, the one to the lower left of the valve (directly left of the rubber hose under the EGR vacuum valve) and the one that is just below the hardline fitting that goes to the exhaust manifold. I'm not referring to the two fuel lines on the far left of the pic nor am I the coolant lines that go to the heater core.



it's in one piece! or at least, it's as far together as I can make it at this point.



the side you'll never see



That EGR crap sure does take up a lot of room.. Maybe I will ditch that ASAP....



more to come...

Looks great man. I cant wait to see the final outcome!

Nice work! BTW my boss says I can't come out and play this weekend...

Beautiful