Scores240 Forever Build 2019 Version

[Scores240]

Hello everyone that still frequents the forum. I've been on here for what seems forever now and have never shown much of my project / build until now. The progress and build has escalated fairly quickly now that I've fully committed to making it into a somewhat competitive SM auto x car.

I'll start with a little background and history lesson on the car first. It is a 1993 240sx coupe that had 193k miles on it when I purchased it from a dealer in Raleigh NC back in 2006. I drove it for a little while stock as i was researching 5 speed swaps since it was automatic. I was in the USMC at the time and stationed at MCAS New River where I was lucky to have an automotive "hobby shop" on base that we could use to do any automotive project we wanted. It was staffed with a few mechanics in case we had questions and there was also a tool room with all of your regular hand tools and also specialty tools. I acquired an engine/trans combo a few months after purchasing the car and did the swap at the hobby shop, where i practically lived until it was running again. Driving around the base one weekend I saw a ton of cars and people "racing" on an unused section of the runway and was curious what it was and wanted to try it out. Thats where i learned about autocross and where I first got into this addiction. After that first year I did your typical cheap coilovers with 5-lug, 300zx brake swap, steering wheel yada yada. My memory is running out on all that i did to the car back then so we'll jump to current status.

The current build is as follows:

KA24DET (19psi E85 - 391hp , 390tq)
Fully Balanced
Wiseco 9:1 Pistons
Eagle Rods
King Race bearings
ATI damper
BC 264's / springs, retainers / guides

Garrett GT2871R
Converted SR20 Manifold w/ Tial mv-s 38mm
A2W intercooler inline with charge piping
Ice / water reservoir in trunk
HKS SSQV BOV
Stock Intake Manifold

Evolve Injectors 1200cc
Radium Rail
Radium FPDR
Radium FPR
Radium Filter
Aeromotive 340 pump

Stock KA 5spd Trans
OS Giken TR2CD twin plate (Love Love Love this thing)
Al driveshaft
Cusco type RS in 1 Way 100% setting

Suspension

KONI 8611 Front 8610 Rear
Veilside Front housings with modified mounts
Defsport rear threaded sleeves
T3 Camber plates
T3 FLCA's
Whiteline Front ARB
GKTech "Grip' front drop knuckles
JasonM RLCA w/ Z32 knuckles
S14 Subframe swap

Mustang Rep wheels
17 x 10.5 +27 all around
Hoosier A7 275/35/17

I think thats most of it, now lets have some pictures do the talking.

So I had a really good season in 2018 with the car running well and strong on the previous engine build. That engine used the same cyl head but the short block was different and used stock rods. Over the winter I was debating whether or not to pull the engine and have the rods replaced. I finally decided to go ahead and pull the engine and discovered a bunch of issues that inspired? prompted all of the parts i just listed.

VolgaMf.jpg
So I pulled the engine and tore it down to a short block before dropping it off at the machine shop. They discovered that the bearings were shot and the cylinders would require another bore.

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While the engine was at the shop i continued gathering parts to support a 400hp + goal.
In this same time I was also sent to China for a work trip that lasted 4 weeks. It was a decent experience where I got to visit most of the major attractions, and see my sister who's been living in shanghai now for 7 years

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The great wall, we weren't expecting it to be so cold as the weather was nice at the hotel but when we got there it was flurrying. lol

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Me with the cheesy beanie i had to buy at a shop at the wall which was a madhouse of chinese ppl buying coats.

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I stayed at a hostel for one night that was on this street, which was an interesting experience to say the least. The next day I took the high speed train from Beijing to Shanghai
(roughly 4.5hrs 830miles)
nurvUsl.jpg


Now back to the Build. Right before I left for China I picked up the newly built shortblock and was wishing I could stay home and finish building the thing.

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Upon getting back home I could finally get some work done. Spent a few hours getting my valve lash set and was then finally ready to throw it back in the engine bay.

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Install day, I use an overhead chain hoist since I don't really have space for a regular gantry style hoist.
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And she's in. I made the COP bracket myself with some help from a friend that TIG welded Al nuts onto the bracket to fasten the coil packs to.
yfMijdC.jpg


We're caught up to somewhere in April here. I'll be posting up more until I'm fully caught up.
Hope ya'll enjoy the build and I hope we can strike up some activity.

[turtl631]

Sweet! Sounds like a nice build. Mine is stalled, baby #2 objects to be wrenching much ..

[Scores240]

Sweet! Sounds like a nice build. Mine is stalled, baby #2 objects to be wrenching much ..

I can see how that would affect the car hobby. All i basically do is work the day job and then wrench on the car.

[gills]

Cool man! Looking good. You forgot to mention S2000 ABS retrofit

The whole baby thing is why I started a team. Takes the load off big time.

[Scores240]

Over the weekend I had found that I had a pretty significant coolant leak that i determined to be coming from the coolant outlet at the cylinder head. I replaced the intake manifold gasket and rebled the system and all seems to be good now.

I looked over my S2000 ABS install to verify what lines were going to which corners of the car. Everything was plumbed to the correct wheel and my stop signal is working correctly. So this still makes me curious as to why i can hear the ABS module activating through low speed turns when I'm nowhere near the brake pedal. I know my front tone rings aren't perfectly concentric to the spindle / hub but the system still functions in eliminating lock up, but maybe its causing weird bugs ?

[Scores240]

Some details on the conversion to COP. I used K20 Coils and made sure to grab a portion of the Honda engine harness so that I could assemble some sort of custom harness for the KA. I purchased a junk SR20 CAS just so i could steal the trigger disk from it and swapped my KA nismotronic ECU with John @ nismotronic for an SR20 ECU. I then repinned my KA ECU connector to work with the SR20 ECU and pulled all of the unnecessary wires from my engine harness.


Made my own bracket to mount the Coils. Had aluminum welded on the top for the coils and also had 2 aluminum nuts welded to my valve cover to hold it all down. In retrospect, I could've used the two center valve cover bolts to hold it down, oh well. No regrets.


Made my own COP harness that I can detach from the main engine harness. Fairly happy with how it turned out.


Thinning out the engine harness and repinning the connector for the SR20 ECU.

[Scores240]

More catching up to share here.

So one day last year while searching facebook for sale ads I came across a guy in NJ selling a z32 gearbox without the bell housing for $100. When I got to his shop to pick it up I was pleasantly surprised to see that he was actually selling me an RB25 Trans. A couple weeks before I had found this transmission I saw someone on zilvia selling a RB25 bellhousing, that i then went and dug up to message the seller that i wanted it.

RB25 trans. Has the distinct shifter plate / placement. The only unfortunate problem I've found with the purchase is that it is missing a "check ball" mechanism the bolts onto the outside of the Bell housing. The parts are unavailable / discontinued at the dealer and courtesy and just about every other nissan parts site I've contacted. So if anyone happens to have a scrap 300zx trans laying around they would sell parts from i would gladly take that mechanism (its the same between RB25,Z32 and maybe even frontiers/exterras)



I had found AceInHoles' thread on how he made it work on his KA and had a shop do the same thing for me.



After a few months of having all of this sitting around I took all of the transmission parts i had assembled and dropped it off with a local transmission rebuilder to check the condition and assemble the casings. Notice the hole missing the check ball mechanism...


Now all I need to acquire to install the damn thing is a driveshaft, trans mount, shifter& bushings and a slave cylinder. How much power does the stock KA24 trans hold ? 400 ish ? That means I'm safe right, lol.

[gills]

I looked over my S2000 ABS install to verify what lines were going to which corners of the car. Everything was plumbed to the correct wheel and my stop signal is working correctly. So this still makes me curious as to why i can hear the ABS module activating through low speed turns when I'm nowhere near the brake pedal. I know my front tone rings aren't perfectly concentric to the spindle / hub but the system still functions in eliminating lock up, but maybe its causing weird bugs ?

How much runout is on the tone rings? That's a definite possible issue if the lowest point is going beyond a ~1mm air gap. If an ABS system senses a speed sensor mismatch/fault, it will deactivate the system and throw an error. At least on the MK60.

However, why it's activating prior to pressing the brake pedal is bizarre. Something might be happening with the brake pedal switch wiring/connections in those tight low speed sections?

[djsilver]

What type of LSD are you using? I had a KAAZ 2-way for a while and it popped and hopped a lot. If yours is doing similar, it could be causing enough fluctuations in the speed signal to freak out the ABS at low speed.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Scores240]

What type of LSD are you using? I had a KAAZ 2-way for a while and it popped and hopped a lot. If yours is doing similar, it could be causing enough fluctuations in the speed signal to freak out the ABS at low speed.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm running a Cusco type RS in 1-way @ 100% clutch stack engagement. It only has option of 2-way / 1-way ramps. I bought it used and was hoping it would be 1/1.5 but unfortunately it's not. It hops and bangs a lot at slow speed. You might be onto something here.

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[Scores240]

So i checked my brake signal wiring and ABS module caliper plumbing correlation a couple weeks ago. I thought i had reported my findings here but i can't find it anywhere, lol.

The plumbing is correct between module to the related caliper.
My brake signal wire is also wired correct and working.

I suppose the only thing that would be causing this strange functionality is the front tone rings. The runout on the rings is enough that it is visually and obviously noticeable to the eye.
The only solution to this for me is to get new hubs and tone rings.

Aside from the ABS doing strange things at low speeds the car has been performing fantastic in the autocrosses I've been to so far. Power and torq is almost instant with demand on throttle in 2nd gear and has forced me to adjust my driving that i became comfortable with last year.

How much runout is on the tone rings? That's a definite possible issue if the lowest point is going beyond a ~1mm air gap. If an ABS system senses a speed sensor mismatch/fault, it will deactivate the system and throw an error. At least on the MK60.

However, why it's activating prior to pressing the brake pedal is bizarre. Something might be happening with the brake pedal switch wiring/connections in those tight low speed sections?

[Scores240]

This is an update that is skipping a lot of the previous work I've done as i feel its not as interesting since its old news. lol Going to try sharing more of the current events and mods but starting with my dyno day.

I took the car to JK tuning in carlisle PA for tuning by the same man who created the Nismotronic ECU I'm running. I looked around for other tuners in a panic to have it done sooner but gave up because I didn't want to deal with someone inexperienced with the ECU or flat out refuse to look at it, plus by going back to John Kerr for a retune the rate was gonna be cheaper.


We dealt with a couple of issues throughout the day which we were able to figure out and finish the session. Had a weird issue with the TPS sensor but re-seating the ECU connector fixed that. Then the MAP sensor was generating an extreme value at an odd time throwing off the tune at that cell. We turned up the smoothing value on the signal and no longer had a problem.

We ended up with 390 ish in HP and TQ but i was hoping for 400+. The solid lines is a pull at 21psi and the dash lines are I believe a pull at 19psi showing the turbo was out of steam at the top end.



The current state of the engine bay minus the addition of GK tech V2 offset strut top camber plates.


A few weeks after tuning I finally went to my first event on the new engine at Pocono Raceway. The course was setup fairly fast and didn't require me to shift out of 3rd once i got there shortly after the start. I ended up with FTD and 2nd in PAX out of 56 drivers for what thats worth.


This was the only picture i took that day. The wing is a heavy home made unit that a friend built for his car who so generously let me use for the last 2 years. Its based on the E423 Airfoil and was one that i had plans to build myself when he offered it up to me.

[Scores240]

During the Pocono event, which happened to be a Thursday evening I had very little confidence in the brakes. They were going to the floor on heavy application and started dragging on the rotors toward the end of the day. My next event was that following weekend for a Sat/Sun special at Mid-State Airport about 2 hrs 45 min from my house. I loaded up everything I thought I needed to make any repairs and also to do an oil change and bleed the brakes. I took off Friday afternoon hoping to make it there for some test n tune runs but ended up taking my time with the oil change and bleeding the brakes.


Was actually kinda nice doing the work on the trailer versus the ground.


Still the current aero package since last year. A homemade wood splitter and cheapo extreme dimensions bumper cover.
The brakes felt much better after bleeding but still were not inspiring confidence.


Decided to replace front and rear rotors and pads. I had also purchased caliper rebuild kits but didn't have the time to do that as I had another event to head to in the morning. I went with G-Loc R8 up front and R6 in back and boy are these an improvement over the old rotors and Hawk HP+'s I took out.


These are the GK tech V2 offset strut top camber plates I mentioned earlier. They space the strut pillow ball down about 19mm I believe which I'm ok with since my front strut housing have been customized. They are intended for drifters to re-position the strut outboard and forward in the strut tower when they use angle kits with extended LCA's. The mounting studs can be threaded into any of the holes you see which allowed me to move the strut inboard for Camber. At this position and with my T3 LCA's almost at their shortest length my Camber is at -4.2, where before I was stuck at 3.2 with the LCA's extended out a fair amount which I didn't like because it made the car wider than it needed to be up front.


Modified front Veilside housings. I had a local fabricator cut the original ears off and weld on extended ears with the spindle mounting holes about an 1" higher. The extended ears enable the 10.5" wheels to clear the shock/spring without spacers and will also clear the 11" Hypergrams I'm planning to switch to. The 1" height change though ended up bittin me in the butt because then I couldn't get the ride height high enough without compressing the helper springs. However, with the GK Tech strut tops installed, I have proper ride height and usable droop travel.



I decided to check the car inventory of a local U-Pull-it salvage yard for a Infiniti J30 and was surprised to finally find one. I got this diff for $83 after about 3 hours of wrenching. Using the 3.91 FD I'm aiming for 75mph in 2nd gear at 7400 rpm on 315/30 Hoho's.

[Scores240]

So its been a while since the last update, and quite a few autocross events have happened. I tried being cheap on tires and bought 275/40 A7 takeoffs from JB tire that ended up not helping to put power down where I needed it anymore than the corded 275/35's i took off. After two events of running them on the back, my 275/35 fronts finally corded beyond use and I caved in and bought 4 used 315's and Konig hypergram 18x11's.

Right now the car does not look very good due to being like 4 different colors lol. The 315's were a big improvement and I'm learning where i can now push harder and go faster on them than i previously could with the 275's. I think I PAX'd 3rd in my first event on them and then 2nd, 3rd in the following events. This past weekend my last event of the year was at Pocono raceway with NNJR/NEPA SCCA & PCA. My 2nd lap of the day ended up being my fastest due to the welds on my hybrid SR turbo manifold breaking at the wastegate during my last morning run. I'll admit that i did find a hairline crack around the weld a couple weeks earlier but was lazy and didn't wanna take it off for repairs.

[Scores240]

This was my best run from 9/14 at Pocono Raceway. I must've been focused too long on the wrong spot which caused me to go wide and slide. I had some fueling and charge pipe problems in my afternoon session and couldn't improve.

Best run from 9/15