Kinkstaah

I too have an excel spreadsheet, infact I put this V8 conversion all in it, including dates, what i bought, and even compared what I thought I'd spend to what I actually did spend. Then it all became a bit superflous because the parts I did spend on weren't really strictly related to "Conversion only" costs.. like say, the previous post. Also got a bit lucky in some aspects, like a pre-made ready to go refreshed cammed motor. Saved some $ there. ........Provided that engine actually started and was built correctly......... Moving on, more bushings! So now we had the rear of the car, and bushings done (many not pictured on the front arms), we decided to tackle plumbing up the engine side. We left the clutch out for now because it's just going to be easier taking engine in/out/in/out/in/out without a clutch to contend with. But the gearbox looks to have bolted up fine and took up space fine, useful for checking clearances to things. Here was our lovely engine bay,complete with old R34 ancillaries just.. hanging out. Gearbox sorta fitting okay! The commodore shift knob options are horrific, so we ended up cutting this and welding on a literal bolt to the end of it with the same pitch that Nissan shift knobs use, so I can re-use my OEM Nissan/Nismo Shift knob. The gates are tighter than a R33 Gearbox is (maybe the ripshifter does this) but it means that the AUTO housing I had around the shifter now fit better after the conversion than it did before. Another win! Please check page 1 for a description of my abomination of wiring. It was always a really sore point, but now that the motor was gone, we could remove what wasn't needed anymore. The way I thought about it was ..... My Haltech PS2000 ran the Engine, standalone. The LS1 Ecu runs the Engine, standalone. No other functions of the car did not work. AC worked, Power steering worked, dash worked, all electronics worked fine before the conversion. Logically then.. we could remove all of the things the PS2000 was wired to. Logically then.. we could run the LS1 in "Engine only" mode, and everything should be just fine, cause the rest of the car's wiring wasn't changed, because it was never in play to begin with. ... in the past my car has had up to 4-5 ECU's running various things. Anyway, all gone now. So we started pulling wires out. Initially we labelled them, and thought about them, and then eventually came to the conclusion above. "I'm sure it's fine" What's this for? I don't know. I knew then, I don't know now, but I took a photo of it for some reason. With literally all the engine wiring in the bin, we had an empty engine bay to start figuring stuff out in, and first cab off the ranks was the fuel system. The engine we got had some nice return EFI fuel rails on it which was great, because the LS1 uses a returnless system, and the rest of a skyline is .. not a returnless system. so thank f**k for that, basically, but we had to plumb it all in. We decided to cut these lines shorter, to angle them up against the firewall as much as possible. We didn't know how the f**k people ran a manifold/exhaust through here but we sure weren't going to be the guys that didn't make every effort to try and make someone's future life easier. People notice that shit! (also I almost melted my car to the ground due to wiring issues and heat in the past. This is fuel... and a manifold, what could go wrong?) Ah yes the first braided line, the one that started it all. The stock ECU can handle flex fuel. I had a flex fuel sensor. I had to mount it somewhere. So this: + This = This It seems I don't have too many photos of the fuel lines, they went through many, many revisions. With the engine in again, I had to think about cooling, as a clutch fan isn't feasible/doesn't exist. Luckily the LS is setup for thermos from the factory as it has them, and luckily, the AU falcon's thermos match up nearly perfectly with a R34 radiator, as well as pushing a LOT of air. "but isn't the LS huge?" A lot of people are still suprised by how small it is in the engine bay. .... so much room for activities! You can't see it in this photo, but you can actually fit your entire arm down behind the motor and grab the bellhousing too, so my e85 sensor was not in peril. Radiator and Thermos in! Sometimes things just fkin work out! sometimes.

It's funny, because as of now the car is done, the only things I'd do to improve it is add widebody (which i own) to fit wider tyres, and maybe get a set of heads for more NA power (which realistically looks like ... maybe? about 30-40rwkw). However this would probably cost about ~15K to complete. If my car spontaneously caught fire or was stolen, I could buy a new Mustang with less than 15K Difference. Did I mention new Mustangs when tuned make about the Same KW as my motor with the heads I referred to above? Did I also mention that Mustangs can fit a 315's on all 4/square setup with the OEM Body? Did I mention that the new 10 speed auto is pretty amazeballs for keeping in said power range? Have a look Here to find "Mustang Performance Pack 2" (which is a slower manual), but has aforementioned tyre fitment. It's 48th on the list. If you CBF, here's a snippet: So.. I am super happy with how it is, as is... but would I recommend what I have done for someone else? lol no. More history to follow 'soon'

I'm gonna be that guy... why get suede on the parts you don't touch? The idea of alcantara is when using gloves you get better grip on the wheel.... ?

So at this point car looked like this: I had an engine, and gearbox, and clutch, all I needed was a loom, and that part was super easy. (says the internet) So things must be coming along great, fast, right? No. Would it be fast if you just wanted to put the engine in, wire up some kind of loom, not really care about much else, get a tailshaft and manifolds fabbed up and go do skids? Yes. Did I do this? No. I said a couple of posts ago that “While I’m here….” Was always going to be an element, and now is when it began to strike in full force, because while I also bought one shipment, there was actually 2, and there was scope shift. It went from “Hey lets just change the engine” To: Brain: Pssst… remember how this was all to remove annoying, worrysome things with this car? Me: ……. Yes? “Lets remove anything that caused annoyance in this car, EVER!” If I’d ever rolled my eyes, and dealt with it, or had to make an excuse for it, or “I’ll get around to it” it now became a prime target. There were quite a few of these things. Like in every car. Even yours. Don't you judge me! Given I needed the car to be engineered, I had a HICAS problem to deal with. I couldn’t use rose jointed arms/eliminator kit, and the stock ones had a lot of play in them, plus, they were f**kin shit, and already removed from my original subframe as they were quite shit. So were the arms i had replaced them with. So was my diff. All worked, pretty okay, and good enough for 99% of people, but sadly in this context, and the only context, I am the 1%. It was all bad. It was worse than bad, it was mildly annoying. So what’s a boy to do? Lets convert the subframe instead to a NON HICAS one. …..while it’s out, lets replace EVERY bush in it. …..while it’s out, lets weld in some subframe reinforcement plates, I mean if S15's crack them, surely a v8 will? (not that skylines seem to..) …..while it’s out, lets get my “1.5 way” Diff rebuilt, as this was clunking and being an asshole beyond what other diffs were doing. …..while it’s out, lets remove the shocks and put some stock suspension back in. It’ll be needed for the engineer anyway, and I wanted to rebuild my shocks because they were leaking, and slightly annoying. ……and did I need a re-valve? I went from 5-4 springs to 8-6 in the past..... I also changed the engine. So maybe I need a re-valve. In any case it was a question, and it could not be suffered to live. Pictured: Annoyance ^----ahhhh, refreshing! Also, while I’m buying bushes.. ….why not buy every bush? For the whole car? The front too? ….lets remove the front subframe while we’re at it, because.. there’s no engine there.. ……so maybe we should clean up the engine bay …maybe we should create fuel lines/adapt to the 34’s fuel system …. maybe we shouldn’t use rubber lines.. maybe we should have braided hose and fittings for fuel the whole way.. ….maybe we should get that e85 flex sensor all plumbed in.. before the car is going….instead of later …maybe we should have braided lines for the catch can too… while we're buying lines... …maybe we should have custom hard lines made for the coolant lines to the heater….. while we're doing lines.. …maybe we should relocate the oil cooler….... while we're buying lines.. ….maybe I should get around to cleaning up the engine bay… This was also the bulk of the cost, and a LARGE, LARGE, LARGE % of the head f**ks. We actually decided to do this in sections, i.e the rear of the car first, because it had 0 thinking to do, then we planned on doing the Engine bay part of things, then the middle/gearbox/clutch part last. The plan was to have everything done to the point where the only thing the car would need was wiring, and an exhaust fabricated up. Also, anyone want to buy my diff? This is where I spent $800 (receipts available!) to have my diff totally taken apart and rebuilt, and told nothing was wrong with my somewhat-clunkier-than-others 1.5 way diff, and that's just how they are. How they are is a 2 way diff, which was somehow missed in that $800 adventure. I'll leave it to your imagination how that diff drove with the new/refreshed/reinforced subframe.

Yep. Nismo diff is the answer here. The N/A R34 GTT has the same "stuff" as a S15, or at least a S15 helical bolts into a R34 N/A perfectly. Luckily, a lot of people drift S15's so options are plentiful.

We actually had to uh... mould the lip a bit with a hammer and cut a section out/fold it out of the way. There isn't *quite* enough slack in the wires to move the loom onto of it unlike a S chassis where you can. Luckily you don't need to cut wires. When you see it in front of you its fairly easy to see which pars of the lip need some attention to get it to go over the top, but it can (and should) be done. re: Above wheels, 18x9 +32 will fit fine on the front, with a 255. With a 265 you will be real (REAL) close to touching the upright arm with the outer edge of your tyre. HOWEVER a 255/40 is a larger rolling diameter than a 265/35. Beware of your loom ?

86's are just awesome, perfect starter car and realistically, perfect "Enough car anyone needs" with a mild boost application. It's the middle part of car progression where people go BUT I WANT POWEERRRRRRR in the middle they suck at. Then they grow up and realise the power was never always the fun part. (it is fun to a degree though). (mx5 factory turbos are awesome though). I could have SWORN I took photos of how awesome those headers fit (in addition to them being fkin not flat) and I have dug them up. Yeah definitely 'block hugger' manifolds alright.. I am not sure what these do fit in, but it sure as hell isn't gonna be this. Even if they were flat. And this was on the "Easy" side without a steering rack to contend with! Pictured above, my reaction to looking at that fantastic fitment. I will write up other random shit soon enough now that I am looking for visual evidence.

265's can fit. I have them all round on an 18x9 +30. They will pretty much only fit in that space. I also had them in the past with 18x9.5 +27 (because the tyre was mounted in the same spot, centrally speaking). Mind you, you will want to roll guards, make sure your liners are absolutely clipped in, and potentially relocate the driver side loom under the right/driver side front quarter panel, because you can/will rub through it if your springs aren't ultra rock hard. Will your life be a hell of a lot easier with a 8.5in rim and a 255? Yes.

'little' evo. You can plumb an exhaust in if you actually plumb it further back (and not lose power), but realistically when you've gone to the degree most people have in these kind of builds it's venting to atmosphere and everyone prefers it that way.

Won't fit. It'll almost fit. It may fit removing liners, mutilating guards and running camber that will make you hate your 265's.

do it and post results

Yes, this guy is in Vic. And yes, the OP is in QLD. However its the same scenario, with much the same situation with much the same enforcement, with very similar police having the same thoughts with the same powers and using similar judgement. The link you linked Update: Is it still legal to ride?'s entire argument seems to be..... "Well they didn't say we COULDN'T do it" ....which is pretty much THE peak loophole quote of all time, in any scenario. It is obvious to a reasonable person that when they say bike for exercise, they clearly mean a push bike around the block in similar vein of 'ESSENTIAL' exercise, i.e walking a dog around a block. I feel if you get in to this discussion while on the back of a motorbike to a police officer, at best you'll get a warning, at worst you will be dealing with $1600 fine. do it and post results

^--- that is absolutely looking for loopholes. Logically though, going for a drive in a car and returning to my home, never getting out is 0 risk at all. However, police can't confirm that and statistically it is rare. Being pulled over mysteriously 150km from your home going nowhere near there (i.e all reasons you're allowed to be out are nowhere near your listed address) is almost certainly going to be fine time. All of the exercise has been along the lines of "A walk/job around the block you live/walking pets in said area", the intent of the law is clear and the article mentioned is clearly looking for loopholes "oh It doesnt say I CANT do that" including a quote from an official saying "Stop looking for loopholes". Realistically the guidance is... "do you NEED to?" if not = banned.

… could I also get this? The VZ one is a fkin DVD and near impossible to find. I have the VY Series 1 one, but they... change stuff.

Is it exactly the same scenario when the car leans out? Not only between 60-80% throttle? Not only under 90C water temp? Not only when Sensor X is doing Y? It could be tune related. Putting it on a dyno after checking everything mechanical (and allowing yourself to see things like fuel pressure while the car is on the dyno under load) will help. If you DO have fuel pressure, but running lean...

I reckon it is, super robust and they can be made to bolt down there if you keep the original SMIC brackets and such

I support this from the firewall forward. Actually I lie, there's a guy with a still streetable SS doing pretty respectable times at Winton, so as much as people on SAU bitch about Commos' being unable to handle, it clearly can be done to a pretty decent extent. Realise this is an auto so you won't be doing that... but still. https://www.carsales.com.au/cars/details/holden-commodore-2005/sse-ad-6431803/ Smaller cams are better choices if you want the thing to be good at what it does best (i.e be a comfy cruiser around town), cam surge will ruin everything.

Now I have an ODB2 engine, I have a double din full android head unit, so I can run torque and show any gauges I want! ? To the OP though, the point I was trying to make that in the future, they too will probably want different gauges/change the gauges there... so don't waste too much time getting the stock gauges working when most replace them anyway. Skip the middle man.

They are tough..... .... for a 25 year old engine. You're going to have much more reliability aiming for 350whp than 500whp though. How fast you choose to burn the candle depends on you, basically..

The oil temp is really the only one that does work well, but others work better, can have clearer/more resolution.. The boost gauge isn't really up to the task, and battery voltage is... probably not worth having a slot. My car is N/A now (v8 life) and I have water temp, oil temp, and an AFR gauge there. When it was turbo, I had Oil temp, boost, water temp. Back when it was Auto and Turbo I had 6 gauges, the 3 up top as well as AFR, Oil temp, and Transmission oil temp. Yes 3x oil temp sensors ? But the main one is it will be easier to install aftermarket ones.

So the search for a gearbox began where all searches begin, gumtree.com.au or FB Marketplace. I also figured i'd need a clutch, and one of the things all Commodore people constantly raved about was a remote clutch bleeder. I had already managed to find myself a starter motor re locator kit from mal wood automotive. I don't know if this existed on the Berzerk R32 that got LS swapped here years ago, because they went about it by changing the steering rack to a VL non powered one instead. It turns out before you make decisions on things... there's a lot... LOT of options to choose from, but I decided a) I want the car to be legal b) I want the car engineered by VASS c) I want the car to be dailyable, so that meant retaining power steering, and retaining aircon, as well as the heater. d) I wanted all the gauges to operate as factory This sounds like a bit of a tall order, but this is where my bad luck actually turned around. LS's often have standalone looms, so you can run the thing on an engine stand quite easily. R34's quite easily run standalone engine ECU's and don't suddenly have problems with the dash doing weird shit, speedos not working.. so my line of thinking was "this should work", joys of a basic car. I found a gearbox for sale eventually that didn't look like it'd been outside for 200 years, and found someone who was "90%" of the way through their LS conversion into Skyline build themselves, but wanted to sell up to conslidate cars/put money into business etc. Again i thought : .. maybe I should walk away, like this guy is currently trying to. But no, am stupid. In the end, I bought: 1x T56 Gearbox 1x Heavy Duty clutch for above gearbox Both Cross members, because the seller also sent me photos of a stock GM sump clearing the skyline crossmember, whereas the motor I had... definitely, de finitely hit (to the point we had pulled it off already to start notching it). 1x Standalone loom 1x "Later' ls1 ECU (needed to run Flex fuel) 1x Set of radiator hoses modified by seller to fit stock locations on a skyline (yay) 1x Clutch bleeder relocation kit. Pretty much everything I needed except manifolds and a tailshaft. The manifolds had made custom, I got a photo of them, but they had already been sold. 1x Rip Shifter 1x Shifter extension to mount up with the standard hole in a R33/R34. I also had to buy another engine, to get everything in the above package. I had originally planned on just sticking with a stock 220 or whatever rwkw a LS1 makes, and iron out all of the infinite bugs i was expecting to begin with and go and rebuild/try and make some power later, but this "forced" my hand. The engine that came with the above had a fresh rebuild with all receipts, a VCM714 cam (232/234 .600 lift), LS7 Lifters, double manley cam springs, double timing chain, 25% underdriven balancer, ARP fastners throughout, and the heads had been skimmed for more compression. New bearings, freshly machined, suitable oil pump, aftermarket baffling for the new sump, etc, and of course, all of the gaskets, seals and such were brand new and just fitted, which eliminated my shopping cart to replace all of those old things on the previous, now-spare motor. And the new one was drive by cable too, which was nice. He had initially built the thing to go and drift, so had done all the needed things for this to sustain some pretty sustained "high" RPM. Just so happens for me, the parts he selected were basically identical to what I was planning to do.. "one day".. It was at this point that family and friends switched from "This car is a curse" to "This is a good idea, see, the car wants to live, the universe agrees!"

+1. Just run aftermarket gauges to the same location. Pretty much everyone else does/will.

MX5's have issues of "What do I need to do, my car is working, there's nothing to fix" and "I don't have a lot of power". The stock SE one can do 190rwkw on the OEM turbo and Brendan Beavis has clearly shown its reliable in doing more track days than the entire of SAU combined, and being faster than 99.9% of people in them. GF still won't let me track her MX5 yet, though. So I needed another plan. I actually did make a note in a spreadsheet as to how much this conversion cost, how much I bought things for (and how much I sold RB bits for!, and a timeline!) and quickly realised that the big killer in all these builds is the friends you make along the way. By this, the level of 'while we're there....' is extreme to the nth degree. With the engine in the car, we needed headers. This wasn't a great deal of space, and this is with everything removed/relocated as best as we possibly could. However, the block hugger manifolds I bought were approximately this flat. They also didn't fit, pointing directly to the engine mount... ^--- above picture with the other side of the manifold touching the bar.. Both side like this. The supplier replaced both of them without complaint. Getting my money back instead of a store creidit though.. took many many hours of waiting in the store for the manager to get back from wherever he was, though.. At this point we had also removed the sump, because we were going to have to notch it in order to reach the crossmember. So we were looking at needing manifolds, a cable TB, Water pump/Gaskets, oil pump, rear main seal, front seal, sump gaskets, the lot. The "While we're there" started on the engine stand but it quickly accumulated. During this time a lot (almost all) of the RB stuff sold, so I more or less had a shell sitting on stands. The desire to just cut ties and walk away was very strong, an underutilized MX5 was in my hands, but then I thought "What if...., I'll never know if it was actually gonna be awesome...." So I started the search for a gearbox.

Can I interest you in a V8 R34 sedan?

Can I interest you in my Renault Megane?