So in the past few days I did some work on the motor. So far the motor went on the engine stand, took off the turbo and the exhaust manifold, and I've gave it to my friend Raffy to get it sandblasted, maybe he can do it tomorrow, if not, it should be done on Monday. I also managed to pull off the oil filter that was on there, that sucker was on tight! I had to take off the engine mount to get good grip on it, but it finally let go. I don't know how these guys do it in Japan, as there was so little room to get it in. But now I mounted the block adapter and its all good. I will find the spot for the remote filter after the motor is in. Finally I did remove the KA wiring harness, and will be sending it out along with the SR one to get them wired for a turn-key one. And the guy that's doing it is pretty good on price, ($90 shipped) which I think is pretty good. But that will have to wait till Monday, as I will have no time tomorrow to go to the post office, and I don't think they will be open.

Happy New Year!!

P.S. If you guys have questions or have a suggestion, email me at Sirwarrior@Spymac

I got a call on Friday from a friend of mine telling me that there is a package there for me, which is very odd as I didn't order anything and never used any other address than my own. After I got there I found out that it was my clutch fan that the guys at Phase2Motortrend replaced! THANKS GUYS!!! Also my friend got me a Xmas gift, a set of tools to work on my project. Sweet! Than I got home to see the turbo elbow showed up!!! YAY!!! And than I find out that the blown T25 turbo I got from ebay came in too, but they made a prank gift out of it, HAHAHA, not funny!

Today, I got the engine stand and managed to take the clutch off, but I still need some time to put the motor in the car. I wish I had more help as taking off the flywheel is a pain without a air tools. But I do like looking at the motor. Its still gives me the funny feeling inside when I look at it. and I haven't even fired it up yet!! Can't wait till I feel the power of the SR20DET.

So its like 2am and you have a feeling in your stomach like you forgot to do something. For like a week now, but you don't know what it is exactly. Than you log on to a few forums and start reading people's posts. And thats when it hits ya!!! Dumbass! I forgot to check whats inside the fucking box that came with the clip!!!!! DOH! So I got my ass outside in the cold (coldest its been this time of year in over 10yrs) and go get the damn box. Pop it open and find exactly what I thought would be inside MAF, Igniter chip and ECU. But was it all worth it, YEP! a quick google later I find that the E5 ECU I have is from, DRUMROLL PLEASE, 1994 to 1996 180SX Blacktop SR20DET, Manual (Applause) Sweetness!! Makes the freezing ass part seem worth it. Now I got to get some sleep as I got a big day tomorrow and my turbo elbow should arrive!! Oh and there is some tree holiday too ;)

I also noticed that this isn't a Redtop project anymore, its a Blacktop, so I updated the title accordingly, but hopefully the people googling for redtop SR20DET swap will come in too.

Today I gave away my old KA24DE motor to Dan. He's going to be doing KAT project with it. Since I didn't know its exact condition, the head was half way apart and missing the valve cover, I hope he can find the bottom end in good shape. We were freezing our asses off in the cold, but we got it done in about an hour, which included taking off the intake and exhaust manifolds, as the trunk of his S14 is tiny, especially when trying to put in a motor inside. The battery in the trunk made the space even more PITA to use, but we got it in. Now I don't have to worry about taking it to the junk yard, as that was where it was heading.

Oh yeah, tomorrow is my birthday so I probably won't be doing much in garage. More like getting drunk and trying to forget how old I am. Yep I am going to be 21.................again.................for the X time in the row. :P

nbsp; Today I gave away my old KA24DE motor to Dan. He's going to be doing KAT project with it. Since I didn't know its exact condition, the head was half way apart and missing the valve cover, I hope he can find the bottom end in good shape. We were freezing our asses off in the cold, but we got it done in about an hour, which included taking off the intake and exhaust manifolds, as the trunk of his S14 is tiny, especially when trying to put in a motor inside. The battery in the trunk made the space even more PITA to use, but we got it in. Now I don't have to worry about taking it to the junk yard, as that was where it was heading.

Oh yeah, tomorrow is my birthday so I probably won't be doing much in garage. More like getting drunk and trying to forget how old I am. Yep I am going to be 21.................again.................for the X time in the row. :P

I'm sick as a dog, can't go and work on the car because its too cold outside and I feel like crap. But at least I got some time to wire in all of my gauges. Now if I only had enough wire.........

I got myself an T25 turbo from eBay for 30bux. Not bad, but it has issues and needs a complete rebuild. Forced Performance FP-Big28 would do the trick as they completely rebuilt this sucker.  So I will consider going that route once I get some cashflow. I also want to put in stainless steel line kit for the turbo. But this is going to be a side project, and all the side jobs will go toward that.

This weekend was pretty good as far as the amount of work done, I could have done a lot more, but it was too fucking cold on Sunday, so I stayed at home. But I did manage to get lots of tools and I did separate the transmission from the motor. Clutch looks like shit and so does the flywheel. I will need to get the flywheel turned this week, and I am hoping to get the wiring harness of the chassis by Xmas. Looks like the car won't be ready, but its getting close now so I don't really care. Everyday I do manage to get a lot of shit done, even if its not working on the project, its getting parts or the tools or some cleaner or other misc crap. I wish it wasn't so damn cold out, or I would be further ahead than I am.

I do need to check the fuel pump for proper wiring, as I didn't hear it come on. I did manage to get some racing fuel as well, that way the car will be using good gas and not some old 87 that the previous owner put in it a year ago. P.S. The turbo elbow should be sent out tomorrow, so I won't get it untill after Xmas.

Today has been pretty productive day as far as the progress on the motor. The wiring harness is off the motor and is ready to be shipped out, got the turbo elbow and downpipe off, I got the oxygen sensor free form the rusted elbow, I loosened up all the bolts on the exhaust manifold AND changed the spark plugs. WHEW!!!!!! The trickiest part was unhooking the fuel injector clips as they were a little bit of a pain in the ass, but once I figured it out, they came out easy.

Now that I started to tear into the motor, its going to be fun, but I got to get to Gil's tomorrow and see if I can sandblast the exhaust manifold, before I got putting new gaskets on everything. Hopefully I will be able to play with it myself, as I like the way it works, but never actually did it myself.

Aside from all that, I will want to get whole bunch of hose clamps as most of the ones on the motor are really crappy ones. So I figure I am going to spend about twenty bux on the hose clamps alone. I got to start thinking about getting all the stuff needed to put the motor back together, so that I won't get stuck when I need one silly part in the middle of a night. Also since I did order a Megan Racing turbo elbow today, I do hope I will have it by my birthday. It was that or the PS2, and I think I will like this better.

I do wish I did have better outlook for the 5lug swap, but as it stands right now it looks like it won't be done till after the new year as the SR20DET install is going to be taking over in the priority department. Once that is done and all the gauges are hooked up, I will move onto the suspension. Maybe Mike will be available by than. UGH!

Pulled most of the wiring off the motor, which I am going to send out to some guy to do it. I also took of some heat shields from the turbo and I am trying to get the turbo elbow off and replace it with Megan Racing one, but one bolt is a pain in the ass to remove, so I got some WD40 and will work on it some more this weekend. Should have the water pump replaced and maybe even the oil pan. Let's hope so. Oh yeah, I got the battery cables almost done too, well I got the positive one done, and I am going to finish the negative one as soon as I can find the torch in my garage. Thanks to Lewe and Gary for helping me out on this.

The only part that I've seen broken is the clutch fan, which my man Howard @ Phase2 will ship out at no charge!! Sweet! YOU DA MAN!!!!!!!

Motor came in today!!! YAY!! All that waiting and I finally got it home! Its pretty! AND MINE!!!!!! (OK give me a break, I am kinda excited here!!!).

I did manage to get a couple of things done today. The battery kit is just few steps away from being in, the cables ends will be soldered and connected the right way, by Gary of course. I will try to take a look for a good spot to drill the holes and mount the tray itself. I didn't get a chance to do it today as it was freezing cold, which limited my time in the garage to as little as necessary even with the heater on. Damn this Chicago weather!!

SR20DET should be arriving tomorrow, so thats pretty exciting. Got the battery kit for the trunk, but still no cables for the relocation kit, got to get the terminal posts too. Nothing got done this weekend, well almost nothing, I did manage to put the battery in, just to make sure everything is working on the car, but I didn't get a chance to see if the fuel pump did. DOH!! It was dinner time tho, and I needed to get out of there.
Still to do is

• battery terminals


• fuel pump check


• harness removal


• get the motor


• battery kit install

Should be able to get some of this done tomorrow and Tuesday. I got to send in the harness for service too, so that I can have it up and running by my birthday!!

The fuel pump is complete. I got it mounted and ready to drop into the tank, just need to get some more gas out of it. I should be able to finish it tomorrow. I will also put some 100 octane in there, so that the SR20DET will have some extra octane as it starts its life in my engine bay.

Today was pretty exciting day as far as the overall project is concerned. The motor is paid for and soon will be on its way over. Thursday it will ship out and should be in few days later.

With no more time to waste, I got my ass in gear and put in the fuel pump, which wasn't the hard part, but rather its the removing of the old gasoline that was in the tank. Luckily I had a small water pump that I was going to use for a water cooling my PC laying around and used that to pump out the gas. Although now I smell like gas and feel a little queezy. I did manage to mess even this a little, as I lost the little retainer clip that holds the filter onto the pump, so I got to go get one tomorrow. Another thing I need to get done is taking off the dust shields off the S14 spindles, which is easy to do, but I just got to stop by Pino's to do it.

Oh and the rear rotors were junk, so I had to get a replacements, luckily they were easy to get a hold of.

So at the end of a the day, I spent few hours working on something that still isn't finished, I smell like I work at the full service gas station, and I am broke again. All in all, not too bad.

here was some progress on the purchase of the Blacktop SR20DET today. My boy at Phase2Motortrend, Howard, got most of the stuff finalized. The Discover will ship to my shop with no problems, just waiting for the money to go through. Hopefully it won't be too long, and they can send it out by Tuesday. I hope anyway.

Now me and Mike got to get our asses in gear, as the suspension needs to be done BEFORE the motor arrives. With the next check I will pay for the harness wiring, and we will put in the new parts in the time it takes the guy to send me back the harness. That is the plan at least.