CDogbert's 240SX Heart Transplant
12-18-2009, 12:00 AM
#1
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Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: N38° 37', W90° 17'
Posts: 1,906
CDogbert's 240SX Heart Transplant
My '91 240SX...
...needed a new heart. It sounded like a WWI fighter plane, was leaking oil badly from the head, and had at least 180,000 fairly hard miles on it. There certainly haven't been any nice miles from me, that's for sure.
I found a '96 KA24DE in Danville, IL for $550 with 99,000 miles. car-part.com said 176 miles. car-part.com was wrong; it was more like 280 miles.
After a cursory inspection, and a $35 pulling fee I was not made aware of that ate the rest of our gas money, we loaded it into the truck with the help of a forklift. Motors are heavier than you would think, especially when they're covered in road grime.
I forgot the tie-downs, so the motor was quite literally just perched in the trunk. If I got into an accident, it would have probably killed us... and unfortunately, the journey was quite long. Three and a half hours each way, to be exact.
... but at least we had killer 90's tunes.
We stopped off at my buddy's house to pick up some essentials, but halfway to my house, we discovered that nobody in St. Louis County actually rents out engine hoists. We were deeply saddened by this news.
Not in the least because it meant we had to unload the damn thing by hand. So I recruited my old roommate, and the three of us managed to get it out of the truck and stood up on chalks/jack stands.
Fast forward a month because of time problems between who was originally working with me on the car and myself, and we start the project.
This is what a car looks like when its ___-end is three feet in the air.
And this is what your car looks like without an engine.
Unfortunately, the engine mount bolts were so rusted that we spent an entire day messing with them, and eventually had to get an oxyacetylene torch to remove them.
After we torched the bolts off, the person I was working with became more and more unreliable, to the point where I decided after a month and a half of jerking my chain, I was going to drop him like a bad habit. I was doing this in my parents' garage, and after repeated threats to sell everything so they could move their cars back into it (which I relayed to him, with no response), I decided to try and find someone else to assist enough to get the engine into the car, so I could take it to a shop. Mercifully, I had just reconnected with an old racing buddy, who agreed to help me.
We needed to torch the EGR valve to swap out the exhaust manifolds.
And then, after three months (2.9 of them waiting for help), it finally went in.
But not before giving us a total scare...
But then, as was par for this project, another thing went wrong. While lowering it down onto the trailer to take to the shop, the left rear brake caliper froze. It had essentially beached itself on the ramp.
I had to free up the caliper. On a trailer ramp. In the middle of the night. On an incline.
It wasn't a fun night.
But I eventually did get it freed up, and then took it to Adrenaline Motorsports in St. Peters. They were quite helpful when dealing with the car, given that it was as much of a problem child for them as it was for me, but managed to work out (almost) all of its gremlins and get the other engine working smoothly. I get to pick it up on Monday, but I drove it today, and it's like a totally different car.
I would have saved a ton of time had I just taken it to the shop to begin with, rather than have them clean up my mess. There were also a lot of things that I didn't know and wouldn't have figured out (the ECU was bad and it was only running on three cylinders, for example). I don't think I have enough fingers to count how many times I was ready to just be rid of the car, but starting it up today made it all come back why I kept it in the first place.
...needed a new heart. It sounded like a WWI fighter plane, was leaking oil badly from the head, and had at least 180,000 fairly hard miles on it. There certainly haven't been any nice miles from me, that's for sure.
I found a '96 KA24DE in Danville, IL for $550 with 99,000 miles. car-part.com said 176 miles. car-part.com was wrong; it was more like 280 miles.
After a cursory inspection, and a $35 pulling fee I was not made aware of that ate the rest of our gas money, we loaded it into the truck with the help of a forklift. Motors are heavier than you would think, especially when they're covered in road grime.
I forgot the tie-downs, so the motor was quite literally just perched in the trunk. If I got into an accident, it would have probably killed us... and unfortunately, the journey was quite long. Three and a half hours each way, to be exact.
... but at least we had killer 90's tunes.
We stopped off at my buddy's house to pick up some essentials, but halfway to my house, we discovered that nobody in St. Louis County actually rents out engine hoists. We were deeply saddened by this news.
Not in the least because it meant we had to unload the damn thing by hand. So I recruited my old roommate, and the three of us managed to get it out of the truck and stood up on chalks/jack stands.
Fast forward a month because of time problems between who was originally working with me on the car and myself, and we start the project.
This is what a car looks like when its ___-end is three feet in the air.
And this is what your car looks like without an engine.
Unfortunately, the engine mount bolts were so rusted that we spent an entire day messing with them, and eventually had to get an oxyacetylene torch to remove them.
After we torched the bolts off, the person I was working with became more and more unreliable, to the point where I decided after a month and a half of jerking my chain, I was going to drop him like a bad habit. I was doing this in my parents' garage, and after repeated threats to sell everything so they could move their cars back into it (which I relayed to him, with no response), I decided to try and find someone else to assist enough to get the engine into the car, so I could take it to a shop. Mercifully, I had just reconnected with an old racing buddy, who agreed to help me.
We needed to torch the EGR valve to swap out the exhaust manifolds.
And then, after three months (2.9 of them waiting for help), it finally went in.
But not before giving us a total scare...
But then, as was par for this project, another thing went wrong. While lowering it down onto the trailer to take to the shop, the left rear brake caliper froze. It had essentially beached itself on the ramp.
I had to free up the caliper. On a trailer ramp. In the middle of the night. On an incline.
It wasn't a fun night.
But I eventually did get it freed up, and then took it to Adrenaline Motorsports in St. Peters. They were quite helpful when dealing with the car, given that it was as much of a problem child for them as it was for me, but managed to work out (almost) all of its gremlins and get the other engine working smoothly. I get to pick it up on Monday, but I drove it today, and it's like a totally different car.
I would have saved a ton of time had I just taken it to the shop to begin with, rather than have them clean up my mess. There were also a lot of things that I didn't know and wouldn't have figured out (the ECU was bad and it was only running on three cylinders, for example). I don't think I have enough fingers to count how many times I was ready to just be rid of the car, but starting it up today made it all come back why I kept it in the first place.
12-25-2009, 02:38 PM
#4
Senior Member
SL Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: N38° 37', W90° 17'
Posts: 1,906
Yep, all this work just for a KA. There were several times I said that myself the past couple of months. Mostly when I was writing up craigslist posts that said "TAKE THIS BASTARD 240 OUT OF MY LIFE".
This is the third one I've ever seen in person.
This is the third one I've ever seen in person.
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