_-Night-Shade-_ [ 1994 GS-R ] - Winter 2012 ... Part 1

[Mad Cow]

Ooh very nice, when's the ZE going in? And you know that I'm gonna have to see it when you're done, hopefully by then my car will be presentable too. It's uglier now because I blew a tire and I've been running on a spare ever since, and the terrible unprimered bodywork the previous owner did is really starting to show.

[mazdags94]

Nice job. The swap job is all too familiar to me . I'm sure you'll be wiping up the bay... it's a given. I love the gloss black paint. Keep it up!

[_-Night-Shade-_]

Few updates: got the valve covers sandblasted and ready for paint! Also got my hands on some Devcon Flexane 94A to fill my mounts with!
Unfortunately ceramic coating the headers is a bit pricey so I will be going the cheap way and painting them with VHT high heat silica header paint which has ceramic in it and is good for 2000F so hopefully that'll work out, better than nothing I guess.



I am hoping to have the ZE in this weekend, which gives me a bit of time to fine tune everything and troubleshoot if need be. But I am really anxious to have the MX-3 on the road! We've been having some great weather lately - Spring just came outta nowhere! I'm even going to wait to do the maintenance stuff I have planned till after it's back on the road, as the main concentration right now is the swap.

[JWMX3]

how long does it take for the mounts to cure ?

[tripleMX-3chicMS]

i want to see VIDEO of this swap.... LOL

[_-Night-Shade-_]

MX3-chic: I'll try to get something for you

Ugh, delays delays delays. Getting frustrated. Just want my MX-3 on the road. We've been apart for too long lol.

Okay so I had a bit of a f*ck up filling the mounts, sort of... I didn't expect the polyurethane to start hardening up so fast so it started to get thick on me in the middle of filling. So then I started to rush and made a mess everywhere, and ended up wasting like half the polyurethane, what a nightmare. The thing is the instructions are like "stir for 2 minutes, pour into container and stir for another 2 minutes" so I'm stirring this thing and by the time I'm done it's already like halfway through its working life. Not to mention all the writeups I read were like "wait for it to thicken up otherwise it'll seep past the tape" yeah, right
Long story short, I only ended up filling 3 of the 4 mounts, and not even 100%. However I did the front and rear first as they're the most important, and even the one I didn't get to had the least volume for filling and happened to be in the best shape, so I think the situation is salvageable. Now that it's all cured it's still rock solid and I can't even budge the mount so I think the desired results were achieved.



Next up: painted and baked valve covers




Aaaaaaand ceramic coated "aluminum" Pace Setter Headers

[solo_ryder]

Good update, liking the progress

[JWMX3]

i hate those headers

dont forget about the pcv grommet

[_-Night-Shade-_]

Yeah, stupid headers! Nobody said it wasn't gonna be plug & play. Anyways, almost there...

[fowljesse]

Yeah, we had a good time fitting those headers. We cut out the flange between the front 3, and the rest, and welded it together. I wish I could afford to coat mine!
As long as you got the front and rear mounts filled, you'll be great.
Those valve covers look great.

[_-Night-Shade-_]

Thanks Jesse! It's only VHT header paint. I couldn't afford the real thing either
The headers are the only thing holding me back right now, engine is already in and everything. I'm gonna grind down the one flange that's hitting the frame/steering rack, and I have an idea to get the O2 sensor bung further away from the slave cylinder. If those solve the problem then we're golden.

[IMACHU2]

Porn red valve covers

[_-Night-Shade-_]

Arghhhh! This swap is a f***ing nightmare!!! Everything's going wrong!

The headers don't work. I gave up twice, not once but TWICE. The first time I gave up when I realized I didn't have the tools to do what I wanted, so I started bolting up the stock primaries that the ZE had on (I have to use them because the rear primary doesn't have EGR). Done. But then when I go to put the stock Y-pipe on, the studs won't line up! Probe/MX-6 primaries have the studs in different spots on the rear header. So I'm like crap, I'll have to try the PaceSetters again. So next morning I took them to an exhaust shop and had them grind down the flanges that were hitting the frame. Done. Now both headers could bolt and the rear one was still tight like a chinese pussy next to the frame but at least it was bolted up. I thought I was on my way when, like a smack in the face, I found out the hard way that the PaceSetter Y-pipe won't bolt up without hitting the shifter stabilizer bar! Gah! So I gave up the second time. Luckily I had a Probe Y-pipe that I got when I bought the KLZE so I bolted up the ZE primaries and the pipe up but it's a tad too long so I had to unbolt my catalitic converter in order to clear it. That's fine since I need to redo my exhaust anyway. The final verdict is that the PaceSetter headers CANNOT be installed without major modification to either the headers or the stabilizer bar.

Right, at least with the exhaust out of the way I thought I could actually concentrate on getting to car to run. I got the axles in, fresh fluids. I started hooking all the electricals back in and I can't f***ing plug the tranny sensors into anything, none of the connectors line up! Wtf?! So I go home and look at my K8 with the tranny and sure enough the plugs/connectors on the tranny are different! Do Probes have a different wiring harness or something??? I say this because you know that Probe Y-pipe I mentionned above? Yeah well it has O2 sensors in it, they're crappy Bosch ones so I wanted to get them out but I can't because they're seized into the Y-pipe. So I gave up on that since it didn't matter, I just wanted the car to run. Well turns out it DOES matter because those O2 sensors don't plug in either! They have like the reverse of what's needed to plug in. I compared them side-by-side to my O2 sensors. So once again, do Probes have a different harness or something?

Needless to say I ran out of time. Today I had to get my car out of that garage and get it home *sigh*



At least now the car is on my driveway and more accessible...

[Mooneggs]

sorry to hear about the troubles... did you not realize that the pacesetters as they are don't fit?! There's been alot of us that have mentioned that... sorry you had to find out the hard way I know what it's like to have to stop a project because of an impossible obstacle (at least at that moment in time)...

[_-Night-Shade-_]

Moon! Thanks for finally blessing my worklog with your presence
Actually to be honest with you I didn't look into it, nor did I look into the probe compatibility stuff... it's a bad habbit of mine...