Since the cage went in, everything was painted it was now time to start the assembly phase. So first things first, the heater matrix. Huxley said to me I’d never get the end heater matrix/core in due to the triangulation of the cage to the front struts, challenge accepted!
After a few nudges here (with some added cuts), and a kick there it went straight in! So atleast I can retain a fully functional heater setup
I started speaking to Norfy about my wiring, as the car will have the bare essentials as its not likely itll see the road in the near future. So after speaking to him one evening I began cutting down this mess, and had a date night with the car whilst I was there. (Im 21, I should be out drinking, partying or whatever my friends do! Nope, im just sat there with a car that tests my patience constantly
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Interior harness in
Now for something I wasn’t really looking forward to. For the SR/Z33 gearbox conversion, with the use of an adapter plate you can either chose an S15 clutch and flywheel and leave the bellhousing, or use an S14 clutch setup like I have, and get the bellhousing machined.
So here’s what I started with, 1x Z33 CD009 gearbox.
First things first, remove the front cover and 2 circlips;
Now its time to remove the obvious bellhousing bolts that essentially sandwich the two halves of the gearbox. Luckily a bit of searching online the day before meant I didnt forget this little one that’s hidden under the plate that covers the shifter mechanism;
So now it should be ready to simply pull the bellhousing off. After softly prying the bellhousing, it began to move and then stopped. After pulling my hair out a friend told me about a small 10mm nut that holds the windage tray (?) behind where the front cover usually is!
And then, POW!
Its hard to get a sense of scale from pictures, but the size of the gears in comparison to a small casing gearbox i.e. SR20/CA18/RB20 is just phenomenal. Oh, and it’s the first time I’ve seen inside the gearbox, so its nice to know all the gears have teeth haha!
The bellhousing itself creates a problem due to the sheer size of it, meaning now any old machine shop will be able to mill the bellhousing. Luckily enough my friend and engine builder came to the rescue and he knew a guy that could
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Anyway, back to the car. I relocated the battery to the passenger side of the boot. I thought about having it behind the drivers seat like I did in my old car, but I suppose it could become a deadly object should it come loose, so in the boot it went. And luckily enough it seems like the BMW 540 battery cable I used to use still reaches the dashboard area which is where im hoping to run the front chassis/engine bay loom, ideal!
I finally installed the S14 N/A throttlebody too, something that doesn’t look very fancy haha
For those that don’t know, when installing the Tomei Oil Block, it ditches the OEM oil/water element, which means the original heater hoses don’t exactly work. After a speaking to a friend whos done the same thing, I went a similar route, which was to simply block off a water way on the block, and the associated connection on the heater side;
Simple, but avoids having a hose that is massively kinked.
Surprise surpise, I came across another issue, something that shouldn’t have really happened in my eyes. Greddy provided tabs with the inlet to retrofit the standard fuel rail, but for some reason my fuel rail seemed to pull the top of the o-rings as its get bolted down.
A solution could’ve been to weld some tabs on the rail to other mounting points to pull the top of the o-ring back in. But I cant weld so that option is useless to me. So a friend hooked me up a killer deal on a Mazworx top feed fuel rail and a set of injector Dynamics 1000cc injectors, a bit overkill for the TD06L2, but definitely future proof should I fancy a change to something a bit bigger and begin to push the engine.
I know I whore the engine off wayyyyyy to much, but I just cant get over how good it looks in the flesh! Suppose its down to this guy though