And then there was some wiring.. the 240SX has a speed sensor in the transmission, but the 350Z has it in the differential. Since we had a 350Z trans and 240SX diff, we had no speed sensor at all. I already had built a unit that was reading data from our DL1 datalogger, so I figured I might as well use the GPS speed from that to drive the speedometer. This was my proof of concept showing I could drive the speedometer using an Arduino (and a circuit to help translate voltages from 0-5v to -5v to +5v)
I discovered a chip in the ECU (car computer) used for idle had fried. Apparently this is a common issue with the Maximas relating to leaking active engine mounts. I picked up another ECU/key from an Infinity J30. The key itself I ziptied into the antenna that sits around the lock and wired the immobilizer into the ECU as it expects. This way I was able to get around the anti-theft (NATS) and get the car to start.
Then I discovered I had completely miscalculated my room for the throttle, and there was no room for the idle control motor anyway, so I had to make a blank plate:
Then I got even deeper with the wiring.. and it's looking like a bit of a mess at this point:
The 350Z oil pan does not have a provision to hold the crank sensor position sensor for the Maxima, so we need to make a custom one. We checked the gap on the other engine, and the sensor runs very close! Here you can see us setting it up with feeler gauges. It got another bracket on the right side.
It's close!
This is what the engine looked like when we first fired it, but it started!
This is what it looked like when we were bleeding the coolant:
One thing that I never figured out, was that the VIAS system would not activate. I don't know if it was from the many check engine codes that were tripped or something else, but the ECU would not trigger it. I just got an RPM switch from Summit and used that instead. In our videos you can see the blue light kick on at 5200rpm where I had it set to trigger the VIAS.
The intake manifold required a little "clearancing" of the hood:
We also finally swapped our brake pads after putting over 50 hours of racing on the Raybestos ST43s! As you can see they are tapering, but not nearly used up. New pads are so thick!
And our car was ready to race again!
Video overview of the V6 swap below. You will hear in the video at the end, it does sound like a baby 350Z engine!