vvti 1jz s14 kouki

[Mzag]

Hey guys, Ive been in the 240 community for about 5 years now and had multiple cars but havent done any in depth build threads. Now that I have a project I plan on sticking with for a while I figured its the perfect time to start.



I originally bought it as my first car in 2012. I had all these dreams about what I wanted to do with it but being a 19 year old college student and having it as a daily severely limited me. I had the car for a year and did some minor modifications like coils, brakes, wheels, etc but I got bored of the car and moved onto something newer. A year after selling it I was given the opportunity to buy it back, so without hesitation I was the owner once again.

This time it came back looking a little different, JDM front bumper, grill, and paint matched carbon fiber hood. I bought some varrstoens es2 and the car now looked like this.




After only owning the car for a couple months I foolishly traded it for a rhd rb25 s13 because I had started drifting earlier that year and wanted something for the track. Fast forward to a year later, spring 2015. The s13 was gone and the kouki was back in my garage, this time as a project, not a daily.

When I picked it up the last time, my previous s13 in the background.


This is where the project starts, the car is currently sitting on jack stands in my garage fully stripped to the shell. The progress is slow but this time im not rushing anything and doing it right the first time. I received the motor last week which got the ball rolling on the winter build, more updates to come.

[Mzag]

I know its been forever since this thread was started but I now have the car in a shop where I can finally work on it. Basically doing all the boring chassis work leading up to the swap...

Got settled into the new shop and started tearing the car down to a bare chassis


With all the rust repair that needed to be done I got adventurous and started looking for ways to flip the car over, I found the design for these stands online and went for it




Here come to disturbing pictures, the rust was pretty bad







A few weeks and a lot of sheet metal later





And how the car sits now, did the first coat of por15 on the entire underside

[tricky_ab]

WOW! I love that you're taking your time with this, and doing it right.

[alwaysSlideways]

do it right or dont do it at all! love it!

[Mzag]

Thanks guys, definitely a tedious process but hopefully I wont ever have to do this again.

I also went ahead and modified some stock knuckles and extended/boxed the front lca's. Then of course covered everything in por15.

[scottie]

It's refreshing to see chassis restoration done right. The underside looks brand new and POR15 should keep it that way.

[Jake S14 kouki]

Awesome man! Glad to see these cars being restored and appreciated in a proper way.

[Mzag]

Im terrible at updating this but Ive made a little more progress. The car is now off the stands with the gas tank and rear subframe back in. I started stripping the engine bay and had to take a little break from the chassis work and got started with the motor rebuild.

All new gaskets, arp headstuds, 2jz water pump, 2jz oil pump, drift motion pulleys, excessive motor mounts and ac delte bracket, and the collins cd009 to jz adapter kit.




I used my brothers motor/trans to test fit since mine wont be here for another week week, in and out twice with lots of pounding and cutting/welding to make that giant transmission fit.


And this past weekend I finished up the engine bay rust repair and painted it gloss black.

[Mzag]

Another little update. Finally getting down to the little things until it moves under its own power.

I relocated the engine bay fuse box to the passenger side kick panel which isnt too hard, but adding the connections and relays for the engine harness at the same time made for some long days of wiring.



Picked up the cd009 trans from lkq so i could finally put the motorset in for good.


Im using the gktech shifter and it still landed a couple inches behind the factory shifter hole. This is also with xcessive motor mounts all the way forward. Planning on re working the shifter itself with some bends to try and get it in the center.



Made the trans crossmember


And finally the motor sitting in the bay

[rawgarage]

Damn great start and attention to detail...

[05subysti]

Love the underbody restoration, there was a lot of rust! Any plans to upgrade fuel system/turbo/engine management?

[tricky_ab]

Interested to see what you have planned for the engine as well...

[Mzag]

Going to keep it all stock for now and see how I like it. Possibly tomei arms turbo or driftmotion rebuilt/upgraded stock turbo, standalone, and injectors at some point but that wouldn't be for a while.

[Mzag]

Starting the piece everything together. Waiting on couplers to finish the intercooler setup, driveshaft, and power steering line which should all be here by Thursday.

First start up and drive should be in a few days!

ImageUploadedByTapatalk1472008451.965976.jpg

[EnvisionMore]

Nice start! Definitely interested in seeing how your JZ/CD009 setup comes out. Are you going to run the shifter panel / boot still?

[Mzag]

Originally Posted by EnvisionMore

Nice start! Definitely interested in seeing how your JZ/CD009 setup comes out. Are you going to run the shifter panel / boot still?

Yea, I'm going to cut and re weld a forward facing angle in the shifter so it moves it forward a few more inches. As it sits, I can bolt the center console into place but the shifter is at the back edge of the opening so an inch or two should do the trick

[Mzag]

The remaining parts needed to fire it up came in today so here is the first startup video.

https://vimeo.com/180130189

[rawgarage]

Damn starts right up

[Nissansota240]

Nice work, a lot of similarities to mine, your shifter sit a bit further back though, I was thinking about looking into flipping the L shaped piece for the Gktech shifter and then modifying the brackets to move it forward and up to work with the new location, so that the whole shifter itself sits about perfect to what OEM is

[soundboy]

Very good rust repairs, very impressive work

[corkscrew]

What engine harness did you go with

[Mzag]

Originally Posted by Nissansota240

Nice work, a lot of similarities to mine, your shifter sit a bit further back though, I was thinking about looking into flipping the L shaped piece for the Gktech shifter and then modifying the brackets to move it forward and up to work with the new location, so that the whole shifter itself sits about perfect to what OEM is

Thanks. That's not a bad idea with the shifter, may have to give that a look.

[Nissan2nr22]

So cool I love this.

[Mzag]

Originally Posted by soundboy

Very good rust repairs, very impressive work

Thanks!

Originally Posted by corkscrew

What engine harness did you go with

I used the stock harness that came with the motor and just deleted what isn't used and made my own connections to the chassis harness

[tjcbar]

Awesome build, serialnine has a adjustable shifter for the cd009 gearbox that could fit without any cutting, this build is on my bucket list =D

[Mzag]

Thanks! I will have to take a look at that shifter then. Took this to the track Sunday and the gktech shifter was very disappointing, I'll update with pics later

[1988montecarloss]

nice to see another Mainer in here, not many Schassis up here that arent just ragged out pieces of shit haha. what area of the state are you in??

[Mzag]

Originally Posted by 1988montecarloss

nice to see another Mainer in here, not many Schassis up here that arent just ragged out pieces of shit haha. what area of the state are you in??

That's too true, I really wish there were more around. I live in Gorham, how about you?

[Mzag]

Here's a small update since its been running and driving. I scrambled to get the car done for a drift event last weekend and luckily made it too the second day to give it a little shake down. The motor ran great and is tons of fun with the cd009. Here's a couple pics of how it currently sits.
ImageUploadedByTapatalk1472695782.903559.jpg
ImageUploadedByTapatalk1472695795.788005.jpg

I did have an issue with the gktech shifter which was pretty disappointing. First off, they did not include any instructions or even pictures of how it was supposed to look fully assembled, not even on their website until a few days ago when I looked. I wasn't too worried about that since it was pretty easy to figure out and it really can only go together one way.
So when I first drove around it felt and shifted great, no complaints and was pretty impressed with the quality and design. But half way through the day and roughly 20 shifts from 1st to 2nd the shifter between the pivot ball and where it connects to the trans bent so bad I could no longer shift into 2nd, 4th, or 6th.
I know for a fact I wasn't shifting hard enough to where this should have bent so bad and after looking at the design I can't seem to understand why they would make that section of the shifter so narrow compared to the rest. I have contacted gktech and they are trying to resolve the issue so I won't give them any negative reviews just yet, especially since this was part of their first batch to be shipped.
ImageUploadedByTapatalk1472696739.769145.jpg

[1988montecarloss]

Originally Posted by Mzag

That's too true, I really wish there were more around. I live in Gorham, how about you?

Bangor area here