I thought I'd better stick up something about what I'm doing for those who may be interested. There are quite a few engine builds going on at the minute on the forum, mostly Turbo, so here's my plans for some good N/A power.
Having been an Almera owner on-and-off for 4-5 years now I'd always been interested in squeezing power out of the very capable SR20DE. During this time I'd been fortunate enough to pick up a lot of spares and some special extras that I always planned on fitting to my road car. Having scrapped the last Gti in the summer I thought I'd better see what actual bits I'd accumulated. After a quick rummage around I realised that I probably had enough parts to build a full spare engine.
The spec I'm aiming at is:
53J Ex-BTCC non- Roller Rocker Cylinder head with titanium retainers, uprated valve springs, Tomei Solid lifter conversion, Super-Tech lave stem seals and genuine Nismo race cams.
Pulsar GTI-R 54C Engine block with knife-edged SR20VE Crank, Nissan Bearings, GTI-R con rods and 8.3:1 GTI-R pistons, Crank Scraper, full Mains Girdle and Baffled sump.
I have all of the above with the exception of the crank scraper, baffled sump which I will be fabricating once the bottom end is built.
I've been concentrating on building the head first. Trying to tackle one thing at a time to avoid a load of jobs being half finished all at once.
The cylinder head had been in hibernation for a while so unboxed it to check it over.
This thing has been decked within an inch of it's life. A good 2+mm has been taken off.
You can just see the thread beginning to break through on the bottom right of the picture from the water inlet mounting stud.
There is some light detonation damage around the edges of the bores but I don't think it will cause too much of a problem later on (famous last words!)
You can see how the oilways have been tear-dropped to blend in with the gasket shape. The mating surface of the head has been skimmed and then lightly sanded with a random orbital sander. This supposedly helps with the gasket sealing onto the head.
The valves are standard size but they have suffered a lot of corrosion/ detonation damage so these will be replaced by a nice used set I have in storage. The valve springs are all in good condition bar one on the inlet side of cylinder 4 which has snapped in half. I'll be looking at getting a single replacement once I have another spring tested for spring rate and other specs. Otherwise I will be looking to get another set of springs.
The valve stem seals had began to break down too so they will be replaced when I change the valves.
Onto the camshafts. They appear to be genuine Nissan blanks and are labelled up as Nismo 7862 on the ends. These are old pics from when I first got them. They have since been cleaned and checked over for straightness.
Chunky lobe action
You can see how the lobe itself isn't symmetrical so it has a more gradual opening phase and more aggressive closing phase. As these were designed for solid lifters (smaller base circle in comparison the HLA based cams) I had to source some. Luckily I'd seen Jagy was selling some of his gear from his race engine so a quick PM and Paypal transaction had Tomei solid lifters winging their way from Czech Republic. I have yet to put these in the head as I still need to sort rocker arms before I can measure up the cam clearance so I can order shims to suit.
That's it for the first instalment. There will be more to come in future days and weeks.
Having been an Almera owner on-and-off for 4-5 years now I'd always been interested in squeezing power out of the very capable SR20DE. During this time I'd been fortunate enough to pick up a lot of spares and some special extras that I always planned on fitting to my road car. Having scrapped the last Gti in the summer I thought I'd better see what actual bits I'd accumulated. After a quick rummage around I realised that I probably had enough parts to build a full spare engine.
The spec I'm aiming at is:
53J Ex-BTCC non- Roller Rocker Cylinder head with titanium retainers, uprated valve springs, Tomei Solid lifter conversion, Super-Tech lave stem seals and genuine Nismo race cams.
Pulsar GTI-R 54C Engine block with knife-edged SR20VE Crank, Nissan Bearings, GTI-R con rods and 8.3:1 GTI-R pistons, Crank Scraper, full Mains Girdle and Baffled sump.
I have all of the above with the exception of the crank scraper, baffled sump which I will be fabricating once the bottom end is built.
I've been concentrating on building the head first. Trying to tackle one thing at a time to avoid a load of jobs being half finished all at once.
The cylinder head had been in hibernation for a while so unboxed it to check it over.
This thing has been decked within an inch of it's life. A good 2+mm has been taken off.
You can just see the thread beginning to break through on the bottom right of the picture from the water inlet mounting stud.
There is some light detonation damage around the edges of the bores but I don't think it will cause too much of a problem later on (famous last words!)
You can see how the oilways have been tear-dropped to blend in with the gasket shape. The mating surface of the head has been skimmed and then lightly sanded with a random orbital sander. This supposedly helps with the gasket sealing onto the head.
The valves are standard size but they have suffered a lot of corrosion/ detonation damage so these will be replaced by a nice used set I have in storage. The valve springs are all in good condition bar one on the inlet side of cylinder 4 which has snapped in half. I'll be looking at getting a single replacement once I have another spring tested for spring rate and other specs. Otherwise I will be looking to get another set of springs.
The valve stem seals had began to break down too so they will be replaced when I change the valves.
Onto the camshafts. They appear to be genuine Nissan blanks and are labelled up as Nismo 7862 on the ends. These are old pics from when I first got them. They have since been cleaned and checked over for straightness.
Chunky lobe action
You can see how the lobe itself isn't symmetrical so it has a more gradual opening phase and more aggressive closing phase. As these were designed for solid lifters (smaller base circle in comparison the HLA based cams) I had to source some. Luckily I'd seen Jagy was selling some of his gear from his race engine so a quick PM and Paypal transaction had Tomei solid lifters winging their way from Czech Republic. I have yet to put these in the head as I still need to sort rocker arms before I can measure up the cam clearance so I can order shims to suit.
That's it for the first instalment. There will be more to come in future days and weeks.
