engine and drivetrain S14 engine swap, M2 conversion start to finish

[ThatGuy]

I found a battery terminal from a 90's 7 series that looked cool so I mounted it on the firewall.

All the posts were not connected so I had to make a bus strip out of some scrap copper.

[ThatGuy]

The radiator was tricky on this one. The owner brought an old Ford radiator that was a little bigger than the stock 2002 rad. It mounted fairly easily, just had to add two holes in the nose support on the left side for mounting tabs.

Running the water hoses was a different story. I pieced together different shapes from different hoses to get it to go where I needed it to go. There are a lot of splices but they are tight and I think they will hold up fine.

I didn't take too many pix though.

[ThatGuy]

Wiring was fun. The harness had been cut in half and spliced back together with blue wire nuts. I sorted all the wires and ran them where I wanted them to go so they would be the right length.

After everything was sorted, routed and trimmed, I took it all off and soldered and put heat shrink on all the connections.

[BobBreed]

Use a NAPA 1335.....

[ThatGuy]

Connecting the E30 harness to the stock 2002 harness was easy, well, after hours of sorting wires, studying schematics and pinouts translating german to english and asking lots of questions.

There are 6 wires from the S14 harness that have to connect to the 2002 harness. I used a 6 pin Molex connector from Fry's to adapt the two together.

The connections are:

Alternator light

Temp gauge

oil pressure light

tach

ignition start

ignition run

[ThatGuy]

I almost shat myself when I went to start the car for the first time. It cranked for about half a second and then stopped hard! Crap, what was that? Oil pump jammed? something in the cylinder? Nope.

For some reason the clutch was hitting the inside of the bell housing, finally found out what it was after hours of sweating and checking.

I had to grind down a couple little lumps on the inside of the bell housing. After grinding it now spins smooth. So after putting the trans back in for about the 20th time (really), it fired right up (not really)

I had a problem with the fuel pump relay which was not getting power in the RUN position. After a little research and a quick splice, we have liftoff!

[ThatGuy]

The car after the swap saw it's first show at Brisbane this year ('09). Since then it got a new muffler and has been running strong. The only problem was when the PCV hose came loose from the air plenum and started running rough. The hose was reconnected and it's been fine since.

I also did the cutting and welding for the rear fender flares but failed to take any pix. It does look good though.

[ThatGuy]

Use a NAPA 1335.....

Is the 1335 shorter?

I didn't think there would be any filters shorter than the one on it.

[ThatGuy]

I almost forgot, in addition to the suspension, for doing all the work involved in an S14 conversion.

I received this:

it included the harness (uncut), ECU, airbox, bell housing and transmission.

[Retrogroucher]

That's great. Thanks for sharing!

[ThatGuy]

Just to provide a little more info for future searchers, I kept a log of all the time I spent on the car, kind of like a time card.

I could, theoretically break it down hourly for each facet but I don't have time for that right now.

I actually keep a journal on all my cars for future reference because I have an acute case of CRS. Also because if I had done this in the past I would have gotten more insurance money for my Nova when it was totaled. Hindsight ya know.

From Dec 9 '08 through 15 May '09 I spent a total of 178.5 hours on the car.

This includes everything:

removing donor engine and other misc from the donor car

suspension and brake work

pedal box

engine in/out eleventy billion times

rear flare cut outs

painting engine bay

custom brackets and fab

5 speed swap

driveshaft mods

exhaust fab

fuel and cooling system mods

wiring

etc, etc.

Any questions?

(Yeah, I know, if I had charged only 45/hour for labor it would have come to more than 8g's. I did learn a bunch though.)

[Julio]

Great job..........

Jb