Enough with the introduction, here's some of the important info:
1986 200sx Turbo (mk 1.5) - 5spd
All the cool accessory options, voice, rain sensing wipers, digital cluster.
1997 KA24DE
1993? OBDI wiring harness.
I think that's about it. Anyway, so about a year ago I bought the KA, tranny, and harness with some grant money I had, obviously that was what they wanted me to spend it on, not silly things like textbooks. Me and some friends made fairly quick work of getting everything out, with the exception of the motor mounts, which eventually became the excuse we used for slacking off and not doing any work. We had pretty poor tool availability, and started the project out eager but ignorant. It's definitely been an interesting exercise in doing things the wrong way, but I'm gonna post this here to hopefully answer any questions and make note of how things went in case anyone else is doing something similar.
Those mounts I mentioned really turned into a mental block, we were stuck and couldn't get past them, and in retrospect, I can't really rationalize it. We were originally just going to cut them out, as we hadn't had any luck getting at them with any of the wrenches we had, and whenever we managed to get on the nut, we didn't have any room to actually turn the wrench.
Then I discovered pivoting ratcheting wrenches. Man those things are convenient, 17mm plus hammer and they were out, and it was time to finally put the KA into it's new home. Now there's a pretty big difference between the way I image this should've been done, and how it got done. We had the engine and tranny hung just about where they were going to go, and had the mounts bolted down, the idea was to drop the motor on top of the mounts, and bolt it up, easy. Of course, things didn't actually work that way, and after several attempts, the engine kept falling about an inch forward of the bolt on the mount. I would suggest using a floor jack to support the transmission, unfortunately the one I borrowed from my neighbor was ancient and didn't actually work after being in her shed since the days the dinosaurs walked the earth. We also didn't have any jackstands, so the car was up on 2 old scissor jacks, and I'm not crazy enough to go or let my friend lay completely under a car if that's all its got in the way of support. We ended up taking one of the brackets off the engine, and attaching it to the mount, then moving the hanging motor so that we could thread one of the bolts. After we got one on, a little raising and lowering of the motor put the other three into positions where they could be lined up.
After the first side was done, we went back to trial and error with the other side, my friend would push on the engine (the reason this was necessary was because the tranny was unsupported, so the whole assembly was at an awkward angle because of the weight) while I lowered and raised the lift. All of a sudden I heard a loud noise and he looked over at me, and my immediate reaction was, oh god, I just crushed his hand or something, but then he grinned and I was all like hells yes. Some dancing and shouting ensued, and we decided we'd been productive enough to earn a cigarette break.
By the end of the night just about everything had found it's way into it's correct spot in the bay. Most of it had been attached before dropping the engine in though.
Stuff left to do:
Hook up the driveshaft
new slave cylinder (have one)
new spark plug wires (I have a ton, but was told I should get a new set)
new radiator (probably just going to go to a junkyard)
hook up radiator and fuel hoses
run wire from the alternator to the battery
gear oil in transmission
coolant
belts
clutch fan
check vacuum lines
wiring
??? working ???
All the accessory functions are working, but I guess there really isn't any reason they wouldn't, gas gauge seems close to what I recall, all the lights work, power windows, voice tells me fuel is low when it's not but whatever. There's no real reason any of it wouldn't work I guess, but it's reassuring to me at least that it's somehow functional.
Either way, someday I'll get some pics in here, and it'll probably be at least a couple of weeks before I have an opportunity to get back and get anything done on the car, but I'll try to answer any questions.
