Shortly after we discovered the SE-R Mailing List in late January 1997, we began to fully appreciate how special our Sentra SE-R is. It's not that we didn't know it was special. We just didn't know how special. We had inklings. We occasionally looked around at the new car market to see if there was a suitable replacement. We could never find one. Our SE-R had just turned over 100,000 miles on New Year's Eve. We were already talking about keeping our SE-R forever. It has required so little in the way of maintenance that we could start thinking about 200,000 miles and more.
Our main concern in achieving this goal, was the condition of the engine. The body and chassis were sound. It has a little rust that we plan to take care of when we get it painted (we don't know when that will be yet). The engine was another story. It was the one thing that could bring our plans crashing down. Since our SE-R was our only vehicle at the time, we could not afford the downtime pulling our own engine would require. If we wanted to put in an engine rebuilt by ourselves, by hand, we would have to find another one to rebuild.
As time went on, we got more and more serious about this. We met Jody Misenheimer when we bought our BBS wheels. It was Jody who told us we could find information about the SE-R on the internet. He was driving his third SE-R. His first one was totaled, and he currently has two (his brother drives the other one for the time being). Jody told us all about the engine he was building from the one taken from his wrecked SE-R. He was having it balanced and blueprinted, and was installing the Nissan Motorsports 10:1 compression pistons.
In late May of 1997 we had the first Texas Rally in Austin. We had a turn out of over 20 cars, including Jody's with his newly rebuilt engine (which was clearly the fastest). Jody told us at the Rally that he wished he had waited to build his engine. He told us that you could use the pistons from the normally aspirated 300ZX in the SR20DE and they would net you 11:1 compression. We got a little more excited about hand building an engine ourselves. Mike Gadaria (from Austin) was also at the Rally with his 92 SE-R. He had been having a problem with his engine and several people had driven it in an effort to diagnose the problem. We did not as we were installing the AD22VF brakes that day. We did hear a few people talk about it and the most common diagnosis was a knocking rod. We thought to ourselves at the time "poor bastard" and got on with life.
We finally decided in mid-summer to try to locate a damaged, but rebuildable SR20DE. We found out about a couple of engines that might fit the bill. The first we encountered was believed to have been run out of oil and the engine seized. We thought if the seizure was not too bad, we could rebuild it. It turned out the owner wanted more for the engine than we were willing to risk on a seized engine. There was a second engine we inquired about, but we don't remember the details.
Finally in the fall, we read on the SE-R Mailing List that someone was replacing their SR20DE (with a knocking rod) with and honest-to-God SR20DET. We figured, wow, a knocking rod is not too bad for what we had in mind. We inquired if he would be willing to sell the engine. A few messages were exchanged and it finally dawned on us (can't believe we were that slow) that we were corresponding with Mike Gadaria. Wow, not only did this engine fit the bill, but it was only three hours away to boot! We were very excited about this. A few more messages were exchanged. Mike expressed concern about selling a damaged engine. We put his fears to rest when we explained what we had in mind for the engine. We quickly made a deal and only had to wait for Mike to receive his SR20DET, have it installed, and wait a short period to be sure all was right with the turbo engine. That worked out well for our plans. We got even more excited about the project. When Mike was having his SR20DET installed, they decided to install an aftermarket engine management system. He suddenly no longer needed his Jim Wolf Technology ECU. We quickly made a deal for that too. Within a couple of weeks of the install, Mike was satisfied that the SR20DET was running fine and there would be no major problems. Now all we needed to do was find a time that we could travel to Austin to retrieve the engine.
On a nice, warm, sunny, November Saturday, we set out to Austin to retrieve our new project engine. We arrived in Austin early in the afternoon and called Mike to come meet us at the shop where the engine was waiting. Once he arrived all we needed to do was get the engine on the truck. We had a problem and needed to get creative fast. The SR20DE is designed to be removed from below, so there are no convenient places to attach chains and pick it up with an engine hoist. What to do?
Important disclaimer: What is described below is dangerous and stupid from a safety point of view. We do not condone or suggest you repeat or attempt our actions. If you copy the activity below, you do so at your own risk. You can get hurt and/or damage the engine. If you copy this action, you have made a conscious decision to do so against our recommendation not to. You are on your own.
What did we do? Well, we decided to move the engine using floor jacks. That's right, floor jacks. We pulled the truck to the overhead door at the back of the shop (or as close as we could get). Just outside the back door were two locked cars. We had just enough room to move the engine between the cars and the outside wall. We also realized that the bed of the truck was higher than the lift capacity of the floor jacks. To compensate for this, we jacked up the front of the truck and placed it on jack stands. This lowered the bed several inches which was enough to get the engine on the truck.
We were ready. We located two large floor jacks and wheeled them over to the engine. We tilted the engine to one side so the jack was underneath (it is surprisingly light). Once one side of the engine was on a jack, we tipped the other side up to get another jack under it. Aren't we clever? Now we have to get the engine to the truck. Did we recommend not doing this yet?
Well, we moved both floor jacks with the engine on them towards the back door. No small feat. It took plenty of maneuvering and several false starts. Finally we made it to the back door. The only problem now was the very uneven pavement outside the door. A little more care and we were at the back of the pickup 10-15 feet away. When we got there, we realized we were still about 6 inches short of the already lowered bed. What to do? Well we had an old piece of carpet with a small sheet of particleboard on top of it in the bed. So....... we carefully tipped the engine onto the particleboard and slid the whole shootin' match into the bed of the truck. Whew! We attached a whole bunch of bungies and were back on our way to Houston...... with no way to get it off the truck.
After arriving back in Houston we faced the prospect of driving around with an engine in the back of the pickup for a week (we were going to get an engine stand through our employer, but that would take a few days). The next day we stopped into a major parts store and found an inexpensive stand. The price was right and they had them in stock. We left with one. That afternoon we put the stand together. Almost. We still had to buy the bolts to attach the engine to the stand and the stand came without four nuts. Off to another parts store. Fortunately they were open until 7 p.m. on a Sunday night and they carried metric bolts. We must have been living right. Back home with more nuts and bolts. We finished putting the stand together. Now all we had to do was attach the engine to the stand.
When we got the engine stand's adjustable bracket
attached to the engine, we still had to get it off the truck and onto the
stand. We had attached the bracket to the engine while it was still
in the bed of the truck. We figured if it worked getting it on, it
might work getting it off. So, we slid the engine (on the particleboard)
to the rear of the bed with the shaft of the bracket pointing outward.
When we rolled the stand up to the truck, wouldn't you know the heights
were only different by a half-inch or so. So, we just lifted the
shaft up until it slid into the stand and rolled the stand back until the
engine was out of the truck. Like we said before, we must have been
living right.
So dear friends, this brings to an end the story of how we obtained our spare engine. In the next installment, we'll have a lot more photos and will go into the tear down. We hope you enjoyed the story even if it is not technical. We managed to get the engine and get it home and on a stand without killing anybody or dropping the engine. Not a bad way to start.
Check back soon for the next installment.
Copyright George D. Roffe 1998