Nissan Silvia S15

Engine Rebuild Revisited

Once bitten - twice crazy :)

To cut a long story short, this is my second attempt at improving the power of my Silvia through an engine swap. The first time I paid a guy in Australia who was a seller on NissanSilvia.Com, various skyline forums and had pretty good feedback on ebay. I had bought parts from him in the past successfully and sent him a large chunk of money to build me a monster (2.4L stroked SR20DET with fully ported cylinder heads etc). I received a lot of photos of 'the engine in process' as shown below - looked really nice and I was excited.

The engine block - sleeved and rebored to 91mm (stock 86mm)

A closer look at the sleeves

Combustion chambers opened up

Intake and exhaust ports

1mm oversize valves

Unfortunately - for reasons unknown - the guy just stopped communicating just when we were ready for shipping, leaving me out a huge amount of money (as you can imagine) and without an engine. For the record the guy posted online as 'roguepi' and he gave his name as Mark Lee who's email was Roguepi@tpg.com.au from North Rocks in New South Wales. If anyone knows what happened to him - please let me know as I am still gutted by this.

To add insult to injury I had also sent him some parts I had here (coil packs, CAS, Adjustable Cam Sprockets, Injectors, etc..) so that was money also down the tube. This actually put my Silvia project on hold for almost three years while I recouped the money to reinvest in the project.

So - what now?

Well - I have decided to be a bit more conservative and to do things closer to home. There are now a few trustworthy tuners here in Moscow and I am working with my new friend Evgenniy from Alpina Service (www.alpina-service.ru). I actually first met him while working on one of my other project cars and saw the amazing engine work he had done for Subaru's and BMWs. Evgenniy is a real professional and will take responsibility for the machine work for the block and head.

I obtained a new engine from a wrecked S15 in Japan which seems to be in good condition (although it will be totally rebuilt anyway) and picked it up from where it was being stored at my cousin Lesha's garage in my pickup (thanks to Lesha for storage and to Andrey, Maksim and Vladimir for helping me lift it.)

The same evening I stripped the engine and took the head off for the following work:

• Port match and polish the cylinder head ports with the intake and exhaust manifold (leaving a 1.5mm step on the bottom of the exhaust side to subdue reversion - i.e. the exhaust port on the head is smaller than the ). The intake manifold is from Ku Engineering and a masterpiece to behold.
• Open up combustion chambers and reduce squish zone
• Install 1mm oversize Brian Crower stainless steel valves and cut a 3 angle seat
• Install new bronze valve guides and seals
• Install Ferrea valve spring seats, dual valve springs and titanium retainers
• Install Camshafts (HKS step 1 256deg intake, 264deg exhaust)
• Install Rocker Arm stoppers

Pictures to follow shortly.