Will do an update going based on the images I have and what was last posted here. May miss a few bits but will edit later if I need to.
So after finding out the hard way that the V6 chassis width etc is different to the 4 cylinders I found myself in a situation where the engine didn’t wanna fit with enough room left up front for a sufficient cooling package. Intercooler and radiator with fan and shroud needed at least 12” of its own real estate based on the measurements I got from the suppliers. This mean the engine had to go back even more than I originally thought which would cause firewall to bell housing clearance issues. So to combat this means I had to lower the engine more in addition to pushing it back into the engine bay. Lowering the engine meant engine to differential clearance will become an issue as well so it took lots of fiddling with suspension design, diff placement etc but getting the engine where it needs to be is most important. After this was finalized I took my cardboard engine mounts design onto CAD and got the design done out and bent in steel
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Ordered the intercooler, which essentially is two intercoolers welded together and was originally designed for a twin turbo Nissan, but fits perfectly in between the headlights and body structure of a Vitara and has enough cooling area to handle my initial 4-500hp goal. Well almost fits perfectly as I had to do some cutting to the back of the grille and removable cross beam area above the grille to get it to fit forward enough to leave enough room for the radiator package to clear the engine. But once everything is fitted, no one can see where the cutting was done. The intercooler two outlets will need to be modified slightly to point in the area of my throttle bodies for my application.
Originally was going to use a 22x13 dual pass radiator kit with a dual pass oil cooler mounted on top of the radiator. So with those dimensions I mocked up everything out of card board boxes to ensure it would all work like how I had in mind.
but after some further thought I ended up ditching the oil cooler idea and try maximizing the space for all radiator which ended up being a 22x16x3” unit which Ron Davis has as an off the shelf piece with fan and shroud kit included. For keeping the oil cool I would run a 3 Gallon Oil tank for the dry sump, hopefully this massive quantity of oil and the use off a cooler water sprayer kit will keep everything cool. If not I’ll have to revisit cooling when that time comes. Above you can also see how limited space is between the engine and what would be the radiator without a fan or shroud. Engine must go back more.
and since we are on the dry sump topic
Aviaid 3 stage oil pump was purchased in case it was needed when fitting the engine for clearance purposes. This will be going in the area where the AC compressor once lived and will drive off of a modified J18 crank pulley and mandrel. I wanted at least 4 or maybe 5 stages to have a minimum or 3 scavenge stages but the engine mount bracket got into the way of anything longer than a 3 stage so I opted to use one for now. If I do end up needing more scavenging I’ll custom make a engine mount bracket in the future for a bigger pump, but for now this should work. I have to take the pulley to a machine guy to get the work done as when I was scheduled to do it, the Ronies virus took over the world and everything went to a halt.
24 tooth crank drive gear will be used after calculating optimum oil pump speed based on my engine rpm range.
Now with advanced technology being more available and prices dropping to being more affordable, I had no reason to not jump onto the bandwagon and get all up to date electronics for my build. So after months of research of what’s available and what I need to do what I would like to do, I ended up choosing ECUMaster as my new brand of electronics as they are one of the very few companies who offer products to provide a full vehicle electronics package at a price no one else can match, and capabilities to be on par with some of the more costly competitors. So I dropped the ball and purchased an EMU Black (ECU), ADU5 (digital dash), PDM16AS (power distribution module. No more fuses or relays. It’s all done solid state electronically in this box with logic), EGT to CAN module (8 EGT inputs for individual cylinder monitoring and trimming), Battery isolator (electronically controlled kill switch with diagnostics), EDL-1(SD card data logger with Bluetooth), 12 button CAN keypad and USB-CAN module ( to communicate with all the above with only one cable to the laptop).
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A general pic of some of what’s listed above to give an idea as I don’t have a pic with all my bits together
So after going with an ecu which can control 1 DBW throttle and the two cable driven throttles seem like it was more effort than it was worth to get them to work together off on throttle pedal cable, getting a DBW throttle to fit was next on my agenda which allows all the fun strategies (Turbo Antilag for example 😁) it made more sense for me to do a DBW throttle now and be done. I was going to use a BMW DBW actuator and adapted it to my existing cable throttle but again was still more effort than it was worth so I ditched the cable throttle and went with a 60mm Bosch DBW unit. Being there were a few used ones I can grab locally, this I did and spent the money instead on figuring out the best way to adapt it to my intake manifold.
here it is with a weld flange I purchased.
plan now was to flip the intake manifold back to it’s original orientation and fabricate a Y-pipe (or W pipe) to merge the two plenums to one so they’ll both feed from same throttle body like it’s done stock.
since I’m on electronics, also ordered a steering wheel button kit. Since I’ll no longer be using the combo switch for indicators and headlights etc, this kit mounts to a racing steering wheel so you can retain having access to these functions without having to take your hands off the steering wheel.
here is a pic of how one looks installed
