Also actually, on the belt routing front, some VW engines use a very very small pulley on the timing belt run, definitely smaller than 50mm so that could be worth investigating if you need a tiny pulley.
Ah excellent, thank you! I knew I had seen smaller pulleys somewhere. Google suggests 1.9 TDI cambelt idlers would be the ideal candidate.
First on the list was the spigot bearing. The Micra doesn’t run a spigot bearing at all but luckily the crankshaft is counterbored. I can only imagine that this was for manufacturing because it isn’t just roughed out. The size is consistent to a knat’s between both engines I have. When accounting for the spacer plate there isn’t a lot of input shaft engagement in the crankshaft so I went for a top-hat arrangement in phosphor bronze. An Oilite bushing or a roller bearing would have been a nice touch but there isn’t enough wall thickness for a carrier. I don’t intend to sit in a lot of traffic in this car so I confident the bronze will be fine.
Big bit of metal
Fractionally smaller bit of metal
Added lightness
And a speed hole for good measure
It’s definitely a thing
And it even fits. I went for a 2 thou tap fit.
The problem I have now is the front cross member. For some reason I didn’t take this into account when designing the mounts etc which has left me with very little clearance for the crank pulley. With the pulley cut down it will fit but I will have to trim down the bolt as well. This leaves me with no space for a trigger wheel if I am to keep the factory timing marks on the pulley.
My thoughts are currently leaning towards ditching the Megajolt in favour of another standalone ignition ECU that can utilise the 60-2 trigger already machined into the flywheel from the factory. I am running a Motorsport Electronics ME221 on my supercharger MX5 daily and am very happy with it so am considering their NODIZ system but am also tempted by the much more financially friendly Speedunio. Failing that I also rather like the idea of a belt driven distributor, Cosworth BDC injection style!
So some fairly major steps have been taken over the last two days!
I took Friday off work because of life / house stuff etc needing doing and was blessed with good weather so pushed the Midget out and finished the last few jobs needed to pull the old engine. My good buddy drdantastic then came by with an engine crane and this happened…
This revealed an unbelievable amount of road muck, oil, lost fasteners and a large spec crying out for some Nissan goodness. So we obliged…
The mounts are prototypes from a potential production supplier if there is any demand for the kit. I am very pleased the quality and the price is good.
Today was spent pulling the old gearbox and readying the new engine and box for fitting. This was pretty successful which everything fitting. We were also able to check that the starter was engaging properly but were ultimately defeated by the clutch release. I had made a mistake with the basic conversion using the original fork which meant that it wasn’t engaging properly so we didn’t get to fit the engine and called it a day.
I am tied up with birthdays, family visits and life stuff for the next few weekends but should be able to fit the engine fairly soon, hopefully looking a bit like this…
Very interesting to see this - there is a big gap in the market for a basic RWD A-series replacement and I too was thinking Micra / Jimny. A rusty old 1275 is £500 + £1200 for a rebuild then it still has to be fitted. You can buy a complete running Micra for £300. A ribbed gearbox with hardened halfshafts and front disc brakes should handle 80bhp. I don't want all the hassle and modifications of fitting MX5 or Zetec power. And of cause the expense. My car is a Morris Minor - I'd be very interested if you were to sell the conversion parts needed to mount the engine to gearbox.
Well an update is now well overdue on this project.
Since the last post I have been slowly working away at sorting out the little bits and pieces that I wasn't happy with to make the conversion as simple as possible. As I said early on it is my intention to get this to the stage that it could be sold as a kit so I am having to work a little harder to keep the number of custom or modified parts to a minimum and design them so they can be either made cheaply or very easily with basic tools.
First up is the clutch release bearing, the idea shamelessly aping kevins setup but with a Ford slave.
This is a laser cut ally plate sat on risers which replace the nuts holding the front cover on.
This adaptor bolts in place of the original slave cylinder and accepts the original pipework. The bleed screw is also in the original position.
Due to a lack of clearance front and back it is not possible to run the original Nissan distributor or fit a 36-1 trigger wheel to the crankshaft damper for Megajolt so I have put a trigger wheel on the adaptor plate. Handily the facelift CG flywheel has a 60-2 tooth pattern built in which will work with most ignition ECUs. I will probably be going with Nodiz.
A little more had to be cut from the bellhousing but the sensor can be replaced in the car.
And a belt route was decided upon which gives decent wrap around all of the wheels.
There is now a dummy engine sat in the car with some very motivating GSXR600 SRAD carbs bolted on for good measure. The standard Nissan manifold does fit as well. And yes, the bonnet does fit!
The next hurdles to overcome are the cooling system and sump clearance. I somehow managed to completely miss the lower cross member when designing the parts, which is completely and utterly in the way of the sump! At least it is steel and easy to mod.
The first hurdle was the sump and oil pickup clearance. I had completely missed the fact that the sump and oil pickup pipe share the same space as the front cross member. Cutting the car is out of the question.
As can be seen above, the standard oil pickup travels down vertically from the pump before moving back. It is attached to the pump with a flange. Unfortunately the pump inlet hangs a long way below the crank centre line leaving only around 35mm of clearance between the pump and cross member. This meant that even with a very tight radius bend it would be impossible to retain the original style of pickup. Other options considered included over-boring and tapping the pump inlet to accept a banjo bolt but this was rejected because I didn’t want to modify the pump if avoidable and was concerned about flow loss in the banjo.
Thankfully I have a complete spare CG13 in the shed for mocking up. Less luckily, I forgot it was full of oil before turning it upside down to take the sump off…
I ended up roughly CADing the bottom end (phasing) before having a prototype part 3D printed by Champion 3D for trial fitting before committing anything to metal.
Happy with the design I gave my wallet a good kicking and ordered some CNC bent pipes in steel.
These were made by Lister Tube and are extremely good quality. Even as a one-off I was pleased with the price but as so much cost is in set up and I am still hoping to sell these kits if I ever finish the design I felt it made sense to have a small batch made up.
I then made up a crude jig for tacking the assembly together with the MIG before silver soldering. For the first off I reused the Nissan support bracket.
Finished assembly.
The sump was a pretty simple affair…
Scribe
Carefully cut with the grinder and drill out the two spot welds at the front
Trim the baffle
CAD
Cut
And weld. I then filled the sump with water to find leaks, ground them back and re welded.
Grind and weld and water test and weld and grind and weld and test and weld and test and grind and weld and test and test and weld and grind until...
I then cleaned it out as best I could with petrol and thinners before giving it a final rinse in the dishwasher.
The Nissan sump is made of good thick steel so welds nicely. I took my time welding and didn’t get any warping.
More to follow shortly…
James
Last Edit: Apr 12, 2020 15:29:04 GMT by metroman: More images added
For the exhaust I didn’t fancy taking the easy route of using the original cast manifold for a number of reasons:
It is not pretty, at all It is really not good for flow It is heavy
Instead I did some more CAD and ordered some mandrel bends from eBay to use with anything that can be reused from a very cheap 106 tubular manifold (also eBay).
Fabricators and welders, please look away now
The plan. I have tried to keep the runner lengths as equal as possible. The runners are almost certainly too large for the engine but were chosen to match the collector I had.
I split the collector just below the welds so I could weld the inside before welding it back together
This really stretched my abilities with a mixture of wall thickness, mild and stainless steel and some tricky angles. It is far from professional but will hopefully be functional.
Next I moved onto making up and downpipe and exhaust from an old 1 5/8” stainless Morris Minor system I had been gifted by nevskills532
Due to a lack of material this was the only option…
There is not very much space under the floor for an exhaust. I have designed the downpipe so that when funds allow I can replace the Corona Cannon with a proper Maniflow system further down the line. One more job off the list…
Along side the big and exciting bits I have been pushing on with all the little bits that are needed, both for the conversion and for maintaining a car this old.
First up was the fuel system. The car had been fitted with a Facet pump and new fuel tank a few years ago but both were causing problems. The pump was running directly from the ignition with no fuse and was mounted high on the inner wing. The fuse issue is obvious, however these pumps are meant to ‘push’ rather than ‘pull’ fuel and so should be mounted as close to the tank as possible, ideally below the fuel level.
I opted to mount the pump on the heel board in front of the rear axle where it is nicely out of the way.
While pocking around I found the original steel fuel lines to be quite corroded under the underseal with a pinhole near the tank. It wasn’t enough to leak but enough to be moist. Mmm, moist. I decided to drop the tank, replace all the fuel lines and also sort the non-functioning fuel gauge.
The hard lines were remade in Kunifer and the very sorry looking fitting tidied up on my newly acquired Amolco mill
The fuel gauge issue turned out to be a bad earth on the sender which was fixed with a dedicated earth strap.
Hurray.
I then cleaned over 5 decades of grime off the prop shaft and re-greased the nipples. Interestingly the shaft does not appear to have ever been painted and has almost no rust. There are benefits to total loss oil systems!
I made a big bit of metal smaller
And used it for mounting the top belt idler
Before moving onto wiring in the Nodiz ignition system
This was remarkably painless. I am running a Ford coil pack and crank sensor and will initially run a very basic 2D map. The Nodiz does support TPS and MAP sensors but I am keeping things simple. The ECU is held on with Velcro under the dashboard.
I also made a loom for the alternator. All the wiring for the ECU etc is completely standalone. I haven’t cut or modified any of the original wiring. This should make fault finding easier, improve reliability because I am not using very old connections and makes all the changes completely reversible.
Some parts got painted and I carried out a full trial fit on the dummy engine.
With plenty of work complete the next stage was the exciting one, third time lucky?
The ‘proper’ engine was tipped onto its nose so I could swap the sump and oil pickup. This was surprising easy to do on the floor.
There is nothing fragile on the front of the engine and it is actually very stable like this!
The pickup was fitted with plenty of Wellseal on the sealing faces.
A special crank bolt was also fitted, this is necessary to clear the front cross member. I put a fair bit of work into ensuring the material used matches that of the original bolt so the correct torque can be applied.
With that out of the way and the dummy engine removed there was nothing for it but to bring out the crane!
And it’s in
The alternator will need to be swapped out for a later one which is shorter and all ally. The exhaust will also be heat wrapped.
With everything bolted on and the base timing set on the ECU there was nothing left but to turn the key pull the starter…
First. Time. That has never happened before in my life!
Cool little project this. I like the progression of it being a vaguely A series based engine.
I helped a mate put a cg13 into a k10 micra on bike carbs a few years back(possibly the same ones you’ve used, they were off a 600) I made him the manifold and an adapter to use the k10 dizzy, but that would be right in the way for you. I think it made 115hp on the rollers.
Thanks Dez, I tried really hard to find a way to run a distributor as it would be far more in keeping and would have saved a fair bit of cash. I looked at everything from angle drives to belt driven setups but couldn't find an elegant way to make it happen without removing or modifying the heater.
Thanks Dez, I tried really hard to find a way to run a distributor as it would be far more in keeping and would have saved a fair bit of cash. I looked at everything from angle drives to belt driven setups but couldn't find an elegant way to make it happen without removing or modifying the heater.
James
I suppose you could have moved the battery out back, and moved the head box rearwards a bit to fit it in, but I think I would still have looked kinda wrong on a rwd setup. Using the pre-existing trigger wheel setup is a much cleaner looking option.
Personally I’d now go through the engine bay and hide/tidy up as much stuff as possible, to really emphasise the engine.
Very smart little swap that. I ditched the ageing/asmathic/leaky/underpowered A series from my first car, a 68 mini. Replaced it with a 1.6 8valve c16se vauxhall engine. Similar power output to this I'd imagine but at the time (15 years ago) people weren't using the Micra engines and the vauxhall was a well trodden path.
