Build a V8 240SX in 24 Hours?

http://mouseattack.org/pics/240V8/24...r/shell_02.jpg

I’m sure some of you may have seen the V8 240SX I built last year (the one with the silly scoop). I have decided to do another V8 swap, but this time to do it as a challenge in 24 hours. We will be making a FREE video of the swap (hopefully both entertaining and instructional), which will be released in early March. And as if doing the swap wasn’t tough enough, we added a few things to the challenge to make it even tougher:

- At the end of the 24 hours the car will be brought out as-is and will race other modded 240SXs (stock engine, sr20, and possibly an R34 skyline). There will be both a drag race and a short circuit or touge style race.
- In addition to the engine swap the car will be completely transformed! This includes suspension, brakes, interior, cage, and a new paintjob.
- Besides myself there will only be a crew of 3, and we will not be using a kit, templates, or any pre-made parts for the swap.

So place your bets now! It all starts this Sunday at 10am. If anyone has any questions or ideas of other interesting challenges let me know!

http://mouseattack.org/pics/240V8/24...r/shell_03.jpg
http://mouseattack.org/pics/240V8/24...r/shell_04.jpg

Are you making it mid-engined, as referenced in the second photo?

Can't wait! This will be awesome. I saved every single picture of your other V8 240 I could find and show it to my friends all the time haha.

I doubt you could make it mid-engine in 24 hours. I've seen the mid-engine Integra, but that was a lot of custom work/fab.

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Originally Posted by 4W4K3

Can't wait! This will be awesome. I saved every single picture of your other V8 240 I could find and show it to my friends all the time haha.

I doubt you could make it mid-engine in 24 hours. I've seen the mid-engine Integra, but that was a lot of custom work/fab.

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Hey thanks for the kind words! You might want to redownload the pics as I just got photoshop (well actually I just learned more about it) and I tweaked all the pics of the black car a few days ago (www.mouseattack.org). No the car isn't going to be midengined, that would be awesome though.

Day 1 of the swap is this sunday February 10th in Fort Worth, Texas at Baily's Hyperformance Factory who have partnered with me for this event. At the end of day one we should have the engine and tranny mounted and running and are having a meet/tech day and car show. So come by to see the car fire up, have any swap questions answered, and see everything in person (including me possible having a nervous breakdown and killing ownerizer). If you’ve ever considered doing anything more than a ‘bolt-on’ engine swap this is not an event to miss.

Meet/TechDay/Carshow
February 10th 2008
Starting at 7:00pm
Baily's Hyperformance Factory
1200 S Blue Mound Rd. St 200 (behind subway)
Saginaw TX, 76131

Update- Sunday was epic! During the morning/afternoon a few things went wrong like running out of welding gas, and we ended up completely changing the engine mount design halfway through. But by 6 oclock (ish) the mounts were done and the engine was ready to be dropped in. Unfortunately we had to notch the motor mounts and headers for clearance and then when we got the engine in the firewall is an inch or so forward compared to the S14 so the distributor WOULD NOT fit. Off comes the carb and out comes the ‘engineering hammer’ to re-engineer the firewall… problem solved. By then it’s around 7pm and there is a decent sized crowd watching so the pressure was on for us to get this thing running by 8. We get it wired up and try to start it. The engine turns over… barely. We try it for another 10-20 times… the same thing. We tried different grounds, we tried using a batter charger for a jump, the motor wouldn’t give us more than a budge. At this point it was around 7:15 and we were pretty certain the starter was bad so we pulled it off to look it over and found a random wire grounding out on the body, problem solved… or so we though. By now it’s 7:30 and the pressure is on! We put the starter back in and eagerly cranked it… it still just budged. We had a bad starter… Desperate, frantic, pleading calls were made to auto parts stores but it was 15 till 8 and there was no time to buy another starter and get it installed in time.

We were sunk… After a few minutes of pacing around in disbelief I went to the crowd and let them know we had a bad starter and that we weren’t going to be able to meet the deadline. I felt like crap as some of these people had been watching us for hours. I had one last idea to double up a second set of jumper cables to get more juice… It worked! The car cranked and cranked but didn’t fire. There was no spark. At this point it had to be about 5 minutes till and we all were in ultra-super-panic mode. We disassembled the distributor, got crazy with the multimeter, but there was no apparent problem, the only theory was the connectors weren’t seating properly. We reassembled it and cranked the engine and there was a pop… a GLORIOUS pop… then literally 15 seconds to 8 the engine started with a roar! We couldn’t have planned an ending like that if we tried…

So next week it’s time to get the car finished! I’m ordering the axle and clutch line parts tomorrow. And I got in the scoop/cowl today and I think you guys are going to like it. We actually started late so getting the engine in and running (along with a lot of small stuff like the suspension install) only took 9 hours.

A few pics are up on my site: www.mouseattack.org

Update- The car is finished, we did the track day, and now I’m working on the video. The track day was tough… The car had a few mechanical problems and at one point the car was even on fire! But nothing was bad enough that we couldn’t compete. The competition consisted of a time attack on a 1+ mile course and a drag race and while I don’t want to spoil the ending before the video I can say that neither race went ANYTHING like I expected.

I should have a teaser video up in a few days. Until then I here are a few pics of the car:
http://mouseattack.org/pics/240V8/24...r/hanger01.jpg
http://mouseattack.org/pics/240V8/24...r/hanger03.jpg
http://mouseattack.org/pics/240V8/24...r/hanger05.jpg
More pics here: www.mouseattack.org

http://mouseattack.org/pics/240V8/24...r/hanger05.jpg


You need a Knight Rider style light bar!

Yeah... here it is.

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Originally Posted by black roadster

You need a Knight Rider style light bar!

Yeah... here it is.

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Eye-catching visual display makes vehicle easier to see in bad weather

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Yeah, I'm sure bad weather visibility is the top reason people buy this! :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by black roadster

You need a Knight Rider style light bar!

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Glad I wasn't the only one to think that... ;)

You need to let me drive it.

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Originally Posted by ken o

You need to let me drive it.

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You bored with the new Miata already? ::Bleh::

Ok the teaser video is done!
www.mouseattack.org/240sx2video.htm
Right now the video is hosted on veoh which I'm using because they let you download the original high-res version (with registration). Keeping the quality high is really important to me especially for the main video (which will be coming soon). I haven't don't anything like this before so let me know if there are any playback problems. And any feedback for the main video would be appreciated...

Very cool!

Looking forward to the results.....