Project 350Z: Building a New Engine Part 3
In our last edition of Project 350Z we started to assemble our VQ35DE and got the bottom end pretty much done. Now we finish off our engine and take it to Church Automotive Testing to get our factory ECU tuned using the UpRev Osiris tuning package.
As we have stated before, our goals are not to build the most powerful NA VQ35DE but simply to freshen up our car’s engine which had seen many street and track miles, making it good for more track beating. We also wanted to address early VQ35DE weak areas such as the oil pump and rod bolts and overall rod strength. If we could get a little more power at the same time, that would be great.
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Our stock heads were in pretty good condition so we sent them out to have a three angle valve job with just a light touch up to the seats. Since we are not really going for big power, we didn’t bother with headwork. If we were going to do big power, we would have went to the later VQ35HR heads which flow much better.
We reassembled the heads using our previous Jim Wolf Technology valve springs, the stock valves and decided to use genuine Nissan lightweight alloy DLC buckets from a late model engine. The DLC buckets should work great with our WPC treated camshafts. Like the valves, our valve guides were in real good shape and didn’t need replacement.
As you can see our valves are still sitting high on the seats even after the valve job. There is plenty of wear left to go here and the flow should still be fine. When the valves get thin in the margins and sunk down into the combustion chamber, you have to start thinking about slightly oversize valves or even new seats.
The heads were placed on our completed block and torqued down. With ARP studs we could use a higher tightening torque. With our newer VQ35HR gaskets with improved cylinder seal and water flow path, we figure this will be bulletproof.
