Trucky-chan KA-T 620 project

[UnderControl]

After a handful of test beads I decided I'm a professional quality aluminum welder and got the BOV flange welded on. OK, so maybe not pro quality, but functional, and that's really all I'm shooting for out of my first real attempt. Any way, tight space is tight.

 

 

Just waiting on a coupler to finish up the air intake and one more flange to weld on before all of the IC piping is done.

[]2eDeYe]

It's funny how well everything fits when components are still loose. Now that the turbo housings and hoses are tightly secured it's kind of a bitch to get it in place. I ended up having to remove most of the studs from the exhaust side of the head in order to get the unit slid into place. I'll be replacing these studs with bolts.

 

 

 

 

This is why I always recommend installing all the mount hardware loosely when doing the KA swap, once you lock something down it's not moving. Still get's me doing assemblies from time to time.  :lol: 

 

[UnderControl]

Sadly there is no way to tighten the housing and fittings with the turbo in place. All part of the game when you're putting things where they don't belong.

[UnderControl]

Needed a place to secure all the hoses I have going around the front of the engine these days. So I made a little bracket.

 

 

 

Just needs a few holes and some paint.

[UnderControl]

Now just needs paint.

 

 

Edit for paint.

 

[Volition73]

That mount is awesome man, wanna make another? :D

[UnderControl]

Thanks, I'm a little more proud of that bracket than I should be. I should have made a template off of the finished product before installing it, but I didn't so will probably be a while before I think about making anymore.

 

In other news, while waiting for paint to dry I got to work figuring out how to handle this turn signal issue.  Not sure how I feel about it at the moment. while its a functional solution it doesn't really flow well with the rest of the styling on the truck.

 

 

 

Ignore the slight unlevelness, this was just a quick mock up.

[petercscherer]

Hmmm, not a fan of having it pointing downwards... Probably is still pretty visible.

[UnderControl]

Changed my mind and went back to my original plan for the signals.

 

 

The bummer will be going black and so will the lights. Now I just have to decide if I'm going to put the stock lenses back in or make panels to close them up.

[sebpv]

panels

[]2eDeYe]

Smooth the old holes away or use them for air ducting.  

[UnderControl]

I'm pretty happy with my first shaved bumper. Particularly considering how bent up it was before.

 

 

It will get a thin skimming of filler to smooth out the remaining dimples from hammering then paint.

[UnderControl]

Finished up the new mounting tabs for the bumper. I've welded 1/8" bar to the bumper that passes through the front bar with nuts welded to them.  I added some some bar to the top of the front bar to help support the extra load.

 

 

The new intake moved the water outlet a little lower and a little closer to the inlet on the radiator so I had to modify the hose a bit. I had previously had a sending unit adapter, but I no longer need that since the megasquirt will be controlling the fan.

 

 

Got the mud laid on the bumper and will start sanding tomorrow.  Also started on the modifications to the front fascia and found a good size hole that had previously been filled with body filler, good thing I'm going to be making patch panels for it anyway.

 

 

Painted the intercooler end tanks to help make it less noticeable and because I don't like shiny polished metal.

 

[UnderControl]

After a couple of hours I remembered why I don't do body work.

 

 

I don't have the patience to do another lighter skim so I'll either go heavy on the filler primer and give it another quick sand or I'll say fuck it and just put color on over the coat of sealer it has now. Sadly even if I just paint it as is it'll be the smoothest panel on the truck.

[UnderControl]

Every once in a while you come across a pretty good idea on the internet. I came across one just the other day. 

 

In the process of making intercooler pipes actually fit several of them had to be cut and with that lose the nice bead rolled ends. Bead rollers are kinda expensive and I'm kinda cheap so I needed a way to get a bead back on the pipes without paying someone.

 

A $6 trip to Hazard Fraught later.

 

 

 

 

At first the throat on the crimper was crushing the edge of the pipes so I slapped it on the bandsaw to open it up a bit. Over all I think the beads turned out pretty decent and if I were the type to care about something unseen being perfect hitting the pipe with a wire wheel on the grinder should smooth it out nicely.

[UnderControl]

Black bumper is black.

 

 

[76Lil Hustler]

One day I hope to be this good. it looks awesome, you took what shouldn't exactly fit and made it look damn good. jealous.

[UnderControl]

Now there's someone who knows how to inflate an ego.  Maybe I should stop fixing my image links before I get to my early work on this truck.  I will say this truck has taught me a lot over the years, which is exactly what I had hoped for out of it.

 

Not much to report since my last. I made patch panels for the old turn signal holes and have been having fun trying to find an amperage on the welder high enough to make a puddle and low enough to not punch holes in the old sheet metal (harder than it might sound).  Found out that the s13 TPS fits on the Q45 throttle body which simplifies the wiring aspect there. And I've been working on buttoning up the last couple of wires on the engine harness.

 

Pics fixed back to page 6 (roughly the start of the KA swap).

[76Lil Hustler]

this build made me decide to put a KA in my 620. when I can afford it. this thread will help endlessly. to page 6!!

[UnderControl]

The best advice I can give is plan everything out and double whatever budget you think you're going to need. Its easy to price out all of the obvious stuff, but the little things that pop up will nickle and dime you to death. At a certain point I quit keeping track of what all I have in the swap and now the boost builds we'll just say that its worth a lot more in parts as it is whole.

[]2eDeYe]

That bumper turned out nice :cool:

[UnderControl]

I'm pretty happy with it. I'm actually considering not tinting the lights now since I think it looks pretty good as is.

 

In an effort to try to take this thing to a local Datsun meet on Sunday I've dropped the remaining body work to focus on actually getting it running. To that end the engine harness is now pretty much all loomed up. Just have to figure out how I'm going to secure it up out of the way.

 

[UnderControl]

Thrash time.

 

New throttle cable is made and in. This time I went with a build your own motorcycle cable. Also whipped up a bracket to mount the vacuum manifold and got all of the hoses run.

 

 

Managed to get the harness secured pretty well out of sight.

 

 

Exhaust is all back on, everything that came off is torqued or filled with fluids.

 

This morning I'll be doing a test of all the electric and hooking up the ecu and modifying the configuration for the new coils and larger injectors. Then hopefully it will fire right up and I can start working on a tune.

[76Lil Hustler]

So when your done your gonna help me swap my truck eh? eh? :D what would you call this a 5k budget? probably double for a guy like me cause I could not possibly do half the shit your doing. not yet at least.

 

when your done you gotta put a few photos on the truck porn thread, just saying.

 

*update, just found two KA24DE engines. comes with a ECU and harness...

 

I bet I can do a swap just by following your build. more basic though.

[UnderControl]

5k is probably a pretty reasonable budget for a stock KA swap. My swap is a bad example for the budget minded since I built everything to be able to support 400whp.

 

I prefer to post in amateur truck porn aka pic of your truck.

 

There are really only 2-3 things that go beyond basic wrenching ability for this swap. Making an exhaust, shortening the drive shaft and in the event you go with a KA transmission modifying the xmember to fit. As I recall there are transmissions that will bolt up to both the KA and the stock xmember, but I don't remember what they are. Redeye can chime in if he likes or I know the options are listed in probably several threads these days.

 

As for the update from this weekend. I finally had everything buttoned up enough to turn the key around 7pm on saturday...no power to the ecu...sad panda. I'm also only getting power to the gauges with the key in the start position so I'll need to pull the loom apart at the ign switch and make sure I didn't mix up the start/run wires. Lights, wipers and blower motor work so that's good at least.