The RB20DET.
Our main source for a lot of things will be eBay. Some of the best deals can be found there. When shopping for an engine on eBay you have to really do your homework. This auction is a "Buy it Now" which means no bidding, just click to order. You have to read the ad carefully because it's very common for them to price it like this, but not include a transmission or the ECU. A good ad will include the following.
- Complete Engine with accessories (turbo, manifolds, fuel rail, injectors, P/S and A/C pumps, belts)
- Transmission, preferably still attached (that tells us this engine and transmission came from the same car, not pieced together at a junkyard.).
- Since the transmission is still on, we can assume we have a clutch and flywheel. Also look for a shifter on that transmission. Great if it's there, but not a deal breaker.
- UNCUT wiring harness.
- ECU
- Ignitor
This is about the going rate, so for $1600 we can have a complete motor set shipped to us. This is about 80% of what we need to have a running driving sports car.
All the RB's are either a front sump oil pan or are setup for all wheel drive and have a front differential in the oil pan. All RB's need a rear sump oil pan.
So add $500 to every RB we decide to use. These are all custom made. There is a factory Nissan pan that works, but it's been out of production for about 15 years. If we stumble across a good one, we'll jump on it.
So we're up to $2100 but our RB20 can be fully mounted in our chassis.
Wait! Before the motor goes in, there's some things we need to do to prep the motor for our chassis.
- Figure about $500 in timing belt, spark plugs, water pump and gaskets to make sure our engine is going to be maintenance free for a while. During this step we will remove the valve covers to check for sludge, and to paint the valve covers to match the car.
- Power steering pump and lines will need to be removed, along with the A/C pump.
- Re-route vacuum lines and wiring to clean up the overall appearance of our engine.
So we're up to $2600. The only thing left to get our car running (aside from a fuel system, which is a whole separate issue) is an intercooler.
The interest of keeping the pipe length to a minimum our intercooler would have inlet and outlet on the same side, which is a little unusual. Cost? About $150 for the intercooler and another $150 for the pipes and connectors.
So that puts us at $2900 for a running and driving RB20DET.
In order to make more power though, we need to tweak some things.
A Boost controller ($200) will allow us to turn up the pressure, but we don't want to do that on our RB20 turbo because it has a glass compressor wheel and too much pressure will cause it to shatter and spit glass out the tailpipe.
So we replace the turbo with a RB25 turbocharger ($200-300 used on eBay) and we retain our RB20 wastegate. This combination allows us to push 14psi instead of 10psi and on a better compressor wheel. Our fuel system will include an adjustable fuel pressure regulator so with a little fiddling we should be able to get to about 250hp at the wheels. In order to hit 300hp or more at the wheels, we would have to invest in an aftermarket turbo and manifold, and bigger fuel injectors. More importantly we would have to get into engine management which means a lot of money. Most EMS kits are around $1300-1700 and require dyno tuning to really dial them in.
So what's our total for a running RB20DET? $3500-$4000 to start and we would be working towards our goal in steps. The good news, it's only one big purchase and a bunch of medium and little purchases.
Next time we look at the RB25DET and see how different our planning needs to be for a measly 500cc and 40 more horse power.
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