This sure is a familiar sight. I've pulled so many engines out of this car, I can do it in about 10 minutes now. Hopefully, I won't have to do this again for a long time.


There's the engine. It sure is cute. Er... manly.


Old flywheel ring gear.


New flywheel ring gear.


Old flywheel ring gear.


New flywheel ring gear.

That old ring gear didn't look that bad when I first installed it. I'm sure that it was caused by a combination of a worn starter and not having the starter properly engaged when I ran it a few times (the bottom bolt wasn't tightened, causing it to wobble). I'm going to get a new starter for sure.


I previously had a custom driver-side engine mount on the car. The block originally came from a 1982 200sx (Z22e engine) -- a fuel injected engine that needed to be tilted the opposite direction as the L-series engine. The block is pretty much identical to the L-series block, and since I'm using the block without the EFI gear, I need to tilt it back in the L-series fashion.


Here's the fabricated mount I was using. It's a bit rough, but it worked. I believe the new mount will actually drop the engine a few inches (which is good), but it might require me to tweak the gear shifter in order to deal with the 15-degree tilt of the z-series transmission. Alternatively, I could see if I could find an L-series transmission and swap the bell housing out. Seems like it'd be easier to tweak the gear shifter, though.