hoohaa

Did you take more pictures of your progress? I would love to see an in-depth how-to article on this!

If cheap gears were made available for the H233b I would say that more folks (nissan and non-nissan) would use this axle in general. It's a super tough axle, but since gears are so steep for it no one can afford to use it when there are Dana 60s out there with cheap gears and lockers. I would have purchased a set of gears without a second thought at $200 for the H233b. I know at least five people in my club (TNT) would have purchased gears as well. It would take time for the word to get out, but once it did I bet the H233b would start to appear in more non-nissan vehicles.

A heatshield would be necessary. It could be something pretty simple though, just to block radiant heat from the back of the headlight. A watercooled turbo would also be ideal to keep temps down as well.

I'd think mild steel manifolds would be around $100 less than stainless, maybe even less than that. I'm still planning and rebuilding a VG30 for the project, so the manifolds are a way off still. I'm thinking there probably wouldn't be a market for anything like this for the Pathfinder unless I offered a complete kit, but that's way more work than I have the time to do.

Boost level.... How high do you want to go? Plop a huge turbo on the manifold and your truck can be pushing 600 HP with the right injectors, cams, heads, and bottom end. I would, of course, recommend a smallish turbo for a truck application to give more usable boost throughout the powerband. An HY35 is an excellent match to the VG30 and will flow plenty of air to make 350+ HP and still spool up early. You could be pushing 20 psi at high rpm with that turbo. Price is the limitation. In order to boost a non-boosted truck you have to do something about fuel. There are plenty of options. If you are looking for a relatively easy and cheap setup I would strongly recommend looking into Nistune. You can have someone in your area install and tune it. If you farm out all the work, expect a project like this to have a total cost of up to $3k, depending on how far you want to go. If you do it all yourself you can easily keep it under $1500, and possibly lots less if you spend time researching and looking for deals. Those figures I'm giving are for a very solid and reliable setup with no corners cut. I would expect the manifolds to range from $400-$500 in stainless.

The manifolds would be header style, but not equal length. (equal length with long runners would be the most ideal but that would take crazy amounts of work) The head exhaust flanges would be my own design, I'm actually putting the finishing touches on a CAD drawing of a set of flanges right now. The turbo flange would of course be the T3 flange, since this is by far the most common turbo for use on the VG30. With a T3 flange you can run a T3 .60 AR which comes stock on the 300zx, or you could run a T3/T4 if you wanted to go larger, or even a Holset turbo from a Dodge diesel truck. If you needed a different flange I could probably make it happen. A rear mount would be cool, but since I don't plan on making one of those myself, I don't want to invest the time in making a kit of some sort. Rear mounts are IMO easier to build than an engine bay mount with manifolds, but there are some unique challenges, such as oil scavenging and recirculation. Rear mounts are cool though.

Here are a couple of pictures of an unpainted centerlink after the sleeves are welded on: The ball joint used to sit in the spot that the hollow sleeve now occupies.

I'm in the process of turbocharging my WD21 pathfinder and I'm wondering if there would be enough interest to warrant me building a few extra sets of manifolds. The manifolds would be schedule 10 stainless steel with 1/2" flanges, and the turbo would be located behind the driver side headlight. You would need to remove your stock airbox (obviously), and the charcoal canister from their locations to make room for the turbo. I'd probably only make the manifolds themselves, I probably wouldn't sell turbos or anything extra, so the customer would need to figure out how to add extra fuel at boost. There are a number of options for doing this, one is Nistune, which allows real time modification of the factory ECU, making it very simple to add extra fuel at specific boost levels. There is also the FMU option, which increases fuel rail pressure at a specific ratio per extra pound of boost. It's not the most elegant solution, but it works. There is also talk of the WD21 MAF and ECU being able to handle low levels of boost. I have not seen this myself, but Lee of L&P reported that his pathfinder saw good AFRs even at moderate boost with the supercharger with a completely stock fuel system and ECU. Of course a turbo behaves differently than a supercharger, so the MAF will be more prone to being maxed out since turbos flow more air at higher RPM while superchargers tend to run out of breath at high rpms. Anyways, I would leave it up to the customer to figure out fuel delivery. The manifolds would be made to fit non bodylifted trucks. If there was enough interest I might make manifold for 3" bodylifted trucks, but there would definitely need to be interest, since I would have to seriously modify jigs. What do you guys think, would there be any interest in something like this in the pathfinder or D21 community? I would probably need to sell five sets or so to justify the time and research. -Bryan

Nah, that weld was done with a MillerMatic 251. It had better be hot, it was done at nearly the hottest setting.

I have not heard of the oil baffle problem, but the first thing that came to mind when I read the thread was "stuck pcv valve". If your pcv valve does not open under positive pressure in the crankcase, the pressure will find another escape route, usually the crank oil seals or perhaps a valve cover gasket. Engines with lots of blowby will literally spray oil out of the crank seals at mid to high rpm. Check PCV valve for proper operation (it'll only take 2 minutes) and then look into whatever problem these guys mentioned.

My thoughts exactly. I know of at least one person who has done a rear mount turbo setup in the pathfinder. It was really gangster too. I liked it. My problem with a rear mount is that it's way too exposed down there. Not only from rock rash, but also from mud and water and what not. Setting up an oil scavenging pump system can be a little complicated, and there is a lot of piping to be done. Plus turbos run more efficiently closer to the motor. We have plenty of room in our engine bays to run turbos even keeping the AC, I don't know why more people haven't done it before.

The Z31 (pre-90 300zx) had it, as well as other motors in other makes. The Z31 used a crossover pipe behind the motor and above the bellhousing to tie the two manifolds together. The Z32 (90-96 300zx) had twins.

I now have several built WD21 CLs in stock. I can take orders now for those of you I had to put on hold. Thanks

Possible? I'm doing it right now. There are several others who have done it before. Worth it? I'm pretty sure I know the answer to that one... I'll post up some videos when I'm done though.

Pming you phil.