Mr.510

I also "ported" the spark plug drain channels since this motor is for a wheeler. Here's a before and after, you can see the casting mismatch and flashing was almost completely blocking the channel that's supposed to drain water out of the spark plug wells and into the valley: I needed to re-bush my connecting rods for 22mm wrist pins so I machined a draw bolt tool to remove the old bushings without damaging the rods. This is the tool and the 21mm bushings: Next up was turning some new wrist pin bushings from silicon bronze: I cut the ID to exact size at 22mm and the OD for a .003" press fit. When they are pressed in the ID shrinks about .005, and that's what my guy wanted left for finish honing. These are pretty thin bushings so I made a draw bolt tool to install them without folding them into origami: Bushing on the tool's arbor: And pressing in a bushing: The shoulder of the tool seats against the connecting rod ensuring that the bushing is perfectly flush: Next up I drilled the oil supply holes through the bushings on a Bridgeport: I took the rods and heads to my guy so he could finish hone the bushings and touch up my valves and seats. The VH motor is a DOHC four valve so the valve relief notches aren't even close to being in the right place. I borrowed a friend's piston vise and set it up on a Bridgeport mill to duplicate the stock VG30's valve reliefs in the Q pistons:

The really ugly cylinder honed out clean and would have been fine but number one cylinder had a rust pit about 1/8" in diameter half an inch down from the deck... not gonna work! Hmmm, it was time for Plan B: Overbore it to make a 3.4 liter! The rest of this story is in pretty much the order I took or uploaded the pics so it may be a little disjointed in places as I work on one thing while waiting to get parts for another or whatever, sorry! Dennis and I took the engine apart and he put each individual bearing shell into a ziplock bag and marked them with a Sharpie so I could put it all back together exactly as it was. The bearings all looked like brand new so there was absolutely no reason to replace them. I put the crankshaft in a garbage bag and sealed it up so it wouldn't need to be cleaned before re-assembly. A mechanic friend gave me this 100k mile Q45 V8 about five years ago. It's been sitting on a stand in my garage collecting dust until now. VH45 motors are almost worthless as they rarely fail and the cars they came in are super cheap so nobody fixes them. I tried to sell this a couple times but nobody wanted it... so I said screw it, and swiped the pistons out of it for my Pathy. The pistons looked great, with only very minor wear showing on a couple of them. I only needed six of the eight so of course I used the best six. I switched the media in my blast cabinet to corn cob and Dennis blast-cleaned the pistons for me while I worked on something else. They came out looking like brand new. The great thing about corn cob blast media is it takes carbon, paint, and just about anything else off but won't even take the shine off of a polished aluminum surface. I dropped the block off at my favorite automotive machine shop where they work on American V8s exclusively... plus my stuff. The owner really had to look close to see that the piston I took for sizing was not new. There was a little bit of rust, more like water stain marks, on some of the valve seats so rather than taking a chance I decided to have the valves and seats ground. I wanted to port the steps out of the exhaust ports and you really want to grind the seats last in case you mess up and ding a seat with a die grinder. Next up is some cylinder head info. There are two styles of VG heads, the early V52/21V casting and the later 85E/OWO casting. The 85E castings came out in mid '87 I think in Z31s. These are the heads of the "W series" VG30 that everybody wants due to their better intake port shape and cams. The OWO heads are found on all VG33 engines and are the same casting as the 85E but use the larger 10mm exhaust studs. This pic is a comparison of port molds of the early vs. late VG heads: You can see that in the early port the air rams into the far wall and has to make a 90 degree turn to flow past the valve into the cylinder. Not so good. The later heads are a HUGE improvement but left as-produced they do not flow any better because the exhaust ports are screwed up. There are big steps just above the valve seats that effectively reduce the diameter of the opening by about 3/16": It's kinda hard to tell in the pics, but that bright ring 'inside' the exhaust seats is a step that should have been machined out. I have no idea why they left these steps, a slight change in the shape of the cutter used to cut the seat pockets would have taken them out with no increase in machine time. These pics are after I ported the steps out: There were also some minor steps in the intake ports: So I smoothed them out while I was at it:

This is the story of how I ended up building a VG34 engine for my '88 Pathy and how it all went together. I'll start with a little background on the engine, who "invented" the VG34, and what Nissan used it for. Please note that all of the installation information applies to a VG33 swap into a truck that came with a VG30. Background: The VG34 was invented by Nissan Motorsports' engine builder Sly. He developed it for use in the factory off road race trucks that competed in the Baja 1000. For whatever logistical reasons they needed to be able to run Mexican pump gas in the trucks so they only wanted about 10:1 compression ratio. With this low of a CR flat topped cast pistons would be more than strong enough... and the right ones just happened to be in the VH45DE engine in the Infiniti Q45. The "Q piston" as it's known is 93mm in diameter with a 22mm wrist pin. A stock VG33 block is 91.5mm and the cylinder walls are *very* thick so boring 1.5mm (0.060") over does not require sonic testing. (Please note that the VG30 block's bore of 87mm cannot be increased for even stock VG33 pistons, the cylinder walls are not heavy enough!) VG30Is & VG30Es have 21mm wrist pins that are pressed into the rods. VG30ET and all DOHC VGs have full-floating 22mm wrist pins. VG33Es have 21mm full floating wrist pins. All North American VGs have the same length connecting rods and the same stroke and this makes it very easy to mix and match parts. The most commonly used rods for a VG34 build are the VG30ET ones. They are quite strong and good for more than 500hp with no prep work but they are heavy. VG30DE rods are much more common and lighter so they are a better choice unless massive power with boost is the goal, in which case Carrillo rods are the ticket. It is also possible to re-bush the stock VG33 rods which are good for 400hp and that is what I did. My 'old' Pathy motor: I bought my Pathy with a blown motor. I pieced together an engine with the 60k mile bottom end out of my parts truck and a set of brand new early Z31 heads I had sitting on the shelf. This engine ran great it's whole life but about two years ago started pressurizing the cooling system with exhaust. It did not have a blown head gasket, it had either porosity in a head casting or a crack between a water jacket and an exhaust port. I put 130k miles on this motor in the five or six years I've had the Pathy. The truck used a little water when run hard but never overheated until the last 1000 miles or so. The leak apparently got much worse and I massively overheated it a couple of times. I mean it got hot enough to boil every bit of water out three times on it's last trip and I felt I was lucky to get home without using my tow truck! The VG33ER: While looking for a HD automatic transmission for my friend Dennis' Pathy I saw a supercharged VG33ER engine and trans with 48k miles on Craigslist. I was broke so he bought it for the $800 the guy was asking, I went and got it with my Pathy: For the record, that's a whole lot of weight in a soft-sprung Pathy on 33s with no sway bars! The drive home was sketchy to say the least. I had 150psi in the left air shock and 100psi in the right so the Pathy sat level, kinda. The harness was cut and there was no ECU or anything else not directly bolted to the engine. The plan was to swap the whole works into Dennis' '95 Pathy until we found out how much it costs in electronics to make one of these run in a vehicle it didn't come in. I turned the engine over several rotations with a breaker bar on the crank nut before buying it and it felt completely normal. When I got it home I sealed up the intake and exhaust manifolds and stored it inside. A few months later Dennis traded me the engine for installing the SHD (Super Heavy Duty) S/C Xterra transmission into his Pathy. When we went to turn the engine to remove the torque converter I was unpleasantly surprised to find a tight spot. Damn, must be some rust in there somewhere! Fast forward a couple months and my Pathy desperately needs a motor. So I pull the ER motor out and take the supercharger and related parts off (everything above the heads) and sell it on eBay... for a thousand freaking dollars! That made my day, let me tell you! So I proceeded to take the ER engine apart to see if it could be just be honed. This is what I found: Actually, I didn't take a pic of exactly what I found. That pic was taken after I used my ridge reamer to knock most of the rust out above the pistons. At this point my hope was to hone it and put it back together.

The idea behind having the engine at TDC is to reduce the amount of pressure on the rocker pivot shafts as you install them. You will be compressing some of the valve springs at least part way regardless as you tighten the bolts. The most important thing is that you evenly tighten all six bolts on each shaft slowly from the time that the first rocker arm comes under pressure. If you just start at one end and tighten them all the way you could bend or break a rocker shaft. I use a speed wrench and turn each bolt 2 turns then move to the next and repeat until they are all down snug and ready for final torque with a torque wrench. Be very careful that each rocker arm fits down into it's notch properly or you'll break something. As the rockers come down against the valve springs check that each rocker moves side-to-side about .010, it will be obvious if one is above it's notch rather than in it. As far as oil and break in, just pour some engine oil on the cam before you put the lifter plate on and call it good. Also put some oil on the tips of the lifters and the valve tips before the rocker arms go on. When you fire it the lifters will be noisy until they pump up. This causes zero damage to anything. Once they stop ticking drive it like you always do. There is no break in procedure on Nissan lifters and no special oil or assembly lube is required. The factory doesn't rev the motor to some RPM and hold it there to break the lifters in when new. In fact, they don't do any break in procedure at all. VGs generally live 250k+ miles so I kinda think they know what they are doing! I've disassembled more VGs than I can count and have never found a flat cam or even a scuffed lifter face. I've personally run a VG with a constant badly ticking lifter for 50k miles and when I finally replaced it all other components were in perfect condition. VG cams and lifters are so hard there is no appreciable wear on either, even after 400k miles. Only garbage motors with crap machine work and soft parts from the factory (like American V8s) require cam/lifter break in.

The longblock from the Quest will work in your Pathy, but only the longblock. You'll have to take everything off down to the block, heads, and timing covers as none of the accessories, mounts, or oil pan will work. Also, the Quest engine won't have the heavier duty "4x4" oil pump, water pump, and related timing covers. The only difference between the 4x4 parts and car stuff is there is a heavy aluminum housing protecting the timing belt and components from rocks and crap where the car version is all sheet metal. If you decide to go with a VG33 I produce the necessary custom oil pickup tube and will soon have the crank pulley hub Garret mentioned into production. Those two parts make the VG33 swap a bolt-in, once again taking it down to a longblock and running all your accessories and brackets. Actually, I guess you'd also have to drill out your exhaust manifolds for the larger 10mm bolts, or run headers.

I run 25psi on the street and 15psi on the trail. My KOs are getting bald so I tried dropping to 12psi at Elbe a couple trips ago. I had marginally better traction but ended up with crap between the inner and outer beads on all four tires. Ended up breaking all the beads, cleaning them, and re-seating them with my tire machine in the following week due to slow leaks. At 15psi I rarely have bead leak issues, maybe one tire every five or six trips will have a slow leak after. With our kind of wheeling being tight forest trails with lots of jagged roots and pointy rocks the way I see it is this: At 15psi if I knock a bead off whatever caused it would have torn the sidewall out at street pressure. The lower the pressure you run the lower the chance of tire damage, at least down to 12psi or so on a Pathy. At 12psi I can't flex a tire far enough to pinch the sidewall between a rim and rock, even with the truck teetering on two wheels. That is, of course, doing things slow and elegant. If you back up and hammer down through stuff I would not go lower than 15psi. On sand I'd probably run as low as 10psi. You have so little lateral grip and few or no hard obstacles that I can't see knocking a bead off very easily. The only thing I'd watch is how hot the tires get if you run with any speed. I limit my speed to 30mph at 15psi and the sidewalls just get warm to the touch. The occasional short blast to 50mph hasn't seemed to hurt the tires any. Edit to add: The lower the air pressure you run the more your tires will flex to match the terrain, the more traction you will have, and the less trail damage you will cause.

Z31Ts do have higher flowing oil pumps. The highest flowing is from the '84-'89 300ZX Turbo when fitted with an automatic transmission. There are a couple downsides to running one of these pumps in a Pathy. One is increased parasitic drag since you do not actually need the extra flow. The other is that 4x4 models use a different oil pump casting that is much heavier duty and fits with the special 4x4 lower timing belt cover. This oil pump housing and cover are designed to keep mud and other debris from getting to the timing belt and gears. They are also much more 'bash worthy' for those stray rocks that decide to roll around in the engine bay.

Thank you. And you are correct, since the tire on the compressed side was already stuffed into the inner fenderwell and the droop side shock was at full extension with no pneumatics in play it did not improve the total amount of travel, which is basically what RTI measures. What it DOES do (and do very well) is put a lot more weight on the drooped side tire until the point that it leaves the ground. The weight carried by the two rear tires is much closer to even when the truck is flexing over stuff so I gain forward traction. Being able to droop a tire some massive amount looks cool in pics but does not actually improve traction unless there is weight on that tire. Ask anyone that's wheeled with me how well my Pathy flexes and keeps it's tires planted to go over obstacles. There is a tremendous difference in the trucks's off road performance depending on whether the cross-linking valve is open or closed. It makes no difference at the point I'm hanging a tire in the air obviously, but until that point the improvement in grip is substantial. One neat side benefit to the way I set this up is that I can attempt an obstacle with the valve closed so there is no cross linking and my suspension works like everybody else's. Then I can back up, open the valve and see the actual difference the cross linked air shocks make on the same obstacle under the exact same conditions. Since this write up I removed one of my front sway bar end links and this made a noticeable improvement in flex and traction as well. After seeing how well that worked I bought air shocks for the front and intend to do the same thing I did in the rear. The problem is the shocks are too big in diameter to fit through stock UCAs so I'm going to be making UCAs that will clear them. I have gathered a bunch of pics to use for an update to this thread. My driving/wheeling impressions, load hauling capabilities, etc. As soon as I get these pics uploaded to Photobucket I'll post a substantial update. To give a quick synopsis of how I like it: This modification cost me $64 and an afternoon including all the RTI comparison measuring and pics. If it had cost $300 and a weekend I would do it again in a second, it really does work that well!

The round tube ones bend *really* easily. Ask silverton! I gave him the cast ones from my parts truck as they are way more durable, but he sold that Pathy and will need a set for his new one. The cast ones do sometimes break, but only with massive abuse and/or a bone-jarring direct hit from what I've seen and heard. I'm talking about the kind of rock hit that would turn a tubular arm into a pretzel.

Thanks for posting that here Dowser. I thought I'd checked in and updated the info but I guess I didn't! To sum it up: 2001 or newer is what you want in an automagic! I would not even consider rebuilding a pre-'01 transmission when the newer ones are so much better to start with. If you're going to 'build' a transmission start with the upgraded Heavy Duty version, there is no downside. If I could do my trans swap over again the only thing I'd do different is switch to Amsoil synthetic ATF since I could have drained the converter before installing the transmission.

x2 I am more than a little biased but I believe the VG engines are better units than the VQs. My brother is a career (30+ years) Nissan parts guy. When my sister decided she wanted an R50 my brother told her she could not get one unless it was VG powered. The timing assemblies in VQs are prone to failure and they take the whole engine with them when they do fail. A round-tooth VG timing belt is rated for 105k miles and I've personally seen them go 200k. If changed at the proper interval with a factory Nissan belt they just plain do not fail. VGs typically live 250k miles with average maintenance and crap oil. With good maintenance and synthetic or high-detergent dino oil they go 300k easily and I've seen a couple go 400k. VGs are the last truly 'overbuilt' engine from Nissan and are still in production for other markets. I've built racing engines for many years. As time has gone by the manufacturers have built many of the 'tricks' that a race engine of years ago would have had into stock engines. HP keeps going up along with fuel mileage because they are building more highly-stressed engines in stock form. Volumetric and thermal efficiency have gone up due to effectively more radical cam profiles, higher-flowing intake and exhaust tracts, higher compression ratios, and knife-edged cranks with skinny bearings and light connecting rods as well as short-skirted pistons. This means newer-design engines don't generally live as long in stock form and can't be modified for large increases in power without spending really serious money on the internals. As for increasing the power of a VG33, I'd either turbo it or do headers with full exhaust, cams, and a chip or Nistune.

Adam, I am going to sue you for making such an untrue statement about Americans! How dare you tell such lies? I'll see you in court! And yes, I gave them permission to use my videos as well. If some of our trucks make it into a commercial you guys will have to tell me about it as I don't have TV.

It may be Velvacoat or something similar though I don't know what was available at the time these guards were made? My coater uses some powders that cure softer than your typical stuff. I have no idea what the material actually is but they only do powder, no wet-sprayed finishes. They put it on restaurant chairs as it is less likely to chip when the chairs get smacked together or knocked over. It also feels 'warmer' to the touch. Kind of hard to describe on the internet. It's not soft like tool dip or vinyl, it's just a tad softer than a 'normal' powder. The surface almost feels tacky, but it isn't. Anyway, back to taillight guards. I took a couple pics of mine tonight so you guys can see the forward mount. Also note that mine have laser cut bars made of flat stock rather than round bars.

Interesting that there isn't a hole in that side tab on yours. I'd think brush would wedge between the guard and the quarter panel. Is that a problem? I got mine off of eBay several years ago. They do have the Manik logo'd serial number foil plates on them so even though they were used I'm sure they are Manik. The powdercoat on them is just slightly soft and rubbery.

I also have Manik guards on my taillights though mine have one more wrap-around bar and it looks like the tubes might be bigger diameter? The tab at the front of mine has a screw hole in it. The guards were powder coated after that hole was drilled so I assume they came that way. I drilled my quarter and put a 10-32 SS screw through with a washer and nylock nut on the inside. Big glob of clear silicone to keep it watertight as well. I like the look of the guards and they have probably saved my lights in heavy brush and saplings... but I've also broken a taillight by smacking the guard on a tree.

Yep, this is a possibility. Use one inner CV joint and the other outer joint. I'm going to pull a junk CV shaft out of my '88 and Silverton has a junk one out of his '95 so I'll see if the two can be combined to make an 'adapter CV shaft'. The later style (28 spline) inner joints are true, 6-ball CV joints where the earlier ones (27 spline) are the 3-pronged 'U-joint' style. That's why they changed from six-bolt to five-bolt flanges. The 3-prong style has two bolts between each of the flutes of the housing. The 28 spline ones have five bolts evenly spaced around the circumference of the housing. That one is a tough order to fill without spending *huge* money. Most production CV joints have about the same amount of maximum angularity. Also, in applications where you can get a 'high operating angle' CV joint (930 Turbo CVs in VW applications) the increased angle means the outward force on the outer housing it much higher and they tend to break while at extreme angles. They also run much hotter and wear out more quickly when run at high angles. With the stuff we tend to do (low speed, sharp joint angles, and very high torque) we are lucky that our stock CVs live a relatively long time. You'll notice that Baja Fab long-travel front end increases the front track width by several inches per side, thus allowing more suspension travel without increasing the CV angles.

Yeah, what they said. The early vs. late flanges/shafts do not interchange where they plug into the diff. I have a set of each sitting next to my bench to try to figure out if there is an easy way to modify something to make them work. For now the answer is that if you want to change your spline count you need the diff, CV shafts, complete spindle assemblies, and (of course) locking hubs. And don't forget that they changed the TRE taper size somewhere around the beginning of '94 (?) so that messes up the interchange of the spindles as well. Just for a little clarification, the short-side diff flange has a single bolt in the center of the flange that retains it. The long side has four bolts that hold a flange with the support bearing in it to the housing. Early and late bolt in the same but there is a difference inside the diff that I need to sort out.

Why not start with a Hardbody pickup? The only real downside is rear leafs rather than four link. Or drop a HB cab on a Pathy chassis?

Ok, so if the 'new' motor is far apart pull the heads off of it ASAP. Do the carb cleaner in the ports thing and see if it's got a burnt or bent valve. I'll keep my fingers crossed that it does and the bottom end is OK. It sounds like your 'old' motor oil starved and VGs never live long after even a minor case of this. I tell people that if they ever see the oil pressure light when the motor is above idle to plan on replacing the engine in the near future. I honestly doubt the bottom end of your 'old' motor is going to live 100 miles if it tightened up like it sounds like it did. It may already have a spun bearing or three. The one thing VG engines have zero tolerance for is oil starvation. Ask the Z31 guys, they blow up motors autocrossing all the time with the oil pressure light never even coming on. Are you talking about doing valve seals on your 'old' motor? You may want to do that to your 'old' heads if you put them on the 'new' bottom end but they aren't going to do anything to help if it oil starved. I just had an idea: If we can determine that the bottom end of the 'new' motor is OK I will give you a set of good, ready-to-run VG33 heads for it. 80-some thousand miles on them I think? That way you don't have to mess with your 'old' motor at all, other than trying to make it live a little while to idle around town. (And I do mean idle! If you need to get to work or whatever don't let it see more than 2k rpm!)On that front, change the oil and filter and put one quart of Hilton's Hyperlube in it in place of one quart of oil. It will not hurt anything, won't screw up the seals, and just *might* make it live a little while longer. Don't throw the oil filter away! Drain it thoroughly and put it in a ziplock bag. We should cut it apart to check for bearing material if the motor doesn't explode right away. An oil filter media inspection will tell the whole story. I wish you were closer to Seattle!

'Old' motor: If it smokes under load after it's warmed up it is more than just valve seals. Also, generally if the valve seals are toast they probably got that way because the valve guides are worn out. The further you open the throttle the less it should smoke if it's valve seals. As you open the throttle manifold vacuum drops. It is manifold vacuum that sucks oil past bad valve seals. Once this starts to happen the guides are history in short order as the oil burns onto the valve stems and the resulting baked-on carbon wears the guides very rapidly. Smoke only at startup, idle, and on deceleration is generally valve seals. Lower load/higher vacuum = more smoke. More smoke with more throttle is generally rings. Higher load/lower vacuum = more smoke. Many engines have a combination of both. On your 'new' motor: You have to pull the heads to do rings so you're into a full engine gasket set, T-belt, etc. Crank has to come out too so you can clean the block after honing the bores. My VG experience says if it's got low compression on one hole caused by rings it has a broken ring, the bore is hammered dog poop, and the block will have to be bored. This is NOT a common failure on N/A VGs. More likely it has a burnt valve. You might be able to put your 'old' heads on the 'new' bottom end if it is a valve problem on the 'new' motor and a rings issue with the 'old' one. I think this is most likely from what you described. If you need a stock motor on a budget a good used one is the best value hands-down. Unless you can combine two by only buying head gaskets and a timing belt that is. If the 'new' motor is still mostly together don't pull the heads yet! Put it back together and do a dry compression test followed by a wet one. This will tell you with certainty if it's a valve issue. If the compression goes up way more on the bad hole when oil is added to the cylinder than the others the problem is either a broken ring or piston. If the heads are off pull the rockers so all the valve are closed and spray carb cleaner into the ports one by one and see if you get a bunch more leakage on one valve. Also, look for obvious cylinder wall damage in all six bores.

Ok, I don't wanna burst anybody's bubble and I don't want to be a jerk dumping on what somebody obviously put some time into... but this design has at least one fatal flaw: When force is applied to the tie rods they apply a twisting load to the center link. The further the suspension droops the worse this will be due to the steeper angle of the tie rod. This will cause the rod ends at the ends of the center link to loosen and the tie rods themselves will wrap around the center link as it rotates. They will end up 'pretzeled'. If the rod ends at the ends of the center link are heims (can't tell in the pics) there will be a ton of play in the steering as the center link twists back & forth. They will also be junk in a matter of minutes off road as a heim can never be allowed to run out of angular travel. Also, has anyone talked to this person? Unless he knew exactly what he was doing the bump-steer is probably off the end of the scale. You can't just move an inner tie rod pivot point a couple inches on a double A-arm suspension without drastic geometric consequences. I wish there was a pic of it taken straight-on from the front with the steering straight ahead so I could better see how the geometry looks.

I know this has mostly been said by others but I'm going to say weight, packaging, strength, and efficiency. Straight sixes are plagued by crankshaft twisting since their cranks are so long. The crank has to be stronger/heavier for a given amount of torque applied in a straight six than a V6. More main bearings are also required. A straight six block is also much heavier than a V6 block of equal displacement. V6s are lighter, stronger, more efficient, and generally have higher torque per cc than straight sixes of equal bore & stroke. The reason straight sixes seem to be smoother is their terribly high rotational mass when compared to all other engine designs. As for the 'straight six sound' if you make what amounts to 180 degree headers for a V6 it will sound *exactly* like a straight six. I personally prefer the sound of a V6 but that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone here. I've owned far more I6s than V6s but I much prefer the latter and wholeheartedly believe automotive I6s will soon be a thing of the past. The Skyline's I6 has been replaced by a V6, need I say more?

Yours is MPFI and completely different.

If it failed in the same place twice (and probably this third time) either the head or block are not flat. When it first blew a headgasket it probably overheated badly and warped the head. Pull the head and have it and the block checked for flatness by somebody that knows what they are doing! Other than HKS metal headgaskets and the like for race engines I refuse to use anything but Nissan factory headgaskets. Other gaskets you can get away with but the money saved on aftermarket headgaskets just isn't worth the risk as far as I'm concerned. Gasoline engines running on propane are not typically known to have any failure issues, in fact they generally live twice as long. Not that it really matters but is this a VG30?

It could be the wrong pressure plate or wrong throwout bearing. The throwout bearing could be on backwards or not be pressed onto it's sleeve all the way. The clutch fork could be off it's pivot or the fork's fingers could be on the throwout sleeve the wrong way. I can't think of anything else off the top of my head. Next thing I would do it compare the parts that you installed to the ones you took out.