So the holidays are over and it’s time to get back to work on the car. I am still missing a couple pieces that are holding up putting the motor back together, but I still have plenty of other stuff to do.
I finished the new subframe last night; I actually finished it in November, but had been super lazy on finishing paint. No more!
The knuckles are unpainted because they are only there temporarily. The PBM rear knuckles aren’t available until March, so these stockers will sit there until I can get my hands on the modified pieces.
Pulled out the old subframe and dumped it on the ground. Planning to keep it as a spare – probably clean it up, then have it sent off to a welder for reinforcement and modification.
Couple other minor things; reinstalled the brake booster, clutch master cylinder and the Z32 brake master cylinder. I flipped the brake booster too to get the vacuum connection on the bottom and hidden, then installed the Circuit Sports brake master cylinder heat shield. I decided to pick up some heat reflective tape from Amazon to add some more heat protection to the heat shield. Heat reduction is a major goal on this build and I’m hopeful that this will help keep the temps in the master cylinder down.
I actually ordered the Circuit Sports brake master cylinder stopper as well, but it won’t work with the heat shield in it’s default form. It’s pretty low importance, but I’m going to pull the shield out and do some cutting to make the stopper fit correctly. Around the same time, I’ll probably be mounting the power steering reservoir in that empty corner up there. I’ll post pics once that’s all done.
Lastly, I mounted up all the new cooling stuff to the motor. It’s an S14 water neck, S14 water pump, new thermostat and water pump pulley. The S14 water neck has a coolant line outlet built in, which allows you to run the coolant line for the turbo from the neck, as opposed to running a coolant line all the way around the back of the cylinder head. All the bolts line up, making this an easy upgrade and there are a bunch of hoses you can lose under the intake manifold if you switch to the S14 water neck.
S13 water neck is the ugly dirty one up top, the S14 water neck is the shiny nice one on the bottom.
The S14 water pump is also considered an upgrade over the S13 water pump, because the S13 pump is known to have cavitation issues at high RPM. This isn’t something I’ve personally experienced, but I don’t want to either. So I went ahead and did the upgrade, and the pump body is clearly different on S14 compared to S13; it bulges out slightly but maintains the same dimensions as the S13 water pump would. There is one extra mounting hole on the S14 water pump, but it doesn’t get in the way; the 6 other mounting bolts all line up exactly.
The S13 water pump is on the left, S14 on the right. You can see near the mounting holes how the S14 bulges away from the flange, whereas the S13 is more flat.
More pics and updates on progress as it comes. Hoping to put in the new subframe this weekend, but I still need to pick up the stainless rear brake lines and 5-lug rear rotors.
