Austarion

Have you thought about a single turbo conversion? A few of the 92ish shape VR4 boys have done that with a single TD05 from a later model Evo with some great results...
I'm sure you would have seen them on Msport though...

yeah single turbo would be nice, however I would have to mount the large single turbo quite far forward and there would be a horrible exhaust crossover pipe. Another issue is the cost.. a single turbo suited to a 3L engine isn't cheap - two TD04s are.

ok some more progress today - went to the a wreckers this morning and found a Pajero V6 and checked out its mounts, they looked promising and mounted in the same spot despite being mid sump:







so $50 later they were mine and used the original Eterna rubber section of the mount and it all bolted up sweet:







but it moved the motor back about 1", which means I can't use the original clutch master cylinder and I'll probably have to cut into the firewall for the thermostat housing.



the engine sits at a good height with plenty of clearance from sump to crossmember height wise:



but as mentioned earlier the sump will need to be notched.. but makes it tricky with the two piece metal section.. I might just get rid of that altogether and have an alloy plate welded in place and just wing the sump. It needs to be notched up until about the dipstick tube (which is seen at bottom of the shot)



while I was there I placed the turbos approx where I want them to be mounted, they are just resting on the mounts but seems to have a bit room on the passenger side but not so much on the drivers side:





and that is all for now

Thats looking awesome! :)
Amazing how it just bolts up... well mostly :)

how much does that engine weigh compared to the stock eterna engine?

we need more pioneers in the world like you mate :beer

I haven't got any exact figures but from what I understand the engine is approx 200kgs - which is probably about 50kgs ontop of the 4G63 (anyone know how much a 4G63 by itself weighs?). I'll have to get some scales when I next lift the motor out and find out for sure.

can you use the pajero rwd type water fittings to allow you to use the original pajero mounts?

Pajero mounts? as in engine mounts? it's using the Paj mounts with the Eterna rubbers cause the Paj rubber mount is a bit taller and would have placed the engine a bit higher.

As for the thermostat housing it joins up to both the back of the heads, and the water pipe which runs down the valley - it pretty much has the bypass, and coolant distribution to heater core, turbos, throttlebody all there etc. On the Pajero the thermostat housing is all up front and the radiator hoses go straight to above the water pump - but the thing is V6 Pajeros/Challengers etc are either 3.0 SOHC, 3.5 DOHC or 3.5 DOHC GDI (oh and 3.5 DOHC MIVEC) - the SOHC has different spacing on the heads and the flange bolt pattern isn't the same either, while the DOHC all shares the same flange but with the 3.5s having a taller block, the heads are further away from each other so it wont bolt up either.

I really have to go pay a visit to a wreckers agin and examine the water routing setup on all the variants and see if I can mix and match something.

yeah i knew that i meant to allow you to use the pajero mounts in the stock position like that is there..

i suppose the easiest way is to mod the mount bracket to bring it all an inch forward..

i heard somewhere the 4g63 weighs aprox 165kg's, not sure if that right

yeah I can definitely do that at a later stage - I pretty much just wanted the engine mounted in the engine bay not relying on a crane while trying to mock up gearbox options. I really have to sort out which gearbox I'm going to use before finalising where the engine sits. I don't mind it sitting where it is now, makes it a little more difficult having to find a smaller clutch master or even setting up an internal one with a different pedal box, but it probably is best to have the motor sitting back as far as it can really.

TomVR4 wrote:i heard somewhere the 4g63 weighs aprox 165kg's, not sure if that right

ahh yep that sounds about right, I gather the gearbox is included in that?

the block itself of the 6G72 is quite light, it's quite a shallow block (the crank is inline with the bottom of the block) - I would go as far as saying the 6G72 bare block is much lighter than a 4G63 bare block, but once you add the crank, pistons/rods, and two cylinder heads plus a large intake manifold, two exhaust manifolds with turbos you can see where it starts to add up. Still, an extra 50-75kgs provided it's not hanging a great deal further forward than the 4G63 shouldn't upset the weight balance.. and I'm sure it wont be noticed with the extra 150Nm of torque in a straight line.. corners on the other hand... haha.

Sit the motor as low and far back as you can to aid weight distibution. Don't take the easy route of placing the motor just because the engine mounts line up.
Good luck! If you get stuck for space consider some SOHC heads. More room for negligible HP loss (IMHO).

putting SOHC heads in just for space reasons would totally take away the main novelty of this swap - to have a MIVEC V6 in there. It'll be running high comp ratio with small turbos so there's going to be limiting factors for having an all-out power machine.

How the motor sits at the moment is about the same height as the 4G63 - the line of the crankshafts is the same anyway. The sump of the V6 drops down much much lower than the 4cyl so it's not so easy to get it to go much lower. If there's not much room I could always bring the turbos forward of the struts and mount them there, but at this stage it looks like I can get away with mounting them low down and close to the block above the engine mounts.

Remember the gearbox is going to have alot to do with how forward or back the motor is going to be mounted, no use having the motor set right back if the gearstick is going to be totally unusable or I have to get some complicated linkages setup to bring the shifter forward.

It's not going to be an all out track warrier, to be honest I don't really mind if it doesn't have a totally ideal weight distribution - I just want a unique road car which is going to be pretty rapid and be able to take it on track outings occasionally. I don't exactly have a high budget for this build either - I'm just plodding away with funds that I can spare. The less fabrication work which needs to be done the better, even if that means mounting the engine slightly forward a bit. If I move the engine back much further now, I'ld have to get rid of the heater core as the inlet/outlet are close to the passenger side cylinder head - I don't see the point of losing alot of the functionality of the car (such as a heater) just to move the engine that much further back. I think I've made enough of a compromise with having no air con now haha, it doesn't seem like the air con compressor is going to fit with the crossmember there.

heater is useful in nz.. what would you do with aircon??