DAMN Riders - No rules, Just ride!

Nice!

Heated grips are great. They should be stock on all street bikes.

I've wrapped a thin layer of cork on the left grip to insulate it. Otherwise followed a similar plan.

Pulled the donor engine out today





The nice thing about working on vehicles destined for the scrap yard, no F's given. Oh the crane hits the cowl? Just keep cranking it up, it'll self clearance





New vs old

Almost done with a custom TV cabinet for my niece's wedding. That's a bank of Solacure UV lamps on the right. I use them to age the cherry.

nice work Ken, cool trick on aging wood.

Rut Row wrote: ↑Sat Sep 17, 2022 7:46 am Almost done with a custom TV cabinet for my niece's wedding. That's a bank of Solacure UV lamps on the right. I use them to age the cherry.

20220913_075014.jpg

Whoa, that looks really nice!

So this happened today.



I did end up pulling the headers off instead of fighting it. Hopefully I can get them in again. All the studs screwed right out though so I think that makes the job easier.







Settled in its new home. I've had stock replacement engines not drop in as easily as the VK dropped in to this truck

V-bands came in so cut apart the headers/cats and welded them back together. I was more motivated to do this because my welds looked like poo the first time around as I didn't have the proper consumables for this thin tubing. Rectified that and the welds look way better now.

Been chugging along on the V8 swap in the Frontier. Started it for the first time over the weekend. After priming the pump it fired right off, so I guess I didn't botch the wiring too bad.

One of the bigger question marks was the anti-theft system in these trucks. The ignition key, ECM, and BCM are all programmed to each other and if they don't all have the same super secret handshake the truck won't start. The 3 choices to fix it are drag the truck to a dealer and get it reflashed to match, send the ECM off to have the anti-theft deleted (~$350), or swap in the Titan key and BCM. I had only found 1 guy who said he did the last option and it was a direct swap. Well I have those parts on hand for no addition cost so swapped them out and it worked perfect.


Frontier vs Titan ignitions. Direct swap. The broken key was the Frontier key.





Got the all the radiator/heater hoses on it and filled it with antifreeze. I had read of folks having a hard time getting all the air out of the system of these trucks so I bought this little contraption to assist. You hook shop air to one side and it pulls a vacuum in the system. Stick the hose in your coolant jug and open the valve and it simply sucks the coolant in. Just keep adding coolant until the vacuum gauge reads 0.









Put the intake/MAF on and ran it up to temp.









To do list:

Finish exhaust/tail pipe hanger

Cooling fan - going electric

E85 related wiring

Tidy up my jumper harnesses.

A/C line at compressor (ordered the wrong one)

good job dude. Engine swaps are always a learning curve especially with all of the new electronic systems in most modern cars.