LQ4 into a 3rd Gen/1972 Nova by frojoe

7 minute(s) of a 891 minute read

Got the engine mount pedestals in, everything lined up well..

Not sure if I ever showed the cover plate for stock wiper motor location...

And finally.. bye bye heater core! No need for the extra complication/weight/space...

There was a lip around the edge of the opening.. easiest course of action was to just trim it off.. took all of 2 minutes....

A pretty embarrassingly-bad hole shape, but it'll get covered up with just an aluminum blockoff panel, so doesn't really matter that much...

Final decision for driver side turbo drain return to pan... a 45 degree adapter fitting... this will allow me a couple different hard/soft line routing options that I'll evaluate soon...

New McLeod RXT Twin Street clutch! So pretty!....

Using the provided plastic alignment tool for the clutch discs, I thought it was going well and would be easy...

Double checking pressure plate finger depth and comparing to the throwout bearing as installed on the trans...

First snag... the opening/notch on the T56 Magnum wasn't quite big enough for the fitting on the Speedway Motors clutch line, had to go at it with a file, of course...

Clearanced....

For some reason, the plastic 26T alignment tool McLeod provided didn't align the clutch discs well, after 2 attempts I could still feel a step/offset between the splined sections on the discs. The tool inserted pretty tightly into the pilot bearing, but I think as I hung the 1st and then 2nd discs on the tool, the weight of the discs started sagging the tool in the pilot bearing and it wouldn't allow the trans input shaft to insert past the 1st clutch disc.

So, I removed the bellhousing and the throwout bearing and just used the trans itself as the alignment tool, and worked out quite well..

Going in!

And in!!!!

Thanks for that info Jim. My engine is a 2005 gen3 LQ4, still has the stock lifters.... I'm trying to find the P/N on them but having a difficult time.

I just did a little more reading/measuring/math.... my pushrod length checker is a "theoretical" 6.800" when full short, and I measured it as actually 6.816" overall, which lines up well with this older Comp Cams diagram below, showing the relationship between theoretical and actual-measured lengths.

So using that above diagram as a reference, my actual-measured pushrod length was 7.322", remove the ~0.017" to bring that actual measurement to theoretical "gauge length", and the theoretical pushrod length for zero lash zero preload for my setup is 7.305". I confirmed this by counting back the turns from the adjusted correct checker length to full short, which was 10.125 turns. That equates to (6.800")+(10.125)x(0.050") = 7.306".

So if I were to reuse my 7.400" pushrods, they would achieve ~0.095" preload. A 7.350" pushrod length would produce ~0.045" preload, and 7.375" length would produce ~0.070" preload.

I did have a bit of ticking before... I'm wondering since my previous setup also had LS9 gaskets, if I was running that ~0.095" preload with my previous 7.400" pushrods, and that was collapsing the lifters and making the "sewing machine" noise.....

For the wiper motor, I made a bracket to mount it under the cowl, I can't remember if I uploaded a post about that (circa 2015 maybe), but I'll see if I can dig some pics up.

After a ton of thread reading, guys seem to favour 0.050"-0.060".. however a few out there are like "bahh I've had my engine up to 7200rpm with 0.100" preload and it's fiiiine"

I'm leaning towards the 7.375" giving 0.070" preload.. as I'm thinking 0.045" preload could just be a touch on the low side... hopefully some other people can chime in soon, I'd like to order new pushrods in the next day or so in order to have them for this coming weekend.

For the hidden wiper motor stuff, I have the backup of all my pics and thread updates on my home computer.. I'll search it tonight to see if I ended up making an update post about the wiper motor. Summary is that I used a motor/lever stock from a 240SX so it has intermittent, however I never ended up retrofitting the lever body into a custom/retro looking dash ****. I just had the 240SX column lever jammed under the driver seat and if I happened to get caught in rain, I would whip it out and plug it into the sub-harness I wired up that is stashed behind the instrument cluster, just under the headlight switch. I re-used the Nissan wiper motor and timing control unit, and wired it so that it really just needs switched 12V, ground, and the control lever connected in order to work.

The wiper motor mounts to the backside of the "cover plate" on the firewall, so it's essentially a bolt-in affair with no weird fabrication needed to the firewall/cowl to get it to fit. I just needed to rejig the linkage a bit for the 240SX motor driving arm. Here's a demo video I remember making: