VK with Transmission and TC:

I had to remove the hood to get the VK in. No way you can get that thing with the headers installed without the hood off.

Reinstalled the new ECU, IPDM, and everything else in that corner.

Had to cut the end off the power steering hardline on the passenger side.

Had to trim the top and bottom rad hoses a little bit

Installed a 10" SPAL push fan since the E-fan won't fit anymore.
It's currently wired to the original E-fan plug, but I'm not sure those relays are going to work anymore, so we'll see.

Reinstalled the front end, and all the hoses. Put most of the fluids back in.

Also reinstalled the rear driveshaft, trans crossmember, and bpipes.


What's left:

• Pull vacuum and fill coolant
• install y-pipe and muffler
• figure out AC. I bought 3 different hoses and none fit. I ordered a AC hose crimper and will modify one to make it work. Will need to pull vacuum and recharge AC afterwards.
• finish re-installing my extra fuse box
• reinstall bumper/winch
• tune

 

Pulled vacuum on the cooling system. It was not holding vacuum. The hiss came from the T-stat area (ie a lot of hoses there) and I couldn't figure out where it was coming from, so I filled up the system with 1 gallon. Started pouring out the t-stat housing. Turns out the new gasket was too loose around the thermostat. Put the old one back in and held vacuum fine.

Reinstalled my headlight/aux/winch wiring, and reinstalled the headlights

Made the custom suction AC line from the original VQ one and the Titan hose. I'm not sure how people use the pathfinder or titan hoses, both were too short in my case.

Pulled vacuum on the AC system for 25 mins, then left the gauges for another hour and a half. No leaks!
I will recharge the system once I have the engine broken in enough to let it idle for a while.

Installed the cajun B pipes, cajun Y pipe, and borla muffler. Still need to weld a hanger to hold the rear of the muffler and attach a turn down dump on the end.

Almost time to fire it up and break the engine in on Cajun's base tune!

 

I wish i could like this like 100 times! this is exactly what i want to do! love the exhaust, I bet it sounds MEAN!

 

Thanks for making such detailed posts. I'm doing a nearly identical build but I'm a couple months behind you reassembling my VK.

 

So everything in the truck is back together.

Exhaust from the back. Welded the hanger to a clamp. Turn down before the axle.

Front end buttoned up.

Tried to start it with Cajun's base tune. Truck will crank but not start.

I've emailed Brennan, but I suspect that my '14 transmission is not communicating with my 08 ECM.
I might have to swap the valvebody/TCM

 

Talked with Cajun, he disabled the U1000 and U1001 codes, saying they are common.
Tried to start again, no luck, the other 2 codes remained.

Swapped the valvebody with my old transmission. All the codes have disappeared

Old w/o screen:

out:

new:

Tried to start again. Started for a few seconds and died. Threw P0335 crank sensor code.

Cleared the code, tried again no start no code. Will charge the battery and try with another sensor I have laying around. Not sure if an Xterra sensor will work on a Titan engine though.

 

Little update.
I could only get it to run after flooding the engine with fuel then pulling the injector fuse, then cranking again. Would die as soon as the key was let go.
Spent a lot of time tracing wires and continuities, all looking good.

Did a compression test, all cylinders on the passenger side are at 170-180PSI,all the cylinders on the driver bank are at 0PSI.

Not sure if the timing jumped or what, but I will pull the engine again and start tearing stuff apart.

I could probably pull the cover /head with the engine in the truck, but since I don’t really know what I’m going to find, and with the amount of lift I have I think it’ll end up being easier to pull it back out.

 

Took the engine out and apart to diagnose. It's somehow much harder to pull out than putting it in. the headers hit just about everything.

The exhaust valves definitely hit the pistons a little on the driver side. Passenger had full compression and looks great.
I'm going to send the head to be machined/rebuild. It doesn't look bad but I don't want to pull the engine again.

The cylinder walls still look good. The truck never actually drove so I got lucky there. Spent a couple hours cleaning metal shavings out of them though.

The Walmart Super-Tech brake cleaner surprised me. It cleaned the top of the pistons better than the CRC could when I first rebuilt the engine.
All clean waiting for the head to come back. Still not exactly sure what happened. The timing was on the correct marks when going in, and the valves weren't hitting when turning by hand.

 

Wow man sorry to hear about this!

if you cant figure it out i sure cant

best of luck with getting it running

 

Got the head back, Reinstalled everything:

Triple checked everything

Changed a couple things. I decided to change the heater core hoses, and add hose sleeving around a few things to make the engine bay cleaner.

She runs!!! Now need to finish putting it back together, recharge ac, break it in and tune.
Idled a little high. Forgot to attach the hoses from the valve covers to intake.

 

hell yeahhhh!

 

Beautiful.

 

like it should have been all along! the v6 gets crappy mileage anyways, they should have just stuffed a v8 in to begin with, but of course, corporate bs got in the way of that!

 

Great writeup and congrats! As someone with a VK swap already, makes me look forward to rebuilding one some day when I wear mine out.

Was is something that jumped? Bad luck or just forgot to torque something?

If it wasn't hitting when turned by hand, it had to have jumped right?

 

I believe it jumped 1 or 2 links on the first crank when I was priming oil with the injector fuse out.

when you turn the crank CCW it basically unloads the tension and puts all the slack on the side of the chain that does not have the tensioner.
I think I may have turned the crankshaft ccw a little when installing the torque converter bolts, but never turned it back CW to load the chain again.
Turning it by hand CCW then back CW is fine and most likely won’t jump links, the speed is low enough and the tension goes right back to where it’s supposed to within a few degrees of rotation.
I think the chain skipped when all the slack was on the wrong side and the speed of the starter hit it, and didn’t grab the link it was supposed to

 

Little update. Truck has been running good and is almost done being tuned. I will update the first post soon.

Had a random cylinder 1 misfire a few seconds after some startups, but not after that. After chasing that down for a couple days it looks like it was maybe just a partially clogged injector. Doing a couple WOT pulls must have cleared it up since it does not come back anymore.

Also had a knock sensor go bad, so I just replaced both for piece of mind today. I had not replaced them during the rebuild, but I highly recommend doing it since you have to pull the manifold to get to them.

Also, NEVER NEVER EVER use WVE by NTK temp sensors. I noticed a small coolant leak under the manifold coming from the sensor. Took the sensor out, replaced the crush washer and torqued it back to spec. The body broke off and left the threads in the block. Luckily it was an easy fix, I still had the original Nissan sensor laying around.

Overall very happy with the swap so far. I can definitely feel the difference (and noise) from the V6, especially with my lift and tires. I used to get 10.9 MPG combined, so far I'm close to 15 while doing WOT pulls for the tune. I've also had multiple random people ask me "what's in that thing?, sounds great" lol