Hello there SW, most of you probably didn't read my other thread where My friend and I "built" a y33 q45 drift car. Well we kinda built the car... cheap and may have cut a few corners that may have bit us in the butt down the road. After two years of building said car we realized we wanted something different from the car. Maybe something that we can drive around without suspicion. A car that can be driven to an event that wont require a trailer. So the only logical thing to do was install the interior back into the gutted race car? The same car that needs a new windshield, registration, and a... *looks around* "perfectly legal California smog"? No its cheaper to just buy another q45...
SO fast forward a few months, we're browsing the craigslists and we happen to come across an almost ideal q45, It's black on black (black interior was a must) cheap, and has a much cleaner body than our previous q45. The drivetrain didn't really have to be great since its going to be swapped anyway. Here's the picture from the add.
After talking to the owner of said q45 we agreed on the price and bought it sight unseen! The following weekend we secured a rental car and headed to Rancho Cucamonga to pick up the car!
*Side note these do pretty gnarly burnouts, but the seats are pretty uncomfortable for 6+ hr long drives*
On the way down to LA we had an hour or two to kill before picking up the new q45 so we see a large building near the freeway with like 3 h1 Hummers, G wagons, and other cool cars, so naturally we go and pull off of the freeway and check it out. As soon as we pulled into the parking lot we were immediately blown away at all the exotic cars were there, apparently this place is some sort of luxury car dealership/ car museum. heres some random pictures of cars that I liked.
yes that badge does say 1500hp...
and this super cool lexani body kitted private security car...
BUT THE COOLEST CAR
While walking into the building I realized that i remembered the place from a Hoonigans live stream episode I watched on youtube...
ANYWAY SO ABOUT THE Q45... t
So back on track with the q45, we pull up at the previous owners house and we see this magnificent beast
Yes I did for sure take a picture of the bad side
onto the deets of the new car, Its a 1999 q45t with the ugly rear end "facelift", almost fully loaded, black leather, factory leveling HIDs, power rear sunshade, 4 year old megan coils, 5% tint all around, some sweet kesken wheels, and a handful of dents and random broken stuff. Basically the perfect doner chassis for our new car!
The drive back home went pretty smooth, the car drove "fine" apart for some crazy rattling in the back of the car from one of the bolts coming loose on the megans and no radio, it was surprisingly uneventful over the 6hr drive. Once we got back to the house we gave the car a good wash and took some better pictures.
swapped over our gt grill
all the yachts in one piccc
OK THATS COOL AND ALL BUT WHAT ARE YOU DOING
So we're swapping over our drivetrain from our old q45 into this new q45t BUT we're going to retain as much factory equipment as possible. that means making cruise control work, AC, heater, and anything else we can keep.
We somehow managed to convince one of your friends to let us borrow a lift at his shop during the week of Christmas, what a fool jk hes cool with us tearing apart a couple cars in the shop. So lets go see how a week in a shop goes while we completely go crazy swapping the new car...
so first things first here's the old car:
It's a 1997 q45 with;
BMW m52 refreshed with m50 forged rods, m54 pistons, s50 cams arp head studs, m50 manifold, 1,000cc injectors gt35/82 turbo, gtr intercooler, walbro 455 fuel pump, and a K- data plug n play ms2 megasquirt ecu.
So to do a "simple" chassis swap you need to first strip down the car you would like to replace.
(Sunday morning)
that front fitment is something i'll miss with the new car since we're not going that crazy on the fender work
gutting the interior out
the plan was to keep everything we could use on the new car
So what do you do with a bare chassis? You weld casters on the frame rails and call pick n pull to grab the car of course!
All tucked away for later
STEP 2
(Wednesday, after Christmas)
Now here's the fun part, ya now have to take apart a "perfectly good car". jk it overheats and stuff so yolo.
snip snip
if you're wondering why your car still feels slow after you get a muffler delete...
dropping the engine by the subframe is super easy with a lift tbh, well unless the last nut holing on that subframe is stripped...
5min with a dremel later...
The plan is to keep the existing subframe in the black car with the VLSD and stock arms/ bushings while we powdercoat the silver cars old subframe and throw on solid subframe mounts at a later time.
#savetheautos
After we dropped out the engine we cleaned up the engine bay, stripped off unnecessary brackets, and modified the heater core routing to work with the m52.
(THURSDAY)
On Thursday I didn't take too many pictures since visually it didn't ook like a whole lot of progress. We were mostly finding better mounting solutions for a huge jegs camaro radiator, huge duel fan shroud, intercooler, and other various small stuff.
engine mocked up while fitting up components and finding a way to keep the OEM hood latch.
So this wasn't really part of the plan... but long story short to remove the engine + subframe we had to cut our "up pipe" basically an extension of the the exhaust manifold to better fit the turbo. I have always disliked the design/ construction of that up pipe and since it was basically the forst thing i welded together, it was not at all air tight... so we cut that off and decided to just remake our "turbo setup" and relocate the turbo where we would have less issues fitting the exhaust.
In this location we can tuck the "downpipe" up closer to the chassis, not have to worry about melting the valve cover, and we can get fresh air from inside the fender through the bumper
(Friday)
Friday was a long day, we started off the morning by having the old car picked up
Got the VH41 and auto trans recycled (which is what the proper way of installing a vh41)
we bolted down the subframe
This is where we basically went into full work mode and I barely took pics of the progress
we installed the battery where the OEM cd changer was, we plan on making it look a bit more pretty down the road.
(SATURDAY)
*enter sleep deprivation and general panic because we want to get the car running already*
We made spaghetti!
driveshaft and trans mounts are in!
And Paul Installed the clutch pedal, shifter, and wired up the car to work with the key tubler! I didn't take pictures since i was welding up the intercooler piping and exhaust.
(SUNDAY)
Sunday was just attaching hoses, lines, bleeding fluids, adding fluids, double checking bolts and clamps for the tightness and oh yah, the first startup and drive
I'd love to day it was a happy ending, and we drove the car home that day... buuut we have a small list of revisions we need to make. the biggest one is that our clutch is making the most awful noises, and we need to extend the wiring to the ecu so we can mount the ecu in the cabin. We'll be working on that eventually, but we're going to wait on that for a bit, working 80+ hours in a week on this kinda killed us.
-Stay classy San Diego
SO fast forward a few months, we're browsing the craigslists and we happen to come across an almost ideal q45, It's black on black (black interior was a must) cheap, and has a much cleaner body than our previous q45. The drivetrain didn't really have to be great since its going to be swapped anyway. Here's the picture from the add.
After talking to the owner of said q45 we agreed on the price and bought it sight unseen! The following weekend we secured a rental car and headed to Rancho Cucamonga to pick up the car!
*Side note these do pretty gnarly burnouts, but the seats are pretty uncomfortable for 6+ hr long drives*
On the way down to LA we had an hour or two to kill before picking up the new q45 so we see a large building near the freeway with like 3 h1 Hummers, G wagons, and other cool cars, so naturally we go and pull off of the freeway and check it out. As soon as we pulled into the parking lot we were immediately blown away at all the exotic cars were there, apparently this place is some sort of luxury car dealership/ car museum. heres some random pictures of cars that I liked.
yes that badge does say 1500hp...
and this super cool lexani body kitted private security car...
BUT THE COOLEST CAR
While walking into the building I realized that i remembered the place from a Hoonigans live stream episode I watched on youtube...
ANYWAY SO ABOUT THE Q45... t
So back on track with the q45, we pull up at the previous owners house and we see this magnificent beast
Yes I did for sure take a picture of the bad side
onto the deets of the new car, Its a 1999 q45t with the ugly rear end "facelift", almost fully loaded, black leather, factory leveling HIDs, power rear sunshade, 4 year old megan coils, 5% tint all around, some sweet kesken wheels, and a handful of dents and random broken stuff. Basically the perfect doner chassis for our new car!
The drive back home went pretty smooth, the car drove "fine" apart for some crazy rattling in the back of the car from one of the bolts coming loose on the megans and no radio, it was surprisingly uneventful over the 6hr drive. Once we got back to the house we gave the car a good wash and took some better pictures.
swapped over our gt grill
all the yachts in one piccc
OK THATS COOL AND ALL BUT WHAT ARE YOU DOING
So we're swapping over our drivetrain from our old q45 into this new q45t BUT we're going to retain as much factory equipment as possible. that means making cruise control work, AC, heater, and anything else we can keep.
We somehow managed to convince one of your friends to let us borrow a lift at his shop during the week of Christmas, what a fool jk hes cool with us tearing apart a couple cars in the shop. So lets go see how a week in a shop goes while we completely go crazy swapping the new car...
so first things first here's the old car:
It's a 1997 q45 with;
BMW m52 refreshed with m50 forged rods, m54 pistons, s50 cams arp head studs, m50 manifold, 1,000cc injectors gt35/82 turbo, gtr intercooler, walbro 455 fuel pump, and a K- data plug n play ms2 megasquirt ecu.
So to do a "simple" chassis swap you need to first strip down the car you would like to replace.
(Sunday morning)
that front fitment is something i'll miss with the new car since we're not going that crazy on the fender work
gutting the interior out
the plan was to keep everything we could use on the new car
So what do you do with a bare chassis? You weld casters on the frame rails and call pick n pull to grab the car of course!
All tucked away for later
STEP 2
(Wednesday, after Christmas)
Now here's the fun part, ya now have to take apart a "perfectly good car". jk it overheats and stuff so yolo.
snip snip
if you're wondering why your car still feels slow after you get a muffler delete...
dropping the engine by the subframe is super easy with a lift tbh, well unless the last nut holing on that subframe is stripped...
5min with a dremel later...
The plan is to keep the existing subframe in the black car with the VLSD and stock arms/ bushings while we powdercoat the silver cars old subframe and throw on solid subframe mounts at a later time.
#savetheautos
After we dropped out the engine we cleaned up the engine bay, stripped off unnecessary brackets, and modified the heater core routing to work with the m52.
(THURSDAY)
On Thursday I didn't take too many pictures since visually it didn't ook like a whole lot of progress. We were mostly finding better mounting solutions for a huge jegs camaro radiator, huge duel fan shroud, intercooler, and other various small stuff.
engine mocked up while fitting up components and finding a way to keep the OEM hood latch.
So this wasn't really part of the plan... but long story short to remove the engine + subframe we had to cut our "up pipe" basically an extension of the the exhaust manifold to better fit the turbo. I have always disliked the design/ construction of that up pipe and since it was basically the forst thing i welded together, it was not at all air tight... so we cut that off and decided to just remake our "turbo setup" and relocate the turbo where we would have less issues fitting the exhaust.
In this location we can tuck the "downpipe" up closer to the chassis, not have to worry about melting the valve cover, and we can get fresh air from inside the fender through the bumper
(Friday)
Friday was a long day, we started off the morning by having the old car picked up
Got the VH41 and auto trans recycled (which is what the proper way of installing a vh41)
we bolted down the subframe
This is where we basically went into full work mode and I barely took pics of the progress
we installed the battery where the OEM cd changer was, we plan on making it look a bit more pretty down the road.
(SATURDAY)
*enter sleep deprivation and general panic because we want to get the car running already*
We made spaghetti!
driveshaft and trans mounts are in!
And Paul Installed the clutch pedal, shifter, and wired up the car to work with the key tubler! I didn't take pictures since i was welding up the intercooler piping and exhaust.
(SUNDAY)
Sunday was just attaching hoses, lines, bleeding fluids, adding fluids, double checking bolts and clamps for the tightness and oh yah, the first startup and drive
I'd love to day it was a happy ending, and we drove the car home that day... buuut we have a small list of revisions we need to make. the biggest one is that our clutch is making the most awful noises, and we need to extend the wiring to the ecu so we can mount the ecu in the cabin. We'll be working on that eventually, but we're going to wait on that for a bit, working 80+ hours in a week on this kinda killed us.
-Stay classy San Diego
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