Another Triple Gauge Swap
 

Now that I have my latest round of goodies from z1 (oil cooler kit), I'm ready to go ahead with my triple gauge swap. This thread will be an ongoing log of my progress.

I'm still NA for now, so I'm just going with oil pressure, oil temp, and water temp at this point. I'm going to run the Defi Advance BF gauges, because the amber one look pretty close to stock. I took a quick video to show the two different opening and closing "ceremonies" as they call it. Please don't judge my shaky YouTube video; it was 3am and I was trying to balance my phone to record, while holding the terminals of the gauge wires up to my drone battery for power.



I'm scared about the ability to go back to stock, so I am going to go the long route and remove the dash to pull out the factory cluster in-tact.

More to come

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

Sub’d

The FSM links seem to have dried up thanks to Nissan. If anyone can hook me up with the FSM for a 2017 it would make my life so much easier when it comes time to rip this dash apart

Supporting hardware:

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1773/...001648dc_b.jpg

Tap for the upper radiator hose, for the water temperature probe:
https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1796/...b0191a3a_b.jpg

I want to leave the stock oil temperature sensor and oil pressure switch in place, without being disturbed. I picked up a few of these -10AN adapters with 1/8" NPT taps. The idea here is that I will put them inline with the adapters on top of the Setrab core, before the hoses. This will also make running the wires much easier:
https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1773/...f48b0d6f_b.jpg
https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1779/...ebacba7c_b.jpg
It looks really big, but a lot of that is just the perspective of the pic... it shouldn't have any trouble fitting.

Can't forget the +20rwhp boost from Zino!
https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1812/...58be83dc_b.jpg

PM me your email address, I have the fsm on CD. I'll send you that section.

Pm sent. Thanks again!

Email sent.

I hate that I'm moving so slow on this. I'm going to blame it on the uppity apartment that I'm living in for the moment. Technically I'd be violating my lease to change a flat tire. I have to drive 30 minutes to a DIY mechanic shop.

Anyway, here is a very quick update:
I put in the oil temperature and oil pressure senders. I did not add the water temperature sensor because I had no desire to open up the coolant system tonight. I had plans with my son and did not install the gauge into the dash, but they are wired up, sitting in the passenger seat. I will post pics later, but to summarize, the oil pressure sensor is tee'd off with the stock oil pressure switch and the oil temperature probe is mounted in a drain bolt tapped to take a 1/8bspt fitting. Not removing the factory gauges tonight allowed me to compare the two temp gauges on the way home. As measured at the bottom of the pan, the Defi gauge reads 10-12 degrees below the stock gauge (I didn't push it to get the temps past 180)

I uploaded a very brief video showing the oil pressure gauge in action. The engine is somewhat warmed up, so it's idling at around d 45 psi


More to come

Sub'd!

And agree on the apartment complexes.. I've managed to build 2.5 fiberglass sub boxes working in apartment complexes... I say '.5' because during the last one they stopped me and told me I couldn't do that in the parking lot.

You can always buy an intact cluster later from ebay for 50 to 100 bucks

That's what I ended up doing... Got it for $60 plus $20 for the harness in a separate auction to play around with the CAN bus.

Well, with the help of Scope22's bracket I was able to get my gauges in over the weekend finally. The water temp gauge is not hooked up to it's sensor yet so it just reads zero (the harness has already been run to the engine bay, I need to gather the will to replace the radiator hose). I will post pics tomorrow after work.

Alright, so here it goes. I'm combining my work on the oil cooler install with the triple gauge swap because they go hand in hand, and the reason I wanted an oil pressure gauge is because I wanted peace of mind if I ****** up the oil cooler install :icon14:

I don't want to call this a DIY, because it's really not. There are some good ones on oil coolers. This is just "stuff I did with some pics thrown in"

In some of the pics above, I posted some preliminary ideas I had for the mounting of the pressure probe (specifically those AN hose adapters. I decided against that because I don't know how much I trust an oil pressure reading directly before or after the cooler. The solution I went with was two-fold: I mounted the oil pressure sensor on a tee with the OEM oil pressure switch (i.e. in the upper oil pan). Nissan figured this hole they tapped is good enough for them to monitor the pressure at, so I'm using it too. It's OK in a tee because unlike oil temperature, the pressure will be same at the back of the tee as it is in the tee branch. It's not just the tee, but there are also some adapters on there to extend the reach, which I needed for clearance. The perspective of the picture makes it look like the tee is a mile long, but it's really not that bad. I was worried about the whole think clocking around after driving, but I checked it several times over the past three months and it hasn't budged.

The stock oil pressure switch (black) next to the Defi oil pressure sender
https://i.imgur.com/lBuhr0fl.jpg


The stock oil temperature probe (blue) next to the Defi oil temperature probe
https://i.imgur.com/7aqCkN8l.jpg

Notice the thread difference between the two probes. I expected them to be the same, and I was planning on replacing the stock temperature sensor with the Defi as a drop-in swap... so much for that idea. I was talking to Z1 about this and they tried to convince me that it's the same thread size, even though I'm holding that in my hand. They said they measured it to be the same, and I trust them, so I'm just going to assume that the probe changed with model years.

My work-around for this was to pick up a tapped oil pan drain bolt from Greddy/ It's tapped for 1/8 bspt, and it makes for a really clean install. Here are some pics of that. I forgot to take some pics with it on the car, but I've got an oil change coming up soon and I'll get some pics then. This moves the measurement location from the block to the bottom of the lower pan. One added benefit was that I got to compare temperatures at two locations before the swap was complete, when I had both gauges going. The bottom of the sump measures about 10F cooler than the block. I'm sure many people will disagree with this, but I found some suitable pipe thread sealant (non-hardening) that I have used on these threads.

Here is the temperature probe masked off to keep the sealant only to the threads
https://i.imgur.com/w6mnPUYl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/EMDcSgfl.jpg

Here is the temperature probe mounted in the oil pan drain bolt.
https://i.imgur.com/GgqVVo4l.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/tuyu0Edl.jpg

After installing the cooler, I noticed that I had a leak (this was before installing the tapped oil pan bolt). It was a big enough of a leak that some of it would hit the exhaust piping from time to time and I could smell it. I tracked it down to a defective O-ring gasket in the thermo sandwich plate. It was letting oil past the seal. Thankfully Z1 actually sells this as a replacement for a few bucks. If I had just pulled the seal out to inspect it the first time around I would have seen this and saved myself some trouble
https://i.imgur.com/oAHk8q6l.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/3Sr3XX2l.jpg


OEM oil pressure switch (black) and oil temperature probe (blue) with wires disconnected. Pressure switch is toward the front of the vehicle
https://i.imgur.com/VXBQsdAl.jpg


A few pictures of the setup after I installed everything. Again, the perspective on the picture makes the adapters look a lot longer than they are. I had to extend the pressure sensors away from the block for clearance. This doesn't come through in the pics. Everything is very tight, and I've checked it once a week for three months; it hasn't budged.

https://i.imgur.com/sCQ5Wxol.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/IuY9lIRl.jpg


So now everything is mounted... I bought a thermo plate with my cooler, but even with that I can't get my oil temp above 140 in good ol' Michigan winter. I made a block-off plate out of scrap aluminum sheet painted black. I added Zino because he's almost like a baby Godzilla, and the Z is almost like the GTR's little brother, so... yeah. My son thinks it's cool at least. This is as close as I'll get to putting any stickers on my car. I bought some heavy-duty outdoor Velcro to put on the plate and cooler.
https://i.imgur.com/WgQG2NYl.jpg


https://i.imgur.com/iZG3Kqgl.jpg

Car is on a lift; this is looking at the cooler up from underneath
https://i.imgur.com/f0cgB9Hl.jpg


https://i.imgur.com/jJ9zzCLl.jpg

I think this covers the oil cooler and gauge probes. I'll make another post for the gauges later.

Here are links to what I used so far

Used a few of these as extensions on the pressure sensor.
1/8 Male-Female BSP adapter

The tee fitting I used. If you look closely, it's BSPP to BSPT. This is part of the reason that I used the thread sealant. No leaks.
1/8 BSP tee adapter

Adapter to install 1/8 BSP fitting into the oil pan
Greddy 1/8 BSP oil pan drain plug

Here is a pic of the finished product. I'll post more details of the behind-the-dash work later
https://i.imgur.com/3kuqB0Hl.jpg