Unless you plan to just buy a shitbox for the money you get from selling the z, i really feel that you'll spend less overall by just getting a used engine. But i can also understand feeling screwed by Nissan and wanting to be done with the car entirely regardless of cost hit.

I have a 2nd car that i do most of my driving. I'm not totally opposed to a used engine, but have heard horror stories of installs going bad, or shops hitting a wall and keeping the deposit and asking the owner to tow back their car.

If anyone knows of a reputable, trusted and experienced shop in the San Diego area that can handle the project, please let me know.

Honestly as long as the replacement engine and trans (they're cheaper as a set) run fine, then the swap is very straight forward for any competent mechanic. Look up race shops in your areas and ones sponsored by clubs like NASA, PCA, BMWCCA, etc are usually the better bet on who to contact.

I'm nowhere near you, but my local shop is Porsche specific and I've seen my mechanic drop a newer 911 engine in the morning and be done with it back in by 2pm, including replacing coilovers on one of my cars in the meantime. He's an IMSA crew chief too, and I found him through NASA.

Yeah, mechanics/engineers at race shops tend to be decent. I lent my car to a race team for a day for testing because they couldn't source a replacement shift linkage part. They had my trans out in like 5 minutes. i was like wtf.

Specialty Z.... They are in Cali. Not sure where they are compared to you.

150 miles. There are reputable shops in San Diego. I can't remember off hand which one's they are but a search would bring them up.

Oh, your golden. Engine swap that beautiful Z & do it right the first time. Take your time with it, find a mechanic you feel comfortable with.

I think maybe those horror stories might have been from engine swaps for different vehicles, which will be more complicated. You are going Z engine to Z car so its the closest "Plug n Play" so to speak as you'll get :icon17:. As victorofhavoc said, any competent mechanic, whos had experience with engine swaps will have very little to no issues with this.

As a bonus if there was anything mod wise you wanted, now would be the time as the engine will be out and will save you a ton on labor.

LOOKING AT THOSE HEADERS. Way easier to do it when out of the car.

Also make sure the gallery gasket is the upgraded material from nissan while you're at it (2013+ should have it.)

Ugh! Sorry to hear.

Good luck going forward with whatever you decide.

Found a shop i'm very comfortable with ... may not be the cheapest, but I may sleep better at night. Looking like we're going to put a used VQ37 with 69k in my Z. Total not to exceed price is $5k. 1 yr parts and labor warranty. He's got it on the rack just to make sure it won't need anything else.

Interesting that he said he had a very similar customer with a Q37 a couple months ago. Did the same work.

Appreciate the suggestions on modding. My mod $ go to my Jeep Wrangler, and based on the financial hit i just took on the Z, no more mods planned for the Jeep.

That seems like a fair price. You should be up and running.

But I'm still going to suggest getting the gallery gasket replaced before that engine goes in.

:iagree:

:iagree::iagree: x 1000

Do the Galley Gasket while engine is out. It's a labor intensive job if engine is still in the car. Do it while engine is already out. Small extra cost but it's a big insurance, well worth it.

I'm glad you found someone your comfortable with, and yeah with work like this, you dont want cheapest. Your paying for someone whos experienced.. and while anything can happen, you did dramatically lower your chances of dealing with stupid problems lol. I've seen people cheap out on things too many times only to find the work was done half assed with allot of stupid rookie and avoidable mistakes. You eventually pay double to do it right elsewhere lol.

Yeah that's a good price. Like others said, I'd do the galley gasket, just to be safe. Glad to hear things are going to work out!

Man sorry to hear about this, I am a little concerned now. I have 2012 Z with 47k that I barely move now because of COVID. Did you ever find why this happened?

A '12 with 47? That thing needs more play time.

OP good luck with your repairs. Sometimes it's just good not to dwell on the why and just move on to the next.

Engine replacement in progress. Shop not sure why it happened. They said they've never seen such a clean low mileage car blow an engine like this. They think maybe oil starvation ... oil pump failure? IDK. I do know the oil level prior was right where it should be. I asked about sabotage. They said not likely.

To quote John Bender from The Breakfast Club - "Screws fall out all the time ... the world's an imperfect place"

BTW - does not need a torque converter like the dealership thought.

I'll let you all know when I get Zed back and how he drives.

The only way to know exactly what happened to the old engine is to pull it apart and see what broke.

:iagree:

Update from the shop - he pulled the oil pan and did some looking around and he's quite convinced it dropped a valve and then the engine grenaded from that. He said not due to oil starvation. He's not sure (nor am I) as to what would have caused a valve to drop. In 7+ years, that engine was only redlined once and that was for a nano-second and was probably 4 years ago. The morning this happened, i was passing a car on the highway, but was definitely not exceeding 5k rpm's during the couple seconds it took to pass the car. As i said earlier, it's always been babied ... maybe too much.

Also, the flex plate it toast, but other than that, the shop says my Z should be ready possibly be end of day tomorrow.

Any guesses why valves decide to drop themselves into a cylinder?

We'll update when i get my Z back.

Our engines dropping valves is not normal at all. If you did have piston to valve contact it may be due to the galley gasket leaking oil. It supplies oil to the VTC's on the cams. Normally that won't cause any piston to valve issues unless the timing chain jumped or broke. That diagnoses is lacking lots of information. Something else was missed.

Thanks Spooler. So maybe the timing chain broke causing the valves to go nuts. I guess then the question is why would a timing chain fail at that mileage on the VQ37? I've not heard of that happening on our engine.

The shop didn't do a full diagnosis - I would have had to pay for a bunch more labor. He just did some of his own (without charging me) based on his curiosity.

Yeah, he would need to have pulled the front cover off to look at everything. That might have given him more of a clue.

:iagree:
He would have to tear the motor apart to see what really happened.

I had one motor drop a valve for no reason once. Another motor, I had a Crane triple valve spring break and hold the valve part way open. Lucky, it didn't do any damage.

Got my Z back on Saturday. New long block, flex plate and intake manifold. Needed the manifold because it was polluted with shrapnel from the engine grenading. It really looked like someone dropped a bomb in there. There would have been no way to clean it out. Total price with labor $6485.

Drove great on Saturday. Only did 15 miles as the weather sucked. However, it has a couple oil leaks so taking it back in the shop on Wednesday to have that taken care of. Hopefully easy fix.

Keep us updated and glad you decided to keep it. :)

I have never done a study on engines that have dropped a valve, but I believe there are 2 common types.

First is it broke at the lower notch of the valve stem where the retainer latches. This can be explained by micro cracking during the manufacturing process. Whether it's inclusion in the material or surface scratching, your guess is as good as mine. This fails catastrophically without warning.

The other type is caused by excessive wear on the stem as witnessed by the recall on GM LS7 engines. This creates a valve train noise that develops over time. Hard to tell and it requires trained ears to detect without opening the engine.

I have experienced a valve dropped on my '82 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40. Luckily, it happened at a red light while idling. The engine simply stalled and refused to turn over. Opening the valve cover revealed the cause and after a new valve, lapping of only that one valve, and reassembly, the engine was back. A tiny nick on the piston and on the head were all the damages left inside the engine. In a way, it was a lucky engine.

At any rate, I'm glad the car now is running again. Hopefully the oil leak is a simple problem that can be easily fixed.

Final update as now have my Z back with the leaks fixed. Runs great ... this car seems so fast after driving my Wrangler for the last month. While the Z was being fixed this last time was actually considering going with another sports car, but after driving it the last couple days, it really is a cool car ... just hoping the replacement engine holds up well. Thanks to all for your help on this thread.

:tup:

Keep your receipts and stuff in case you decide to sell it ever! :D

Glad to hear it worked out!!