I have noticed a picture of an L18 in a 1200 in the engine photos area, my questions are:
Does a L18 or L20 fit easily into a 1200 engine bay. What sort of modifications do you have to do? Also, do you have to change
gearbox, drive shaft etc?
Putting one of these engines in would give you a lot more cubes than an A14/A15.
Cheers

Simon

I had looked into doing this conversion. Its not hard. You will have to change the engine mounts obviously. The L series is a bit taller than the A series so u will have to try and get
it as low as possible. The gearbox mounts will also have to fabricated. Also, the L series gearboxes have a hydrulic clutch, so u will either have to convert it to cable or get a
clutch resevour connected to your pedal. The drive shaft will have to be cut and replaced uni's. I think thats all? The reason i didnt end up doing is because of the weight of the L
series. I didnt want understeer. Hope this helps.

Davo

Hi Simon - here's some info about a L18 that someone put in their 1200. I reckon there are better choices out there now but maybe this will help you make up your mind. This is from Martin
Pots Website at http://members.iinet.net.au/~mpot/DatsunMods/
... has heard of someone who installed an L18 engine into a 1200. Then entire job was done by an
apprentice mechanic. It was a huge job, and involved deeply scalloping the crossmember, engine mount mods, and reshaping the sump.
The engine runs custom extractors for clearance, with a 2.5" system and 3" tip. Induction is twin 45 side draught Webers, which give an incredible throaty roar under acceleration. The
head was extensively worked, with maximum porting, valve increases and a huge cam.
A factory EFI setup imported from Japan was tried, and found to be much smoother, but too restrictive above 6000rpm when used with the cam. The gearbox used is a reverse H Japanese race
box. The radiator is a custom 5 core with a big thermo fan. The diff is a shortened 1200 ute diff.
The engine produced in excess of 170 hp, and was incredibly quick!

Well for less work and money fit a A14-A15 no other mods needed and can get same sort of power with
less weight :)
Andrew

Not wanting to sound rude but for all the effort the choice of an L series would be a waste of time and money, as has been said already you can get as much power out of an A series anyway,
You could build a sleeper 1700cc stroker and there are no structural changes required and it still looks like a 1200 to nosy buggers. If your intent on going bigger look at the later
technology from Nissan like a CA 1600/1800 or the alloy SR series. Or if your really keen an alloy quad cam Nissan V8 ! I've seen one in a 310 Sunny and theres plenty of room. But any
engine swap will require the gearbox tunnel to be modified (wider and probably higher) unless you can find a car that was an automatic as these usually have a bigger tunnel.

I wasn't aware that you could build the A-series engine to a 1700cc. ..did I understand you correctly??? If so what is involved in
this build up???!!!

Anything is possible if you are keen enough. A good friend had a 1760cc A15 built for racing. It featured custom made forged pistons, Carillo rods and a welded and offset ground crank. The
block needed relieving for the rods to clear in the bottom of the block. This was a "cheater" engine which was run in in a 1300 to 1600cc saloon car class. This motor was still a screamer
(9000rpm) and had stacks of torque. Sadly this engine has "disappeared" and many of the people associated with it still won't acknowledge it's existence. A good race engine builder could do
the calculations and build a similar short block, though it would'nt be cheap. Similar engines being built here in New Zealand can cost as much as 30,000NZ$ (15,000US$)but you could probably
use more standard parts with a little cross referencing in various component suppliers catalogues for the correct con rods and pistons. Get friendly with some engine machinists and pick their
brains.

Thanks for the response!! Would you happen to know by any chance the bore and stroke of this 1760cc engine??? What is the maximum you can bore an A-series motor??? ...I know you
have to take into account possible core shift,which can only be checked by a sonic check...but without a sonic check what is a safe limit??

Max Overbore that you can safley go is 120 thou or 3mm. My A14 is bored this much giving a capacity of 1530cc a A15 with 3mm overbore is 1608cc I dont know of any
bigger capacity engine being built anything is possible with lots of money.