Z Fever

We here at Z-Fever have been building a VQ35 powered Sentra Spec V. We are using the stock LSD transmission from the Sentra w/ an 06 Maxima transmission bell housing installed on it. We this occurs the Sentra's axle bracket no longer lines up with the mounting holes on the VQ35 engine. Also, the Maxima axle did not fit either. It is way too long.
The solution.....
We have to make a custom bracket that bolts to the block AND is aligned with the axle. This is how we did it:

We started by using the stock bracket, cutting it and making steel pieces to space the part that holds the axle (the round hole with three bolt hold evenly spaced around it). Then we welded them together making 100% sure that the parts are square. Misalignment would NOT be a good thing.
Here is the part we made:



You might wonder why we did not just use this part???? Well, we could have done that but then the next time we do one of these swaps we would have to waste time making another one from scratch and welding pieces together leaves the risk that the part would not be perfectly square.
If we do it right the first time we can make another billet piece in a couple hours and have it look amazing! It's what you might call "professional"!

Then we use a Faro arm to measure the entire part, This process takes 3-4 hours. Then we use the 5 separate one dimensional drawings and overlap them to create a single image. We also have to fine tune each image.
Then we create a complete digital image from those 5 and fine tune changes to accommodate the machines abilities to cut metal
Also, the computer program allows us to see the part at different angles.






From here, we right a programs that tells the CNC how to cut the part. Meaning...what bits to use on each angle, how to rotate the part, when to rotate the part, when to change the bits, at what speed to move the part, and finally how fast to rotate each bit as it cuts the metal.... Take a long time!
Here are different stages of this part being made:













And finally we take a bit of time to de-burr the component and smooth the edges... otherwise it has extremely sharp and would be dangerous to handle..
Here is our part next to the one we welded up:









And here is a good look at the part mounted on the VQ35 engine:







I hope you enjoyed this and find it very interesting...

Doug