@Anthony VF
I can only echo the theme of responses here. I get it- RBs are cool, I even owned one for a while and it was a lot of fun, but what you are proposing here is about the biggest task a petrolhead can do- and one that 99% of very experienced people would put in the too hard basket.
You’re going to need a donor halfcut- not just an engine. I’d imagine that’ll run you around $10k over there. Then you’ll need to give the engine a full major service, failing that, seeing as you want big HP, a rebuild. There’s another $1000-$6000 if you do it yourself. New turbos and intercoolers will be $4000. Then (and here’s the real tricky bit) you need to make it fit.
The custom crossmember, engine mounts, braketry and piping is time consuming, skilled labour work. It’s full of technical drawings and trial and error test fits that are way beyond pretty much anyone without a well established engineering shop. If you have a mate that owns such a place, I’d see it running you around $7000 and a few cartons of beer. If not- remembering that these blokes charge themselves out at $100+ an hour- expect over $10,000.
An aftermarket ECU to make it work will be another $2000 with at least another $1000 to wire it up. If you want your current dash and in car electronics to work, I’d expect an extra couple hundred and if you want a decent race dash you can put down another $1000 and the same amount for a tune.
Incidentals come into play too. Will your steering column still have a clear path to your rack? If not, knowing the headache that’s caused on our manual 300C conversion, I’d expect an expert to charge a couple grand to make it. You will need a new radiator and a modified tail shaft. That’s $500 conservatively.
All of this assumes the engine and gearbox will actually fit- which it probably won’t- and that you’ll run it as RWD- which kinda defies the point of what you’re doing. Transmission tunnel work will run you thousands and make most of your interior panels unuseable. Firewall moving and inner guard modification is strict race car only stuff and will cost you thousands. Probably approaching $5000 if you get it done nicely and have the bay smoothed and tidied while you’re at it. If you want the front diff to work set aside another few grand.
Then there’s the legality of it. I have no idea about Canada, but over here you need an engineer to sign off on any serious job like this. For them to do that, it’s a requirement that the car has updated brakes, suspension, rigidity and tyres to deal with the extra horsepower. $2k for the certificate and probably $6k for the mods.
The reality is, that with this much custom work- which will NEED to be carried out by professionals, the car will be off the road for a while. Shops tend to put things like this on the back burner while they churn out more profitable jobs. You’ll need an engineer for all your chassis mods, an auto electrician for your wiring and a dyno tuner. And the car will need to be trailered between them. Expect it to sit in each shop for a few months. How are you going to get around then?
So all in, I’d expect at least $40,000 on a very unlikely best case scenario. The sky is literally the limit if things don’t turn out simple. $60k wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Either way you’ll be off the road for at least 6 months and need a trailer and tow car to get it from A to B. Don’t expect it to be a daily when you’re finished either- high HP cars are not meant to be taken to work everyday and are not the most reliable run arounds.
There’s another thought too- high HP car+young inexperienced driver+slippery conditions= crash. Don’t even try to tell me it won’t happen to you or that you’ve been driving since you were in the womb because I don’t care. Statistically most young people will crash their cars at some point. Some will write them off and some will be killed. Nearly every mate of mine growing up (male and female) has had an accident at some point. Many have written cars off and some have permanent injuries to show for it.
I myself wrote off a Toyota GT86 on a slippery hills road about 4 years ago. I was a Gran Turismo player since the age of 5, grew up with paddocks and cars to screw around in and had real on track experience. That stuff doesn’t apply in the real world anywhere near as much as we want it too. I wasn’t breaking any laws or driving dangerously, but a genuine lack of experience cost me thousands of dollars, threw me into depression and changed my life forever. It can happen to you and 9 times out of 10 it’s those who think they are invincible who are, in fact, the most venerable.
Take it from me- I’ve been there and done a much more simple swap that turned out to be a nightmare. Making my 300zx Vert a Twin Turbo, with a mates help, ended up taking 2 years, costing me over $6k and in all honesty making the car far worse. I was young (18 I believe) and wanted my car to be cool and unique, so I know exactly where you’re coming from. But due to the impatient shortcuts of my youth, I’m now staring down the barrel of doing it all over again. I’m expecting to spend proper amounts of money on a car that I probably haven’t done 3000km in, in the last 5 years and the only way I’m justifying it is with sentimental value and the promise to myself that I won’t get carried away and that I will use it as a daily when it’s done.
So here’s a thought and I know you don’t want to hear it. Just buy an Impreza RS or WRX as a daily and be done with it. They are great cars, a lot of fun and grip extremely well. If you genuinely have $40k burning a hole in your pocket, import an immaculate R32 and use it as a weekender. Keep the Genesis for a daily and invest a few hundred dollars in some winter tyres. It really is as simple as that.
I’m not saying this swap can’t be done, quite the opposite actually. What I’m saying is that for a $40k, 6 month investment that will dramatically decrease the value of the car and engine, you’d be making a massive mistake to try it.
