We all love a good low-buck junkyard motor build. Whether adding forced induction and crossing fingers or going full teardown and rebuild, the stories about how much power you can pull out of a used GM LS-based small-block V8 are endless. But what if you want a V8 that isn’t an LS in your homebrew hot rod? While Ford’s five-liter Coyote V8 is awesome, it’s also still a bit expensive. On the flipside, Gen III 5.7-liter Hemi V8s are everywhere, but the factory pistons are known to be weak points when chasing serious forced-induction power, and they don’t offer a huge edge over a GM truck motor. So how about a completely different V8, one with overhead cams and a stout build? Welcome to the Nissan VK56DE, an underrated motor that’s probably already in a wrecking yard near you.
Back in the early 2000s, Nissan decided it needed a full-sized truck for America. In that era, a half-ton truck needed a proper V8, so Nissan took a look at the 4.5-liter VK45DE V8 in the Infiniti Q45 and punched it out to 5.6 liters. Still an all-aluminum quad-cam V8, this beast originally cranked out around 305 horsepower and 385 lb.-ft. of torque. Unsurprisingly, it did the trick in the Nissan Titan, Nissan Armada, Nissan Pathfinder, and Infiniti QX56 as a workhorse to battle Ford’s modular V8, GM’s LS, and the melange of V8s Chrysler was putting out back then. However, it didn’t take long for a higher power to come calling.
For 2010, Nissan modified the VK56DE to be a 600-horsepower racing engine in the GT-R Nismo GT1. From there, it shrunk down to five liters and found its way under the hood of the Altimas raced in Australian Supercars. Oh, and then there were the Formula Drift builds.
So wait, why a truck motor? Well, in addition to the high-RPM friendliness of overhead cams, Nissan went with a closed-deck block for strength, along with a forged crankshaft, forged connecting rods, and touches like six-bolt mains. In short, Nissan way overbuilt this engine for what it needed to do, and now that examples can be pulled out of junkyards for a few hundred per unit, people are waking up to the VK56DE as a low-buck V8 swap option.
Arguably the most famous VK56DE sits in Jon Rogers’ S14 240SX. Starting life as a junkyard motor, it received a rebuild including aftermarket pistons and connecting rods, beefier main studs and head studs, and a valvetrain package including cams, valve springs, and valves. Is this a lot of effort to spend on a 220,000-mile junkyard motor? Sure, but when force-fed by a 98 mm Precision turbocharger and fuelled by methanol, these measures make sense.
The result? A whopping 1,966 wheel horsepower. That’s an enormous figure, and one that’s especially impressive when you consider than Engine Labs reports that Rogers built the motor for just a little over ten grand. As the outlet wrote, “Most of the $10,500 spent on the long-block lives in the cylinders (rods and pistons), so this could be reproduced on a budget.” In a reasonably light 240SX, this combination makes for quarter-mile passes in less than seven seconds. Insane stuff.
But what if you don’t have $10,000 to spend? Well, you’ll probably like what left-field engine legend Calvin Nelson has been cooking up: a stock bottom end, 121,000-mile VK56DE out of a Nissan Titan boosted by a sub-$1,000 Forced Performance 7875 turbocharger and fuelled by Snake Eater injectors. The only engine hardware modification? Upgraded oil pump gears. We’re talking stock ring gap, stock bearings, and as Nelson said, “I didn’t even take a valve cover off this thing.” The transmission of choice is a GM Turbo 400, and the whole combination’s been stuffed in a Ford Fairmont.
The result is a healthy 670 wheel horsepower, but the limit here likely isn’t the engine itself. It might be the used, Facebook Marketplace-bought torque converter. According to Nelson, “when I contacted the guys over at Circle D, they were pretty adamant that it was way too loose for our combination.” Don’t be surprised if we see another run with a tighter converter and potentially a bigger turbo on Nelson’s YouTube channel soon. After all, the goal is for this low-buck build to run eights in the quarter-mile all day.
Of course, a great potential engine doesn’t mean a whole lot if it’s hard to mate up to a solid transmission, but builders of low-buck VK56DEs have options. The aftermarket’s churning out a variety of bellhousing adapters, whether you want to mate your VK56DE with a CD009 six-speed manual from a Nissan 350Z, a GM 4L80 four-speed automatic from a heavy-duty truck or van, or even a ZF 8HP eight-speed automatic from a modern BMW. Shoutout to the mad scientists at Domiworks for cooking up that last option. Mind you, turbo kits aren’t exactly off-the-shelf for these engines yet, so you’ll likely need to fabricate your own turbo manifolds.
While the Nissan VK56DE is often a forgotten V8, it has huge potential horsepower upside for not a ton of cash. Sure, it’s a fairly wide engine, but as a low-buck option that isn’t an LS and likes to rev, Nissan’s 5.6-liter V8 deserves to be on your shortlist. They’re everywhere in junkyards, they’re way cheaper than a Ford Coyote V8, and they have higher limits than a two-valve or three-valve Ford Modular V8.
Top graphic images: Nissan; Nivlac57/YouTube
Certainly more interesting than yet another LS swap.