Knowing Nissan Engine

Nissan is a great competitor in automotive industries. Interestingly, Nissan have a great method to naming their engines, and is not very difficult to understand that.

Basically, thare was three types of Nissan engine

1. SR
The SR engine is a 1.6 L, 1.8 L, or 2.0 L straight-4 4-stroke from Nissan. It is an aluminum DOHC 4-valve design, with some versions incorporating variable valve timing. The engine was used in many small to medium Nissan vehicles, including high-performance turbocharged variants.

2. RB
The RB engine is a 2.0L to 3.0L straight-6 four-stroke gasoline engine from Nissan.
Both SOHC and DOHC versions have an aluminum head. The SOHC versions have 2 valves per cylinder and the DOHC versions have 4 valves per cylinder, all cam lobes move only one valve. All RB engines have belt driven cams and a cast iron block. All turbo models have an intercooled turbo (except the single cam RB20ET & RB30ET engines), and most have a recirculating factory blow off valve (except when fitted to Laurels and Cefiros) to reduce boost surge when the throttle is closed.
Some sources indicate the 'RB' name stands for 'Race Bred'[1], although this is disputed. The Nissan RB Engine is derived from the 6 cylinder Nissan L20A engine which has the same bore and stroke.

3. VQ
The VQ engine is a V6 motor produced by Nissan with displacements varying from 2.0 L to 4.0 L . It is an aluminum block DOHC 4-valve design with aluminum heads. It is fitted with Nissan's EGI/ECCS sequential multi-point fuel injection (MPFI) system. Later versions feature various implementations of variable valve timing and replace MPFI with direct fuel injection (marketed as NEO-Di). This engine family is widely considered to be the world's benchmark V6 engine for its combination of smoothness, reliability and high power output. The VQ series is the only engine to be honored by Ward's 10 Best Engines list every year since the list's inception.


Ok? I hope you understand. Besides, normally after the engine types (SR, RB or VQ) there has numbering such as 20, 23, or 40. That means the engine capacity. Let's says 23, mean that the engine has 2.3L engine capacity. Easy..huh?

After the engine capacity, Nissan engine must have some letter such as D, E etc. The letter and what it represent for is show below

Letter - Features
D - DOHC, Variable Valve Timing, Direct Injection, Diesel
E - Electronic Fuel Injection
HR - High Response and High Revolution
i - Throttle Body Fuel Injection
N - Natural Gas fueled
P - LPG fueled
R - Supercharged
S - Electronic Controlled Carburetor
T - Turbocharger or Twin Carburetor
TT - Twin Turbocharger

Quite confusing? Here same example...

Engine SR20DET, that means,
SR - Engine type
20 - 2.0L engine capacity
D - DOHC, Variable Valve Timing
E - Electronic Fuel Injection
T - Turbocharger

Other example, engine VQ23DE, means that
VQ - Engine type
23 - 2.3L engine capacity
D - Variable Valve Timing
E - Electronic Fuel Injection

-composed from wikipedia-

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