Hey guys, I thought I'd finally pull my finger out and post a little bit about my TT slick top and set the scene for the future mods I have planned. As you all may know, I had a red TT that I bought and did some work on last year. After a while I wanted more power.... This was my old car just before it went to its new owner: I spent many a late night in my poorly equipped garage fixing zed specific issues and I got fairly familiar with the Z32. Not long after I had all of the niggling issues with the car fixed, I got REALLY bored of the 213rwkw it had and wanted more. Being a uni student working part time, funds aren't exactly plentiful, so I was looking at various cheap turbos with delusions of grandeur, "they'll last for sure" I'd tell myself. I was looking at these dodgy turbo kits and simultaneously having an internal struggle with myself.... I couldn't afford to be the guinea pig for a cheap turbo setup if they did happen to fail. So, at a loss with what to do, I put the red zed up for sale and began window shopping for a built car. I was prepared to pay up to 12k for the right vehicle, but it had to be a good car if I was going to spend all my savings + the proceeds of the red car all in one hit. Jamie sent me a link to a 2 seater slick top for sale at a dealership on Parramatta road. It looked nice and I enquired about it. The dealer had no clue what had been done to the car, so I let it go for about a fortnight. Surely a zed in a dodgy stealership on Parramatta road would be a piece of shit, right? More trouble than it's worth for sure. A fortnight or so went by and I had an offer on my zed, it was lower than I wanted so I respectfully declined, much to the dismay of the prospective buyer as in his opinion, my zed was the cleanest one for sale in S/E Qld and he'd viewed a lot of them. The day after he made an offer, Jamie posted the link up on the aus300 FB page. Someone recognised the car and posted a link to the thread that got my heart racing: http://www.aus300zx.com/forum/showthread.php?t=302803 Could the dealer have been telling me the truth? All he told me was that the car was an animal (without having any idea what had been done to it), could it really be a fully forged motor in a slick top chassis with 300+ rwkw for a tad under 10k? Jamies post had stirred a bit of interest on the FB page with members stating they were going to check it out, so I had my father race out to the dealership and test drive it. His feedback was enough to make me take a gamble... Apparently the car had a shitload of power, drove exceptionally well and was nice and clean. I asked him to put a deposit on the car and said I'd arrange funds. This in itself was a massive gamble as I hadn't received a deposit from the buyer of my zed, but he was extremely interested and I was confident he'd buy it. I rang the bloke back and he came up the next day and paid in full. It was a heart wrenching moment seeing my first turbo sports car drive away, it hurt even more when I told the new owner to do a fly by so I could hear the big single (It sounded amazing, I just never had the chance to hear it outside the car) on song and he almost dropped the gearbox on the ground trying to change gears That night my father drove the new zed home and I booked flights to Sydney. I got a phone call from my father telling me that the car was missfiring and running like shit the whole way across Heathcote road and he barely made it home. My heart sank. Had I been sold a lemon? Was I another one of those imbeciles that got stung by a dodgy dealership when I should have known better? I flew down to Sydney hoping the PTU was dodgy or something. I got there and checked a few things out and decided to compression test it (I bought my comp tester from QLD with me). Pulling the plugs I found that they were extremely fouled, so I went to the local autoparts store and bought 6 more to whack in after I compression tested the motor. Now, my compression tester is just your basic Stanley one available in supercheap, but it read around 145psi with a bit of variance on my old engine, 140 on my mates RB 20 apart from one cylinder that read 90psi and I'd used it on a few different cars so I had a fair idea that it worked adequately enough for me to gauge how healthy the engine was... I was ecstatic. Each cylinder read between 165 and just over 170psi COLD. What a relief!!! I put the 6 new plugs in her and she roared into life. I took her for a drive and could tell that she had a lot of power, there was just something holding her back. I spoke to John at UAS where the car was built and he was extremely helpful. He went above and beyond for me and printed out the receipts for the build that the old owner had commissioned UAS to do. My jaw dropped to the ground when I totalled the bill up, there was over $60,000 in receipts and that didn't even include some of the stuff that was on the car such as the Work Emotion rims, Yokohoma advans and many other goodies that I've since found (Chilli brace, etc ). This is how the car looked when I arrived in Sydney. I really liked the CF bonnet that was on it, unfortunately I replaced it as they're illegal in QLD and the car is my daily driver. As you can see, the mounting points for the bumper had rusted away on the 1/4 panel and the bar had dropped: This was the same on both sides, my father and I attached a bracket to the inside of each guard and we were able to get the bar to fit properly. The whole front of the bar was also smashed, so we fibreglassed it and touched the paint up. The bar now needs some more repairs thanks to my dodgy driveway in QLD, once I've done that I'll get it resprayed properly.... After the repairs: So I had the car checked out at UAS after I bought it. The tune was checked and I was told it was OK. I believed it too, because the car was blowing a lot of black smoke, so I assumed it was rich. Dave discovered the UAS camber arms were bent like bananas, so I replaced with with Theo's stock arms with eccentric urethane bushes (I hate them because they sound like a creaky bed getting a good workout by an enthusiastic couple). I drove it home to QLD and stayed up here for a couple of weeks, hitting the mountains with a mate of mine on a regular basis. On one of the mountain runs, the arse end of the car was getting loose at around 90, then all of a sudden it jumped up in the air and landed with a heart stopping thud and crunch. The shock shaft had snapped!!! John at UAS overnighted me some parts from Japan and I had it back on track the next day ready to decimate all. Not long after that, I drove back to NSW to have some fun on my Uni break. The miss firing became more apparent and Theo generously lent me his coils. They fixed the miss fire and the car ran better than ever. It's a good sign of power when you're destroying 285 wide tyres on roll ons I took it to the UAS dyno day and was EXTREMELY disappointed and worried. We discovered that the car was only making 286rwkw, pinging and running lean the whole way across the map. I booked it into MRC to get Ben to tune it. Funnily enough, Ben is the bloke that built my engine and did all the other work to my zed, he knows it like the back of his hand. He commented that the engine in my zed is EXACTLY how he would build a VG30DETT and he was so glad to finally build one to those specs with stock cams, as the response and drivability is maintained. I can attest to this, the car is responsive and it pulls extremely hard. So the day of the tune came, my baby was inspected on the hoist and then strapped down onto the brand new Mainline dyno. The first run was 280 rwkw, so it was making almost identical power to the previous week at UAS. Ben stopped the car and walked out of the dyno room dragging his jaw behind him. He informed me that the car had been advanced 36* across the whole map!!! No wonder it was pinging! He said he couldn't believe that someone had tuned it like that and it certainly wasn't his work. I was extremely fortunate in hindsight... The tuning began and I was just hoping that it would get back to the 340rwkw it had previously. It got over 300 and then it had a MASSIVE clutch slip. Ben came back out and informed me of what happened (I knew though because I was watching intently through the window and heard it). He told me that the clutch may be out of adjustment and that he could try adjusting it. He asked how far I wanted to go with the slipping clutch, I asked him if he'd mind adjusting it and if it improved, would he mind tuning it until we got one slip and then I'd pull the plug. He agreed to do that and said he wasn't comfortable pushing it if the clutch slipped any further, which I understood and appreciated. The boys at MRC really do care about their customers. Luckily the clutch held out and tuning continued I saw the numbers rise to 327 rwkw and started to smile, then I saw a whopping 359.6rwkw pop up on the screen! I was crestfallen when the figure went back down to 319, but I was told later that he was tuning my high and low boost figures. So I ended up with 359.6rwkw on 22psi and 319.4 kw on 17psi. I was over the moon! :br::br::br::br: Here is a video of how she goes. Private road of course. I'm taking it easy up to about 100 otherwise I get WAYYY to much wheel spin. It will cook the 285's up to 100 if I just bury my foot, lol. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=379020305557294&set=vb.100003479824447&type=3&theater Future plans for the car are as follows: Coilovers to get rid of the 4x4 ride height Find a new matching side skirt for the passenger side (it's missing) Remove the wing and put a mission CF lip on it Bride seats Half cage Retrim fix the odd imperfection on the body work Slowly do some tucks to minimise clutter in the engine bay If I put the mission spoiler on it, it will look similar to this car... I'm tossing up whether to put a urethane 2k spec bar on it in the future or keep the UAS bar (if I can get the damage fixed). I really loathe fibreglass, so I'm leaning toward the urethane 2k bar, but I really love the aggressive look of the Greddy. So that's where I'm at with the car right now, I'm really enjoying it! The car is fantastic in my eyes. Everything on the car has been replaced in recent times and it drives FANTASTICALLY. I am really in awe of how well it drives for its age. I was also amazed when I felt how light the 2+0 slicktop felt compared to my 2+2 targa. Not sure if it's just my particular car, but it feels as light as my mates 180sx whilst still retaining that well built feel of a Zed that S chassis cars simply do not have. The car handles fantastically, it's readiness to turn in compared to my old car is amazing. I'm not sure if it's had any steering angle mods done or if it's just the shorter wheel base, but it is an absolute pleasure to drive through the twisty bits. It also makes it a lot nicer to drive into car parks, in the old zed I reversed in everywhere because it simply didn't have the turning circle to get into tight spots forwards, my new zed has a tight enough turning circle that it's comparable to regular cars Coupled with the power it has now and the 324mm upgraded brakes, it is a very nice setup for a street car. It has enough power that it's fun whilst retaining drivability all throughout the rev range, it stops nicely, it handles fantastically and it's still a very comfortable car, heck, my old Zed didn't even have aircon! I am extremely happy with it. Sorry for the novel, I know it's a bit tl;dr. I'll leave you with this for now
So no more silly talk of selling it I trust?? Don't go Bride's, all the cool kid's have Recaro's (and they are ADR compliant unlike the Brides).
Nah not selling... I turned down a 15k offer recently. I'm just going to save up for an R6, lol. Don't come at me with silly talk Mr. Lotus, haha. You're right, the car is still legal and I should keep it that way. I find it amusing that my car with 480+ rwhp is legal and my last two cars have been defectable, lol.
What do you mean by big single Haha you would get bent over for your car, what do you mean.. Turbos, injectors, exhaust, boost controller, none of it is mod plated.
Big single exhaust. You don't need a mod plate for an exhaust in QLD and there's no possible way to prove that I have injectors or turbos by just looking into the engine bay.
Oh shit i have no clue why that didn't occur to me... i knew that lol. And the exhaust, surely you can get defected for over 90db?
Cheers man. Just off the top of my head (at some stage I'll go through the overwhelming amount of paperwork and list EVERYTHING, from engine to suspension, lol)... Forged rods (probably stock) Forged ACL pistons ACL Race bearings Ported and extrusion honed manifolds GT28RS turbos Dumps that came with the turbo kit Nismo 555cc injectors 3" twin exhaust (I am just guessing looking at the size of it) Yeah for sure, but if I keep the car as legal as possible, I hope to never get EPA'd, lol. Sounds good mate! I have been very keen to see what sort of MPH it will run. Not interested in times yet, I've never been and will undoubtedly get shitty times because of that Thank you
All good I won't be doing any hard launches either. I have seemingly incurable axle breaking wheel hop issues. I'll let you know when I can head out next.
Didn't know Trent had this car & hadn't seen this thread before now but visited to buy a part today & Trent took me for a spin - well, more like a blast! 10 years in the car industry, owned close on 30 Z32's over the years, been in some very quick cars but don't recall ever going for a drive with the tyres trying to find traction in 4th gear at 90km/h. This is one seriously powerful Z & sounds like Trent's just getting started with it. Astoundingly good buy, congratulations! And frankly, the car & brilliant deal couldn't have gone to a nicer bloke. BTW - Trent never got his foot to the floor, you've sure got an awesome Z, well done champ :bow2: :drool:
Haha, thanks heaps mate. We were in third, but that's all good It was great meeting you and your silver TT is a fine example of a zed, I would seriously like to snap it up off you if you were to ever sell it in the future and I had the spare coin (which I won't, but I can dream ), it is just so clean!
Love that front bar, is that the one from UAS? Always thought the Z had a fairly ordinary turning circle but looking at that 5th pic, clearly Nissan made it as good as possible!
Yeah mate, UAS front bar. Needs some repair and a respray. The turning circle on the zed really is shocking and can definitely be greatly improved upon.
