Painting Fun Lots of you will have seen the paint pics in the facebook group yesterday, but for anyone who didn't I will try and keep this brief. So the car has been locked up with the bonnet in primer since I last took it home from the bodyworks shop. I've been reluctant to take it out as primer is not sealed, and driving it around will get all sorts of contaminants and chips etc in a panel that is otherwise ready for paint. Anyway I managed to lock my painter mate in for a day yesterday, and to organise a booth with paint system etc, so I put some rego on the car and off we went. Pictures are off the phone so not great, I'll get some new ones off the proper camera when it's finished. The best news to come of this is I have no excuses for missing the drag day now I've always been told (my brother is a painter too) that prep is everything in paint. We turned up to the shoo at 7:30 and spent the best part of four hours with two guys (my brother Richard and our mate Mark) working on the bonnet first, and then the guards. The guards are being rubbed down too and a couple of chips repaired. Being a metallic you don't want two separate coats of paint side by side, so the colour coats will go across the bonnet and about 1/3 to halfway down the guards, then one coat of clear over the top. Once in the booth it got a little fin fill around the wiper nozzles where they had bonded to the primer and taken a little off when removed. Then the wrapping started. Paper and tape all around the front end, masking off the vents in the bonnet, and paper through the engine bay. Wrapped up and with plastic over the back of the car it got a final wipe down. Mark building up some colour Three and a half coats (not sure which one was the half haha) in and it's starting to look a little more respectable And here we go after three or so coats of clear. The car is still in the booth at the moment curing, I'll be able to pick it up Monday and hopefully get it buffed next weekend. Will update with some "finished" pics. Gotta say I'm impressed with the amount of time that goes into this. I know we're all after a "cheap" respray but I just don't see how it can be done without compromising on quality. This was as I said about four hours of prep between two guys including rubbing and repairing the panels (keep in mind this was a panel that the panel beater had prepped, so the repairs were very minor things to bring it up to the painter's standard), mixing and matching the paint (which is a real PITA with Nissan metallics, we went with Mipa which was very close, but still required some tweaking to get it just right), wrapping the car, and then about two hours in the booth putting the paint on. It still needs another hour or two of buffing and finishing before it's done. We could have cut down on the wrapping time by spraying the bonnet off the car, but the idea was to do the one coat and blend across the adjacent panels so as it didn't stand out too much. It would have been nice to have the new front bar ready to go on too, but at this stage I just wanted to jump on the chance to use the booth and get the car back on the road. More surprises coming soon
JUN front cough cough Seriously though, looks spot on man, I'll have to check it out next time I'm up.
It's coming it's coming... Going to need some customising to suit my intercooler though so not rushing that one at the moment. Will have to wait until a) I have the time to do if or b) have the money to get it done somewhere. All things in time
Shifter Rebuild OK so since fitting a 2k spec box a little over 12 months ago I've been running a Z1 premium short throw shifter. This all came about as I bought a Z-Speed solid shifter mount with the gearbox, but coz ****ed up and sent me a mount for a short throw shifter rather than a standard shifter. I figured seeing as I was already half way there I may as well try the short shifter rather than exchanging the mount. Anyways the short shifter has always felt very "firm" for street driving, but I realised at the recent drag day that I absolutely hated it for any sort of fast shifting... Anyways Black Beast was nice enough to give me a stock shifter, and today I set about rebuilding it. To do so you'll need one of these kits http://conceptzperformance.com/Cart...Car_Type=300&UID=2014080907275314.200.164.147 First up remove this clip that is used in securing the OEM shift boot. This is pressed on and has probably been there for years, I found a gear puller came in handy... With the shifter stripped down I started cleaning some surface rust off the shaft. At some stage I had the idea of painting the shaft to prevent any further rust, and remembered that I had some bling metal paint leftover from a previous project... Next up some bronze shifter bushes. I bought a set of these http://conceptzperformance.com/Cart...Car_Type=300&UID=2014080907275314.200.164.147 from coz. The bushes install pretty easy, actually have a bushing driver but the smallest it does is 10mm and these have an 8mm hole, so I lubed them up and put a washer on top and tapped them in with a mallet. Easy. The rest is pretty straightforward just slide the new boots and pivot on and pack with grease. I use Nulon Extreme grease on just about everything, it's pretty much a lithium grease with PTFE so good for keeping water and dirt out. Pushing grease into the pivot is a PITA as you can't use a conventional bearing packer once it's installed on the shifter. I pushed as much in with my finger as I could, then made a hole in a plastic bag and pulled that over the shaft and used that to pack some more grease in. And here we go reassembled on the Z Speed mount and ready to go. The Z Speed tunnel plate uses a CV style boot so no need to refit that retaining clip.
Finished the shfiter install OK so part two of changing back to stock shifter. As I mentioned the car was previously fitted with a Z-Speed solid shifter-mount to suit the Z1 short shifter. These position the shifter slightly further from the tail-shaft so as the top of the ball is the same "height" as stock, and also mount the shifter using two bolts instead of the nut/bolt as per stock. In short it had to be replaced along with the shifter. The Z-Speed mount bolts directly to the box and eliminates the third link to the chassis. The short-shifter mount was installed with the 'box out of the car and was a piece of cake, swapping them over with the 'box in the car was not so much.... These are the nuts and bolts holding the Z speed mount in place. Total PITA working around 3" dump and engine pipes but anything is possible with extensions and uni joints... The new Z-Speed mount came with some nice stainless fasteners, and I changed the pivot bolt out for a stainless item -the I used is M8x55 for anyone interested. I also used a stainless nut with nylock insert on the pivot-bolt as I read that bronze shifter bushings can be hard to shift if done up to tight. The idea is to use a nylock bolt and tighten but not overtighten. And here we are installed. The Z-Speed kit includes the upper plate pictured which uses foam tape to seal against the transmission tunnel and a cut down CV boot (it's cut down when you receive it, no mods needed prior to install) to replace the two factory boots. I also replaced the OEM bolts with stainless socket-head fasteners and spring washers cause I'm a wanker like that.... Don't worry if you're not a fan of the blue -it will all be concealed once the trims are installed. Having cleaned the surface rust off the shifter I wanted to put SOMETHING over it and blue anodised paint was all that I had readily avaialble... Big thanks again to Black Beast for the shifter
Hey Rob a little confused here are you using the stock shifter with the z speed solid mount and cover plate . or stock shifter with stock mount and just z speed cover plate ? .
Stock shifter with Z Speed Solid Mount and Cover Plate -you couldn't use the Z Speed cover plate with a stock mount as it does away with the upper mounting point for the OEM shifter linkage.
ok yep . but you have the z speed solid mount designed for the short shifter? or did you get one for the stock shifter . going to have see how it feels in your car ,not convinced on it being rigid without the third attachment bolt. . worried about flex ..I'm a bit heavy handed on the shifter .
I had to get rid of the Z Speed mount for short shifter, and bought one to suit the stock shifter. You're welcome to take it for a drive and see how it feels.
Just some pics of one of the little jobs I've been working on lately. A little while back I tried to run a group-buy on Ganador Super Mirrors that unfortunately petered out when Ganador turned around and said none in stock and not making anymore. Fortunately for me (and sorry to anyone else) I got a very very very small number including a set to myself. I left them with Mark after he painted the bonnet and he did a really nice job spraying them up. Same batch of paint as the bonnet too so they match at least some of the car. The Ganador mirrors have plug 'n play looms for series 1 Z32 so that was easy enough. What wasn't so easy was the fittings side of things. The pic below shows the OEM mirror on the right. These things are M6x20mm. On the left are the bolts supplied with the mirrors; M5xSFA. By the time they were lined up and threaded into the mirror there was not much purchase length at all. The bolts in the middle are M5x12mm and what I ended up using; not as long as OEM but I didn't want to bottom out in the stand-offs so I went a little shorter with some blue loctite for good measure, and stocked some M5 and M6 washers so as the pulled up against the door frame like stock. Oh and stainless steel of course. I also took the chance to swap my battered OEM window trims for the Kuruma Z ones I bought years ago from Coz. Big improvement. Will get some pics of them on the car this Sunday. It's starting to look ever so slightly Japanese in styling... Not much of an update I suppose, more coming, info is really there for those interested in what size fittings to use with the mirrors.
New Stereo & Some Interior Changes & New Key So prior to Mark doing a massive backflip on the sub-box group buy I had started collecting some gear to upgrade my stereo. Like most things I had told myself I'd be happy with a simple four channel amp and head unit, but eventually wanted more... Anyways I kept it single DIN as the Link Displaylink would have obscured a double din, and gofast bits take priority. I got an OK deal on a Kenwood KDC-U7056BT with ipod/USB interface, bluetooth and 3x RCA outs. More info here for anyone interested. Despite being a music buff I'm not that much into the audiophile stuff so I really just wanted something to sound "good" and tick the right boxes in the features department. I hate messy wiring and chopping and soldering everytime I make a change so I went ahead and bought one of these to make up a plug in/out loom. This type of plug really is overkill for the application but they make a secure connection and can safely handle more current than the head unit requires so that's what I did. They're very easy to work with, I just tacked a little solder on the end of the bare wire and then crimped it into the pin using a molex pin crimper. The four wires are power, ignition, illumination and earth -I didn't need anything else as I'm using the RCAs for the audio. And installed. Next job was to make up an iphone mount. The last setup I had ran some cable up into the console, but I hated having to go look for the phone in there everytime I wanted to access music or maps or whatever. Even worse when I had passengers wanting to change tunes etc. Anyways I had a piece of carbon fibre laying around so I cut that down, clamped it to the console, then hit it with the heat gun to bend it up to the shape of the trim. I didn't want to lose access to the cigarette lighter or to the screw mount that lives under ash tray assy, so I used some velcro to secure the plate to the console. It's not as "flush" as I'd like but does the job without compromising function. The firewire runs to the USB on the rear of the head unit so I can charge the phone etc while it's in the mount. I found a snap on plastic phone case (harder than you'd think now that iphone 6 is the big thing) and glued that in with some sika and finished product is below. It works almost too well... Next up the amp. I had in mind to fit some alpine Amps that I bought along with a carpeted timber frame that I bought from Jedi a little while back. Unfortunately the frame was a little tall to work with the chunky powertrix rear brace, and turncornersfast parts take priority so I cut my losses and bought one of these instead. The amp mounts nicely to the parcel shelf; I had thought about putting some threads in the body of the car but the amp really is secure on the trim with some self tappers and speed nuts. I'm not a huge fan of putting holes where I don't need to, especially as I had my parcel shelf re-trimmed with the rest of the interior a few years back, so I ran the wiring out through the existing holes under the strut brace. I found an 8mm hole under the plastic cover on the drivers side that I opened up to take an M6 rivnut and used this for the earth. Not a big fan of holes OR self tappers haha. Some people will hate having the RCA and speaker wires etc so visible, but with the cargo cover installed they're not near as obvious. With the radio bezel off I took the chance to tidy up the absoloute cluster **** of wiring that UAS had left when they fit the Autometer gauges. I used the same type of connector as linked above and used one for power/earth wires and another for the sender wires. I used to have to press 3 bulbs and 3 senders back through the bezel everytime I wanted to remove it (harder than it sounds when they have to be pressed between the vents....) -this has made my life sooooo much easier. Last job was to mount the mic, which I put on the cluster bezel. Again some people will hate the visibility, but there wasn't anywhere else that picked up audio quite as well. I tried a few other locations and made some test phone calls and this gave the clearest audio by a long way. It's also well shielded from wind (it got a decent workout driving at 80km/hr with the window down at the cruise yesterday) and the wiring is completely tucked away. So that's really it for now, aside from having fit a Nismo shift knob in place of the 2k style red stitched one I had (thanks Graham!). This is really comfortable to shift with, although I must have missed third at least half a dozen times yesterday due to having gone back to standard length shifter and having a much longer throw than I've been used to. I have a Nismo 330F wheel ready to go in as soon as the hub arrives too, so that can wait until next update. Actually I lie, one last thing; I finally got myself a Titanium key that works. I have only ever had a valet key for my car so previous (two I think) attempts to have a Ti key cut have resulted in key shaped paperweight. This time the locksmith was actually interested in getting it right and cut the key profile off the valet key code, then manually cut down the bridge to match. Infill is KH2 to match the car. Not a modification (unless you're in the garage section ...) but a nice touch and something of a victory for me!
Does the job, user friendly & intuitive, two-stage alarms, customiseable display screens... I'm happy with it.
