PARTS ACQUIRED DURING THE MONTH OF FEBRUARY For this months parts acquisitions, i purchase a couple of items that I think will be great improvements over their factory counterparts for not just oem carbon canister setup but for a couple of other setups in the car as well. SAAS SILICONE VACUMM HOSES Starting off with my purchase of several different sizes of new aftermarket black coloured silicone vacumm hoses to replace as manay of my original oem rubber vacumm hoses as I can. These new hoses will be the perfect upgrade for hoses like the ones that I took off on the carbon cansiter where the rubber hoses basically falling apart on me due to age as I was compressing them during the removal process. For more information: https://www.shopsaas.com/performance/silicone-hose/ NEW SPRING STYLE HOSE CLAMPS The only other parts that I purchased for the month of February was a 100pc set of spring style hose clamps from ebay. I have learnt over the years that regular worm drive hose clamps are not suitable for use where a hose is connected onto a plastic hose inlet/outlet as the worm drive clamps can loosen over time and cause leaking issues. These new spring style clamps will prevent this issue from occuring and as they can expand and contract along with the hoses as they expand and contract when the temperature rises and then falls during heating and cooling cycles providing constant tension on the hose which in turn will prevent leaks. Using this knowlegde, I will be trying to replace as many of the factory worm drive hose clamps that are used to clamp down hoses to any plastic style hose inlets/outlets just to reduce the chances of having to deal with hoses leaking in the future.
After 2 massive months of working on the rebuild project, I ended up with 2 major setbacks occuring in march for the project. One being me damaging a pair of rare oil cooler hoses and the other being the devasting results of my restoration attempt on my rusty OEM power steering cooler. Even with theses setbacks occuring progress for the month of march was still made, with me finally taking at look at my used UKDM oil cooler and mounting plate parts along with starting the restoration process on my used twin turbo power steering hardline part. I also got to compare my new fancy GKTech high performance clutch fan with my OEM fan and more work was done to prepare the carbon canister bracket and front tow hooks for paint. Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@adamzx Instagram: instagram.com/adamzx_z32
OEM CARBON CANISTER RESTORATION PROJECT (PART 3) For the third monthly update on the carbon canister's mini restoration project, I wanted to begin the stripping process on the canisters mounting bracket so it can be restored back to new again. The mounting bracket was placed into a large container and left to soak in my paint stripping solution for a full 2 weeks expecting the old paint to just flake off the metal when I removed it from the container but that was not what happened at all unfortunately. As you can see the solution has not been very successful at lifting the old factory black paint off of the metal bracket and I think I why. The biggest problem with this bracket for me at the moment is the size of the entire area the bracket takes up and so the container it is submerged in wont fit inside my ultrasonic cleaning machine where I can heat the solution up which seems to be the key element to making this paint stripping solution work as effective as it has done so far for me on of all of the smaller sized brackets I've stripped previously. With the disappointing results from the chemical stripping process, I decided to try and use an abrasive type of stripping method going forward to finally get this bracket stripped clean. I connected a nylon wire wheel onto my electric drill and began aggressively stripping the surface of the metal down as much as I could. Initially the wire wheel was making quick work of the paint and I was glad to see progress finally being made, but thats when I realised that using this method might work well on flat smoove areas of the bracket but it wouldn't be able to get into all of the norks and crannies that I would also need to strip down as well. So here is where I'm currently at with the bracket which is only about half way stripped down and I'll need to find another way to finish stripping off the rest of the hard to reach areas before I can progress with the restoration.
OEM FRONT TOW HOOK RESTORATION (PART 2) Like the carbon canister's mounting bracket, I left the tows hooks inside a container with my paint stripping solution and left to soak for a good week or so. Even though the hooks did get a bake time in the ultrasonic cleaner, it didn't really soften all of the paint and the paint that was left over had a pinkish stainning to it. With my second failure using the chemical solution on 2 different parts, I was quite fustrated to say the least and so I pulled out the electric drill and a 60grit flap wheel attachement and basically went to town on the surface of the hooks. After about an hour of hard work, I was very happy with how both of the tows hooks came out, where most of the paint had been stripped away. But it wasn't 100% stripped as I couldn't get into the mounting holes and hook opening with the flap disc wheel, but it was good to see some progress being made none the less.
WATER PUMP CLUTCH FAN UPGRADES (PART 1) One of the awesome new aftermarket cooling products I have chosen to go with on the rebuild, is with a GKTech High Performance Engine Fan which I did in an effort to try and improve the cooling efficiency of my OEM cooling system without having to go with an expensive thicker core radiator. I discovered this prodcut a couple of years ago and it has been on my wishlist for the Z ever since I saw but like all things before the accident, I never had the funds to be able to go through with getting one of this units until now. According to GKTech's website, the new high performance fan has been designed to be more capable of pulling more air through the front of the car and then through the radiator to improve cooling performance then that of the OEM clutch fan and when tested on a dyno, the new fan can apparantly pull 40% more air through the radiator then that of the factory VG30 clutch fan and though the GKTech fan has designed to fit SR engines it can easily be fitted onto a VG engine when paired with the RB/VG billet adaptor plate. More Information: https://au.gktech.com/products/sr-k...-60-more-air-flow?_pos=1&_sid=06b1d71be&_ss=r With all of this information I had to get one of these fans as it ticked all of the boxes for me and my setup. It required no modifications to be fitted to the engine, it looked cool and it will improve cooling performance in the engine bay which will lower temperatures, its a win win situation the way I see it. During the Easter long weekend I got a chance to compare the GKtech fan with my OEM clutch fan as part of my photo archieving work for the project and it was cool to see what the differences were between the two fans side by side and I thought you guys might like to see the comparison as well. All in all I cant wait to install this new fan design onto my car and hopefully see slightly lower temperatures in the engine bay.
UKDM OIL COOLER & MOUNTING BRACKET RESTORATION (PART 1) After several years of being in storage, its finally time to pull out one of the rarest mechanical OEM parts I will be installing onto my Z, and that is the UKDM Oil Cooler. I picked this unit up about 2 or so years ago off of Ebay and as you can see its in pretty average condition but its intact, it doesnt have any visible holes in the unit that i can see and it doesnt leak any fluids from my initial flushing of the old engine oil inside the cooler. Now your probably wondering why I have this cooler when my car is a NA model and doesnt require the use of an oil cooler especially one this large. Well its kinda a long story but basically it has been a pipe dream of mine for years now to create the worlds first factory style extrenal transmission cooler for a 300ZX Z32 and so this oil cooler is actually going to be part of my new transmission cooler setup for the car and should provide more then enough cooling performance for my factory 4 speed automatic transmission when compared to the tiny factory intank cooler inside the radiator. As for the long version of the story it goes as follows, over the 18 years or so that ive owned my Z, I have been through 2 OEM transmission's and I am now very pro active when it comes to taking care of my current 2nd replacement transmission which I had installed about back in 2017. When I had the first replacement transmission installed I was told that it was advised by the shop who installed the trans, that they needed to install an extrenal trans cooler into the system to provide better cooling for the transmission and so an universal aftermarket cooler was installed by the shop onto the front of the car. During my 2kspec replica build in 2012, I decided to remove this aftermaket cooler as it didn't fit with my project goals and because I had plans to install the PWR alloy radiator, I thought the cooler that was included in that unit would be sufficient enough to keep my transmission cool for the forseable future. When my 1st replacement transmission randomly died on me 9 years after it was installed and a month after I had serviced it for the first ever, I learned that because I hadnt serviced my transmission in such a long time, the none friction enviroment that the transmission had be operating in after 8+ years or so had turned into a friction enviroment causing the transmission blow. Fast forward to today and I have now ditched the PWR radiator in favor of a more OEM style cooling setup and I now have the skills and know how to service my transmission myself which I intend to do every 40,000 km. Anyways since getting this new transmission which I was about to service after it had reached its first 40,000 km service interval, I wanted to go with the recommendation by the shop about installing a external trans cooler to help protect the transmission from overheating and failing on me, and this is where the UKDM oil cooler comes in. I can fit it to the car in its factory location infront of the aux fan on the front cross member and use the factory oil cooler hardlines to route the coolers hoses around the condenser and then run hoses to the factory transmission cooler hardlines. Hose sizes will need to be reduced from 10mm down to 8mm and vice versa going from the oil cooler hardlines to the transmission cooler hardlines but it should all fit up fine from my research. Being a delicate part I decided I'd first try and soak the cooler in a 1 to 1 mix of water and simple green all purpose concentrate cleaner and regularly scrub the cooler over time. So I placed the cooler into a suitable sized box and left it to soak. OIL COOLER MOUNTING PLATE RESORATION (Part 1) The UKDM specific mounting plate for the UKDM oil cooler was another used part I had sourced a long time ago and as you can see it needs some serious restoration work done to it as you can see. I first wanted to strip the bracket down to bare metal and so I placed the bracket into my paint stripping solution and let it sit for more then 2 weeks but like the carbon canister bracket, the paint barely came off at all mainly because I hadnt figured out a way to heat the solution to soften the paint at this point. So this is where I brought out my hand held sand blasting gun, to try and abrashively strip the paint off in no time but that was far from what happened. After 30 mins or so and 5 refills of soda media for my tiny blasting gun, I just couldnt get the unit to work properly and I believe the issue lied in my compressor not being setup correctly and so I would only get 10-15 seconds of blasting before nothing would happen and I would have to reset the compressor and refill the gun and I had to give up on using sand blasting as an effective stripping method for now. OIL COOLER HOSES ACCIDENTLY DESTRUCTION So out of all of the issues I was having cleaning up the oil cooler mounting bracket, I got hit with a major setback which unfortauntely was entirely fault, sigh. So what happen? Well I put the used UKDM oil cooler hoses in my paint stripping solution to remove some overspray paint that was on the hoses, just to restore them a little bit and I only intended to leave them in for a few hours but I got caught with other things and I ended up leaving them in the soultion for almost a week before I finally went to check on them and as soon as I pulled the hoses out of the solution both of the hoses began melting in my hands, it was a disater. I tried to rinse the hoses off with water but it was too little to late. Turns out that the solution that the hoses were submerged in was a costic form of degreaser which is great for stripping paint when heated but very bad for rubber parts and so I basically had just destoryed the factory oil cooler hoses in a moment of stupidity i guess, sigh. Not all is lost though, as I did have a spare of the longer hose but the shorter hose, no such luck unfortunately and since then I have found out that both of the hoses are now discontinued from nissan and no longer avaliable. I even tried contacting a few UK breakers online to see if I could source a used pair again but, the only breaker who got back to me so far stated that he doesnt have any of those hoses for sale, so yeah not very happy but I differently learnt a valuable lesson after putting rubber parts in a costic solution thats for sure.
POWER STEERING TT HARDLINE RESTORATION (PART 1) In order for me to consider putting the UKDM Oil Cooler onto my car, another important part that I needed to acquire was the twin turbo version of the power steering hardline that runs from the reservoir and along the front cross member. The None turbo version of this hardline runs along the top of the cross member as shown below. The twin turbo version however has a section in the hardline where it dips down and along the front of the cross member so that the oil cooler mounting bracket can be fitted to the cross member. So it was vital for me to get one of these twin turbo varients of the power steering hardline as the NA hardline would block my ability to mount the oil cooler mounting plate onto the top of the front cross member. But buying one brand new is of course a no go as they are discontinued and a used unit would have to be sourced to progress any further. I did try several wreckers for a while but noone really knew or had what i was looking for. But in 2022 I was lucky enough to find a gentlemen advertising 300zx parts for sell here where I live in victoria and after meeting up with him at his yard, I had a plentyful supply of Z parts to collect along with one of these TT hardlines. After being in storage for over a year, I was finally ready to pull this part out and try and restore as best I could. I first had to disassemble all of the hardware attached to the hardline leaving me with more rusty Z parts to deal with. A soaking in evaporust overnight fixed all of that though. The plans are to strip down the paint and rust on the hardline itself so it can be repainted in either a silver or factory green paint. The mounting hardware for the hardline I was hoping to paint them in a gold paint and maybe add some new fasteners in either titanium or stainless steel. UKDM POWER STEERING COOLER RESTORATION (PART 1) This has to be one of the hardest and rarest parts I've ever tried to source for my Z project and it took me nearly 10 years of research and being in the right place at the right time to finally get my hands on one of these very rare OEM 300zx p/s coolers. The UKDM power steering cooler was only avaliable on the UKDM models due to the fact that the higher speed highways over there like on the autobarn could cause overheating issues for these region specific models, which is why the UKDM models got a larger oil cooler, twin automatic trans coolers in the radiator, a differential cooler and a power steering cooler. The power steering cooler is mounted in front of the factory oil cooler on the UKDM specific oil cooler mounting plate which is mounted to the front cross member. There were 2 versions of the P/S cooler released during the production run of the UKDM & euro based 300ZX's. The series 1 p/s cooler (90-93) was routed to the HICAS pump inside the engine bay. The series 2 p/s cooler (93-96) was re-routed to be part of the loop for the power steering hardline as the hicas system went from hydraulic to electric and I believe the series 2 cooler had a slight redisign making it have a better cooling efficiency over the series 1 varient. This is the setup I will be trying to replicate on my Z. More Information: https://z32enjoytheride.wordpress.com/2015/05/19/post-39-euro-spec-power-steering-cooler/ I attempted to dismantle my p/s cooler back in 2022 but I was unable to remove the rusted hose clamps at the time. Months later I asked my Dad for some assistances and he was was able to help me get the hose clamps removed which then allowed me to remove the old p/s hoses off of the coolers inlet and outlet pipes which allowed me to separate all of the attach parts from the cooler. As you can see everything is in an extremely rusted and crusty state, the amount of metal flakes coming off of this thing was crazy but I was hopeful that after a bath in evaporust the cooler might not be as bad as it looks. And to my surprise it came out looking heaps better then it did before the treatment. Even the hardware didn't look to bad after the treatment and I was over the moon to say the least Though the cooler and its hardware looked more like car parts again and not all rusty looking. I then began the pain staking process of gently scrapping off all of the remaining old factory black paint or coating that was still on the coolers piping and what was left of the cooling fins, my plan was to repaint the cooler to protect it from rusting in the future. This is where things took a turn for the worst, after chipping away at it for a couple of weeks I noticed one morning before heading off to work, that the cooler which had been stored in a sealed container after its derusting treatment had began to flash rust while inside the container which was not a big deal at first but when I inspected the cooler more closer, I found the one thing that I never wanted to see and that was several pin holes in two of the inner cooling pipes. Needles to say I was devasted and I knew straight away that this cooler was now toast and unusable going forward. I did a quick leak test of the cooler which was found to be leaking at the pin holes I had found. Unfortunately the weakened thined out metal can not be welded close and I will have to source another cooler to keep this mini project alive. I did contact a couple of 300ZX breakers in the UK hoping I might get lucky twice but the only one that got back to me stated that they didn't have one of these coolers avaliable to purchase, bringing me back to square one again. All is not lost though as it has always been in the back of my mind that this cooler was not usable and that it would be just as valuable as a working unit is as would a template would be for me to get another cooler fabricated. Or use it to find an aftermarket cooler that i could then purchase to replace the oem cooler with. I am currently looking into my options but who knows how long it will take for me to find a solution.
Looks good. For what it's worth I would stick with the OEM fan. I've had the chance to test both with an anenometer and did not find any evidence that the GK tech fan outflows the factory fan. Speaking in round numbers, based on what I observed, the factory fan outflows the GK tech fan by about 14% at idle. When you look at your side by side picture this shouldn't be surprising at all. I'm not bashing GK tech and it's probably worth noting that nowhere in their marketing material do GK tech claim that their fan outflows a VG fan at all. I think people just see the 60% improvement on SR fans, and 40% on RB fans, and assume that it's the same for VG when the manufacturer has never actually made that claim. Anyway I'm not telling you what to do with your car, just that seems incorrect.
Wow no kidding that really sucks to be honest but thank you for the info rob, I might need to rethink the gktech fan upgrade now as my OEM fan is only got a few minor marks on it from the accident and perfectly usable so I can still use it no problems. I was more worried about higher noise problems with the gktech fan but I haven't really found any first hand feedback from a z32 owner using this fan and thanks to your comment I now know it might work out worse then the OEM fan. I do appreciate the advice rob you could have saved me a big headache down the road.
April has been one of the biggest months for project so far, I have spent hours and hours of work stripping down, derusting and grinding a ton of metal parts for the front end of the car so that those parts can then be painted making them look better then ever did when brand new. Also this month I got to use for the first time my new sand blasting attachment for my pressure washer to help not just strip down larger parts I am trying to restore but to also speed up the paint stripping process on existing parts I was having difficulty in cleaning up last month. I also made changes to my plans for my cooling fan setup from last month and I finally got to apply paint to a couple of parts bringing their restoration work almost to completion. Though I didn't recieve any new parts for the second month in a row, I was able to make a big parts order this month from Nissan Japan mostly containing a heap of OEM replacement fasteners and various other front end parts I missed in previous orders from Japan. These parts will be vital to me being able to re-install not just the existing part setups that were on the car that I took off during the teardown of the front end but will also help me to be able to install all of the new parts I'm currently working on restoring at the moment. There is still a ton of work left to do on this rebuild project, but thanks to my efforts this month I am one step closer to getting my Z back on the road.
2000 MODEL NA INTERCOOLER DUCTING UPDATES (APRIL) Last month, I didn't get a chance to make any updates on the progress of the 2kspec intercooler ducts mini project I started back in Janruary, as I got caught up working on other things. However this month I was able to get the replica mounting bracket prepped and painted in a gloss black epoxy chassis paint which was a huge achievement for me to see the finish product of me and my Dad's handy work replicating this now discontinued mounting bracket. The bracket had been put into storage after its de-rusting process was completed back in February and this is how the metal had faired after a month of storage in a sealed plastic ziplock bag. The first step I needed to do was to prepare the metal surface of the bracket as best I could and my chosen method to achieve this was by using an abrasive brass wire wheel to strip the surface of the metal down as much as possible. This process will not just clear away any of the remaining surface contaminants off of the metal but it will also scuff up the metal surface up which will help allow the epoxy chassis paint I'm going to use to have something to bond to when I paint the bracket. I spent about 30 minutes or so working on this prepping phase making sure to get into as many of the tight areas as much as possible. As you can see the metal surface is now no longer dull looking and has abit more shine to it. When it finally came time to paint the bracket, I first wiped down the entire metal surface of the bracket using wax and grease and a microfibre cloth to clean the surface of metal as much as possible. Then I painted the bracket with 3 coats of Raptor's gloss black epoxy chassis paint waiting 10 minutes between each coat. The bracket was then left to dry over a entire week in the garage to allow the paint to dry as much as possible. And here is the finished product, a nice fully coated metal bracket in a durable epoxy coating which I hope will last for 10+ years or more. I am very happy with how the bracket now looks and I can't wait to get it installed on the car.
FRAME RAIL LOWER MOUNTING BRACKET RESTORATION Again another item that I didn't get a chance to post an update on last month was for the lower frame rail mounting brackets and so here is what I was able to get done in April. Starting off where we were back in February, the brackets had been stripped of their factory black paint coating and the brackets were then soaked in evaporust to remove the hidden rust buildup that had formed under the factory black paint. Like the mounting bracket restoration for the 2kspec intercooler ducting, I wanted to coat these frame rail brackets in the same gloss black epoxy chassis paint to not just make them look brand new again but to also prevent the metal from corroding and or rusting in the future. Even though I had removed the rust on the metal using evaporust 4 weeks ago, Upon removing them from storage, I noticed that the metal surface on the brackets had already begun to flash rust again even though the brackets had been left in a sealed zip-lock bag. So to prevent further rusting of the metal I went about preparing the surface of the metal on the brackets for paint using a power impact drill and a brass wire wheel attachment. The process probably took me about an hour or so to complete the stripping down of the metal which removed all of the flash rust and as you can see the metal surface is now cleaner look and abit more shiny. Unfortunately I ran out of time to paint these brackets this month but now that I had started the painting process on other parts of the car, I can fast track the painting process on these brackets in the next update.
BATTERY & BATTERY MOUNTING APRIL UPDATE One of the newer items I have decided to try and restore or improve upon this month, is a couple of OEM Battery Tie Down Bracket's. Originally when I brought my Z back in 2006, I didnt actually have a battery tie down bracket at all and so over the years I've managed to acquire a couple of spares before I brought a brand new OEM tie down bracket in 2008 and installed it in 2012 as part of my 2kspec conversion replica project. With all of my efforts currently this month working on restoring several old OEM parts with new paint, I thought Id give the spare set of OEM tie down brackets I have the same treatment. My plan was to simply stripped down the old factory black paint and then repaint them in some Raptor branded epoxy gloss black chassis paint. Simple enough I thought but it would turn out to be much more difficult to just remove the factory paint from the brackets then I anticipated but more on that later. Before I begin the restoration process on anything, I like to take a before photo of what the part or parts looked like before I started. Starting with the silver painted tie down bracket which I found in a wrecking yard back in 2007 or 2008, where the metal on this bracket had already began to rust quiet heavily at the end points by the time I had found it, and the reason it was painted silver was due to my Dad painting it that colour while we were repairing and replacing my original factory battery tray which I found out after buying the car that it had rusted away almost completely and so I was able to source a good condition used tray and install into the engine bay alonbg with the tie down to bring the oem setup for the battery back to factory once again. The other OEM tie down bracket is a another used item which I purchased to replace the ugly looking silver bracket. It was in almost new condition except for a couple of rust spots forming on underside of the bracket which lead me to then buy a third brand new tie down bracket which I have been using ever since. Comparison (New Vs Old) Anyways the first task I wanted to address with both of these bracket was all of the rust on the 2 brackets which required a soaking in evaporust overnight. The results were mixed to say the least, the rust on the old silver tie down looked pretty bad even after the evaporust treatment, the other bracket however was looking much better with almost all of the rust now removed from the exposed metal. The next step now, was to strip away all of the old factory black paint from both brackets to prepare the metal surface for the new paint I would be spraying over the brackets in the last phase of the restorartion process. Using the easiest method first, I soaked both brackets in my costic degreasing solution and cooked the brackets for about an hour inside the ultrasonic cleaner. I was expecting the brackets to come out of the ultrasonic cleaning machine completely stripped down to bare metal but this is where I hit my first brick wall on this restoration process. It turns out that the paint on these brackets seems to be very durable and the costic solution did barely anything to the old paint. So on my second attempted, I pulled out the brass wire wheel and my trusty power impact drill setup hoping that this more abrasive method would do the trick. But this is where I hit my second brick wall and even after switching over to a 60grit flap wheel, the time I spent tyring to remove the paint and prep the metal surface of just one of these brackets was taking far to long for my liking. At this point I had decided that the old silver tie down bracket was becoming to difficult and time consuming to continue the restoration process on and so instead I would solely focus my efforts on the better condition bracket which I was hoping would take less time and effort to strip down and then paint. Knowning how difficult it was to strip the factory paint off of the first tie down bracket was using the wire wheel and flap wheel attachments on the power impact drill, I figured Id go all out on my next attempt and use a sand blasting method to acheive the results I wanted and having just recieved my new sand blasting attachment for my pressure washer and a 20kg bag of kilned dried sand, I gave it a shot and the results were mixed yet again. As you can see the sand blasting on this part did remove alot of the paint but I wasn't able to remove all of it and even though it was removing the paint efficively, it was still taking alot longer to do then I was expecting and being that the sand was going everywhere using this specific blasting method and even after trying to continue the paint stripping on this part using a wire wheel attachement on my impact drill the paint just wouldnt budge so I ended up deciding to stop and leave the bracket in its current condition. Unfortunately a really disappointed outcome to be honest, maybe I was expecting to much from all of the paint stripping methods I have tried on these battery tie down bracket's but after spending all of this time on them and I still have yet to get the results I am wanting, I have decided for now to postpone any further restoration plans for these parts. They are not essential to getting the car back on the road anyways and I already have a perfectly good condition tie down bracket which will do the job fine for the time being.
FRONT BUMPER BAR & REO BAR APRIL UPDATE For this months update on the front bumper bar section, I continued stripping down and preparing several parts for paint. During that process I was hit with several setbacks which did slow down my progress but after some presistences and hard work, I was able to spray down the first couple of coats of epoxy chassis paint onto the first of many parts I intend to paint for this rebuild and this success helped to motivate me to continue pushing through with my efforts ive been working on over this month. FENDER SUPPORT BRACKET RESTORATION (PART 1) Starting off with a couple of spare sets of fender support brackets which mount between the points where the front bumper bar meets the front edge of the front fenders or wings as they are called in the UK. As you all know, the first task to be done was to remove all of the old factory black paint which included the usual soak in a costic degreasing solution while it was also baked in the ultrasonic machine for about an hour or so. Unfortunately the results from my first paint stripping attempt on these brackets was mixed which i have now come to expect at this point. Out of the 4 brackets I treated, 2 of them come out pretty much stripped of all the old paint, but the other 2 brackets were alot more resilient to the process and still had most if not all of the old factory paint still intact. So a second soaking treatment was done but with a longer 2 hour cooking time in the ultrasonic machine. This resulted in one more of the brackets coming out mostly stripped of all of the old paint coating while the last bracket still had no change to the amount of paint that was removed, making me feel a little defeated at this point. Fead up at the lack of progress I had made so far, I decided to just go ahead with the next step of the process and soaked all 4 brackets in evaporust to remove all of the surface rust that had formed underneath the paint. The last step in the process was to prepare the surfaces of the metal on all 4 brackets for paint. To do this I use a couple of different abrasive methods to strip away the remaining paint and to also rough up the surface of the metal to help give the chassis paint I was going to use as good of adhesion to the to the metal as much as possible. I ended up using my new sandblasting attachment on my pressure washer to strip down the last troublesome bracket which was followed up by all 4 brackets getting a quick once over with the brass wire wheel. All that is left now to do, is to paint the brackets in a couple of coats of epoxy chassis paint which will not just make the brackets look better then brand new but will also protect the metal underneath from rusting in the future. Unfortunately you will all have to wait to see the finish product as I ran out of time to get it done this month. FRONT BUMPER BAR UPPER BRACKET RESTORATION (PART 2) Another part that I wanted to restore in this section was the front bumper bar's upper support bracket which I last touched on back in February. This bracket is part of the alluminum mounting support bar that mounts onto the top of the front bumper bar and is part of where the nose panel will slide and lock into when installed into place on the core support. The used support bracket that came off the mounting support bar had signs of rust on the paint which is why I wanted to restore it back to new again and like with the process of the fender support brackets this bracket would be getting the same treatment. However one of the biggest challenges with just stripping the paint off over this part in particular was the fact that it was quiet a long piece that would not fit into any of the plastic containers I have been using so far to soak parts in my costic degreasing solution. I had no way to submerge the part and heat the costic degreasing solution to allow the old factory paint to be soften and then be removed. So to overcome this problem I specifically looked into purchasing a sandblasting attachment for my pressure washer as it seemed like a quick and easy tool to use to achieve the results I was after. once I had acquiring all of the necessary equipment and a 20kg bag of Kilned dried sand, I strapped down the part to a metal wire draw and began blasting the part down. The process was pretty satisfying to watch and being a mostly flat piece, the sand blaster work wonders on stripping away all of the paint from the bracket. With the bracket stripped, I then prepped the surface of the metal for paint which again being a flat part meant that the wire wheeling process was not to difficult to get done in a about an hour. With how well the stripping and prepping process had gone on this part within the span of a weekend, I fast tracked the painting process the following weekend. I applied 3 coats of an epoxy black chassis paint to the part which came out looking fantastic and I was really happy with the new high gloss shine of the epoxy coating. I planned to let the part hang in place for about a week to let the paint fully cure before I can show off the finished product of the restoration of this part next month.
INTAKE DUCTING MOUNTING BRACKET RESTORATION (PART 2) Just a small update on how the intake ducting's pair of mounting brackets are going with their restoration. If you guys remember the last time I worked on these brackets was back in February and since then they have been in a seal bag while I worked on other parts over the next few months. Unfortunately after all of that time in storage the metal had begun to flash rust which is something I wasn't expecting to see but as I'm new to all of this metal work prepping i know now. As i needed to prep the surface of the metal anyways, I just went over each of the brackets with a brass wire wheel and the brackets both turned out looking better then they did before. Obliviously the next step is for both brackets to be painted, but again I was unable to get that done this month but I hope to get them all finished up by the next update.
POWER STEERING TT HARDLINE RESTORATION UPDATE (PART 2) Another small update on the restoration work being done on the twin turbo power steering hardline. All I was able to get done was a quick once over of the mounting hardware for the hardline with a wire wheel in preparation for paint. Before After The plan is to coat this in a gold paint to replicate the gold cadium coating the hardware has from the factory.
RADIATOR, TRANS COOLER, COOLANT OVERFLOW AND AUX FAN UPDATE (PART 2) Another section of the rebuild which has seen a couple of minor updates to mention this month was with a couple of radiator related parts which included the lower radiator hose bracket and a pair of spare radiator mounts which were both in need of restoration. OEM LOWER RADIATOR HOSE BRACKET UPDATE (PART 2) Starting off with a small update on the lower radiator hose bracket which just needed a quick once over with the wire wheel to get the metal surface prepped for paint. Before After NA RADIATOR MOUNT'S RESTORATION UPDATE (PART 1) Another spare set of parts which I wanted to strip down and paint was my original na radiator mounts which for me had always been an eyesore ever time I looked at them when I opened the bonnet and looked at my engine bay. I thought replacing my original mounts with a brand new set of mounts in 2012 would satisfy my OCD which they did for a couple of years but now its been 12 years since they were installed and the new mounts have suffered some dulling and fading of the factory paint. So I pulled out my old original mounts and began the stripping process. This was followed by the de-rusting process. And then the mounts where cleaned up using the wire wheel to finalise the paint prepping process. With the mounts ready to go, I set them up and spray them with 3 coats of epoxy chassis paint coming out looking amazing even when compared to my 10 year old brand new mounts that have now faded from the sun. Comparison (Painted Vs OEM) The mounts were then left to dry for a week before I could apply a couple of touchups to the mounts where needed which I havent done yet.
OIL COOLER & RELATED PARTS UPDATE (PART 2) With the excitement and thrill in beginning the restoration process on the UKDM oil cooler last month, I had to continue my efforts this month to restore not just the oil cooler itself but to also restore the oil coolers mounting bracket and the oil cooler's related hardline assembly piece which connects to the cooler on the lower front cross member and helps route fluid to the cooler from around the condenser. UKDM OIL COOLER RESTORATION UPDATE (PART 2) In last months blog post of the oil cooler, I had submerged the unit fully into a container which contained a solution of simple green all purpose concentrated cleaner diluted at a ratio of 1 part cleaner to 1 part water. The cooler was left to soak in this solution for about 2 weeks or so before I pulled it out of the solution to see how well the cleaner has done to remove all of the buildup of road grime and salt that was present all over the surface of the cooler. Unfortunately the soaking in the simple green solution did not help remove much of anything off of the cooler and instead more or so dulled the alluminum which was a little disappointing to see. As a test of how well cleaning the alluminum would be on an area no one would see, I hit the underside of the base of the cooler using a brass wire wheel attachment to clean up the metal and also remove years and years of dried on salt and corrision. It took some time but most of the corrision and salt is now gone but as alluminum is a softer metal it has left the surface of the cooler with scratches and marks which is not ideal on the rest of the cooler, its ok for this area as it will be hidden when the cooler is mounting in place ontop of the mounting bracket. With the cleaning process not going how I had planned it at this point, I felt it was worth changing my focus to fixing another huge issue with this oil cooler which was to repair as many of the bent / damaged fins on the face of the cooler as I could. To do this I basically used a small metal pick to try and wedge between the bent fins and then attempt to gently pry the fins back into their original position. All I can say is that this is a very time consuming job to do and though I was able to fix some of the bent fins back into place, alot of them were so badly bent out of shape that they either broke off the mounts they were attached too or they broke off completely. Anyways after about an hour or so of work, here is how the repair process is going on the bent fins and i reckon its not too bad and though it will never be brand new looking again, its a start. For next month's update, i'll be looking into alternative cleaning products to use to help me hopefully actually clean the alluminum surfaces of the cooler and get the cooler looking as brand new again as possible and Ill also finish off repairing all of the remaining bent fins as much as I can to complete the restoration work. UKDM OIL COOLER MOUNTING BRACKET RESTORATION UPDATE (PART 2) Last month I was in the process of trying to strip down the old factory paint from the surface of the mounting bracket using a soda blasting method which didn't end up working too well for me because my air compressor was not setup correctly for blasting. What I ended up doing this month was give the bracket a long hot soaking in my costic degreasing solution which did manage to soften most of the remaining paint from the surface of the metal. The mounting bracket was then soaked in evaporust as you would expect to remove as much of the rust off of the surface as possible. Once the rust was all gone, I then hit the surface with a wire wheel attachment, to clean up the rest of the metal surface so that I can now paint the bracket in an epoxy chassis paint. OIL COOLER HARDLINE ASSEMBLY RESTORATION (PART 1) The final part related to the oil cooler setup that I needed to restore, was the oil coolers hardline assembly which mounts onto the front cross member next to the oil cooler and wraps around the lower left corner of the condenser. The purpose of this hardline piece is to help route engine oil coming from the engine and around the condenser to the oil cooler and then back again. I'll be using this same setup for my new trans cooler setup but instead of the fluid travelling to the side of the engine it will flow towards the front of the engine and connect to the existing trans cooler hardlines to complete the new trans cooler setup for my transmission. I gave the hardline piping assembly a thorougher cleaning to begin the restoration with some simple green hoping the staining on the metal would be removed but as you would of guessed it wasnt going to be that simple for me. Due to the complex shape that the pipe assembly has, I decided the best way to strip down the metal surface of the piping assembly was by sand blasting it which I hoped would be a simpler way to get into all of the tight areas of the piping assembly. Though the sand blasting method did work well to strip down the piping assembly, it didnt get into ever nook and cranny which was due to the way I had to mount the part to a wire basket to be able to hold the part while I was blasting it. Still it was a great and fast method to strip the metal down. To prep the metal surface further so it can be ready for paint, I will be using a wire wheel attachment and going over the metal as much as possible but due to the complex shape of the piping, I found it difficult to be able to hit every surface at ever angle possible. But I did manage to get alot of the metal cleaned up after about an hour of work. I will continue with the wire wheel prepping using a dremal going forward which should allow me to get into the harder to reach areas which I couldnt get before using the big impact drill.
WATER PUMP, COOLING FAN & THREMOTSTAT SECTION UPDATE (PART 2) So I alot has happened with the path that I'm now going to take with regards to my choice of my cooling fan setup on the Z. I also began the restoration process on a used set of coolant inlet and outlet pipes as part of my spare replacement service part stragey plans which will allow me to replace an old worn out part with a restore part during service intervals when required to in the future. WATER PUMP CLUTCH FAN UDATE (PART 2) In last months blog post I layed out my new clutch cooling fan upgrade path using the GKTech high performance cooling fan option which I was hoping would increasing the amount of air flow coming into the front of the engine and lower engine temps when compared to that the OEM cooling fan setup. After making that post a very knowledge Z owner on the aus300zx forums who knows way more about VG30 engine performance then I do, made a very important post for me detailing out the issue I would have with using this new performance fan setup. He quoted to me that he found that the GKTech fan would be less efficient at pulling air through the front of the car then that of the OEM fan and according to him its about 14% less efficient. With this new information from someone who is very trustworthy within the Australian 300zx community, I was convinced that I needed to revert my plans on the cooling fan setup change and go back to my original OEM fan which though has a couple of very minor scuffs on it from the accident is in almost brand new condition. With no need for the GKTech fan anymore, I promptly posted the item up on ebay to try and recoupe the money I had spent on it back in 2022 and it has already sold to its new owner in Peru of all places. All in all I am very happy with this decision as I definitely fell for the promised performance figures on GKTech's website about the airflow increase of the fan without noticing the claim did not mention any increase on the VG30 engine and if it wasn't for the post made by the member above, I would have found myself with possible overheating issues using the GKTeck fan on my Z in the future. COOLANT INLET AND OUTLET PIPES RESTORATION (PART 1) One of the very early project plans I had envisioned for the rebuild project was for me to do a major 100k km service on the front of the engine as I figured it would be worth doing the service now while the front of the car is dismantled during the bodywork repair phase of the rebuild. Unfortunately after 2 years of working on this rebuild project, I have now decided to put the major service on hold and get my Z back on the road as soon as possible. At the time of the accident I was just about to hit the 290k km mark so a minor service will be done of course but the major 100k service will now happen after my car hits the big 300k km on the odometer. Anyways while I've been part hunting yahoo auctions for rare hard to find Z parts over the course of December 2023, I came accross a person selling a cheap set of coolant inlet and outlet pipes which I've been interested in toying with the idea of having a spare set of these coolant pipes which I could restore and replace during the 100k service instead of cleaning up my original coolant pipes taking up extra time I could save by doing the restoration work now ahead of the service. So I purchased the pair of coolant pipes and after being in storage for a couple of months, I began the restoration process this month on both parts even though I wont be installing them as part of the rebuild project just yet, I still wanted to cataloge them and clean them up for going back into storage ahead of when they will be installed onto the Z. I removed both of the coolant temp senders from the inlet pipe first and then submerged both pipes into a container of evaporust for about a week or so to remove all of the rust buildup that was present inside the pipes. Before After I still need to remove all of the old gasket material on the mating surfaces of the pipes and then clean up the surface of the alluminum to complete the restoration work on these parts but for now its a start at least.
After 4 months of continual progress on the rebuild project, May was unfortunately not as productive due to a few reasons. One being that I needed to spend alot of time writing up Aprils massive progress report which ended up taking me 2 full weekends of hard work to complete. I then went on a holiday for 1 week in Honalulu in Hawaii with my Dad, where I got to relax and see some amazing sights and visit places I have always wanted to go to. Still I did make some progress in that I discovered how bad my first attempt at painting went from last months efforts and I also finally got my hands on some new parts for the project which is bringing me closer and closer to getting my Z back on the road.
