Thanks guys. Feels great having ordered the seats finally. They weren't a priority but it was important for me to put the money from the old Recaro sale straight into them and not have to save up later. That picture is of my buddy's car, though I previously had the same unit.
Just a little tip completly out of the blue. As i understand it you are going with the Vipec i88, right? It could be that when you are setting it up you might have a look at the z32 basemap provided within the software package to help in the progress. If so then you would probably set the idle solenoid to work at 150Hz. Thats not going to work correctly. Gotta set it to 100Hz.... Carry on!
Great, thanks for the tip. I am leaning towards an i88 under the advice of my tuner but I could be persuaded to a Haltech. I haven't looked into it too much yet because of its lack of relevance.
Well if you should decide on Haltech, my tip still applies. They have set it to 300Hz in their basemap...
So it's been a while. Unfortunately I've been putting all my wrench time into the bike, but the parts sourcing effort for the Zed is still in full motion. Good news as well is that the bike is coming along with most of the hard yards done. It won't be too long 'til I have it completed and - I also taught myself how to MIG weld stainless. Which is cool! I'll likely do that when I make the Zed's new exhaust, though for now I won't be considering manifold work. Not 'til I teach myself TIG, which as I am getting into the finer details project planning is looking more and more necessary. Anyway back on track. I recently nabbed a set of cam covers off of the VG30DET engine originally in the Nissan Cima. They differ in that they are designed to be compatible with a different intake manifold (single turbo. After laying out all 8 covers it looks like a mix 'n' match won't be necessary; Cima covers it is. They present the least work to get the job of a metalwork cleanup done. Somewhat resolutely, they are not compatible with DETT spark plug guides - the ones I retrofitted SR Splitfires into. I say this because shortly after I finished the SR conversion I came across another concept which I greatly (and frustratingly) preferred. So although it's a bit shit, fitting up these covers more or less confirmed that I'll be parting ways with the SR coil packs. The good news is that it really wasn't that much work down the drain and I can flog the SRs for well more than what I paid for them. In other news I am stoked to say that I landed one of my dream "unicorn" parts. After a good 24 months of looking, I was able to convince an owner to part with his VeilSide speedometer. I initially contacted the man about 6 months ago asking if he'd part ways with his item (the only person short of the current owner of the VeilSide Z32 demo car, which I wouldn't want to dissolve) and he politely declined, knowing how hard to come across they are. More recently after laying down the order for my new seats and making the centre bezel to house my VS gauges I tried again. He conceded that although he didn't want to sell it and had been offered sums larger than I had, he believed I simply wanted it more than he did. His only stipulation was that should I ever sell the car that he have the opportunity to buy the part back. Not likely on the latter but hey - top guy is top! As far as I can tell there are only about five or so of these around. I've never seen one for sale and when you look as stringently as I do that really means something. It'll pair up with the gauges, pedal set, shifter, seats and exhaust nicely. Down the track there might even be some five spoke VeilSide goodness too. but I wouldn't know anything about that... As a bit of a larf I recently picked up this Mine's OEM replacement boost gauge too. I had this gimmicky idea a while ago of plumbing it up to the larger turbo in the compound system to see what it alone is up to. As the primary (smaller) blower in a compound is fed by the outlet of the larger turbo, measuring its sole output in boost pressure is impossible; any reading will be the result of what it's being force fed combined with its own further compression. This is plumbed to the intake manifold so a traditional boost gauge will present this - if desired though, a second (unnecessary) boost gauge can be plumbed into the outlet of the larger turbo, and will read only what that huffer is up to. Since there is little merit in this I wasn't interested in fitting up a second boost gauge for this function alone but this small factory replacement item seemed perfect for the job. Next up is a Carbing strut brace. Now those that know me will not be surprised by the following; (FB message from my buddy) "dude there's a carbing strut bar on yahoo, I want to nab it" (disgruntled me) "front strut braces on zeds don't do a ****ing thing. in order to clear the plenum the design has to be so god damn circuitous that it loses nearly all structural integrity and serves as nothing more than a dead weight" "it might help" "it won't. I have held Carbing, UAS and Powertrix strut braces and can bend them all with nothing more than my body weight. any chassis brace that flexes that easily will not do a damn thing for your handling." "**** you I'm doing it anyway" "then why did you ask my opinion?" So anyway when it arrives dude calls me up and says this new brace he's landed could hold up the tower of Pisa. I call bullshit, jet over and - what do you know - bar doesn't bend under my own weight. Not even a poofteenth. Hell to the contrary, it's so strong you could take on a zombie apocalypse with this thing as your only weapon and by god, you'd come out on top. It turns out that early Carbing strut bars aren't made of aluminium - they're steel, chromo, or some other super strong shit. Now I'm all about light weight aluminium body bracing - so long as they can get the job done right. Every single front strut bar for a Zed I've held though has been a cinch to flex by hand, and it's because they've all been made out of aluminium alloy. This early model steel (probably) Carbing is tenfold stronger. It honestly might be the only Z32 front strut brace ever that could actually bloody well do something. These too are very very hard to come across, so when one came up locally I jumped on it. I have no idea if I'll end up running it in the end but hell I'll give it a go. Next up in the suspension department I have landed a complete Nismo bushing kit. Every suspension bushing bar the subframe mounts and those covered by my after market arms is included. After a bit of thought I've concluded I'd rather go solid for the subframe anyway - that way I can raise it up as much as possible. Besides, nobody ever complains about the front subframe being solid mounted. As weird as it is that the whole damn car is seam welded and yet the bushings are all original, these won't be going in for a while. Down the track I want to do a subframe rebuild/mod project with roll centre correction, modified anti-squat, bump steer etc etc all the bells and whistles. Low priority task and the bushings will go in with that project. Very keen to do that though! Keeping with the theme of opportunistic purchases I also landed a few parts from Powertrix with their recent 40% off sale. I bought some of their Max Flow fog light ducts because it looks like I'll need every bit of air I can get to the coolers that will have to be mounted in the SMIC positions - even though I'm sporting an NA front bar. I'm just plain and simply running out of space for the mass of heat exchangers that'll be necessary to run this thing. Some adjustable rear sway bar end links were also picked up. I've wanted these for aaaaages, just never had a reason to finally pull the trigger until they were going cheap. The reason I've wanted these for so long is that I'm hoping I'll be able to adjust out some of the rear lean the car has always had - apparent when you're setting up a super low car with tight fender clearance. Reportedly this is an issue with all Zeds, noticeable when bringing down fenders so close to rim lips. The front end links are standard for now, I'll get some SPL down the line but no rush there. Lastly, the first of two big J-Land orders has come in. My made-to-order-expensive-as-shit Jun cams are here along with a few other nick nacks. These are the 264*/9.5mm versions. Good for adding some power without turning the car into a lag machine. Like I said bloody expensive, but they're the best street cams money can buy for the Z32. At the moment I'm weighing up having a buddy of mine (built more than a few engines) teaching me the ins and outs of head porting and taking the job on myself. I understand that there's a science to it but I don't think it's beyond my capabilities to expand to yet another auto area of knowledge. Would be a good little money saver too and the only limit of how much breathing my motor will have will be me - not my money. I don't see why not. That same order saw a GReddy oil thermostat and pair of Bride seat rail adapters come in. The former was too cheap to pass up (why not right?) and the latter will hook my Bride rails up to my new VS seats. Lastly, I nabbed a pair of now discontinued cargo blind block off caps from a friendly yank. As always, more to come. I need to get to work throwing spanners at this thing and not just landing parts. -A
5000 hours on a project and cant even get a nice line on the guard.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-bkq0CSzjQ&feature=player_detailpage#t=99
Prrrrrretty jelly lol Doing much the same here, $10k at the ready and endlessly sourcing/researching parts , endlessly as it seems.. - and yet no spanner time happening in months. It sucks !! but that's what planning is. ...Leader Gear install = Rear Subframe Revamp = Squat Revamp = BBK Install = No Rims WTF !!! = Sitting on blocks for god knows. Solution, spin the current rims around for mobility lol Hope you've realised or this helps that at some point you have to stop and restart from the ground up.
i'm sporting a bare shell on stands receiving a reasonable level of chassis fab, fair to say ground up started a while ago.
Great work! Interesting to hear about the strut bars changing materials over the course of development, seemingly reducing their effectiveness. And good pick-up on the cargo blind deletes - I imagine other minor non-functional items like that are going to start disappearing from stock soon. CZP only has the RH side ones available. Though I suppose in a dozen years we'll be able to scan something on our smartphones and send it to a 3D printer anyway.
Thanks G. The change to aluminium was a good one overall, just not for absolutely all of their models. Now finally, an update that actually includes work on the car instead of just more parts stockpiling. Had heaps of time to get my act together recently and have been relishing it too after a few months of not touching the car. First job I finished up was one my buddies and I started like a year ago... cutting and shutting a Bride rail I got in from Japan. While it was a Z32 rail, it unfortunately wasn't compatible with the seats I had; sliders too close together. Now while this sounds like a simple case of cut out the welds, move sliders outwards, re-weld in reality the amount of measuring, aligning and contorting involved in making the four pieces dead even with each other was massively time consuming. With that polished off, I cleaned up and closed the book on another partially done mod. Smoothing the frame rails. All holes were welded up bar one at the rear passenger side that holds a brake line, and another at the front of the driver's side that I cut to run the power steering feed line through. Since the rails are more or less flat out of the factory, a few skim coats of filler followed with long hits with an orbital sander were all that was necessary. Next up I finally got to start on something new! Making space for the new cooling system. After a serious amount of measuring, research and deliberation I worked out a complete set up that will fit my goals of neat, efficient and tucked away out of sight. I initially thoroughly looked into and mapped out a v-mounted system. Unfortunately, as much as I love them to death I just can't bring myself to take the risk without knowing if it'll function effectively with my front end and body styling. I'm not willing to change to a reverse vented hood to allow the intercooler to vent through, and as reasonably confident as I am that the system can be made effective without that (and one or two other things), it's not worth investing in when the alternative I measured up is a still very neatly laid out guaranteed win. Anyway. The first step was cutting out some room for the new components. The old support was bowed from the previous owner. It was very bulky and took up a lot of space where the new radiator is going. As a final nail in the coffin, cleaning up the factory unit was way more work than simply replacing it. So it made sense to just cut it out, relocate in a new one and kill three birds with one stone. Unfortunately I couldn't just lop a section out of the rad support for more radiator clearance due to the following; Crappy pic sorry but as you can see, the new rad location just under the bonnet latch lands dead on the caster rod bracket mounting bolts. Okay, new support is getting shifted forward. The first step for this was working out a solution for the brackets. Knowing they are about twice as long I picked up some S13 units, thinking they'd bolt up. Here's a side by side; Unfortunately, no bueno on the frame rail side. After a bit of fettling I realised not only is the bolt pattern different, but the whole design is too. Even if the Z32 pattern was adapted over the S13 units they'd still foul on the frame rail itself. Alright, time to Frankenstein. Both brackets lopped in half and mated up, with one misguided extra cut; There was a lesson learned in this job... the function of a jig. Keeping things straight while being welded. Ask me how I know... Cleaned up and temporarily rust proofed with some matte black. As these will be visible from above with the finished bay, they'll later on be powder coated along with the UAS tension rod brace and sway bar. Quick shot of the gussets that'll be getting welded onto the underside for extra strength. They're not attached yet because the brackets will be modified further to house the radiator and to do so I'll need access to the underside. Next up is something I've been looking to get my hands on for ages and ages. With the water and air cooling systems getting sorted out, the new oil cooler arrived too. Bigger is better right? Of all variants, the largest oil cooler GReddy did was the 21 row, sold as part of Supra and GTR kits. Difficult to come across and damn dear when new (think 1k+) I was stoked to get my hands on this. This will be side mounted in place of one of the original intercoolers and ducted air from the fog light duct, outer sides of the bumper mouth and a pair if indicator ducts that are to come. It literally takes up every last square centimetre of space behind the bumper, one more row and it flat out wouldn't fit - I love it. Carbie set off my bike for scale, haha Can't stand the colour though. Cheap blingy show off ricer crap. Did a test with paint stripper and it came straight off, thankfully it's not anodised. Lastly, something else came in. It's a second hand after market fender for a cruiser with a 12" rear tyre (think this). And after being split in half right down the centre and a lot of welding it will become my front tubs. As you can see there'll be a good amount of extension carried out on either side but it should turn out well. Got a few tasks to finish up first before that though. -A
More work is getting done. Been cutting the crap out of the car and making more cool junk. So satisfying binning heavy lumps of unwanted metalwork.
Alrighty then, bit of word. Finished up another big big section of work on the chassis. As I went over, I decided to make an after market rad support. The old one was obtrusive, bent, and would have taken longer to make look nice than simply replacing it. With the elongated caster rods in place, it was time to work out just what the new final resting place of the radiator was. Initially, the rad support blocked relocating a radiator (of any use able size) further forward in the chassis. With that gone, it was a matter of trimming any other non-structural metalwork that prevented the radiator from being further tucked. I made up a mock up radiator out of some MDF to serve as a guide and started trimming out the back of the headlight buckets. This was during the whittling process and as such very rough - lots and lots of very small cuts to make sure I don't gut too much. It was plenty cleaned up later on. With width dictated by the frame rails, after removing some of the headlight bucket the next component to foul was one of the high beam adjustment linkages. I needed to pull apart my headlights at some point anyway (made the mistake of welding near them and buggered the glass) so I did it sooner rather than later to see if modifying the linkage could help my cause. This I guess is an "exploded view" of the factory inner high beam adjustment linkage. The long bolt was initially held in place by a housing that bolts to the back of the headlight, while now it is secured with a split pin inserted through on the inside of the headlight. The bolt was then trimmed and slotted on top so I could wind it with a flat head. The factory linkage is designed to be adjusted from above, but my upper rad support is all welded up so that isn't possible anyway. This new set up is actually (in my case alone) more practical too, which is neat. Next step after that was removing a bit of the plastic housing too. With a whole lot of measuring, I worked out that I could cut a portion out, replace it with L-section plastic and not limit the adjustment of the high beam lens in doing so - Mr. Nissan left heaps of extra room inside the housing. Housings were cut up, new pieces plastic welded in and the inside of the housing sealed with two part epoxy for water proofing (I'm not that gun of a plastic welder). The top right pic shows the new position of the (wooden) radiator with the now modified headlight housings. The newly added split pin is in the bottom left pic, and you can just make out the now slotted bolt head in the bottom right pic. All in all I was able to move my rad forward a further 30mm after doing this, and the headlight functions just the same as it always did. Extreme, probably, but I'm satisfied the rad's as far out of the way as it could be within reason. More or less totally out of sight. Pretty happy with that. The challenge here was not just how far forward the radiator could be, but (somewhat obviously) the how big it would be too. As you guys probably know, TT Z32s are stupid hard to keep cool with an electric fan. The reason for this is that relatively speaking, the radiator in a Z32 twin turbo is tiny; height restricted by the vehicle profile and width restricted by the boost piping (Nissan knew this, which is why the NA radiator is so much wider). It's also almost square; at best only a single 16" fan can be bolted up to it and this plain and simple doesn't have the air pulling capabilities to compete with even stock cooling mechanical fan. The rad I'll have to make up to fit in this location has about 20% more surface area (2760 cm? vs 2200cm? stock) but being a whole lot wider, can also have two 14" fans fitted to it. The Dereale pullers I'll be picking up advertise 2100 CFM each, so combined they should make for a proper hurricane keeping the car cool. Now that the new rad location was determined I got to work further modifying the caster rod brackets to suit. They were channeled in order to make way for a little more core size and hold the radiator in its place. The rad position was marked on them, they went back in the "jig" to ensure dead straight (relative to frame rail) markings and then got the chop. As this is obviously a structural area, I made up some 5mm plate steel U section channels to weld into the recesses. Quite sure the channels are now by far the strongest area of the whole part, haha Once the channels were welded in, underside access was no longer necessary so I could finally finish the units off by gusseting the underside. This is I think is common practice among the S-chassis crowd as their brackets are considerably longer and more likely to flex than the stock Z32 ones. All said and done they were cleaned up and I was good to move onto the rad support itself. I picked up a metre or so of rectangular box section, bought a drop saw and went to it making the basic shape. This is some thick wall stuff so it's super strong, though a bit heavy. Surprise benefit here was that I could just use the jig to determine the length of the verticals without touching the car. Winning. Welding welding welding. Beveled it a bit much but oh well Now with the rad support made up it next had to be modified to receive the four bolts on the end of the caster rod brackets. This meant a set of captive nuts. I flexed my new drop saw muscles and cut up some scrap left over from when I made the weld-in brake master cylinder brace; Then went out and bought myself a bitchin' drill press complete with RPM/depth readout and a laser guide that doesn't work properly. Tappin'. These bolts are exactly the same width/pitch as the brake caliper mounting bolts, which is mad because that's the only tap I actually have haha. The holes aren't centered very well which is a shame, but I'm learing how to do this stuff as I do it so I can forgive myself every once in a while... I drilled out the new support and beveled both the holes and the captive nuts so the welds could safely be ground flat after. More welding. Chucked in some spare bolts (R32 GTR caster rod bolts if anyone needs some lol) during the welding to stop the threads warping, but I don't know if that's necessary. [/IMG] Next up the last job before paint was redrilling the caster rod brackets. When the final rad support placement was concluded (that was hard, seriously) the brackets were trimmed of an inch or so of excess length (still well longer than the stock Z32 brackets), so four new holes had to be put in. Now in theory these could be painstakingly and meticulously measured out, marked and drilled and then you can kill your wife when they turn out to be bloody miles off. Anyone who's done something like this can attest to this (and their wives probably). Never work off measurements alone unless you absolutely have to. Always mark. Once mocked up together the (non drilled) caster rod brackets covered the four holes in the rad support, leaving no gauge of where line up the drill to. To overcome this I knocked up a few of these little things. They're the same thread as the rad support, ground to have a pointed tip and slotted topside so they can be wound in and out with a small flat head. With those handy it was simply matter of threading them into the rad support with only 2mm or so of peak protruding, fitting up the rad support and caster rod bracket assemblies on the car then smacking the underside of the bracket ends with a hammer. The brackets were left with neat little imprints from the bolt tips, guiding where to drill. Or in my case, where you'll have to weld up a big hole because it's too close to where you need to make new smaller holes ahhhhhhh it's all part of the fun Coat of paint and they're all done and dusted. And at long last, fitted up to the car. I am not welding in the rad support just yet because my garage is a bit height restricted, and as is with the rad support out I can pretty easily skateboard a motor in for mock ups. As always, more to come. -A
Incredible is an understatement. Your dedication to this build is something I've never seen before haha.
