Meet Loreli (Version 2.0 aquired)

I know I'm a little late on my build thread, but I thought better late than never. I got her on July 17. Been working on her nearly every day. Here are my daily entries from the previous weeks, and I'll be continually updating the thread as I do more work on her and work on the other car as well.

A bit of background on why I have a new car...
Well, on June 24th, my old car was rear ended in stopped traffic, pretty much putting an end to that build.

Here she was, right after the accident. I got rearended by a car going roughly 40mph while I was stopped in traffic. Got shoved into the car in front of me as well. The rear took the grunt of the damage though.







These are pics of the rear fenderwell





The inner fenderwell actually made contact with my rear right coilover


That's supposed to be straight down


Insurance totalled the car out, I bought it back, and in a one week effort to make it to ASB XI, I had the car ghetto frame pulled


Drove the piss out of it at ASB. DGAF mode at this point

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After that event, that car has sat in the parking lot, collecting dust and spiders. Because now we have...

 

Version 2.0. The replacement.


148k miles on her. Recently swapped in motor. A 93 motor with newer style injectors. Recently swapped over to manual. Used to be automatic. Picked her up with cylinder 5 not firing for some odd reason. But she looks good. I didn't care. Good base to start with.

Week 1
Monday, July 18
Begin troubleshooting.
Replaced spark plug for cylinder 5. No change. Noticed injector #4 had blue painters tape over the wires to it's plug. Pull them off, and I discover exposed wires just twisted together, with blue painters tape used instead of electrical tape, no soldering. Cool....
Go to strip the wires to solder connection... wire pulled out of the plug. Awesome...
Solder the wires into the plug, solder the wires coming out of the plug into the harness, and heat shrink it all. Problem fixed, cylinder #4 is taken care of. Cylinder #5, still not firing. Check for spark, there's spark. Check injector signal, there's a signal, not a harness issue. Might be bad injector? Also, the VG is running a Series I igniter. Changing that ASAP, once I source a jumper harness...
3 hours pass, I'm tired, and electrical problems make me rage. I go home and sleep. Very little accomplished

 

Week 1
Tuesday:
Car still sounds like a Subaru, but I cave in and decide to take it to my friend, a Nissan Master Tech, to give the wiring a good once over. As I was tracing wires, I noticed a lot of wonky wiring and missing stuff. Needless to say, I'm over my head in trying to figure out what is or isn't missing in the harness. Taking it to an expert.
In the meantime...
The car came with a broken ignition module, meaning... all you needed was a screwdriver to start it. So i go to swap the one out of the white one into the new car. Pics of the carnage before hand (key apparently broke in the ignition)

More wonky wiring, cool!


And swapped mine over!


Yay! Finally a key to start the car.

Then, I go to swap seats. Finally my Tommy Kaira seat will match my interior since everything is black inside! Also, you find a crap load of stuff under a seat when you pull it off. Check it out!

Not counting all the change I found. Vacuumed everything, and installed my Tommy Kaira seat. (Sorry no pic!)

Found a random white wire dangling under the dash, I pull it, it touches a ground and sparks. Cool! A random hot wire. I trace it to the fuse panel, and yank it out. It was sandwiched into one of the fuse panel connectors for power. Awesome. It's gone. Good riddens. No more fire hazard.

Go home feeling accomplished. Car still rides like crap. More on that in the next entry.

 

Week 1
Wednesday (SUSPENSION TIME!):
Finally, the day I was looking forwards to. Some background on what was installed in the car:
The car was riding on some Goodspeed coilovers which rode like shit. Super bumpy, no control whatsoever, and definitely not smooth. Also, the rear suspension arms made a TON of clunking noises.
Plan was... uninstall everything from the old car, uninstall everything from the new car. Install legit parts into the new, install crappy parts into older car.
A part of me died having to install all the crappy parts into the white car ;_;
List of stuff swapped:

Uninstalled:
Godspeed coilovers (Thank God)
Megan Tension Rods
Megan RUCAs
Stock Toe Rods
Ebay FUCAs
Stock Eccentric Bolts
Varsstoen CE28 reps

Installed:
Edgar Spec Powertrix Coilovers
Peak Performance Tension Rods (Going on 4 years of abuse now)
Peak Performance Toe Rods (5 years, and now on their 3rd car)
Powertrix FUCAs
Powertrix RUCAs
Powertrix Rear Sway Bar End Links
SPL Eccentric Lock Out
TT Rear Sway Bar
Nismo LMGT4s up front
Volks CE28s in the rear

Found out the reason for all the noise too. A good majority (about 80%) of all the nuts and bolts holding the aftermarket arms in place were hand tightened. Scary knowing anything could have fallen off at any minute. The right rear RUCA also had a bolt just long enough for a nut to have about 2 turns worth of tightening. Needless to say, this full swap job was majorly important.

Also transferred an exhaust hanger from my car to the new car since it was missing one, and fixed an issue with the gas cap not staying closed. Simple job of transferring a piece from the old car to the new one. Did a DIY alignment on the car, still rubbed the tires, but I didn't care. It rode SOOOOOO much smoother and quieter. I was very VERY happy.

No pics due to all the work being done. Took 4 of us about 5 hours to completely swap everything over from one car to the other and vice versa. I can't believe we accomplished so much, but I was happy

The result:

 

Week 1
Thursday:
I needed a breather. Long day at work plus longer nights on working on the car are taking a toll, but I solder on...
Decided to tackle the ride height issue and the tire rubbing issue.
Ended up raising the rear 1/2" (not down for the reverse rake). Also swapped tires from 265/35 Hankook RS-3s, to my 265/35 Bridgestone RE-01Rs for more clearance.

So now it sits like so:


Feels so naked without my Veilside spoiler :/


Also did a bit of clean up on the windows:
Before...

After...


MUCH BETTER!

Also removed the JDM mud guard replicas. No more need for them. I have a TwinZ piece in the way

Also gave my car more wheel/ tire clearance by messing with the fenders. I had to modify the rear bumper tab some more since it wasn't modified (read: grinded or hammered) enough. Here are some before and after pics. The tab had been modified already, but not enough for my liking, considering the fitment and stance I have in mind for it.
Before grinding, hammering, etc



After grinding, hammering, cutting, etc




No more rubbing. Yay! Called it a night. More work planned for tomorrow.

In the plans:
Wire in Series 2 igniter jumper harness.
Roll the front fenders better
Reinstall the fog lamps

 

Week 1
Friday:
I wanted to switch over to the new style PTU (igniter) since this thing was still running on the old style PTU. However, there was no jumper harness with the car, and the only jumper harness I had was either mangled, or hard wired into my old car.
So.... I had to hardwire the jumper harness into the existing harness... the proper way.

Half way there, but not really...

Once everything was wired up, I go to start.... and nothing. I wonder what I did wrong.
Go look at my other car, oh... the connectors were on the wrong end of the harness. I had to switch them around. Cool, more soldering. I was hating life at this point, but it had to be done. Or else I was stuck at work, lol.
Many cuss words and an hour later...

Stupid long wires, blahhhhhh. But whatever, car started up no problem, but still sounded like a Subaru. So, the PTU was NOT the issue. Definitely dreading it being the injector :/

Tired of all the wiring, I moved on to install the fog lamps off my old car. The car came with broken fog lamp housings that had some HIDs attempted to be installed. Pics of what I'm referring to here:

Notice the exposed housing, and blue painters tape holding the wiring/ bulbs in place. Ditched it all and took the easy way out of just installing my stock, relatively unmodified fogs.
And boom!


This did not go on without some drama however. When uninstalling the front blinkers to have access to the rear bolts, I get greeted with this lovely "wiring" job.

Exposed wires, both power and grounds, and scotch tape attempting to cover the exposed parts. Very very dangerous and another car fire waiting to happen. Probably preparing for an attempt to wiring in the sidemarkers in the fenders, since they aren't wired in, thankfully lol.
After some more cussing and electrical tape, all betters!


Week 1
Satuday:
Got home at 2:30AM, and up at 7:30, I was beat from the long week. But I had stuff to do and a full day of events, so work on.
Broke down and took the car to my buddy to look at, mainly the wiring and the motor itself. Diagnosed the issue with my motor in 5 minutes with a stethoscope. Handy tool! Injector 5 is pretty dead. Yay... I got an injector job to do. We so excited....
Took a look at the rest of the motor, and pointed out the AICV and EGR deletes, as well as some wiring I thought was either missing, extra, etc. He was able to clear up a lot for me and I felt better knowing exactly what I was dealing with. Might do the dremel method for the injectors, since I don't care too much about this motor anyways, or a plenum pull, whichever takes less time and effort. Pisses me off though, that after 233k miles on my old motor with original injectors, not one has gone out, but this new motor with newer style injectors, I'm already replacing one, wtf?
Also found some random wire hanging out in the fold of the front fender lip. Pretty much, the front fender was partially rolled with a random wire inside of the fold. No idea what it is for, but I took it out since it didn't belong there, and was already disconnected. On Monday, I tackle the injector change, and maybe roll the front fenders better.

 

Week 2
Monday:
Finally got around to checking the injector. Infinite resistance. Cool. Didn't want to pull the plenum so dremel time it is. First, I started by pulling off any usable injectors from the spare fuel rail I got. Unfortunately, only 3 were usable since the old mechanic used a ton of orange silicone to seal the injectors in the rail. Who does that? And, out of the 3 non- contaminated injectors, only 2 passed the resistance test.
Long story short, took a grinder to the plenum, annihilated the old injector pulling it out, had some issues bolting down the new injectors, but I got it in and it RUNS ON 6 CYLINDERS! I've never been so happy over anything car related in my life. Feeling accomplished, I call it a night. Only problem now... I can hear the exhaust leak now. Might have something to do with all that orange silicone lathered all over one of the flanges -_-' but that's work for tomorrow.

Oh btw, here's a pic of the new injector in its home, with the manifold dremelled.

 

Week 2
Tuesday
This just got dropped off today

New rear bumper made by a Peruvian company called TwinZ. Looks like so when installed. I can't wait! It' brings down the lower body line of the car, so it'll actually match my sideskirts once I transfer them over, and it shortens the but a little bit.

Decided to rol the front fenders properly. Only like 20 degrees worth of the arch was rolled kind of flat, and it wasn't cutting it. The fender lip got snagged on both sides and pulled the lip out :/ So I had to remedy that issue. Here are before pics of the fender.





And after:


A little bit more pumped, but still not enough for my 25mm spacers. SO I pull some more...
Big mistake. Due to the fender lips being pulled out beforehand, there was a crease that was created, not allowing the fender to be pulled out smoothly. SO in that section it flares out. It isn't that bad, but I'm not happy with it either. Time for new fenders. Gives me an excuse to ditch the missive JDM fender markers, lol



Week 2
Wednesday
Breather day, just planned on swapping my headunit. I feared the wiring in there seeing how the rest of the car was wired.
Old head unit:

Note the random switch. Pulled off trim piece, but it went nowhere. Cool.



PROPER WIRING!


And a random bolt, lol


Swapped the trim piece from my car, removing the switch, and getting a working clock all in one shot. Sweet.


Plans for Thursday... LSD swap and solid differential bushing install.

 

Week 2
Thursday

Didn't do much on the new car, but got a good amount removed on the old car
Took out the differential and cleaned it up. Gonna hold off on installing it until my new differential bushings come in. I have solid bushings in my white car, but removing the bushings from the subframe looks like too much of a pain. I tried already. I'm just getting some new ones to make it easier on me.
Also removed my one piece steel driveshaft, as well as the axles. Always good to have spares.
Removed my ebrake shoes as well. They're being sent off to get repadded with some materials with a stronger initial bite, perfect for drifting and for the drag guys as well. Hopefully I'll get them back soon and give them a try.
Going to hold off on installing the driveshaft and differential in until both the new bushings come in, and until I'm ready to swap my clutch and flywheel over to the new car, so maybe within a month. We'll see.
Also removed my AshSpec ECU. It'll be going into the new car once I set some dyno time aside.
I'll be dynoing the car in it's current condition. All it has are a JWT filter, gutted cats, and an Ebay exhaust. I'll be comparing stock ECU to the AshSpec one to see the gains from just swapping ECUs. From there, I'll have the car dynoed again once I transfer all my mods over (UR underdrive pulley, RPS segmented flywheel, RPS Sport 6 puck, steel 1-piece driveshaft, my differential, Veilside 3" exhaust) and comparing stock tune with all my bolt ons with the old set up on stock tune, and then installing the AshSpec ECU and making the same comparisons. I'm gonna try to get my hands on a Selin kit as well, so we'll see.

Oh, almost forgot. I transferred this guy over as well


This night's casualty. A little piece of me died when this happened lol.
Its fixable though. Clean break.

 

Week 2
Friday-Sunday
Took a break, mostly because I had to go down to San Diego for work. VMR Wheels had a booth down at a car show. So I decided to make a weekend out of it with the girlfriend. The car made it down and up without any issues, thank God.

Week 3
Monday
Decided to take care of the exhaust leak. After getting the car running on 6 cylinder, the exhaust leak was VERY apparent.
Here's the culprit, a cheap gasket.


And RTV used to try and seal it, LMAO


Cleaned off what I could and installed the OEM multi-layer metal gasket. Much better. Seals up nicely. However...

When the AIVs were unplugged, the cats weren't plugged properly. Again, more RTV.

Project for another day. Might buy some DoLuck test pipes my buddy has to just bypass the whole gutted cats issue and have a smoother sounding and flowing exhaust system.

Also removed the single silencer from the exhaust. The car is significantly louder, but it sounds a lot better since it isn't rattling due to the silencer anymore.


Took a bit of force to take it out, but it's gone now.

I also checked the timing on the motor. It felt sluggish, and sure enough, it was off by 5 degrees. Put it back to 15 degrees BTC and reset the idle as well. Tried swapping my AshSpec ECU in, but each time I would swap it in, the idle would jump to 2000 RPMs. So odd. So back to stock ECU until I figured out what the issue was.

 

Week 3
Tuesday
Come back to work and notice this on the floor. The car left me a surprise I missed last night

Rewind an hour...
I took the car in to Nissan to get an oil change. A light away from the dealer, smoke starts entering the cabin through the shifter hole and coming out from the sides. Roll in, tell them to check it out while the oil is getting changed.
Verdict: We can't find the leak, there's oil everywhere. Cool.

After work, I decide to put it on my neighbor's lift to see where the leaks are. All I find:
oil over the starter, the AIV hose, the passenger side frame rail, and the passenger side cat. Rear main seal area is dry. Oil pan is dry. Yet smoke emerges from the rear of the motor. Just what I needed... more issues I can't pinpoint. I decide to call it a night and head home.


Week 3
Wednesday
Give the ECU swap another go. Still idling at 2k rpms. Back to stock. Gave the car a wash. Hadn't washed it since I've bought it. Still has a slight oil burning smell. :/


Week 3
Thursday
Didn't do much. I'm getting a wee bit burned out. Tested my ECU on another car to see if something was wrong with it. NOPE, worked just dandy on another car. I miss my 7400 rpm redline ;_;
Hit up my buddy once I get home and he tells me to reset my TPS. I unplug it for 10 seconds, reconnect, and boom, idle drops to normal. SWEET!!! AshSpec ECU in place and working. AWESOME. Little victories. I'll take what I can get.


Week 3
Friday
This car is really testing my patience. Driving down to work, it drops a cylinder. WTFACK?! As soon as I start exiting for work, it starts firing on all 6 again. I'm seriously contemplating swapping my old motor in. The car still smells of burning oil when I beat on her, meaning it leaks when oil pressure goes up it seems like. Only other thing I can think of leaking are either the rear PCV tubes, or the valve covers. In either case, I'm not a happy camper.
Considering buying a new 91 harness, and swapping my old motor in with the new harness and keeping this current motor as a back up. Working out all the little issues with it while it is out and ready for when the old motor kicks the bucket. We'll see. Until I can pinpoint the leak, I'll make a decision.

 

Week 4
Monday
Injector #3 just died on me on the drive home. Awesome. I hate this motor...



Week 4
Tuesday
Swapped out injector #3. Usually when you're in a bad mood, you finish pretty quickly. I got the whole job done in 20 minutes, including dremelling the manifold, lol.


I wonder why the whole bottom part of the injector was brown. So weird. Anyways, car runs on all 6 again.

I unplugged about 80% of the engine harness from the old motor as well, prepping it for a motor pull. All I have left to unplug are the plugs for coilpacks and injectors #5 and #6, and some connectors on the rear side of the motor. Then I gotta disconnect all the heater hoses. Should be fun. I'm planning on literally dropping the motor and pulling it out through the bottom. We'll see. New engine harness is on the list of stuff to buy as well. I hope to have the old motor in asap.

 

Week 4
Wednesday

So... my car tried to kill me this morning.
I lost power assist to my brakes on the freeway. I had death clinch on my ebrake the whole drive to work, lol. I think the vacuum line for the BMC got kinked somehow. Time to swap the one from my old car into this one :/


The culprit to my lack of power assist. A kinked vacuum line. Apparently the oem piece was replaced with a crappy flimsy rubber hose. I replaced it with the one in my white car. Brakes are back in action and I'm not gonna die. Again.

 

Week 4
Thursday
The car didn't try to kill me today. Little victories at a time

 

Week 4
Friday
Another injector died on me today. I am not happy.

Dremelled out the manifold again, prepping for injector swap. I ran out of replacements, so I'd rather get the dirty work out of the way first. Dremel out the manifold, reconnect everything, still sounds like a Subaru. Pull the car out, and turn off car. 30 mins later, turn car on to leave, it runs normally. UGH. Whatever, I can't really complain.

Week 5
Sunday (Funday)
Finally pulled the old motor out. She may be old, she may have miles on her, and she may be dirty, but she's never let me down and has been extremely reliable all the years I've used her in the white Z. Steve and his friend Mike came over to help
Made the decision to drop the motor from the bottom, and I do not regret it one bit. The harness was about 80% disconnected already from what I could see and do. Only like 5 connectors, which I missed, were left. Those came off easy.
Here she is in all her glory, still in the white car, but mostly disconnected.

Yes, she's dirty. I know.

From there, we disconnected the PS lines, AC lines, took of the intake pipes, disconnected vacuum lines, unbolted the tranny crossmember, the LCAs, tie rods, tension rods, and steering column. Came out easy from underneath. Used the forklift to lift on the front bumper support and boom, out the motor slid out. Easy peezy.

Bwahahahaha. I was surprised at how easy that was.

Here she is out on a roller dolley. Excuse the dorkiness, lol.


My buddy and I gave the motor a slight cleaning.


MUCH BETTER.

While it is out, I will be deleting the EGR, cleaning up my PCV plumbing, since it's easy to access now, and maybe headers.


So that's it for today. The white car currently sits with no motor or tranny. It is slowly becoming a rolling crashed shell :/

 

Week 5
Monday
Injector 4 finally gave out. At this point, I'm in DGAF mode. Just waiting for the weekend.
I bought brand new 91 harness for the swap, as well as new heater hoses, the ones that go in the rear of the motor. Might as well since everything's out.
Also ordered some brand new exhaust manifold gaskets because... I order some Stillen headers

Oh yeah, new harness

 

Week 5
Tuesday

Got some work done on the old motor. SO MUCH easier with it out of the car. Makes me wonder how people get all this side stuff done with the motor IN the car.

EGR.... gone!



Knock sensor makes a cameo


I have an EGR delete kit in the way.

Took off the stock headers too. Nuts came off surprisingly easier than I thought. Clean off the old gasket material as well. I have new gaskets on order. All clean



Took pics of the exhaust ports in the head as well. I really have zero clue as to what I'm looking at with regards to the condition of the valves or whatever, so I'll let the pics do the talking and maybe someone can chime in for me in interpreting what they see





Also took the stock oil pressure sender unit off. Going to look for a T-fitting in order to run an aftermarket oil pressure and oil temp sensor off the stock location for a clean install.


Yay clean VTC solenoids



All the junk removed.


I'm probably going to delay the engine swap a week or so. My new headers are coming in tomorrow. I'll be sending them off to get ceramic coated. I'm also planning a plenum pull in order to do a coolant bypass. Meaning I have to order new intake manifold gaskets. Might as well do it while the motor is out. Clean up the motor a bit of any unnecessary items.

 

Week 5
Wednesday
Replaced injector #4. That one was a pain in the butt. Also, my coolant hoses decided not to hold water in anymore. Tightened them up and took the drive home. Made it home without any major issues, but still losing coolant.

Thursday
Was able to make it to work. After work, pulled out the radiator and coolant hoses. Luckily, I had recently bought new OEM hoses for my white car, so I just transferred those over. Cleaned up the radiator as well. And transferred over my Nismo radiator cap. All good to go. No more coolant leaks.

 

Week 5
Friday
Swapped over my Odyssey PC680 battery. Making room for a possible expansion tank for the cooling system. Transferred over the OEM j-hooks since this car lacked them, and my super custom battery tie down set up, hahaha.


I know it looks ghetto, but the piece of wood works really well.

And that was it.

 

Week 6
Sunday
Whoa, 1.5 months of ownership already. And I still don't consider this car MINE just yet. Once the old motor is in, then I think I'll be content. Anyways, on to today's agenda.

Today I was focused on transferring my steering modifications over to the new car. Initially, I was just going to swap the subframe/ steering rack assembly. But, knowing I had a newer rack in the new car, I decided against it. The only reason I was considering swapping over the whole assembly was because I have ES steering rack bushings in the white car, and transferring those over would have been a big PITA. However, I decided just to buy a new ES kit with YugoBernie's longer bolt set up and be happy that way.

So, I swap over just the tie rods, with some help from Steve again (THANKS BUDDY). Thought it would also be a perfect opportunity to show comparison shots between Z33 and Z32 tie rod ends, as I know a lot of people in the Z32 community wonder about that. As well as an install guide to tie rod end spacers for those not familiar with them.

Quick run down of what was being installed:
SPL Pro Outer Tie Rod Ends
Tein Z33 Inner Tie Rod Ends
(1) Tein 6mm Tien Tie Rod Spacer
(1) Bolt-On Tie Rod Spacer

So, I bought a new style of steering rack spacer for even more steering angle. For $50 shipped, it wasn't a bad deal. Here is what it looks like.


Basically, you thread this into the rack on the passenger side, and then the tie rod threads into the spacer. Here is a mock up picture outside of the rack.


On the driver side, I'm retaining the Tein 6mm spacer, as shown in this picture.


The reason being, the rack on the driver side runs out of travel before you can fully utilize the thicker spacer. The 6mm spacer is just the right length before the rack runs out of travel.

Here is the larger spacer installed on the passenger side.


And then the tie rod fully seated against the spacer.


And here are shots of the driver side, so everyone can see where the spacer goes.


And close up.... (the gold shiney thing)


Now, since we are using difference sized spacers left and right, the steering needs to be centered so you have even throws left and right. So I centered the steering. I will be posting up and installation guide, so I'll post all the details in that thread once I make it.
So, centered the steering, set the toe to what it was before, and viola, this is the result at full lock.



Comparison with the previous set up, and with stock...



Nice difference

Also did some extra work on the rest of the car interior wise. My passenger door was missing the hole cover that goes on the window rail/ "B-pillar". The car was also missing the clips that hold the tonneuo cover in place. As well as the clips on the hatch that the cover latches onto.

On the white car, we pulled all the fuses and relays, because you can never have to many back ups, as well as swapped over the nice hatch shocks over to the new car. And the front brakes were pulled off as well in preparation of swapping them over to the new car.

Funny story, we had a bitch of a time taking the tie rods off the new car, the oem ones. The ball joints were being busted and they were making clunking noises. We had to swap them into the white car so the steering would still work. However, in all the hammering, the threads got a we bit messed up. So, in order to run them in the white car, we did this...

LOL.

And that is all for today. Tomorrow, possibly some work on the old motor.