sft3303

Overdue Update: Long time since last post, but I've bought a house and that's been stealing a lot of my resources I would've otherwise put towards the Z. Good news is, the house has a nice shop space so I can finally give the Z the attention it really deserves. So here's a little catch-up post to get us back up to speed: I'll start with a small tangent: the detached shop was built much later than the house, so it's relatively modern. However, one thing that I've always wanted in a garage was a painted floor. Something that wouldn't stain, have decent traction, and look good. My dad had always wanted the same thing, but he's lived in the same house for so long and after having a family, there's no way he'd ever get the time to clean out the garage sufficiently to paint the floor. Keeping that in mind, I was a bit of a stickler making sure that nothing got put in the garage until i painted to floor. It was literally the first thing I did when I got the keys, under the assumption that as soon as anything got moved in, I'd never ever ever get the chance to move it all out again until I move out of the house entirely. So I used Rustoleum RockSolid, it's a 2-part epoxy system you can get from Home Depot (maybe Lowe's or elsewhere? I got it at HD) for less than $300 for a 2-ish car garage. Took a ton of time cleaning/taping/etching the floor, and it makes a huge difference in how that space looks and feels. Promise this isn't a paid advert, but I'm super happy with it, so I thought I'd share: Cleaning/etching/squeegeeing: Final Product: So various non-car projects like that have taken place that have made living so much easier, and having this garage is going to make living with this project so much nicer by far. Anyways, going on to the move, we dragged the Z the 3 blocks from the rental place to the new place, which was exciting to say the least: It was pretty astounding how dirty it had gotten. I didn't wash it regularly, but It didn't get moved outside of the carport. Nonetheless, there were tons of dust on it, and of course sitting outside, tons of spiders webs/nests/general bug life. After a good hosing/scrubbing down, we got it pushed inside: It was really nice to have the engine and car back together in the same place. Now that it's out of the elements, I can get some actual work done without getting rained on, rolling around in the mud, getting bitten up by insects, having to hold flashlights in my mouth, etc... All the little things that aren't the end of the world, but ultimately impede progress and make doing simple things 4x as hard to do and take 4x as much time. Also, this meant that i could finally park it on top of jack stands and tear into the suspension: Nothing rough beyond expectations, but still all in need of cleaning/replacement of all soft goods: The hubs/bearings all looked really good. Once the calipers were off, the rotors spun very freely and there didn't seem to be much by way of dust/water intrusion in the bearings: Hell, with the retaining nut off, they practically fell into my hand. The spindles are in perfect shape, ready for new bearings/repacking. That'll be a little while before that happens... ...because this happened: And that brings us up to date with this morning. Still pretty standard disassembly stuff, but I can't even begin to try to quantify how much better it is working inside now. Hopefully many more updates to come at a much higher rate!

So I've been tossing around the idea of ITB's, and my recent lack of quality time in the machine shop has led me to commit to the project of building my own set of ITBs. I've settled on 38mm, given that this is a standard compression 2.8 motor that'll mostly be used for "spirited daily driving." This page here gave me a lot of good detail here, and the close® relationship between TPS and MAP is what drove the decision for small-ish plates. I don't want to feel like I'm driving with an on/off switch. But, I do want to make/experiment with some crazy cool carbon runners as well as hear glorious ITB noises. Electronic throttle control still isn't off the table, although this does complicate things a bit. If anything, this will give me motivation to push for electronic throttle control (ETC), as ETC would allow me to fine-tune the low end throttle response for decent daily driving, as well as make idle control easy-ish. The current plan is to hack up an old webbed EFI manifold I've picked off of a L24e maxima and make custom throttles from 6061 that will fit like sockets into the bores of the manifold. The manifold will retain the geometry, bolting features, and injector placement (so that I don't have to figure those out/create them). I still have the EGR standard non-webbed manifold that came with the L28e as backup, but I'm hoping I never have to install that... I've also purchased -08 (wayyyy overkill, but it's all summit had in lengths longer than 18") fuel rail to make an o-ring fuel rail with. Probably with some MX-5 or RX-7 injectors? That's a bit more off in the distance. Anyways, pictures. Tonight I started into the throttle body fabrication, but basically we just got the stock cut into its 6 pieces and then figured out the lathe at the maker-space we'll be working at. I'd kill to have my own lathe again, but this totally does the trick (and they have a 4-jaw, which is necessary for this). More pictures of machine shop madness soon!

Got distracted a couple weekend back by some buddies back in school. They were revealing a project car of their own: This is Auburn University's 2016 FSAE race car. For those of you who haven't heard of FSAE, it's a great program that gives college engineering students the opportunity to design, build, test, and ultimately compete with a race car. It gives kids an awesome opportunity to engage in engineering topics outside of the classroom and gives them hands-on experience turning the math from their homework into real-life problems and finding real-life solutions to those problems. Super proud of these guys, the car sounds as good as it looks. For more info: www.auracing.org The L28 has still been piecing together: Finished valves: An example of how well these valves cleaned up: Cam and rockers installed, ready to mate up with the engine: New cam chain guides installed, and the head's on! A bit more paint was due, because why not. Gotta keep the rust off that steel, why not make it a decent color, and paint the valve cover while we're at it? Couldn't resist: And that's about where I am right now. Spent a good amount of time cleaning the interior, which looks like it's in fantastic shape, but this doesn't get me much closer to it running/driving. Cleaned up on the right, original shape on the left: And that pretty much catches us up! Next up is getting it somewhere that I can take off the suspension/crossmembers and replace bushings/paint. Reinstall suspension, new brakes, steering, engine/trans re-install, wiring, wiring, more wiring, fuel system, so much left to do. Very excited about the future! -J

This engine was way dirtier than I expected, but not beyond what elbow grease and lapping compound could handle. Pretty much every port for every valve on the engine was nearly clogged with particulate (Rust? Soot from EGR?) but it was all relatively easy to break off and all the valve seats came back to working order with a liberal application of lapping compound and torque. The camshaft had some light surface rust, but 800 grit wetsanding knocked that off super easy and it's looking like new: Some gross looking valves: Cyl 6, after refurb, holds simple green/water dilute just fine for 30 minutes: Eventually, all the valves were re-installed and all cylinders seal up just fine. Now on to the engine assembly. Had some troubles here with my own impatience, putting bearings that were too narrow in the rear main cap. Thankfully I caught it when I went to put bearings in another race and saw they were too wide. Felt like a total fool. But the bottom end went together relatively smootly otherwise, the crank is in really good shape and it all just slid together once I had the right parts in place/in hand: The cylinders cleaned up fairly well. These were left to soak in a bucket of kerosene for a week and then vigorously wire-brushed. Cylinder 3 had snapped its piston rings (it lived a rough life) and I used the snapped rings as a handy ring-land cleaner. All of the pistons cleaned up pretty well and are happily seated with new rings in their freshly-honed bores:

Been really bad about updating this. Been going through the home-buying process, and it's taking a lot of my spare time and energy. BUT, the new house has a 3-car garage where the Z can get the attention it really deserves. So here's a ton of pics, most of them are focused on the engine rebuild for now, I don't have space for much more than that right now. Current plan is to move the car over to the new house and start taking apart the suspension. The engine will stay out of the car until the suspension is out (including the front crossmember) such that the front and transmission crossmembers can be cleaned up and powder-coated with all of the suspension components. The steering rack will also get attention at that point, since this will be the easiest time to get to it, while the engine is out. That's kind of what this whole thing is devolving into, a big game of "welllll, while we're at it." I'm not particularly worried, I'm not relying on this for my transportation and I don't have a deadline, so as long as I stick to my budget I'd much rather get things done the right way now than have to re-do the work later. Anyways, now for pictures: Took the block to the wash to try to get as much krud off as possible: Then back on the engine stand for wire-wheel and primer/paint: Next post will be head refurb and engine assembly!

More engine build updates! This L28 is still really dirty by my standards. It's kind of funny, all the engines I've built in the past have been 600cc race bike engines. So they've typically been newer, low mileage, all aluminum affairs. Cleaning them has typically been a relatively dirt-free, happy, oily affair. My friend from work (Jason) who's been helping a ton with this has his roots in tractor/diesel engines, and tells stories of shattering cast pistons on their ways out of bores and other various tales of iron-block debauchery. He claims it's the cleanest engine he's ever seen. It's the dirtiest I've ever taken apart. Interesting how varied experiences in the same endeavor can be! Anyways, he was gracious enough to allow me to take the long block to his shop where there was much more space/light/protection from the elements. We tore into the block pretty well, and to my eyes it looks pretty bad, but it's encouraging to hear Jason talk about how he's seen far worse come back to life. Cylinders 1 and 6 have some pretty bad ridge wear (like .003" or so of a ridge) that are likely caused by front-to-back vibration causing increased wear on the front/back of these cylinders. Cylinder three was nearly rusted in place, and as it came out, it was pretty obvious that bore was in bad shape. Lots of what looked like pitting on the bore and then the piston itself was covered in carbon/dirt/soot and the upper compression ring was jammed in place. When I picked out the upper ring, it fell out in 4 pieces, 2 larger almost half-pieces with 2 smaller ~6mm long pieces. Pretty rough. This N47 head is still playing games with me though. I've dug a bit further into the head tonight to pull out all the rockers, lash pads, camshaft, etc... and I'm still on the fence. It's still looking like it will be a fair bit of work to get it usable (e.g. just on the fence between junk and salvage part). I pulled the first exhaust valve (one of the better looking ones, actually) and was greeted with a pretty gnarly looking valve seat: I rubbed around with a 320 grit sand sponge and then attempted some lapping compound, but the debris/damage on this seat might be too much for a simple hand-lapping job. It did clean up relatively well, but I'm honestly not sure how much we can get away with here. New rings/bearings are on the way all around, it'll hopefully be able to go together in the next couple of weeks, which will be exciting! It's going to be neat, but then I'll have a lot more to do before it'll run. Tons of wiring, EFI shenanigans, exhaust, and then the matter of getting the chassis legitimately roadworthy. 4 pot toyota calipers got here back a while ago for use with the standard non-vented discs, as well as parts to completely re-build the the rear drums. Bushings will likely get replaced at some point in the near-ish future (fall of this year?) and either cutting of coils or installation of lowering springs will happen. This recent progress is getting me excited about the future!

It's been my obligatory "too long between posts," and so I've finally got the L28 up onto a stand where I can get some real work done on it. Been a lot of fun, definitely like being able to make progress on the motor itself. It's an N47 Head N42 Block, and we've run into some issues. First, some pictures: Rockers were crazzzzzy out of adjustment, but at least free of sludge. Looks like whoever drove this at least made sure to keep up with oil changes. So here's my current dillema. I've currently got 2 heads, the L26 E88 head and the L28 N47 head. For those of you who aren't aware, the N47 was a head that was "graced" with emissions-hampering exhaust port liners. I just so happened to find one of them in the state below: I was able to pry the dead liner out with a pair of needle nose pliers within about 30 seconds of discovering it, it was not very well secured. So I'm a little confused with what to do now. Here's kind of the pros/cons I'm considering now: E88 Pros: No emission liners in exhaust Seemingly in cleaner/less full of shit shape Cam is in better shape, likely would not need to be re-ground/replaced E88 Cons: Soft valve seats (originally designed for leaded gas) No porting for injectors in intake (not something I couldn't fix) Sprayer bar cam oiling (not a huge fan of this) Popped off the cam cover for the first time and found that one of the rockers was just floating around in the gallery. No super obvious signs of damage (shrapnel, shavings, etc...), but I have no idea how it would've completely come off of its pedestal on its own without causing damage while running. N47 Pros: Proper internally oiled cam Properly ported intake for EFI Hard valve seats (I read they were steel somewhere?) for use with unleaded gas N47 Cons: WTF do I do with the exhaust liners? Just run cylinder 3 without it? Rip all of them out? Do I lose scavenging velocity at that point? Cam would need to be re-ground/replaced (excuse to buy a hot-ish street cam???) Either way, putting this motor back together seems to be growing into a much larger project. I was hoping the L28e would've survived longer on the road and would've been in better shape, but looks like that was simply not true. I pulled the head off the block, and the bores look decent. I can still see factory cross hatching in the cylinders, but the pistons themselves are covered in soot/junk (egr?) and bits of bugs that have crawled into them and died over the years. Head gasket had no visible ruptures, so I'm hoping it wasn't overheated or pushed past its limits or anything of that nature. I'll post pics on this eventually. Definitely going to be a more interesting build now, as I'll be more motivated to spring for those "while I'm at it" kind of mods. If I'm pulling the pistons to hone/install new rings, might as well source some flat-tops and bump the CR. Things like that. Get excited. In other news, I bought a 1-owner 1997 Chevy Tahoe for parts running/car trailer hauling duty. I'm stunned with how good of shape this 20-year old truck is in. I love it, and it'll take good care of me when my lease on my current daily expires this year. Expect cameos as the engine gets moved around and the car gets hauled.

Christmas came late: got some tranny parts in today in anticipation of swapping in the L28. Went with MSA for this order, poly bushings for the tranny mount and a short throw kit for the 5 speed plus a clutch kit and a bunch of other "while you're at it" odds and ends. Oddly enough, the trans didn't come with a lever or any parts like that when I picked it up, so I figured that was a good enough reason to dish out for the whole short throw kit. Came with a nice weighted knob as well, which was nice. Hoping to potentially throw the "new" engine/trans in the car in the next week at this rate! Need to go out an potentially buy a little arbor press for the trans bushings, it's about time I graduated from hammering things in and out of other things. I also got an upload of the current power distribution module card layout. Like 40% through, or so it feels. Kind of stagnated the past week or so on it, but I'm ready to leap back into it this coming week and get more stuff done. Might try to get the boards ordered before the end of february, no idea how crazy aggressive I'll get on wiring the car, e.g. how soon it'd be able to run... Some slight distractions came over the past season by way of a yamaha which had been sitting in a field for some number of years. Couldn't pass up the opportunity, and it taught me a hell of a lot about bodywork and paint. It's an 87 FZR 1000, and was a pile of parts in various stages of disrepair/body panels in various form of prep for paint. The guy had simply taken it apart for paint and lost interest after losing the title in a housefire (or so he said). Took a couple weekends of putting it all back together and several more weekends of painting (everything that's white) in my backyard to get it to where it is now. Finally got it inspected/registered and the bonded title on its way, so maybe I can devote more of my focus back to the Z!

Digging this up from the back pages! Pulled the L26 yesterday with the help of a couple pals from work. Went relatively smoothly, the biggest beef we had was dealing with the split in the middle of the driveway in my carport. The hoist didn't like the surface transitions and was generally a pain to move around. Otherwise, no snags getting it out of the bay! In other news, I'm ~40% through the design for the power distribution boards. Looking like I'll be working with 14x 8A outputs with current monitoring/overcurrent protection//flyback protection. EagleCAD seems to be making it a breeze. Photobucket is being rather finicky, but i'll try to get some progress pictures in when I can, including of the board layout. Also just put in an order for the clutch/throwout/pilot bearing/front cover gasket, hoping to drop in the L28 next weekend!

Some Techy Stuff: After i moved into my house, i decided it was about time to ditch my 4-year old radio shack soldering iron and step up to something a bit nicer. It was only $100 and makes the job of assembling a megasquirt so much more enjoyable. So the megasquirt I'm building is an MS3 with the MS3x expansion board. Ideally this will be running sequential injection and wasted spark ignition using a 36-1 trigger wheel on the crank and a v6 coil pack I scrounged off an old ford taurus. MS3 (er, anything after ms2) also supports CANbus, and the documentation on it makes it incredibly easy to build up your own hardware around the ECU. So the plan is to replace the large amounts of heavy-guage wiring and high-current switches with low-current signal switches with 4 CANbus-based power distribution modules around the car. (Front, Center, Dashboard, and Rear). I'm reckoning this will cut the weight of the wiring harness in half (never held a full Z harness, but I'd estimate the harness would weigh 60 lbm including all the connectors, relays, etc...) and also allow for functionalities that simply weren't possible before. Anyways, the "brains" of those modules are these Teensy 3.1 arduino-clone microprocessors. They have a built-in CAN controller, but still need a CAN transciever in order to interface with the bus (blue chip on the breadboard in the picture). Right now, I'm having no troubles reading whatever the MS sends out, but I have yet to figure out how to transmit on the bus from one arduino to the next. I'll need that capability in order to (e.g.) have the dashboard module tell the front module to switch the turn signals on, etc... As it sits on the bench, I can simulate an engine temperature that the MS sees and transmits over the CANbus and the module turns on an LED whenever the temperature is over a certain set point (simulated e-fan control) and then back off when it falls below a different, lower set point. Ladd industries sells a nice 48-pin waterproof enclosure I'm planning on using for all of these, should be super-robust, easy to use, and look really clean. Not much more on this front for now, but as it gets colder and my desire to be outside with the car drops, more tech stuff (PDMs, CANbus, Dashboard Renovation) will likely be what I focus on

Here's some interior shots! I'm super excited about how rust-free this thing is. The Central Texas barn where it was stored turn out to be pretty friendly to this old thing. The original spare was even still there in the trunk! The seat covers for both seats were in completely rip-free condition! The foam was garbage, they were full of dust and smelled like rat turds, but the fabric was still alive! I yanked them out and pulled off the covers and machine washed them a few times, they're as good as new now and just need new foam before I can call them done The dashboard was pretty well hagged, looks like the years of road time it did have in texas did it no favors. I've yanked it out and since installed a full-face dash cap, as well as removed the guages and cleaned out all the turds from the hvac ducting. The whole cabin smelled 100x better after pulling dashboard out and a good vacuuming.

Engine Stuff! So this thing had been parked since '94 or '95, and was basically completely unmodified when it was parked. That being the case, this car basically still had all of the EGR & emissions-wrangled flat-top carbureted non-sense. It was neat to see all of it in near-factory shape, but all of it had deteriorated from years of non-use. So that all got yanked out in anticipation for pulling the old L26/4 speed for an L28e/5 speed I found locally for a cool $300. Some examples of grossness: Plenty of barbs that broke off when trying to remove hoses Thermostat housing was disgusting, hose barbs rusted through and even the main radiator hose barb was corroded through and practically dissolved. Some pretty gross stuff (fungus?) looks to have grown in there at some point too. I couldn't even get the bolts for the collector off of the exhaust manifold (and the exhaust was some junk that had been welded on by some muffler shop a long time ago) so it got hacked off and all thrown away. Here's basically how it sits now:

Picture time! Figured this'd get little attention/be worthless without em. Here's how she looked when I picked her up: I actually did a lot of my disassembly (of mainly motor/interior) before ever giving her a good wash. Just this weekend I decided to try to get it clean, maybe even take a whack at restoring a little bit of what shine might be hiding under all that dust. Here's how she turned out: Looking way better than I anticipated! I initially just washed and tried to immediately buff, but that didn't cut through a lot of the oxidation that had built up. So I went over what I could/what was worth it with 400 grit wetsand then 1500 grit wetsand (what I had on hand that made sense) and then buffed again. It's nowhere near perfect, but I have no plans on breaking this thing so far down as to give it a paintjob that would meet my standards. Plus, I like the patina it kind of has. Interior/Engine/Techno pics to come in following posts! Sorry for the delay in pics, I know these threads are generally worthless without them.

Howdy! So I've wanted an s30 since I was about 10. This summer I finally finished up school/got settled into a job and house and now have the time/space/means to really do justice to a proper s30 project. I wanted to finally get a thread together to collect my thoughts/ideas and perhaps gather input as well. Let me know what you guys think! Looking around the area, I found a 1974 260 that had been sitting in a barn since 1993. The owner at the time was the grandson of the original owner, who had transferred the title to his wife (owner's grandmother) who parked it when the choke cable failed (of all things!!!). I'll have pics coming soon, they're all uploading off the phone as I type. So first off, here's some plans of what's to come: Pretty Standard Stuff: L28e Swap 5 Speed Swap Megasquirt (MS3x) Distributor-less ignition (Wasted Spark using some V6 coil pack I have from the pick & pull) Some sort of Header/Exhaust combo (MSA?) E-Fan Decent HID Headlights (Properly Installed/Aimed) and decent taillights Watanabes (I can dream, right?) or likely some knockoffs Things I'm forgetting about Stuff I want to do that I'd call less standard in terms of builds on here Self-built CAN-Based power distribution modules Complete guage overhall, completely computer controlled/CAN based Drive-by-wire throttle control GPS Speedometer/Datalogging to MS TPMS Heated seats (Don't judge) Probably more stuff I'm forgetting about

Just a heads up, you might want to read up on the actual manifold design, the first one (your fj20 manifold) is going to have pretty poor flow characteristics going towards the wastegate. The flow of the exhaust gases almost has to do a 180* turn (aka, flow reversal) to get to the wastegate, and that is something you really do not want to do (will *actively* slow your turbo while the wastegate is engaged). If anything, the path to the wastegate and turbo should ideally be separate, but equal. Aka, the exhaust comes to a "fork" in the manifold, one route to the turbo, and the other to the wastegate, where it is equally easy to go to either path. Just something to keep in mind.