Bringing this back from the dead! After my dyno session where you could see significant blow-by coming from the valve cover, the car progressively started producing blue smoke from the exhaust. I don't recall the exact timeline now, but around mid-2016 Flatblack helped me pull and disassemble the engine. We discovered two pistons with broken skirts, and one piston with broken ringlands. My head gasket was also hanging on by a thread, with very elongated bores. Since then other life priorities took precedence, and the car was basically untouched for 7 years.
Mid 2023 I finally took the car in for paint, and got it back in October. Meanwhile I had the block cleaned up, found some used pistons, performed the coolant bypass mod on my P90 head, did the 240z tail light conversation, and last month finished reassembling the longblock. Sometime between 2013 and 2016 Flatblack sold his 280z, so we traded flywheel and clutch setups so I'd have more torque headroom. At some point his flywheel dowels went missing, so I'm waiting on replacements to get the engine stabbed back in and broken in over the next few weeks.
Once I have everything complete, I'll post some reveal pictures of the new look! Short term I need to get a rollbar, some performance seats, and harnesses put in the car. I'll also need to get my MS2/Extra upgraded to the latest version, and apparently be a little more conservative with my tune. From there, I'll likely pursue installing the Snow Performance meth kit I've been sitting on for a decade, follow-through with the 280zx CV swap with the weld on adapters, upgrade injectors and swap to running E85, and look at swapping to a properly sized modern turbo to support my original 400whp goal.