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Have you rebuilt your L28E with forged pistons and H-beam rods? Lowered compression? In my opinion that's too much turbo for the unmodified S30 chassis and "supports 500 HP" sounds good - but is it? In an unstiffened early unibody Z - probably not. We saw a 300HP RB25 swapped Z here in Phoenix tear the spot welds apart. It was a 240Z chassis and the 280 is a bit beefier but still. This is a town with no rust. The kit looks legit however (I'd still go for a different turbo, but that's me). I'm not a fan of the charge pipe config that an opposite-side intercooler requires but it's a little more difficult to get same-side charge piping through the radiator core support. Don't get me wrong, I'm in the TURBO EVERYTHING camp - but do your research, and do it the right way, and you'll have a Z that's FUN to drive and will stay together while you're doing it.

Last week my order from Apex Engineered came in so now I can start stripping down the car and prepping her for the body shop. Money is a bit tight right now so I’ll install all my suspension parts first and probably send the car of to the shop in February. In the meantime I decided to strip out the interior and see what’s hidden underneath. It doesn’t look that bad but for a car that has been quote on quote “restored” only 10 years ago they sure did a shitty job. Lots of surface corrosion sports throughout the interior, lots of missing bolts, fasteners and rubber plugs and unpainted parts from shotty repair work. I cleaned up the surface rust and sprayed a generous amount of rust converter on everything. I will order some more rust converter, primer and color matched paint soon to clean up and protect the inside parts. I’ll also look at some spray wax to protect the hidden parts and crevasses of the chassis. A guy on YouTube I follow (M539 Restorations) uses one from Liqui Molly I believe which seems pretty good so I will give that one a try. It's not all bad news though. It looks like that in all these years the wiring harness stayed unmolested by all the previous owners. I also found out that the car has 4 pretty big and new looking JBL speakers! They didn’t all work when I tested the radio but I believe that might be the head unit itself. I will probably replace it with a Bluetooth capable retro looking one in the future. I also found a full and intact box of original Nissan glass 10amp fuses in the trunk!

2.0 is coming along.