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Hypothetically, most of the Z forums nowadays are pretty dead. There may be a handful of posts on each one every day. Even though a lot of the information in forums is old, there is still a lot of relevant information on them. It would be sad to see it all get lost. I guess social media or smart phones are to blame. I'm not sure if there was an app for each forum (like a hybridz app) if that would help at this point or not. Everything that is posted in social media pretty much gets lost and is very hard if not impossible to find again, and its mainly just pictures and comments, nothing too technical. Does anyone think that there would ever be a world in which forums would merge before they got totally lost? Like several of the Z forums combining into 1 large Z forum (if that's even possible with the different software they use) to get the handful of people on each one all together so there are decent numbers on one. I worry that one day several of the old forums will cease to exist and all the information in them will disappear forever.

How do you download it to back it up?

If I know the answer to a facebook post is on here, and I'm not busy at the time, I'll try to put in the link to here, or say its on Hybridz. I don't know if that makes a difference. Once a few years ago, someone asked "What's Hybridz?"

Have you done a build like this before? If you are unfamiliar with Zs, I would suggest buying a running and driving stock or near stock Z, not an unfinished project with a bunch of aftermarket parts. This is one of those things where you really need to be familiar with how they go together. And who knows how many pieces are missing from the project, and how much it'll cost to repurchase all of them one at a time. The shell looks pretty good, some of the parts are decent. Seems like he spent a lot of money on wheels and flares. Looks like probably a stock L28ET in unknown condition, and a set of coilovers from a brand I've never heard of. CX Racing as far as I know is chinese stuff, not sure if it's any good or not, and he lists the turbo as a BW T4 with a value of 600 which makes me think it might be some old journal bearing turbo. He has quite a bit of stuff from Skillard, which I'm not really a fan of, from what I've seen it's mostly sheet metal parts that are only suitable for a race car. The brakes are nothing special. Kinda comes down to personal taste as to whether or not you like the build he's doing. Personally, I'd be building it a lot differently.

I have finally switched my focus to getting this car running again. This weekend I painted the engine block of the new replacement engine. I was hoping to get it in the car, but various things slowed down my progress. I thought I had a pilot bushing on hand, but couldn't find it. So, a trip to the store for that... Couldn't find the torque spec for the ARP flywheel bolts and wasted time looking for that. Little things like that eat time. Anyway, a few pics: With the back plate, flywheel, disc, and pressure plate now on, I am about ready to put the engine in. I think I will strip and repaint the motor mounts first. Then, I'll put the engine in and start the work to mount the oil tank for the dry sump. I will likely need to cut some of the inner fender well on the right side. I don't like going that route on my "early" Z, but I dislike blown motors more.

Apparently it is not in running condition. So, basically, it is a collection of parts. Looks like he wants about 75% of what he paid for the parts. That seems steep. $28,500/38,290 If you wanted that exact set of parts then you might consider it as a 25% off sale. But since the car is not running you can't tell if the set of parts will actually make a nice car. Not even clear that the engine runs, and it doesn't say anything about engine condition. Besides that you'll need to pay for a paint job for the hood if you want it to look decent, unless you ho with the classic primer black. Also, I don't see the shiny rims on the spreadsheet. They might not be included. Looks like a risky endeavor unless you plan to sell the parts separately for full price. Good luck.

Whenever I answer something on Facebook that has been discussed thoroughly or answered on here, I try to provide a link and mention the name of the site. Maybe "brand awareness" will gain us a few users. I don't think it will ever come back, though. Attention spans are too short. I always have hoped that Dan would give a warning before shutting the site down so that I'd have a chance to download it in full. Maybe I should just start doing a backup every few months just in case that doesn't happen. There's too much valuable stuff here to lose it all.

I doubt we'll see a resurgence of forum activity. I agree with @Derek, the trend since 2010 or so has been towards short-form social media, soundbytes, instant gratification scrolling, and now AI. Unfortunately e-commerce has basically all but migrated to other platforms as well so it's near impossible to fully unplug if you're looking for parts. We're a small remaining userbase but I think we can at least keep the HybridZ discussion boards alive. Which are good reminders, just put in my donation to HybridZ operating costs and time to put down the phone 😁

I got my hatch hinge seals from Vintage rubber back when those weren't available basically anywhere and they seem pretty good quality. Cheaper reproductions are now available, but after my frustrations with the fitment on a lot of the precision kit I don't think I'd bother. Vintage Rubber's kit is expensive, but it seems like it's far more complete than any other. It has damn near every single piece of rubber you can find on the car. I know for a fact the kit from Resurrected Classics has most of what you could want, but something like the hatch hinge seals aren't in that kit, just as an example. There's one piece that I didn't even have to install to know it's better than most other kits and that's the hood to cowl seal. The Resurrected Classics is a good reproduction of the later style with metal insert so it just sort of clamps on without the need for adhesive. It's longer than necessary though, which isn't ideal for a piece like that where cutting the metal inside is tricky sometimes.

Three weeks until I'm home and properly working on the car before a long road trip. I've been creating a detailed list on some Google notes of everything I hope to accomplish. I'll update once I truly get to it, but for now just wanted to share my excitement for my new brakes. Was in Utah about two weeks ago for a handful of days for a music conference and my brother was kind enough to let me borrow his truck to drive up to Logan just for one evening to have a quick dinner with the siblings up there and I took a quick trip to my folks' place late in the evening and opened up some of the parts to keep my motivation haha. Also had a big box of new seals from Resurrected Classics. They were kind enough to give me a steep discount on their weatherstripping kit when I asked if I could get it without the door seals since I had already purchased the S30 world seals before they released their kit. Looks like they were kind enough to give me the discount and kept the door seals anyway! I'll be making a thorough comparison of it against the Precision kit I have, mostly to see if it's truly far better for some of the worst fitting parts.

I've been doing the best I can on FB to try and encourage people the return to the forums to no avail. The general attitude is, and I quote, "too cumbersome". People would rather have the wrong answer in a hurry than the right answer that takes a little work. There are so many FB groups for the S30 that there is no way to get any kind of quality answers. I don't know how many times I could of contributed to someones question but didn't because I knew the answer was easily found on one of the three forums. You are starting to see that AI is burrowing its way into the FB groups as well. Sad times these are.