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Don't tell my wife Like I tell other people. some like to fish, some like to bowl, I like to make.

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 have two heads in stock as I type this so the head can actually be purchased. I can't help that you can't afford it. That's a feature not a bug. For the very beginning my goal was to provide the components so that talented engine builders could make the decisions on the types of components they wanted to use. Based on what I've seen and taking the pricing of the relatively simple L6 head as the baseline I highly doubt it. I'm not really sure what I did to put a burr under your saddle but you remind me of the guy that starts a fight in the line to get into the club because he can't afford the cover charge. Just get out of line and go somewhere else.

Went out for some Auto-x this weekend, and had a proper blast. Highly recommended for anyone here who still hasn't gone to try it. Enjoy a slow lap, some V8 noises and straight cut gearbox whine. I have a handful of things to think about and address moving forward, but overall I'm very happy with where this sits. Next up is OnGrid at the Ridge in late July for more testing, and maybe, just maaaaybe a little redemption.

Good progress over the long weekend. Paint, bondo and fiberglass is mostly a waiting game which is pretty annoying. Got the duct glued together and painted so it looks like something. Trimmed it up a little and we are in great shape! The holes in the hood are a little bit large, but that's ok, and will likely get solved with a new hood (fiberglass) or something on top. Also got the transition piece painted which is exciting! This will help blend the splitter into the air dam, and will get taped onto the splitter once I put some trim on top of it. Need to get to work on the new intake pipe as well, going to put the filter over near the wheel for now. In the future, I'll flip the manifold and pull air from the cowl/wiper box area, but that's a bigger lift in terms of fabrication. Can't tell you how excited I am to have a metal fabrication project after 10 months of composites.

Meh, he's a paid supporter of the site. I figured I'll give him his moneys worth

I started typing a number of snarky responses and have settled on Wow what a shitty thing to say.

3 years later... took ages to find a good painter willing to take on the project. These days insurance jobs with small panel fixes seem to be more profitable. Luckily I found someone willing to do it in the summer months of this year while the insurance workload is reduced. Prepping... Overall quite happy with the result. Couldn't contain myself and started puzzling together the undercarriage the first chance I got. Pulled lines in the trans tunnel and assembled the suspension component. On the wheel first the first time since 2017!

More pis of it finished up The bottom plate was beat up a bit and bent from floor jacks. So I took off the old one by drilling out the spot welds. I then drew up the shape and had a new one laser cut. The center plate that is welded to this plate, I re-made it as well, but out of 304 stainless steel. This way I can leave it a brushed stainless finish after powder coating and it is a good place to use a floor jack. I then spot welded on the larger plate in the original locations I then tigged the seam between the spot welds Then tigged on the center stainless plate Then blasted the entire cross member and powder coated it in a super black semi gloss powder coat. Powder coated the motor mounts as well I always first do a primer powder coat that is sandable I sand most off this off to fill the small blemeshes Then final coat Finally the brushed stainless plate for the floor jack Next up is getting a new transmission, then finishing the exhaust

He's saying although we are launching a DOHC head in 2024 we readily admit it will be pale in comparison the mighty KN20 from Datsunworks. At least that's what I'm hearing.

well old story , but MAG58 was right, mercedes M104 head is possible on a datsun L28 stroked , build is not over but we will see what happens soon bye bye Didier

**UPDATE Went to court yesterday and basically played dumb. Told the judge that "I went to the state ref and he told me since the car is so old that he couldn't do anything to certify it. So how do I go about taking car of this ticket. The vehicle is a pre smog vehicle so I've never had to SMOG it" The judge said "Ok so what Im going to do here is dismiss the case cuz it seems like your car doesn't qualify for an inspection. Sorry about the inconvenience Mr. Soto" I tried to play it cool but I was so happy. After reading all the horror stories from other people about having to revert to stock and all that I was lucky I guess Hope this thread helps someone going through something similar

Greetings Everyone, Due to the increase in spammers HybridZ, registration has changed from being automatic to manual. That means one of the Admins will need to approve any new registrants. If you ask or tell someone about HybridZ (please do) let them know registration isn't automatic anymore. We'll do our best to stay on top of any additions and hopefully you all will see a lot less spam. Thanks, The HybridZ moderation team

It was a good idea not to wait on rebuilding the 3.54 diff. The new LSD arrived weeks after I expected it and there's no shot I would have been able to swap it into the spare R200 before my trip. I'm excited to get this together in the winter though!

Some of their stuff is good and some is hot garbage. Max the owner doesn't stand behind his product and has a tendency to try and blame "modifications" to your car as the reason. I have a lengthly (4 page) post on classic z car about my problems with his door assemblies. Resurrected Classics door problems I have their door weather strips and their fuel filler neck and the are excellent. My advice is no matter what you buy test fit as soon as it arrives and go from there. The doors were so bad that I ended up not using them. Max refuses to refund my money so I make sure to take the time to tell people about my experience. Do not trust what he says as he says whatever he needs to to get out of doing the right thing. Caveat Emptor with this guy for sure.

You should really just post on FB because they love trolls and useless posting there

I track my Ford powered 260Z. My personal experience is that transmission gearing is extremely important to getting the most fun on the track. In Florida, you will most likely be doing track days at Daytona and Sebring. Both tracks have very fast sections. Before doing track days, I autocrossed the car. In autocross, you only really need second gear if you have the right differential / tire height. I used Hoosier 275/35-15 tires and have a 3.36 rear end. With a 1.94 second gear in a T-5 and 6,500 rpm, 2nd gear was good for 73 mph. When I started doing track days, I needed all the gears. I had replaced the stock 1st through 4th with G-Force gears and shafts, but fifth gear was still stock. With that set-up, these were my gear ratios. 1st 2.95:1 2nd 1.94:1 3rd 1.33:1 4th 1:1 5th 0.59:1 Worked great until I needed 5th gear. that big a drop absolutely killed the fun (no acceleration in 5th). After my first time a Daytona, I changed 5th gear to 0.81:1. The .81 gear absolutely transformed the car. Now 5th gear is warp drive. The transmission that you show probably doesn't have a good selection of gear ratios, and probably won't hold much power. If it were me, I would get the new TKX with the close ratio rears. That transmission will handle the power and maximize you fun on track. If I didn't already have so much invested in my T5, I would get a TKX. This is the TKX I would get: https://www.speedwaymotors.com/TREMEC-TCET18084-TKX-Close-Ratio-5-Speed-Ford-Manual-Transmission,452007.html?srsltid=AfmBOoq-x1paVSDoNvgI38myLy79UBWXzZFW-QeQ4bK1_vWnSHM7bEEJ Gear Ratios 1st - 2.87, 2nd - 1.89, 3rd - 1.28, 4th - 1.00, 5th - 0.81

For a street car I think the rails make sense. For a race car that has a cage perhaps not. For a similar amount of weight you can triangulate the cage with tubing on top of the floor that extends to the suspension pickup points.

So.......it's been 7 years since my last post. The car basically sat in that drive way for a few years then pushed it in the garage for another4 years where the mice got to it. The gas in the tank and lines went to shit. I replaced the fuel pump and got it kind of running again. Obviously having the car sit outside for so long it pretty much ruined everything in the fuel system. This is where a project goes to die .....you lose interest and end up selling for cheap because it doesn't run. Well ......not this time. Last year the house where I was storing it had to be sold so I needed to find a home for it while getting it road worth again. My best friend who lives in Rochester, NY (I'm in Massachusetts) told me to trailer it to his place and we can work on it together. I know that the carbs need to get rebuilt so I decided to send them to Kyusha House. Here is the before pictures. And after Taka's absolutely amazing work.....

Here comes the Project thread that I should've started when I picked up the car in 2021...... Firstly, I'd like to thank the person who has been the biggest help with this car, and who has ended up being one of my best friends, Andrew Mielke (who owns Milkfab Engineering). Without him the car would not be where it is today! His hybridz profile (check out his z) also shameless plug for his business: MilkFab Engineering Z acquisition: I had always wanted an s30 after growing up hearing my dad tell stories about how much he loved the gold 240z he had when him and my mom were dating. Any time we would see them at car shows or out and about i'd be drooling over them. When I started dating my now wife, I noticed a copper colored Z sticking out of a storage building on the road they lived on. Her and her family started jokingly calling it 'my car' due to me staring at it every time we'd drive past. Fast forward 3 years from then, we were married and looking for a house. She gave me a call because as she was driving to her parents house she saw the car outside and they were working on it, asked me if she should stop by and ask about it. I said 'yeah' never expecting it was actually for sale, and when they told her it was and priced it I was super surprised. This was in early 2021 when Z prices were going up dramatically, and she knew that. I told her we shouldn't get it, that it would be unwise since we needed the money for a house down payment, we had no place to put it, etc. BUT, she made me buy it, saying 'You never know if the prices are gonna keep spiking and you never be able to get one....'. So, we bought it, my parents drove over two hours to come pick it up and take it to their house where I could work on it/store it until we had our own place. My wife is a nurse and worked weekends for a while, which meant I spent many a saturday getting up at 5am, heading to my parents, working all day, then driving back in time for dinner. Over the course of 2021 I got the car 'ready' to come home, and we bought a house for it to come home to. The short of it: Where we started (There is probably more than this I'm currently not remembering) L28ET with no E or T round top su carbs lots of electrical gremlins from previous owner cutting random stuff to try and get the car running Radiator support bent from car being wrecked nasty gas tank Where we are now: Frame straightened L28ET with the E and T many fewer electrical gremlins cleaned gas tank coilovers proper race bucket seat (passenger still gets to bounce around in a nb miata seat lol) More posts to come with some build processes, pictures, stories, and more general nonsense.

New to the forum but I wanted to make a summary of my build status/plans for my 1982 280zx. I got the car with 150k miles 7 years ago in a straight up trade for a Kawasaki Ninja 250 (crazy, I know). I was in high school/college for most of that time so my major upgrades had to wait until I got my own garage 2 years ago. Overall goal is an aggressive (~350hp) restomod that I can take to the track occasionally. I've been recording my build progress but only recently went back to edit/upload all of the videos. If you're interested in following along, subscribe to my YouTube! I'll be posting videos every 2 weeks until I'm all caught up on footage. https://www.youtube.com/@engiandesign 2018 (One year after I got the car) January 2023 Engine Bay April 2024 Engine Bay Stripped, and Painted May 2024 Engine Rebuilt July 2024 Engine Bay Mostly Complete Current Mods: Fully rebuilt L28ET Rings, bearings, studs Stock internals Valve job with new valves and seals Cometic MLS head gasket Cam sprocket and timing chain Port and polished head High volume oil pump Schneider stage 2 cam regrind with matching springs, retainers, lash pads and resurfaced rockers Ported exhaust manifold with custom external wastegate piping Tial MVS 38mm wastegate Borg warner S257 SX-e T4 7670 CXRacing Intercooler Kit Mishimoto 25 row oil cooler Mishimoto catch can Champion 3 core radiator FF Dynamics dual electric cooling fans 3.5" cold air intake 240sx 50mm throttle body Aeromotive fuel pressure regulator Upgraded 100 Amp alternator Pallnet fuel rail 1000cc Bosch EV6 injectors Megasquirt MS3x kit from Godzilla Raceworks TSP high flow fuel pump All new glowshift gauges (9 total) CXRacing 3" stainless exhaust modified with X-Force Varex valved muffler Front/rear sway bars 280z style aftermarket air dam Louvers New carpet 4 Infinity 6x9 midrange speakers with 10" Pioneer sub Future Mods Multi-spark ignition CD009 transmission swap Wilwood big brake kit Custom front grill Side skirts Rear diffuser Duck bill spoiler Fender flares Coilovers Rims/tires Seats I'm sure I'm forgetting something on this list but that's pretty much everything. I got it running in July and after a few months of dialing everything in, its finally running great! I'm currently running 9lb of boost on a very conservative tune but it still rips. Luckily my work has a chassis dyno and some very experienced tuners which should help unlock a lot more power. This winter I plan to focus on body work/aesthetics along with rims/tires/suspension. This is my first project car so I welcome any feedback or suggestions, especially related to future mods. Make sure to subscribe to my YouTube for more updates!

Before removing the diff, I would check the u-joints on your driveshaft as well.

Bumping zboi's thread so he can continue his contributions to the community. Let's see an update.

My opinion: Flares because your tires are fat and need room = cool. Skinny tires that should fit stock but spaced way out anyway = not cool. It's in the same vein as camber to me. Negative camber for better handling? Awesome. Crazy negative camber because you want people to know how much camber you have? Stupid.

A few notes before I get into it 1.I am rewiring my car from scratch. So I have no clue what color wires correspond to what pins, or what year switches I am using 70-78 2. I'm not using the stock taillights, I only have an off, high and low signal, all red(Think Semi trailer lights). So the way I wired stuff might be different for you 3.I feel that if you understand the concept of what I am showing below you can adapt what you have to create something similar. I am an idiot when it comes to wiring, but I got this to work for me so feel free to copy it at your own risk haha. This definitely isn't stock Hazard switch (Ignore the PinX stuff for now, That is how I am keeping track of what wire is going to what pin on the connectors I have) I see the hazard switch as the first step in how the power is routed. The switch has two different states (Noted by the vertical dashed line in the image above), on and off, each with it's own outcome. Hazards on: (Right side of above image) 5 Pins should be connected on the switch when the hazard switch is on/closed, use a multimeter to test continuity between all the pins, and note which ones are connected. One of the pins should receive 12v + from a flasher unit (I am using a PDM (Bussman31s002) to get fused 12v power, then putting that into a 3 wire flasher unit that is adjustable to set the timing of the flashes). So when I have my hazard switch on, power flows through the pdm, then into the flasher, into one of the 5 connected pins on the Haz SW, then a wire out to each of the 4 turn signal lights. This also kills all connections to the "Off" side of the switch. In my case, this disables the turn signals, and brake lights. Hazards off: (left side of above image) there are going to be two sets of two pins that are connected when the hazards are off/closed. Use a multimeter, check continuity, write it down. Feed one of the pairs with fused 12v+. The pin that is connected to the 12v+ gets a wire that is spliced into 2 different locations. Location 1 is the brake switch. Location 2 is a second Flasher unit. These two wires then come back together to feed the Turn signal switch, one flashing, one constant. When the switch is in this position, everything on the right side of the above image is no longer connected. Turn Signal Switch The Turn Signal Switch works off of two inputs 12v constant (Connected to 2 pins that should correspond with your Brake lights, and will disconnect from one of the pins if the turn signals are on in that direction) and 12v flashing (Connected to either the front left and rear left, front right and rear right pins, or no pins at all depending on the location of the stalk. So, for me, If my brakes are on, I get a signal to the "high" side of my tail light. WoodworkerB's website is invaluable. I recreated all of his diagrams with the corresponding wire color of my switch to use for my own project. https://woodworkerb.com/home/datsun-240z-rebuild/blinker-detail/ https://woodworkerb.com/home/datsun-240z-rebuild/datsun-240z-multifunction-switches/ Below I have a schematic of what the whole thing looks like, minus the detail of what the internals of the switches are actually doing, as well as the pinouts. (right most column is where the wire terminates, to its left is where it starts) Looks like the images are tough to read. DM me if you want a full size copy. Let me know if you have questions, or tell me that I'm wrong haha, The harness still in the basement so I would rather fix stuff now than when it is in the car. But as is the lighting system is functional, I pulled out a bunch of stuff to test it all.

Back to work on the Z Turbo car and taking a break on the NA car after finishing up the body work. Time to dry fit the rear suspension for the Turbo Car. Designed and built my own control arms and rear support years and years ago, finally fitting it up. They are 4130 seamless Chromoly that I polished welded then clear powder coated. Here are the rear control arms. I stuck with the standard urethane mounting bushing fror the inner front pivot location, but used really nice Teflon lined Aurora rod ends everywhere else. I had some 6-4 titanium bar drops and plate, so I was feeling creative and made all the big control arm bolts from the titanium Here it is all installed with the brakes and custom parking brake cable as well as custom CV axles, Diff mount and front mount This is a custom front diff mount with a double hump for the duel exhaust that will fit in very nicely. The Diff is an R-200 with 3.70 gears and a Quaife Limited slip. Can remember where the diff cover was from, but I think it was a Nismo part. I bent up my own sway bars from StressProof steel and made two point adjustment links for the end. I machined some mounts with solid Teflon busings for the sway bars, similar tot he 280z placement, front mount style The bar is sitting too low and will hit the duel exhaust pipes so I need to remake the mounts and raise the bar higher in the chassis. Thats it for now, on to the front suspension and crossmenber next. Let me know if any questions, clarifications or more pics. Busy Summer.

In the place ! some more to do but progress !

That makes all domestic orders shipped! One international to figure out still. Thanks again for everyone's patience while I got through these. I didn't anticipate it to take 6 months! Final tally on the donation amount to come as soon as I tally things up, but it will be over $1k. Funds have been flowing to Dan as needed over the last 6 months 1. 7d2jz 2. MAG58 - PAID - SHIPPED 3. MAG58 - PAID- SHIPPED 4. Crespo79 - PAID- SHIPPED 5. Jeffrox - PAID- SHIPPED 6. jhm - PAID- SHIPPED 7. onthego- - PAID- SHIPPED 8. onthego- - PAID- SHIPPED 9. pepper - PAID- SHIPPED 10. pepper - PAID- SHIPPED 11. ModernS30 - PAID- SHIPPED 12. Masonvonritchie - PAID- SHIPPED 13. rxx2rxx2 - PAID- SHIPPED 14. rxx2rxx2 - PAID- SHIPPED 15. Sonethirty - PAID- SHIPPED 16. S30TRBO - PAID- SHIPPED 17. S30TRBO - PAID- SHIPPED 18. Kennysgreen280zt - PAID- SHIPPED 19. Kennysgreen280zt - PAID- SHIPPED 20. Kennysgreen280zt - PAID- SHIPPED 21. ElliottOhZ - PAID- SHIPPED 22. Oki570Z - PAID- SHIPPED 23. lowrider - PAID- SHIPPED 24. lowrider - PAID- SHIPPED 25. lowrider - PAID- SHIPPED 26. jnjdragracing - PAID- SHIPPED 27. jnjdragracing - PAID- SHIPPED 28. OldAndyAndTheSea - PAID- SHIPPED 29. OldAndyAndTheSea - PAID- SHIPPED 30. JonRHD - PAID- SHIPPED 31. JonRHD - PAID- SHIPPED 32. 75280z - PAID- SHIPPED 33. 75280z - PAID- SHIPPED 34. CalZ - PAID- SHIPPED 35. CalZ - PAID- SHIPPED 36. LanceVance - PAID- SHIPPED 37. LanceVance - PAID- SHIPPED 38. Stunt 39. Stunt 40. _akuma_no_zetto_ - PAID- SHIPPED 41. _akuma_no_zetto_ - PAID- SHIPPED 42. 1 tuff z - PAID- SHIPPED 43. 1 tuff z - PAID- SHIPPED 44. Zlost - PAID- SHIPPED 45. AydinZ71 - PAID- SHIPPED 46. AydinZ71 - PAID- SHIPPED 47. zredbaron - PAID- SHIPPED 48. zredbaron - PAID- SHIPPED 49. zredbaron - PAID- SHIPPED 50. airbrush-ed 51. Chris Damato (FB) - PAID- SHIPPED 52. Chris Damato (FB) - PAID- SHIPPED 53. evildky - PAID- SHIPPED 54. torqen2k1 - PAID- SHIPPED 55. torqen2k1 - PAID- SHIPPED 56. torqen2k1 - PAID- SHIPPED 57. torqen2k1 - PAID- SHIPPED 58. torqen2k1 - PAID- SHIPPED 59. torqen2k1 - PAID- SHIPPED 60. Mayolives - PAID- SHIPPED 61. Mayolives - PAID- SHIPPED 62. Mayolives - PAID- SHIPPED 63. bkz72 - PAID- SHIPPED 64. Wizzurp - PAID- SHIPPED 65. Wizzurp - PAID- SHIPPED 66. Leon - PAID- SHIPPED 67. Gollum - PAID- SHIPPED 68. Gollum - PAID- SHIPPED 69. Gollum - PAID- SHIPPED 70. AB240z - PAID- SHIPPED 71. AB240z - PAID- SHIPPED 72. AB240z - PAID- SHIPPED 73. AB240z - PAID- SHIPPED 74. AB240z - PAID- SHIPPED 75. AB240z - PAID- SHIPPED 76. AB240z - PAID- SHIPPED 77. AB240z - PAID- SHIPPED 78. AB240z - PAID- SHIPPED 79. Zetsaz - PAID- SHIPPED 80. Zetsaz - PAID- SHIPPED 81. Zetsaz - PAID- SHIPPED 82. Wedge 83. 24Oz - PAID 84. ihavearustedz - PAID- SHIPPED 85. clarkspeed - PAID- SHIPPED 86. niner11 - PAID- SHIPPED 87. 1970 240z - PAID- SHIPPED 88. 1970 240z - PAID- SHIPPED 89. 1970 240z - PAID- SHIPPED 90. 1970 240z - PAID- SHIPPED

After almost 25 years, still together.

My shirts arrived today, with the wait - huge thanks to Ryan for tackling this big job that benefits all of us and HybridZ! It was difficult to choose amongst all of the colors but very happy with my choices!

Even if 100 people commited to purchase, its still tiny small numbers vs an OEM production. Its got to be done out of passion and at least not to lose money. This is why this is such a huge acomplisment for someone like Derek, We are fortunate the passion runs deep. I cant imagine the hours of "un-billed" time

Unfortunately, it is too late. Maybe for round 6 in a couple of years Got the shirts in and will start breaking things down and shipping things out next week. This week is busy with work travel, so appreciate your patience while I get a few out each day on my lunch breaks.

They received all of the shirts without backorders and are starting on printing this afternoon!

I really wish things would swing back towards the forums. I can't tell you how many times I know the answer to or could add to a post on FB but I don't since it really has no longevity. I always felt like I was adding to the overall knowledge base when I posted here. I can go on and on but I really hate it.

First start up since starting the restoration. Kind of shocked she started right up on the first go. Was expecting something on the MegaJolt to need fixing, but it worked great. Went with Magnacor wires, but they made a mistake and did not fit them up with the right coil boots. Being remade and shipped, so I am using 05’ ford explorer NGK wires for now. Went with a “7” heat NGK plug on account of the 10:1 CR. It’s raining this weekend, but just need to dial-in some crude alignment and she will be road worthy IMG_2339.mov

So this is the finished product if anyone else is interested. It is made out TPU which is very flexible (and hard to print). I have used TPU to create plugs for my floors, wiring grommets and other such.

Just wanted to say again a HUGE "Thank You" to @cockerstar for doing this (a FIFTH time)!!!! Really appreciate all his time and effort to make this happen. You da' man, Ryan!!! 👍👍

Yup! Been daily driving it, 300+ days a year, for the last 4 years. Approaching 75,000 miles on the turbo build. No regrets.

I want to thank all of you here for giving me inspiration for my build. I have adopted the Hybrid Z name for my build years ago since this site provided a lot of information that I consider priceless. I was able to meet some great people at ZCON, some that know my build and others that just wanted to say hello and compliment me on my build. When I built this car I built it as my version of what a Z should be therefore I know a lot of people were not going to like it since it was my vision and nothing else. Taking my car to ZCON for the 1st time and walking out of there with these awards it’s just incredible, especially with all the awesome cars I was competing against. It’s great to see the judges appreciate all the hard work and effort that has gone into it. These are the awards I received. 1st Place in Ultra Modified Best Engine Gold Cup- This was totally unexpected and shocking it was given to a Z with and LS3 since most of these guys are Nissan purists. Again, thank you all for your support and keeping this site alive.

an LS is also vastly more expensive then a traditional 350 swap. He should do whatever he wants to do.

Reviving an old thread... I have a '77 318 Z. It's actually for sale right now but I'm not posting to sell it, just to show it to you folks.

Good update! This right here ^ is why I committed to keeping mine fully a street car and I'm glad I did, but part of me also wishes I could go race occasionally without being scared I'll ruin it haha

Howdy HybridZ! Seems like the trend, y'all get an update at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year! Might need to reframe my temporal perspective and do every 6 months. This was a slow year for the car and myself. First year since I've owned the car that it hasn't gone to any events! Wish I could say it was because I was doing a bunch of sweet mods and we're hitting the track hard next year, but that's not how it went. Overall, since 2020, the "smiles per $" has been way down, and I think I probably burnt myself out doing the V8 swap as quickly as I did it. Combined with the wreck, I felt like I really needed to step back, re-evaluate and take the year off to figure out how I want race cars to fit into my life! A big thing I've found is that since this just isn't a street car, and has no ability to be a street car, it's tough to get that "just gonna go drive the dang thing" and get excited about the project. Starting to find motivation again, which is nice, and I'm aiming for an event or two next year. That's not to say I didn't get ANY mods done this year! I got the Haltech 2500 into the car, and got it tuned. That was a fun small project, with a bigger price tag, but I'm hoping that it solves a lot of problems moving forward. It did reveal that some of the problems with this current engine are just that. The current motor is a L33 aluminum 5.3, but it's just not making great power. Compression and all that looks fine, but it's only putting down 330hp, when we'd expect closer to 400. Putting that out of my mind for now, and going to run it like this. A new engine is just not in the budget right now. I also did quite a bit of work on the front suspension. I've been running the Apex Engineered arms up front, and have been happy with them. Full disclosure, Ohm is a supporter of the build, you may have seen the car on his page! After running a handful of events, I felt like I had 2 problems to resolve. 1) I needed more track width. I have a 1" spacer in the front, and it's just another thing to check on the car, also while making scrub radius work. 2) I needed a beefier ball joint. The Apex arms use a factory sized ball joint, that is a better material, but after running a few track events, getting up on curbs and getting pretty spicy, they were just not up to the task. Bigger is better, so I went and upgraded to a Howe Racing TA2 front control arm, with their thread in ball joint. The arm is 2" longer than factory, and allows the use of an improved ball joint, the design of which is derived from a 3/4 ton truck. I feel pretty good about this mod! I got some work done on managing airflow on the front of the car. With the freshly chopped fenders, I needed a way to get air out of the wheel well, and made up some Kevlar pieces to help with that. I also made a plug for a radiator extractor vent that will help direct air out the hood, rather than spilling around inside the engine bay. I'll need to snag one more fitting for the dry sump, but otherwise, things are looking in good shape. I'm excited to let the car be "done" for a little bit this year.

Looks like I missed some updates! In September I showed my car in a local event, TougeCon. They had a nighttime parking garage meet that I installed underglow for, and a daytime "car show" at the town square. Was the first time really getting the car out, and it garnered a lot of attention! I still haven't dug into diagnose whether I still have the noise issues (probably, I still see some spikes on CLT and AFR), but as mentioned in this thread I did finally resolve my jumpy tach. Turns out using a 12V zener was allowing noise through, and using the proper 18V zener cleaned up up. It's nice to finally have a solid tach. I picked up a cheap Chinese touchscreen head unit that runs android, so I could load ShadowDash and connect Bluetooth to Megasquirt for logging and some extra gauges. It's pretty slick! I have it auto-uploading logs to Google Drive when I hit Wi-Fi, and can download and burn tunes. In the last couple weeks I noticed a distinct whine after the engine got up to temp. It sounded like it was coming from the block area on the passenger side. Eventually I realized that back when I did the L28ET swap in 2009, I blocked off the inlet/outlet on the factory oil cooler since I didn't have a filter stud handy. It must have been bypassing oil the entire time I've run this engine. 🤦‍♂️ For now I got a stud from Nissan, and have an oil cooler coming from GRW. After the tail light swap, I realized the late-style license plate light wouldn't fit the early panels. I took inspiration from Skillard, and fabbed up a simple blanking plate using LEDs. I also pulled the trigger on a fuel system refurb. I'll be retrofitting an Aeromotive Stealth 340 into my factory tank, using a Radium stainless 10 micron filter, and upgrading to PTFE lines to eventually run E85. No more fuel slosh and starvation! In the meantime, now that the engine is broken in I've been working on dialing in my tune under boost. I set up some knock ears using a knock sensor, portable audio amplifier, and some headphones, and it seems to work pretty well! Once I hit around 10psi in any gear, I can clearly hear some ping. I'm holding steady at < 12:1 afr, and have backed my timing out to 19*, but still haven't gotten it to go away completely. I'm going to drastically pull timing and richen things up to work from the other direction, but that's already less timing than I'd expect necessary.

@jhm Yeah it seems like it would be really useful for making quick alignment changes without having to bring it to a shop and having them do it for you. Save a lot of money too ofc. Looking at their website, they have a lot of testing data which looks pretty promising. Like you said though, I would prefer to see some reviews and data from users, not just the manufacturer. Like Sam said, you buy a 99 cent token for each alignment you want to do. I might just buy one since its only $40 and then take it to a shop to get an alignment check and see how accurate it is. @Sam Henao This looks really cool, but I do have some concerns about the pricing structure in the future. Are there any plans to get rid of or increase the price of the tokens? I would hate to buy it and then have the pricing model be switched to a subscription system or something. What exactly do you mean by most advanced algorithm? Thanks for responding, this looks like an awesome tool.

I just ran across this, I can't believe it's been this long. Still love the Z. The only thing I have done to it in the past several years was recovering the Miata seats with upholstery from lseat.com. is this site still active?

New car underway!!! look for it summer 2025.

New addition to the shop! Almost destroyed my first tire, but didn't scratch the rim!

Here is a later pic with everything welded in, I think I did what you are recommending.

I know everyone knows this already but 250hp/300ft-lbs is handled easily by the stock R200 long nose. Until the 8.8 became the hottest topic, the long nose R200 was considered just fine for all mild V8 swaps and some fairly upgraded ones too. Drag racers have run the R200 well into the 11s without issue (other than the lack of LSD options/ratios).