Zetsaz

The VVEL is exactly the issue, unless you have a VQ35DE in which case the later engines also have dual throttle bodies instead of a single one. There's no cheap clever trickery you can do to to just bolt up the engine where a VQ35 was. All the engine electronics have to be swapped over, and your electronics may or may not play well in the new chassis which is where at 350/370z group would come in handy. G35 isn't particularly expensive anymore, I'm not sure all the cost and effort would be worth it. Unless you're swapping the engine into some other fun project like an old Z like ours, you're better off just selling the engine and buying another G35 or 350z. If you have a manual tranmission in the G37 I'm sure the selling price of the engine/trans combo alone would get you most of the way to a decent G35. Google is your friend for kits. Major differences are what I listed above.VVEL and .3L extra displacement are the most notable differences, but it's different and more difficult enough that I can count on one hand how many people are using the vq37 in a swap.

This pictures make me so happy I opted to buy a better shell from someone out of Texas before doing more to the project. I despise rust. Work looks good so far though!

I made a grave mistake.. I forgot that Nissan used used metric fittings for the AC (because why wouldn't they?) and I can't just use the original AC lines for the engine bay unless I can somehow remake just the couple of pieces that connect to the firewall or carefully cut the crimped fittings off (?), sooooo.... Time to order an AC hose kit. It's just money right? Minor progress overall. Drilled holes into the plastic wiring harness block to bolt in the included relays. Only minor hiccup... My placement doesn't allow the wires to for one portion of the controls to reach. Instead of cutting and splicing, I'm going to make a short extension/sub harness, since I figure if anything goes wrong with that one control it'll be easier to narrow it down to an extension I can easily remove than deal with shorts or wiring in a cluttered space. Only have the two dash side hoses, 12v+ source, and switched ignition to connect and I'll be ready to get the dash back in and test! (Oh and technically that blue wire in the third pic for the compressor clutch, and a couple of grounds)

Haha, true. Sorry to disappoint. As far as I'm concerned, what I have is better than the original ducting, the new fan is far better than the original, and each vent has a dedicated ducting all the way to the core. I don't know about you, but I've rarely if every had the fans cranked up even in modern cars. The Z is plenty small and some light airflow to keep things cool will be all I need. The lizard skin ceramic coating was already more than enough to keep heat at bay most of the summer except when the car wasn't moving at lights.

Looks great! Do you know what rear end gearing you have now? That'll greatly affect your cruising speed. I have an '82 ZX 5 speed in mine with a 3.9 CLSD out of a z31 turbo and I think 3k cruising RPM at about 70mph is actually a perfect spot. If you go too low on these they really just don't have much go. The torque curve on them is great, you won't have issues getting up hillls, but it won't really have the pep you might want. For my exhaust (before adding a resonator) it was also just above where cabin drone went away which made it very comfortable. I had bad cabin drone issues from ~2.3k-2.8k rpm. Your exhaust will obviously affect that a bit, but even now it tends to be the area with the most noise. I think your goals are very reasonable. Triple side drafts are great, but I'm partial to EFI just because I like driving mine as often as possible and not fiddling with carbs. I'm right in the middle of AC, so you can check my thread for what that looks like, but the brackets will be just slightly different for you since the dash mounting points are a bit different. Look up Pancho's garage for a nice install on an earlier model like yours.

This has become my philosophy for MOST of my build. Especially over the past year. Keeping this mindset has gotten me more progress on the car in the past year than in the previous 5 combined (that and spending lots of money haha)

Not just yet. I was debating hacking out some AC hoses for the really short pieces I need on the dash side or just ordering a kit. Most places locally didn't have any hose, so I've just sort of taken a break for the holidays. Will probably commit to a kit or ordering some by the foot by next week and get back at it. I only have like 4 wires to work out and the hose crimping before I can get the dash back in. and focus on controls.

As jhm said, a lot of the track attack stuff is very much not final versions and has run into some hangups for some people. Ohm is great to work with in my experience but he straightforward about the fact that the included axles for the rear kit have been the biggest pain and setback as a company and the biggest reason some of these kits have long lead times. Hard to find truly reliable machine shops to outsource the work to. Don't bother looking into the Hell Z. It's been a whole year since any update. If you're very sincerely trying to go all out and have that sort of budget, it's the best kit you'll find at near "bolt in" status.

Making slightly more progress on the vintage air today. Struggling to justify buying all new hoses when I'm just trying to get everything to the bulkhead for now, and hopefully (if possible) reusing the original lines on the engine bay side. They already have good clamps right against the frame rails and formed bends in the hardline sections that keep things neater than I could make them. In the meantime, finally committed to just making extremely basic brackets to offset the included defrost vents. Will have to just deal with the fact that the original openings in the cowl piece won't be fully covered and that's okay. These couple pics are from the first test fit which wasn't enough to get them centered on the openings. Made some slightly longer ones on painted them for the final fit. Used two 2" to 2.5" adapters (from Vintage Air, but I ordered through Summit) on the dash to adapt into the stock side vents in the Z. just used a bit of the 2" defrost hose in those sections. The 2" hoses are VERY snug and probably won't slide at all short of a strong intentional tug from me, but I'm thinking I'll use a bit of black duct tape on the 2.5" section on the adapter. Some people have used clamps, but I think it's excessive and will add unnecessary bulk. Also didn't need to reuse the stock diverter pieces since the Vintage air has its own floor vents on the unit. Couple more pics to come! Up next is wiring, and the two AC hoses to the bulkhead and it'll be ready for the dash

I'm at a 3.9 but I'm NA so it's fine. It's the only thing keeping the old engine fun right now alongside megasquirt making it far more driveable and clean burning than before. I know some people have had good success with CX Racing turbos, but honestly that's literally as cheap as I'd dare go. From a lot of reading, and one friend's personal experience, that's kind of the breakaway line in quality. Any lower and it's not worth your money. CX is barely manageable. If for some reason you REALLY don't want to spend the money on a proper turbo (which I think is the only right way to do it), I would look into what brands some of the cheap LS swap guys are running. Seems like they'd be the most in the know on what holds up for a low cost.

Any turbo from a reputable brand is gonna start at around $900-$1k for anything in modern designs, and more like $1.5k purchase price with your options. $500 is still the land of Chinese manufacturing, though at those costs, you're probably buying something that will likely work well, just not as well proven as a reputable brand. A $500 chinese turbo is probably completely usable for most people, and a HUGE upgrade in quality from the $100-200 offerings on ebay. You can probably find a new T3/T4 hybrid turbo from a reputable seller for around $800 with better specs than yours. Perfectly usable, but probably not much of an upgrade from yours if you're looking for latest tech. Your gear ratios are pretty low at 3.31. Might be sluggish. 280z stock was 3.54, which is actually roughly what the 350z has. If you're making decent power it might work well with the tight gearing of the CD009 but that still seems low to me. Others with more experience can chime in, but a lot of peopel prefer the 3.54. Highest I've seen on a turbo L series for the streat was 3.9 like mine from the "Medusa" Z.

Steve Bonk is your man on the cams. GT3076R is what I've been recommended as far turbos, and will likely never be too small short of a lot of work on your head and frankly excessive goals for an L series if you're still running a zx trans. The expense of a good modern turbo, intercooler, having to upgrade my flywheel/clutch/trans, then the associated mounts, is part of why i've reconsidered a swap. for now my stock block running MS3x is more than fun enough to just cruise around in.

Got my parts from my cousin. No control panel yet since his printer broke recently, but that's a final item anyway. Vent is perfect, assuming I don't run into clearance issues, and matching the original angle will let me flip it to get a smoother hose transition. Couple other oddball parts were supplied too like my distributor cap which is much nicer and has more clearance. Not sure I'll bother smoothing it yet, or even paint it, it's just functional for now. Vent is already drying from paint (cousin was out of black for materials). So far so good! Hoping to make slightly more progress this weekend, since I kind of took a break and haven't moved forward on wiring or anything else.

This is the closest things I've seen done successfuly similar to what you're asking for. The S130 chassis is dramatically different from the S30. There's no grill that would delete your turn signals like on a 280z because yours on the ZX are integrated into the bumper. I'm not sure why you would want to do that regardless. Check out the rest of Bruce's videos too. He has one of the most tastefully modded ZXs if you're looking for some inspiration.

Looks like they've been looped off? On the bottom of your first image, is that hose heading towards the front of the car cut? I don't see the point if the heater core wasn't removed to drop weight. i'm far less familiar with the ZX unfortunately, but this guide might provide some info.http://xenonzcar.com/s130/auto2manualCC.html If your climate control wasn't working there's a chance the previous owner messed with things, but didn't follow through. There's a hose routing diagram towards the bottom, but it's more involved than just that. I would also get the FSM: http://www.xenonzcar.com/s130/fsm.php Short of stripping down to the bare shell and making everything completely custom for a race car, you'll be using that a lot. The vacuum diagram might help once you get things routed properly, and if it still doesn't work it might be that the climate controls were messed with per the guide above but just not done correctly.

@Neverdone That is a HILARIOUSLY bleak outlook haha. But it's accurate. @Subaruuuuuuuboii - take it from me, no build is a budget build. I paid $300 for the first Z I got. It became mostly a donor for engine and interior parts. I got the shell I'm currently in for $1200+shipping from another state. That's VERY Close to where you're starting with an engine and the car. I'm in my car $15-$17k after paint/suspension/STOCK brake replacement/Megasquirt ECU/upgraded differential/coilovers/body replacement stuff/wheels/tires. That doesn't count all the small hardware I keep having to buy and the engine block is still STOCK If I had ignored paint and body interior stuff completely and just did a high powered engine I'd still be at about $8-10k JUST for shell/engine/brake refresh/suspension/upgraded differential/Megasquirt/wiring, and I've done literally every bit of that myself. That doesn't even include what you'd have to do chopping away at the original car, custom engine and trans mounts, and a custom drive shaft, never mind either all new sensors on the engine, or new gauges that easily add up to $1k on their own. Unless you have big money to do an RB26 and somehow keep AWD, what you're planning is a sidegrade at best and will only make the car worse. Sell the engine or save it for another project, and spend the money cleaning up the car. I'm amazed this thread isn't already in the tool shed since it's not even related to Z cars, but it looks Neverdone and I are the only ones nice enough to explain the complications and real costs.

That actually sounds really convenient for some things! I will gladly dimension parts all day, half the battle for me is not knowing the software well enough. In my case I'm just lucky my cousin is an engineer and has a printer. I'm in no rush so I'll gladly pay him $10 total in materials and shipping in exchange for waiting a week since it's on his schedule. Despite the fancy parts and recent work, this is still a "budget" build after all haha. Would rather save the money for potential swap... with how much I've changed, I find it hard to justify dumping money at the L series. I'll either leave it as is and just clean stuff up and tune it better, or swap. Was pricing things out and a proper L series build to meet my standards for how I'd use it would cost about as much as a swap. Gotta save that money in case it ever happens haha

That's a lot of money hacking away at a functional car for an engine that's basically a sidegrade. For the money spent, you're better off doing a full rebuild and addressing any weaknesses in your current engine with aftermarket parts and upgrading the turbo. The car would be just as fast if not faster, more usable, and cheaper. I don't know laws in Finland, but Europe in general is quite strict about engine swaps meeting engineering standards. Unless you have a Forester shell with no engine you're intending on using for racing only, it's likely far more expensive than you realize, especially if you intend to keep the AWD. Fully expect any swap to cost $5k USD at an absolute minimum, probably more like $10k.

Not my printer, but unfortunately my cousin's printer recently had a torn cable while printing a part (after he finished my things fortunately). If he gets that in i'm sure he'd be happy to print something for you for the cost of materials/electricity, plus his time to setup, check, and ship it. If you know someone close to you who does it I can also send you the .stl file

He went ABS on this and the distributor cap to be on the safe side. They'll never come close but at least there'll never be a concern about warping over time

He's printing out of ABS. He was actually having some issues at first, warping, not sticking to bed... but apparently a firmware update on his printer solved the problems. PETG isn't as rigid but is more chemically stable (if I remember that right...), so I might use it for some of my fuel line mounts/isolators. My fuel lines are basically just zip tied together right now other than a few key spots where they're on insulated clamps. As nice as it would be to have an off the shelf part or just fab up some brackets, I might take some measurements tomorrow and actually try to design the defrost vents. If they're a total dud, it's a lesson learned and I'm only out a couple dollars in materials to my cousin. Also spent some time last night replacing the bulbs in the gauges with LEDs. Those green filters are a real pain to remove on the tach and speedo.Almost wished I'd just dumped the money at speedhut gauges already, but you know... budgets.

Cousin sent me a video earlier... https://imgur.com/99RAg17 A friend in Boise who does some 3D modeling regularly took my measurements and made some small adjustments to my center vent design that my cousin just finished printing. Still has roughly the same angle as the piece I was making, but is a slightly cleaner design overall. Distributor cap coming up next along with some other small things! Will be also be printing me a basic bracket I designed to set my MS3x in the stock location. That being said... if it doesn't work I'm just going to fold some scrap metal and drill some holes in it for the ECU bracket haha.

I think where I've positioned it I'll get about the best flow possible if the vent printing is successful. Cousin had to restart it. One side started warping (weirdly enough, the supports worked well, it wasn't the angled section collapsing) I'm amazed anyone gets it has high as they do. for room, I avoided pushing it any farther forward than the two bolt holes that supported the original heater core, as you can see from the front bracket. But at that location, I can't go higher up. I was barely able to squeeze out the inch drop I need for the drain hose, and even then, it's ever so slightly kinked going down the hole I made in the trans tunnel. I think the ducting will be fine, especially if I opt to use some of the stuff on the link you suggested @jpndave. As far as defrost ducts, I'm debating between these two right now.Top don't seem to have any sort of brackets. I think if I used the bottom ones with the closed side towards the cowl and just modified the brackets slightly I'd get them to line up right where the original holes are in the finish panel.

Fortunately that's someone else's installation from ages ago that's still on the xenonzcar site for reference. they did a lot of things kind of poorly that I would never do the same way, but it gives you an idea of why I want to change to use their small included ones that don't drop down so low, or purchase some that already have a 90 deg bend in them to reduce the length of hose and bends in it. That being said, the stock stystem also uses corrugated hose and (at least on mine) the flow was okay despite a weaker and less efficient fan. If you have suggestions for a specfic type of smoother hose/tubing I'd love to hear it, but other than fixing the defrost routing issue issue, I don't really see the need to change from the stock style right now.

That's not too bad! I'll probably make some forward mounting brackets that at least line it up with the stock openings.