Zetsaz

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.

I'm working pretty slow right now, but I'd be happy to verify once things are put together and wired up! I'm slightly more concerned about the defrost right now. Stock vents are usable, but require some... interesting bends. I believe this installation is with the compac and not the mini, but mine is similar. I may end up mocking up some basic brackets for the small defrost vents they included, but I'm also bothered by the possibility of the way it looks from the top with out those vents fully covering the openings on the finish panel. Edit: by the way, Ross. I think those fittings you sent will actually work perfectly. Especially the 90s. I know they're typically supposed to go with the threaded end in towards the cabin, but I think I'm going to use them the opposite direction and they'll actually work great to plug into some of the stock AC hoses I had into the engine bay.

Well, the school's only printer actually in the building apparently has some heating issues on large projects. BUT I made a thing... my cousin is printing it now. we'll see how it turns out. This is a new center exit vent. Figured while I'm having fun making an ecu bracket, having a new dizzy cap and TPS bracket printed, I might as well try my hand at some basic parts and see how they turn out. The defrost vents are too complicated, and honestly I could just make small brackets to mount the smaller vintage air pieces that were included instead of complicating things just to get a 90 degree bend that looks original to avoid putting a loop in one place on the ducting.

Oh man... if my infiniti was sold I would probably be interested. Good luck! I've heard great things about Datsun Spirit's work.

Hmmmm.. What are you making there Omar...? Mocked up the plate with scrap metal I had laying around. Figured I could at least see if I liked the location if visibility would be good where they were recessed just like the original controls. I thought I was sooooo clever using the screw holes in the panel as potential snap plates until I realized they have "ramps" towards the front of the plate and I can't actually snap them in... I have a 3D print file ready to go, courtesy of @seattlejester and I'm just going to epoxy or plastic weld it to the panel. Also realized today that my place of work has 3D printers... Checking if I'm allowed to use them first thing in the morning haha.

Center exit on the 280z is one big rectangle hole. Normally it would be what splits the air out to the side vents as well, but the vintage air has 3 independent exists instead. Center exit needs the side pieces cut and blocked off, and the entrance blocked with something that has an appropriate hole in the center. I'll load pics when I'm not on my phone

Thank you! I'm really hoping I can get to the wiring portion of things tomorrow, but there's still so much left the more I look at it. Still need to modify the center exit. I'm almost tempted to finally buy a 3D printer and design some things. If I could redesign the stock defrost pieces and the center vent the install would be much cleaner

Well... That was entirely too much time spent making 3 very basic brackets. Thought at first they'd just be templates to get the right fit, but considering they'll be totally out of sight and I'm not making nicer attachment points on the firewall like all the bracket madness the guys at project Binky get up to... I'm going to call this good.

Ordered more things with some light black friday sales. -Odd ball parts I needed from Zcardepot, including the missing passenger side tail light rubber that was unavailable this summer. -Skillard window rubber wipe kit -Headliner and roof/pillar trim kit from MSA, as well as a fender cover for when I'm working on the car. Bumpers have apparenty been stuck at port, still waiting on Datsun Garage to ship. Will be checking in with them this week. Debating how much I really need CVs right now with Futofab having 20% (15?) off, vs front control arms that I need to finish correcting the caster.

Is he still in business?? I've heard so many horror stories about poor communication and many months of lead time. Sadly only other carbon dash options right now are Carbon Signal in the UAE. Tough pill to swallow