Ben280

Well, I'm glad I decided against Medford (seeing as how I'm still in Lincoln!). There is the OR-SCCA event in Packwood on 9/26-9/27, which should be a lot of fun.

Glad to see this got sorted out! What events are you going to try and attend before the end of the year? I remember you mentioned Medford in October.

Ended up buying a tow rig, I wasn't able to build the car out all the way I wanted to and keep it streetable! Tow hitch worked awesome just not for my particular scenario.

ZSleep- Unfortunately, turbos are illegal for my car in FP, although not illegal for the class. It would be a great way to make the car WAY faster, particularly with modern electronics. Glad you are experimenting with the wing! Lots of people asked about it, only a few actually went for it. RyanT67- Thanks! I'm excited I was able to make it my vision, although there is still a little bit left I'd like to do exterior wise. I'm excited I was able to get it so light. I think a lot of it had to do with all the fiberglass I threw at the car, and a lot of time drilling out random brackets. My goal was to be at 2000lbs, and I'm excited to be super close!

Thanks man! One of these days I'm going to have to drop in a built L28, but that is a long way off! I've often thought about doing a run of those spoilers for people, might have to start up a group buy over the winter. The parts are somewhat expensive though, not sure I could charge enough and turn out a quality product.

JMortensen; I was thinking about going, but I'm doing a track day later in September at ORP, co-driving a FF at SCCA Solo Nationals, and going to the last OR-SCCA event in Packwood, so I'm about out of fun money for the season. Maybe if I can score a co-drive, but the fuel bill to tow down is going to be too much. Maybe next year I'll be able to budget better haha. RebekahsZ; Thanks!!! Really glad you are into the car! I've definitely used your various posts around this site for inspiration so your post means a lot. Feel free to pick away. I will say I think the shortcuts will always pick away at you. Always something you wish you had done better or differently!

Got a bunch of driving photos from the weekend! Thanks to all the photographers that were out there getting the goods! Exciting new updates coming next week so stay tuned!

Wiring was next, and having never wired up a car before, I was a little nervous! I bought a label maker from Epson to make the going a little easier, since I didn’t want to buy piles of different wires. I also bought a JEGS switch panel which is fused and has lights that show if a switch is active or not. The one thing these cars have going for them is that in stock form, they are brutally simple. The charging system is essentially 1 wire and with a little added simplification this was a pretty easy re-wire. Dash situation has yet to be totally decided, but this is where we are at now. Needs something, but not decided on what just yet. Here is a good 3fer, back hatch lexan installed, super clean wiring and a sneak preview of the fender flare-airdam union. For the time being I’m not running ANY rear lights, or fuel senders, but the car is wired for them, just with hidden pigtails. Another big exciting development was deciding to DIY Vinyl wrap the car! I’m still learning how to do this, but its going pretty well. If I have leftovers, I’ll re-wrap the hood, but for now its pretty good. You can get a good sense of how the flares will blend into the airdam now. Talk about chopping up expensive ass flares! My brother gave me some extended studs for Christmas. These are the ARP mustang/camero studs, they fit perfectly. This job also sucks though, and required getting a slide hammer from autozone, and making a custom plate to hold the hubs in place while the nuts were loosened! Got the doors Vinyl wrapped and that means its time for new numbers! I really liked the old school vibe of the gold meatball, so I did that again. #46 rides again! I went over to the shop today and got the car weighed out finally to get a sense of where we landed! I was SUPER impressed. Anything under 2200 would have been awesome, but I wasn’t expecting this. When the car was first weighed, before the gutted doors, and gutted metal hood, the car weighed in at 2357lbs. Last year in July we weighed it at National Tour and it weighed 2230. Having the car come in now at 2090 is phenomenal. That means that even with the addition of the cage, the car has lost 140lbs! The minimum weights for FP are 2064/2164lbs, so I can ballast up to the wide wheel weight, or shed some more pounds and get to the 10” wide wheel weight. Depends on how corner balancing goes, and if additional weight helps level the car. In reality too more fuel will be added and few more pounds of vinyl and fender flares, but from the original weight, this car has lost over 800lbs!!! Damn near half a ton. I’ll take that all day.

OK! First update in a long time. Sorry about that, but Instagram and facebook are way easier to update than these build threads. But I can’t abandon my loyal Ratsun brothers. So. We left off in early December when the car was about to get caged. This meant doing TONS of prep work to the chassis. Cleaning all the seam sealer out, old paint, flaking undercoating, old rubber, the works. Gotta have the proper equipment when angle grinding! Spent some quality time as well with the paint stripper, worked a treat to pull all the crap out of the front wheel wells. Thought process is that it will be easier to keep the front suspension clean and help ID leaks. Wire wheels were the name of the game on cleaning the wheel wells out. Made a mess but they look great now. Had to remove the windshield for caging so the guys can work in that area. Not the biggest pain, but hardened rubber wouldn’t let the glass go without a fight. Came clean though finally, had to go back and clean out the track. Had some rust in the corners but it was just surface rust so I hit it with the grinding wheel and then some rust reformer acid paint. The day before the car was heading to the fab shop I got a package from John Washington at ZTrix.com. Fiberglass!!! This will help a TON with offsetting the added weight of the cage. Panels fit super well, and John was a treat to deal with. If anybody on the forums needs FG pieces for a Z, he is my first choice. I ordered all skin parts for maximum lightness, and HOLY CRAP these are light! And super ridged as well. Very little finishing work needed. The next day the car was all set to roll up to the shop! Loaded up and strapped down, this is the last photo of the car as a “whole” Since I have to keep an eye on weight for my race class, I wanted to try and track weight as much as I could throughout the process. The shop I went to (SV Performance in Portland, OR) has scales so we were able to do a before and after. Light, but then again, it’s just a rolling chassis, nothing else! I left Scott and Oscar with some drawings and rulebooks to go over and get a basic design. Meanwhile, back at home base! I still have all those motor pieces from a couple posts ago to install! And what better time to install them than when the motor is out of the car! I thought the motor deserved a nice new paint job as well! Ford racing blue was pretty close to the original, or as close as I could get. Figured I would leave the accessories on the motor since I had other plans for those! Day 1 of the cage build and the guys got pretty far. The deal I made with them was I do most of the sheet metal work and generally help out and they gave me a deal on labor. We tried as hard as possible to get the main hoops and bars super tight to the body. Gratuitous welding shot on the rear main hoop The cage design is a main hoop with a halo and A pillar bars. The whole thing is built to SCCA GCR spec meaning an 8pt cage. We used .095 wall DOM 1.5” tube for everything! Dash bar installed, checking for level. Door bars installed. The bend towards the main hoop is pretty tight to clear the seat, but then again, everything is really tight to clear me! Ladder bars in the door, should be pretty good for a side impact! Getting to that point on the cage was pretty much a week of work, and in the meantime I had motor parts to work on! Plus the shop closed for 2 weeks over Christmas. I cleaned up the timing front cover, new gaskets, new bolt kit and you can see the new motor mounts. Seriously though, why did Nissan use different bolts at EVERY opportunity on this thing??? Had to get a little Christmas cheer in! these motors get cluttered quickly! I ended up finding a new oil pump off of a KA24de equipped truck. A little research showed that it flows more oil and at higher pressures, which can only be a good thing. And they bolt right up! Back at the shop after a week, it was time to wrap this cage up. That means gussets!! Back out with the angle grinder! We put gussets on the A pillar bars, from the main hoop to the door jamb, the halo to the roof in the front and back, and from the down bars in back to the hatch frame, where these cars always crack. All said and done we added about 120lbs to the car. Each foot of tube weighs just about 1.45lbs and we used almost 100ft of it. Lots of scaffolding in the back there! Once the car came home, it was time to figure out how to hang all these new panels! The door skins had no provisions for mounting, as its assumed that each race team has their own method. Some quick angle iron bends and some more fiberglass to keep them attached and the door was good to go! Once doors were hung, it was time to shoot a little paint. Engine bay was first to go. I used some semi paint in a gloss black to keep the bay nice and clean! The cage went white to keep the cockpit nice a bright. You can see most of the gusseting here, there are a couple more that are less visible, but these are the big ones! All of them are dimple died for added strength. Once all the paint was laid down, time to get back to fitting panels! Drilling holes and angle grinding expensive pieces of fiberglass is fairly nerve wracking, but I’m getting better at it! Hatch was a big one, since it meant that the rear of the car was pretty much sorted out. Back to the front, the motor went in one afternoon, and the rest of the parts on the shelf went into the car. Same old same old, but with new motor mounts from McKenny Motorsports, a new 240z steering rack and a new sub frame. This car at one point was crashed, and the result tweaked the sub frame and motor mounts. Somehow the suspension isn’t really affected by this, but the motor mounts were all tweaked so new ones were required. Windshield went in next, no real reason on the order here, but I was tired of tripping over it! There is never a good place to put a windshield. New supple gasket made the going much easier, but this is still a bitch of a job.

Alright All!!! You guys have gone far too long without an update! Car hasn't done a whole lot this month. Wrapped up the racing season end of september, and the next day I had the motor out. I was planning on replacing the cross member, steering rack, and all the front gaskets on the motor, and that all is easier with the big lump out of the car. Blame the free shipping deal MSA had a while ago, made me spend some more money to get free shipping on my brake lines! Timing cover gaskets, water pump gaskets and oil pump gaskets! Prepping the motor to pull it out And out! Only a little greasy, overall, not a bad deal, but annoying for sure! Uhoh, whats this?! Bent ass motor mount is what! damn! Now I have to figure out how to make a custom one! No sense in using the torn up stock rubber ones now either. Something custom out of plate is gonna have to happen. With the motor out, I'm getting antsy about the amount of crap that is still in the car, and thinking I REALLY need to finish stripping it. If you recall back to the 2nd or 3rd page, I premiered a lot of the interior, and left it. Well that primer has picked up a lot of dirt and looks gross in person now, so I'm going to re-paint the whole deal. And if I'm going to paint it, well.... Strip it out (again) I'm liking the all black look! (wing is gone by the way, something better coming for next year! Totes top secret) Chisel out the rest of the seam sealer and mess strip out the rest of the front (and make it look nice too dammit!) All in prep for the big kahuna, An SCCA Road Race GCR compliant cage! 8 point fully braced. This car is gonna be ready to rock and roll soon enough. Need to do some more weight reduction to make up for it but I think we will be ok. I sold a bunch of little parts to fund some nice other purchases as well. Drove up to Centrailia a few weeks ago to pick up this pile, 8 Hoosier R75A Radial slicks! 23.5x11.5R16! Big sticky meats! Mmmmmm Hoosiers! All that tire's gotta get covered up by something! The BAMF flares are too small for these, so we have to go bigger! We can do it, we have the technology. Well, the Japanese have the moulds. Gonna be sick! I liked the old version of the car, but with the front bumper gone, I felt it needed an overall change. Color scheme is staying though. I'll try and post some in progress photos of all this stuff, should be exciting!

So the front airdam and splitter combo is officially in its new home, so I had to replace it with something! If case you're not familiar with the reasoning behind ditching that particular version was to be SCCA FP legal. the FP rules state that you can't have any front aero that extends beyond the body line of the car when viewed from above. This means no splitter, no canards, nothin! I originally wanted to keep the airdam and just have a spare, but that wasn't going to be financially possible. New box showed up from MSA the other day. wonder whats in it! OOOOOO!!!! Something different! Decided to go with the Works style air dam. Haven't seen ANY of these on Z's in person, and thought it would be worth trying something new. I'll post a photo tomorrow with the new bits! I also changed my transmission fluid for the first time! When I installed the trans the fill plug was stripped out so I filled it through the drain hole and called it good. Reverse started to grind a bit was in order. Those fill plugs are a bitch, and it took some convincing, but out it came! Looked a bit different. Of course I couldn't find a replacement plug, so I cut and re-welded the last nut onto the fill plug. 27mm wrench will make it easier to pull in the future.

Update time! Been lots of time and no real work so car developments have been slow. Decided to go on vacation instead of sitting on my butt! Family had planned a trip to Iceland, must say I was impressed with their trucks! TONS of trucks like this. Lots of old Land Rover Defenders on 44's. Note the convenient normal SUV for comparison. Anyway, was a great trip, if any of you have the chance to go over there I highly recommend it. Came back with just enough time to get some work and then mount up the race tires for a PCA event two weekends ago! Had a bit of a problem fitting them in the car! Stupid small car problems. Also took the seat out, saves weight and now I can put a real seat in there! Need a seat for adult sized people so I can have an instructor ride with me when/if I do a track day. Couldn't drive like this so I had to figure out some useful solution. Enter my friend Perry and a small trailer he had lying around. TOW BAR TIME! Friend of mine works at a shop and gave me the bends for free. Lined up initially, and was winging it on the height. Added a drop bar to get the hitch level and then boxed in the hitch plate. 1 7/8" ball. Comes off with 4 bolts, and with my new impact gun I can take it off at the track in about 10 seconds. Its just tubing and not DOM so I'm not keeping it on the car for bash bar purposes. Great easy solution. Also spent some time to paint the rear tail light garnishes. my chrome was all pitted and there was crap overspray on the plates so I cleaned them up and made it all nice and pretty. Car all set up! Trailer looked pretty ok, but needed some love. The plywood was all weird and I wasn't loving the red. That toolbox and tire mount setup is legit though. Easy to move fully loaded by myself Little more flat black and some gold paint to match its daddy! I've since painted to plywood. Redid the wiring too, just have to add the wiring harness to the car now. Officially race season, so the updates will mostly (and hopefully) be about racing stuff and not about building the car! And finally, some eye candy from the PCA event. Just the parking lot though, don't have any action shots yet! And super secret bonus, I made a little welding cart!

Another update! Been working on the wiring, gauges and some super cool wheel stuffs! Pulled out all this trash wiring from the front end/coil harness. mostly useless, but a lot of it was from side markers and the ballast resistor. Spent some time working with the gauges. Tired of having them on the on the tunnel where they were hard to see, so I decided to move them! Step one, gut the stock gauges! if you cut the cross piece and massage the fit a 52mm gauge slots right in! Step 2, cut the back off so you can run wires. Re-install, and do some wiring hocus-pokus and here you go! I also found that with some trimming you can make one of the stock gauges fit into the airvent slots. Fits pretty well! Also been working on project racing slicks, which requires me to free up my current 15" Bassett wheels. You all remember the Gotti's from a few pages ago. Well, after some hard work, here you go. Only have the fronts fitted up now, but rear tires will be here tomorrow! Also got this for christmas, Can anybody translate Japanese for me?!

Ok a real update!! Been puttering away on some projects this week, mostly prepping a new rear end to go in. Bought a ATS 1.5 way diff in a s13 pumpkin that will bolt right in. Took a lot of reading to figure out exactly what I needed but the carrier section (and by extension LSD's) for the open diff s13 will bolt right up, and use stock 280z output shafts. Very slick! Carrier bolts were SUPER on there. Needed to have my friend stand on the pumpkin, and use a 4' cheater bar to get these things even close to loose! Was important to remember to loosen these bolts before pulling the LSD out, otherwise, you have no good way to hold onto the carrier to loosen the bolts. Getting the carrier out of the housing was a trick too. Didn't want to pry at it, so a ratchet strap filled in nicely! Shot of the whole mess! Going to use the ring and pinion gears from a 3.90 NA 280zx. Take a look at the back plate, this one is from the s13 Open diff. The VLSD s13 cover is deeper and has more fins. Decided that while everything is out I should try and make it look a little prettier. Spent some quality time with my wire wheel and got the housing and halfshafts cleaned up! In progress with the diff housing, looking good. Before: Middle (need to hit with some engine enamel): Next on the table is a mustache bar from the crew over at T3 that will accept the bolt pattern on the s13 diff cover. Hopefully I'll be able to get my hands on a VLSD diff cover, which holds a little bit more oil and has better cooling! Cooling is very important for the life of the LSD.

Bump from the depths of abandoned threads! Thought the ratsunverse deserved an update since a few cool things have happened recently! Between racing and moving into a new house, nothing MAJOR has happened. Lots of racing the car and making it work! The main difference that everyone will notice is the addition of perminant numbers and SCCA class letters (wrong but thats ok!) and a fresh new splitter! It does its job to prevent the understeer in faster corners and it looks sweet! two locator pins on the cross member and the quick release pin locks hold it on, as well as being bolted to the airdam and sharing the airdam quarter turn fasteners. It has to be taken on and off to move the car out of the driveway, but this solution is pretty nice. She REALLY doesn't do speed bumps now! Finally got rid of the drivers side window too! The window track got tweaked somehow and the window refused to go up. I think it had something to do as well with the lack of hardware holding the window on, but thats all in the past now! Door is totally gutted and the new lexan window will be joining the party shortly. More dzus fasteners in this cars future! I picked up a set of Avon slicks from a racing friend of mine and am planning to get a new set of bassetts to run them. the 15x11 and 15x10's are fun, but they incur a 100lbs weight penalty for the class I'm moving into and its easy enough to get new ones. The downside of running slicks is that i need more offset to clear everything. Sort of fine though because with the 15's I have tierod clearance issues up front. You can guess where this is going! MOAR FLARE!!!! Luckily I was only running standard ZG flares which gave me one more step before doing something stupid; the BAMF ZG flares from Z force! Double lucky a friend locally ordered a set back in april and didn't end up running them on his project car. A quick trade later and they are currently in primer, waiting for final paint tomorrow! The other problem with slicks is that you can't drive them on the street. A keen eye may have also realized that in the last two photos, the wheels don't look like bassetts, nor do they look like 15x10's! A keen eye is right, they are in fact 16x12 Gotti 75ba's! Got them for a ripping good deal. 16x11, 16x12 staggered. Offset is perfect in the rear, and spacers are needed up front. Just how much remains to be seen. Anyway, gold powdercoat center sections and polished lips are in the works!

Got my spoiler attached! Here are some pics. Pretty stoked on how well this turned out. The plastic shape can be easily altered and replaced if needed now that there are the adjusters. anyways, PHOTOS!!!!! Gives you a good idea of the range of the movement I can get out of this piece. At this point its just inhibited by the plastic, but it has the ability to go from 35 degrees to well past 90 degrees relative to the hatch cover. You can also get a pretty good shape to the wing by adjusting the turnbuckles. In the last photo you can also see the new tow hook on the back! next time on ratsun threads, some cool vortex generators for the roof line and maybe an oil cooler?

Back from the dead!! Been working too much and trying to pay down some credit card debt that this bastard has put me in, but I got motivated and decided to finally fix my wingless situation in the rear. I could never find a wing that I really liked. the BRE style was cool, but expensive and a little understated, and the IMSA, while cool just never seemed quite right. So I resorted to building my own! I knew I wanted it to be adjustable, and armed with the McMaster Carr catalog and some cardboard, I went for it. Here's the basic layout of it. Got some large bolts countersunk into the front of the spoiler for "optimum aerodynamic performance" lol I had the piece cut at a local shop. They specialize in CNC style stuff, so my idiot cardboard cutout was a little weird I'm sure! They did a super nice job though, material is 1/2 glossy black polycarbonate. pretty much bullet proof! Next was to sort the hinging system out. Couldn't find anything that knocked my socks off as usual, so I went into fab mode! Got 4 of the strap style hinges, but in the worst finish possible! Toyed around with painting them flat black, but then my room mate told be about Gun Bluing, which I decided would be worth a shot. This is with one pass! took the shine right off, I was pretty impressed! I'm gonna experiment and see what another coat does to it, then probably do a matte clear coat for a teensy bit of protection. You can also see the tabs in this photo, and I'm sure you can judge where this is going! With the shape of the spoiler sorted out and staying on top of the hinge game, I got to work figuring out the adjustably part of this whole mess. I looked into APR and Longacre splitter adjusters, but they were all too long. I wanted a turnbuckle style thing, threaded rod and the whole bit, so again, I decided to cobble something together. Sensing a theme here guys? Anyway, McMaster Carr has literally everything for the DIY enthusiast so I put in an order and patiently waited! Here is the more or less finished adjustable hinge bracket. Up: Down: Going to have 4 of these badboys in total, should be pretty set! And if I want to change the shape of the splitter in the future, I can just unbolt the plastic chunk and keep all my hinges! Going to finish this project off over the course of a few days and them move on to finishing an oil cooler project that I'm in the middle of Oh yeah! I bought an oil cooler haha.

Ok! Not too much has been happening with the car lately, finally got a chance to enjoy it these past few weeks so I've taken advantage of it! Done 3 auto-x days with it and its been a peach each day! No more major mechanical problems (knock on wood) so it seems like we are moving along. Here are some photos I forgot to upload from some recent projects on the car. Aftermath of the alternator on hose violence at the drag strip! Here are some shots of the electrical cleanup in the engine bay. Before: After: Couldn't figure out that relay for a little bit, until I dug out a wiring diagram. Turns out its some kind of starter inhibitor switch only found on the AT models. A quick jump of the important wire there and out it came! Still need to recover the loom but looks 10000% better. Also did a harness tuck on the EFI power harness so that runs on the cabin side of the firewall rather than over where the hood latch was. Another, better angle of the electrical cleanup. You can also see my starter heat wrap, trying in vain to keep the starter from overheating and not starting the car! Might have to swap the starter again. =/ Installed a super cool badge in the dash, MSA has some pretty cool stuff! I also got around to making the windshield banner I've been thinking about for a while now. Wanted something cool and obscure that would stand out at the track. Says "Jaw Breaker" I'll let you guys and gals put your own meaning behind that one haha. Hand cut vinyl, used a print out from Illustrator to make them. I've always like doing paper cut out stuff so this was a fun little project.

Update time! Been busy with work, so the car is going a little slowly. Wasn't in love with my driving position, so I ripped out the drivers seat, and all the drivers seat mounts/floor cross members. The plan is to weld in new smaller cross members and bolt the new seat rails to that. So far the cross members are out and I haven't had time yet to weld anything new in! hopefully this weekend I'll have a day to make some progress. The other good bit of progress is a new front airdam!!!! This polishes off the exterior of the car for the most part, just need to get a spoiler! Anybody got a good lead on a BRE style one? Also want to put on the rear window louver still, but it needs a lot of prep/paint and put some more front aero stuff, but thats waiting on more time! Now, here's a photo! (sorry for going back to iPhone quality after real photos in the last update)

Ok, finally an update with photos! Got a bunch of boxes of parts from Dave at arizona Z car. His stuff is so pretty I just had to line it all up on my floor before I bolted it all up! All good things going on over here! Finished prepping the strut tubes for a good install, and started to test fit all the suspension arms. Everything was a nice fit, and pretty easy to bolt on. Pending the actual installation of the suspension, I figured I should step up my game and chop/weld up my fenders for the flares. Not chopping out too much fender, as I am trying to keep the car somewhat off the ground! Quick shot of the fronts installed. I used nutserts in the rear and normal bolts and washers in the front. And fender welting. LOTS of fender welting. Really not very happy with the MSA ZG flare fit, especially on the drivers side front, but that is a known problem I should have read about before I ordered them! Got all the flares installed and mounted over the weekend, and had a local welder come over and weld in the new strut tops after work on a Wednesday. We did weld the underside for maximum not-breaking-ness. I'm going to wait to sand and grind down the shock towers until I have time to do the whole engine bay. sprayed some clear to protect everything, but other than that I'm done with them! Spent an evening with my room mate doing up the hood pins. Kind of tricky, since I've never done them before but the came out ok! Kept the front hinges and she is a real treat to open and close now! My room mate is working at a shop that fabricate plexi glass and poly carbonate store displays and other stuff, so he made me a cool spacer for my steering wheel, and let me get rid of all the washers i was using previously! AND its yellow to match the steering wheel. Also took some time to "protect my investment" and installed a fire extinguisher. Just mounted up the hanger bracket onto the harness bar. When I eventually do a half cage I'll mount it to the diagonal bar. This one is the Kiddie Auto/Marine specific one. Works pretty well from what I have read and it is a good size, with easy access from the front seats and through the hatch. After another furious weekend of fitting, tightening and testing we finally got the car on the ground and I was FINALLY able to drive it somewhere!!! Still needs a handful of parts (mostly a front airdam) and some fiddling with ride height/front track width (which i think i got taken care of last night) and then I'll be mostly happy! OH!! I need a new exhaust too! The first one that I clamped together held solid but then one gnarly pothole/bridge joint that I didn't see ended it =(. Todays task is new gas for the welder and a bunch of tubing for a new exhaust and new y pipe. Once the car is back in the realm of drivable volume I swear I'll take a real photo of it. Iphones are just so much easier to take places!

My tires showed up while I was at work and my room mate was nice enough to go get them mounted for me. That combined with me mounting the control arms in the rear let me mock up a wheel in the rear for everyone to see! So there you go. Control arms are level in the rear, and according to my iphone app, its got 2.2 degrees of camber. Wheels are rocking out a 4.5" backspacing, so the dish is plentiful These things could be used as salad bowls! Hopefully the front control arms show up soon and I can mock one of those up for everybody!

Houston we have wheels! No real photos yet, but here is a teaser! Dont worry world, this is at almost full droop with the stock setup. flares will be going on next week and tires are showing up momentarily. Wheels are Bassett 15x10 in front and 15x11 in the rear, with Toyo r888 205/50 and 235/50 (respectively) on order. Should look pretty awesome when bolted up! (Still need to get lug nuts!) This was also the week where I dropped the rear suspension out and got to deal with the dreaded spindle pins!!! OOooooo! I was almost prepared to deal with them, my previous car was from the east coast, and every project on it required air tools, a torch and inevitably breaking every bolt you laid wrench to. But even seized A arm bolts had nothing on the frozen bolt hell I was about to enter! And in case anybody had any doubts about the quality of the rear suspension, the rear shocks were as blown as the fronts. see the video a few posts ago for reference haha. I had read enough going into the project that i knew i was going to chop the spindle off to get it out. No need to save it since the Techno RCAs came with new bolts. In hindsight I should have saved one end with threads for reasons that came apparent this evening! Started out normally. Torched the area where the pin goes through the knuckle, quenching every so often with PB Blaster. Anecdotally I've decided that doing it this way draws the penetrating oil deeper into the depths of the seized bolt, but it also makes fire when mixed with MAPP gas! Here's my room mate/partner in crime doin his thing Dont worry, we had proper ventilation and a hose in case things got out of hand. A couple minutes later we threw the knuckle into the vice and took a good whack at it with the 3lbs hand sledge. How stuck can it be i thought? Answer: extremely. More torchin! The sum total of evening #1 was; one entire empty can of PB blaster, a very greasy workbench, one half eaten bag of BBQ chips, and 1/2 an inch of spindle pin driven out of ONE knuckle! Holy shit these guys are stuck! Day two started out similarly- Jake back on the torch, one of the knuckles back in the bench vice. Then we had a stroke of genius. I'll give Jake the credit here, super good idea. Probably worth it for the rest of you guys who hate these things to give it a shot. We had already drilled small holes in each end of the pin so the air chisel we were using wouldn't walk around. Then Jakes brilliance stepped in and we ground the protruding end into a square. If I hadn't cut both ends off of the spindle we could have done this without driving lots of spindle out. Anyways, grind down one end into a square shape until you can hammer on a 15mm socket. I used a deep impact socket with a 3/4 drive. Nice and square. Once you have this, I drove on my socket and attached the breaker bar. This let me start to rotate the pin and break what was left of the rust bond. Sequence for me was to spray some penetrating oil one end, rotate the pin with the wrench, then smash on oiled side with the pointy chisel from the air hammer with the 3lbs sledge. Took about 30 minutes of spraying, spinning and smashing to get them out. That was after sitting on the knuckle for 20 minutes with the torch. Lesson of the day here is that i need an Oxy-Acetylene torch rather than MAPP gas! Next week I should be receiving an excellent package from Arizona Z and then I can start chopping up the strut towers to make way for camber plates! If all goes as planned, the car SHOULD key word here being SHOULD be rolling on the ground under its own power end of next weekend!

Got a couple things done this weekend/friday, but it was mostly a light weekend. Got out and enjoyed the nice weather (for once no clouds!) and fantasized about driving my datsun! First things first; got the motor running. Its official, no sputtering or stalling! Good solid running. This means I got my 240SX throttle working great and successfully converted over to cable from the linkage throttle! Horray for me right? I also got a few silicone tubes to pipe nice cold air into my AFM. Conveniently enough when using the 240sx throttle, you don't have to run a reducing size tube from the AFM to the throttle body like you do on the stock 280z throttle. Cleans up the joint for sure. Here are some photos of the engine bay for your perusal. Sorry for the lack of photos on the past few posts! Silicone plumbed intake: Even shittier photo quality than usual! boo iphones... Throttle cable brackets and routing. Need to figure out a more elegant way of dealing with the brake booster vac hose! Detail at the firewall where the cable meets the pedal. Drilled out the stock ball stud and replaced it with this one from the Lokar cable. Works pretty well! Got my battery situation sorted out for the time-being too. not the prettiest solution, might have to spring for a battery box, but its held solidly in place! I also got some of my interior shit sorted out. Got REALLY tired of looking at plywood in the back so i tossed this guy in there. really classes up the joint! Also finished FINALLY bolting up the steering wheel. Got the "short hub" powder coated by the same friend who did the intake mani. now i can sit in the car and make race car noises!! Deep dish momo 07 wheel. And finally for the interior, i HAD to hang my skull off the rear view mirror. When i get a hook for the wheel, He will get hung off that, but for now, mirror end it is! My suspension stuff also started to show up on friday with the delivery of my TechnoToyTuning rear control arms. Unfortunately FedEx is apparently run by walking talking man giants who hate all things fun, because when i opened the package i find this! To quote Gabriel from T3 "Yeahhh, your gonna have problems with that!". However, being a super cool dude, he immediately shipped out a replacement arm, which should be here tomorrow! Fingers crossed for a more gentil delivery! Seriously though, 3 hours after speaking on the phone I get a new FedEx tracking number in the mail. I am impressed to say the least! The only bummer part of the weekend was when i hopped in the car and put on my race helmet, I realized that my custom brackets sit up way to high in the car, and I have to hunch my shoulders super hard to keep my head from touching the roof! I think I have a fix, but I feel like i need to finish the suspension and get everything ship-shape before I start chopping the interior up again! Thats it for now, going to be waiting on parts for a week or so (Arizona Z Car will be providing the rest of the suspension), which means I'm gonna try and get as much annoying little shit buttoned up as possible! Clutch bleeding time!

Post weekend update! Didn't get much done this week cause of the holiday and I ended up taking a job today (I work freelance so I take the work when it comes!) Did get a lot of sanding and bondo finish work done and then got some paint on the car! Should be getting the rest of the intake piping this week and then the motor can FINALLY get tuned! And if I'm really lucky, the wheels might even show up by the end of the week!

Got some time yesterday and sunday to put in some work. Mostly it was on the exterior. Waiting on a couple hoses before i can really turn this beast over for real. Anyways, got my bondo hat on and went after it. Did some work smoothing out the front and rear side marker deletes, door mirror deletes, bumper deletes and cleaning up the side trim. Wish i had a good photo of the car before I pulled the trim off. Living in the PNW there was moss/algae growing on top of the side trim! Front passenger side passenger side trim. Can see where they got lazy and didnt pull the trim off when they resprayed it. I like black more than the caramel color, but its a shame they didnt do it properly. passenger side rear quarter. My room mate and our friend vandalized the bondo dust earlier. Fender flares are on the roof too. Waiting to get the wheels before I fit them though, might have to go with the BAMF Wide ZG flares. Drivers side rear quarter. Complete with circled low spot! Front drivers side fender. Today I'll have some time and can do some finish sanding and glazing putty. Might be covered in spotty primer by the end of the week! \ Ordered a aeromotive fuel pressure regulator that showed up yesterday so i got a chance to install it. Didn't let the thread sealant set long enough though, so it shot gas across my garage. No fun! looks pretty though. Once I am done sanding, grinding and fabing this engine bay is getting a serious deep clean. On a side note I am still thinking about suspension. As it sits looking at the ACZ coilovers, with T3 front and rear control arms with the tension control arms. Anybody have any advice on this? Comments on what I am thinking or other recommendations would be awesome!