itzgoten

Well to each their own.. My car is completely functional and I didnt get unnecessary parts just because. The muffler alone is worth a lot and not to mention the custom piping and resonator.

here is the Z on the back straight at Thunderhill Raceway.. and here is a video of the car on the dyno.. I'll see if we can get my buddy's blue Z on video after he figures out his manifold/exhaust leak issue

John, I wouldn't doubt that at all.. but from where I'm sitting.. I have a better chance at keeping the STi rear end together than the old r180 or r200.. I made 432hp on the dyno and took it to a open track day. the diff held up fine and I hooked up very nicely in the corners. We'll see in a year how the diff holds up after I switch to e85 and make bigger numbers.

no problem.. if maybe if you have an online album somewhere and you can PM it to me? This was I can browse through them all?

OMG.. I totally forgot about this post and didn't check back for some time.. Sorry guys.. I'll try and find something.. I have some in-car race vids and maybe a short vid of me passing on the front straight.. but the car isn't running now because of some motor issues so I can't do a video where I rev it at a stop.. sorry.. I'm uploading a video of the Z on the back straight and a video of the Z when it was on the dyno.. maybe that'll give some idea of the deep tone it makes as well. Sorry again for sucking so bad.. no good videos and for the late response.. LOL

Gollum, any pics from the event would be great. I forgot my camera and only had pics from my buddies camera and my camera phone (which is ****.. as we all know).. Please send them! And just wondering.. that poster you made.. did you use my buddy's blue Z? if so.. it looks like a totally different car. great photoshop work.. i am only guessing because of the exhaust size, fairlady z badge and the flares.

Gollum, It was me and my buddy! We were there about a year ago in May I believe. for that "Turn 7 Z Meet". This was our cars the day before the event..

Matt, I'm running 7's too. And for what I plan on boosting it seems like I'll be in the right heat range. What kind of numbers were you running with that setup? I really liked the Full-Race manifold but too bad it didn't work for my setup. I ate a crappy restocking fee when I had to have it returned..

Thanks for the support. I haven't looked at the cause of the issue yet. But from the sounds of the motor and how it's acting it can't be anything else. I had to undergo some surgery for some personal things so I've been at home recovering. I'll be back on my feet in no time and I'll post updates on what I find. Thanks a bunch! Take it easy! I need to find out if it's the crank bearing or a rod bearing. When I find out I'll let everyone know. Either way I picked up a spare block form a buddy and I'm going to send that to the machine shop. If the crank is scored I'll be pissed! That crank was sent out and balanced with my clutch and flywheel. It's completely perfect so that would suck big time! And the cv/axles... depending what you consider cheap. Retail is 1500 and I got it for 1300.. but my setup is good for 700whp which I need because I plan to make that much HP in the future. I know they sell a cheaper 300hp setup for maybe 700? But if you think about it.. you get STI stub axles, axles and CV joints.. WIN, WIN, WIN if you ask me.. The axles are from The Drive Shaft Shop.. my brothers shop is an authorized dealer so I got them ordered from his shop. The car kicked ass at the track and it hooked up real well. I do not regret spending on the $$ on the rear end at all.

I got a nice pic from the track so I thought I'd share.. I was able to pick a wheel up in the corner.. This was on the 2nd session before I spun a bearing.. still haven't touched the Z since the track. So depressing.

AURGH! Anything that could have went wrong on Friday did.. I was wrenching until 7PM when we loaded the car on the trailer. The Z kicked ass when it was out there.. passing/lapping everyone on the first session. However, there were MAJOR cooling issues. I need to work out a radiator surge tank, oil cooler and fender vents for the Z. I'm going to try and find a way to make the fender vents like BJHines to see if that'll help any. Also, I found out they used a OEM thermostat! So sad.. so I found an aftermarket Nismo one that opens at 145deg opposed to the OEM ~170deg.. this is BJHines's car. and the bad news.. on the 2nd session I spun a bearing on the 2 or 3rd lap and that set me out for the rest of the day. I was so bummed... and worst part.. I went back to review the video footage of the first run... NOTHING!! The damm camera didn't record crap.. I was trying out the new Coutour GPS camera that tracks GPS, speed, elevation and maps the car on google maps.. FAIL.. should have stuck with the good old HD camcorder I was using.. well back to the drawing board. It was a great shakedown and I learned a lot. Also met a fellow HybridZ member out at the track. He's a lurker but has been on this forum for years! He was an instructor and took me for a couple of laps. Nice to see other Z's out there kicking ass.. over all a bitter sweet weekend.. big learning experience on what I've built and now we'll take from that and learn. Here is the only video footage I was able to scrap from my uncle and brothers camera..

Thanks guys.. I race tomorrow so I'm just glad the car didn't blow up and made decent power. I've been trippin' balls and glad the dyno is finally over. Getting the final touches today and hopefully I'll have some videos to share after this weekend.

So I finally got to dyno the car and get everything dialed in. Car ran great and sounded awesome! Everything was smooth and we had no issues. I know someone is going to ask so I might as well explain. The motor still isn't broken in and we're running it very mild. He had the timing stay the same throughout and barely even worked the turbo. The graph shows for itself that I've made very linear power and could make a lot more after the block is broken in. 91 Pump gas @ 20PSI and relatively stock timing. My tuner says the entire setup isn't even being pushed hard. He wants to have me drive it for a little and break everything in. I'll get the mid-range torque I'm missing and get closer to 500hp. I would hope for numbers closer to 500hp and 400tq. I'll enjoy what I have now and see how things go in a couple of months.

What a hectic week! I've been doing 16 hour (8 hrs of work then straight to the shop) days and working through the weekends to do everything in my power to get this car up and running. I'm embarrassed to say but it was "user error" on this build and I missed one key component that totally destroyed my motor. SR20 FSM's are readily available and I did as much as I could with the research I did online and I overlooked the SHIM BUCKETS! Total utter failure. I feel like an idiot for making such a simple mistake. In short.. I wasn't getting full "stroke" on the valves and not making power. I destroyed my valves and retainers.. I had to dig deep and get new valves and valve train. Since I had to do that I just upgraded (some more).. I got +1mm over sized exhaust valves and dual valve springs instead. No pics this time because we were just haulin' ass to get this back together. Only 2 more days till the race. I'm going to dyno tonight so we'll see how she looks. On the bright side.. she made full boost at 3500rpm when she was broken.. turbo lag won't be as much of a concern as I had initially worried about.

This is so frustrating. We put the car on the dyno last night and had to make a base map from scratch. The car performed well but it's NOT making any power. We checking timing, compression, leak down and everything checked out almost perfect. The stock SR20's are running heat range 6 plugs. I'm running 8's in hope of high boost... but doubt that is the culprit.. at this point we have no idea.. We're only testing at 15psi (which I made 250rwhp and around 250tq average on my old setup) and now I'm barely making 220hp and not even 200tq.. My brother is going to check the head tomorrow to make sure everything checks out. As this point I'm just bummed. I have a race on the 9th and I'm not sure if the car will be ready in time.

I'm banking on the fact that stock SR tranny WILL fail. It's good up to about 400hp thenthe gears turn into Ritz crackers. And I love Ritz and all.. just not inside my tranny. The 350z holds about 300hp/300tq (at the crank) stock on a much heavier car.. So I'm going to pray to the automotive gods that this will mate well with my higher hp but lighter setup will be a good match. I figure the 350z only breaks it's tranny because all that torque and heaviness of the car. Let's hope I didn't waste my money.. And for those who didn't know. The automotive god is Bomex. you know.. the old body kit company back in the 90's.. LOL.. ok maybe a bad joke.. but I still love their slogan.

So I have the breather box installed and we made some -10 lines to fit with 90deg fittings. It doesn't look too bad. I just need to get hose separators so they don't rub each other over time. Not too high on the importance list but it'll get done sooner or later. Here is the firewall battery terminal. I called SCCA today to make sure what I'm going to do isn't against any regulations they have because I plan on running the car in a Time Attack series next year and they gave me a thumbs up. The battery is a "dry" battery and isn't combustible so I'm not too concerned. I'm still going to try and find a way to mount it without being in the way.. Also I had to drive 2 hours north to pick this up.. It'll be a project for the car during the winter. I plan on doing a 350z 6speed conversion! It'll be sweet to have a 6 speed in this car. It can hold more power so it'll be less likely to fail on me at the track. The input shaft for the tranny is broken so he sold it to me for $100 with less than 10k on it! It cost almost that much just in gas alone. My brother called for a new input shaft and it'll run me less than $180 so either way this tranny is a steal. This will be a fun upgrade once I get everything all together.

bertio, If MSA throws a decent event we can meet in SoCal next year when they have the event. I just love the West Coast Nationals format compared to there "Z Reunion" format. I don't think driving from all the way from the bay area and parking 4 blocks away from the event would justify as "being apart of the car show". If you have friends of family up here and come visit let me know ahead of time. There's some nice roads to drive on if you're interested.

Man.. My dyno day got pushed back so I'm just waiting at this point. The breather box came in and it looks decent. I'll have pictures of where it's at and hopefully my tuner will get better and be able to tune me next week. I'm not too worried about the welds on the box since it's only going to have small spurts of air and oil (if any). I ran my other oil catch can for 2 years and barely had 2 or 3 ounces of oil in there. I bought some firewall battery terminals and I'm going to find a battery box for the new battery and mount this things where the passenger foot rest is. The battery is Lithium IRON (not ion) and is not combustible or contains acid. I'll try and get some pics today or tomorrow if possible.

So I got pushed back to Friday because some other cars needed to get finished first. My car gets last priority because I don't pay for shop time. There was no way in hell the breather tank was going to run the way I wanted with the stock locations. Even though I hate to ruin my valve cover it had to be done. My brother made an "executive decision" and had new bungs welded to the valve cover. This is going to work out for the best. The bungs were put where the cam gears are. It's perfectly flush on the inside so it won't affect anything else. The old breather holes were welded shut. I'll just take the time to have the valve cover powder coated again.. Maybe a new color next time? The breather box I ended up getting will sit in the battery tray.. I'm moving my battery inside the cockpit. I found a super sweet lithium battery for a motorcycle which has MORE cold cranking amps and outputs more than enough power. Best part? It only weighs like 4.3 lbs.. I'm going to have it mounted on the other side of the firewall in the cockpit and have terminals in the engine bay in case I need a jump start. Wouldn't want to run jumper cables inside my car.. the breather tank.

Dood.. I never even saw this post.. glad you PMed me.. Hope that helps..

I know you mentioned that you didn't want to custom make one.. but i had mine custom made and I love it. I got the Vibrant 3in turbo back muffler and a 18inch "high flow" resonator. I don't regret me choice at all And my buddy has a custom made 3in exhaust too.

Having the stock 240z BMC sucked. I noticed a huge difference with my Toyota 4x4 4pot brakes after going 15/16.. and even a bigger difference when I went to the AZC Brakes.

The Z finally looks like a car again. We let the motor run some more and I tried to finish putting all the body pieces back on. Going to spend some time after work tomorrow to finishing up the interior. Vinyl for the transmission tunnel, passenger side bucket seat, hook up the wideband gauge and a few other little things here and there. Also need to remember to order the breather tank and some more heat wrap. Here's are pics. My brother is making me a new throttle cable bracket Driver and passenger side fenders on headlights and buckets front grill, air dam and fender mirrors on and the final shot of the engine bay. I'm still going to have different intake piping made. I think everything turned out pretty sweet. I never really saw the bigger picture. Just knew what I wanted piece by piece. I'm glad we're almost finished. Dyno tune on Tuesday! I hope to make decent numbers.

So I finally fired up the Z for the first time today! I'm so excited to tune on Tuesday. I'm hoping for no less thant 400whp but I know the rings have to seal before I make my final numbers. I'll probably make about 350ish HP until everything is broken in and then I'll retune and try to extract the rest of the ponies. My camera phone SUCKS and my "video editing" skills are even WORSE. Don't judge me! hahaha We shot the first part and my brother yelled out "turn it off" and we saw the oil leaking from the oil return line off the turbo. We tighened it and fired it back up. Sounds great but there is a bunch of ticking still because the hydrulic lifters. They were sitting for a few months waiting for everything to come together. I'll let the motor run some more tomorrow and that should help get oil in the lifters. And at the end we noticed a vaccumme line that wasn't plugged to the BOV. My prother plugged it with his thumb and the car died. I kept recording just to see how smoothly the gt35r turbo spools.. I love it!