osirus9

So I'm just gonna go ahead and raise this thread from the dead. I just got myself an '06 330i 6spd and I'm loving it as a daily. 26mpg cruising on the highway to work. It's surprisingly good in the snow too considering it doesn't have winter tires. And it's so quiet inside! My first BMW and I absolutely love it. Anybody else got an e9x bmw?

I have those flares fitted to my car. I can tell you, they fit perfectly with almost no bending of the flares at all. I'll try and get some pics up as soon as I can. As far as I know, Marugen Shoukai is a one man operation in Japan. I doubt they would be able to take an order from you. I'd just go through RHD Japan like I did. Honestly the pricing was quite fair I felt for the quality of their products.

Hmm, I think I'm done messing with it tbh. But just for the lolz, how would you go about pinstriping it?

Sounds like quite a lucky find! Got any pics of the ladies?

Thanks guys! TBH The actual shaving was the easy part. It only took like an hour to sand off all the lettering. The hard and extremely time consuming parts were applying and sanding the JB weld multiple times to the holes revealed by sanding. If you could weld aluminum I think that would be a much better way to go. I agree with the oil cap being out of place... I don't think I can paint the stock cap since it is made of this rubbery plastic material. But what about some cheap ebay oil cap like this? Will this thing fit? http://www.ebay.com/itm/Silver-Nismo-Oil-Fuel-Filler-Cap-For-Nissan-Skyline-240SX-180SX-GTR-R35-S13-S14-/140943459482?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories&fits=Model%3A280Z&hash=item20d0e2849a&vxp=mtr If it is actually made of aluminum I could paint it like the rest of the cover...

Thanks! I actually did think about hydro dipping it, but the main problems with that were expense, and the fact that a flat picture does not map to a curved valve cover. If I had made the rays straight they would have made weird angles around the curves and actually intersected in the front.

So I had a couple extra valve covers lying around and with my Z being in the shop for body work since November I was hunting for a project. I decided I was going to shave and paint my valve cover like the japanese rising sun flag. I've never attempted anything like this before, so I'm going to add in my mistakes so hopefully other people can learn from them. Despite that, I think it turned out pretty cool. Old valve cover: There was a big hole in it covered up by some JB weld and it was in generally crappy condition. Sanding and cleaning: The filth of ages was on there, but nothing some engine degreaser and a lot of elbow grease can't get off. I used a belt sander and 36 grit sandpaper to grind off the lettering. You can see that this revealed some casting defects. I used an xacto knife to cut out the paper thin aluminum. I then taped a shop towel to it and flipped it over and used the xacto knife as a mini putty knife to apply the JB weld to the inside of the valve cover. After it set I ripped off the towel and sanded down the excess. I had to fill in a depression by the oil cap with more JB weld to make it smooth. The other areas also got some extra JB weld to help get them smooth. Then I sanded it down all over with 120 grit, then 240 grit and was ready for primer. Primed. After priming I noticed tiny pin holes in the JB weld. I sanded these down, cleaned out the pinholes, and smeared a tiny bit of JB weld in there as filler. It really makes you appreciate Bondo... Every time you apply JB weld you have to wait 24 hours for it to cure. Sanding and re-filling with JB Weld: The primer was pretty smooth and it filled in most of the imperfections on the metal. I sanded it again with some 1000 grit (I didn't have anything between 1000 and 240) and painted it white. I then sanded the white down with 1000 grit. This looked cool, but was probably a waste of time and if I was doing this again I wouldn't bother. Before: After: Now the fun part! The original Japanese rising sun has 16 rays, but I thought that they would look too thin, so I decided to go with 12. First I traced a circle on the cover with pencil. This scratched the paint and I couldn't erase it. I ended up having to repaint the cover white and sand it again to get rid of the marks. Next I tried a dry erase marker. I taped it to the end of a compass and traced my circle. I then used a green marker (the red was busy being taped to the compass) to measure tic marks along the circle. I took the circumference of the circle and divided it by 24, then measured with a ruler. This is not quite exact, but it won't matter since I was about to majorly distort the rays of the sun to curve around the bulges in the valve cover. I used 3M blue painter's tape to mask off the white areas. I first cut the tape into little rectangles then laid them along the tic marks in vees. Then I traced over the circle again with my compass. Then I lifted the tape up and cut along the line I'd just drawn. My girlfriend helped a lot with this part and the rest of the taping too. All masked off: Now I sprayed it with red paint. This was another mistake... The red paint bled under parts of the tape onto the white. Worse still was that the red paint turns out to be mostly transparent, so I could see the green tic marks through it. The only thing I could think of was to just put on more coats of red paint. This kind of worked, but made big ridges against the masking tape. If I was going to do this again, I would use a red marker for the tic marks, and first spray another coat of white paint so that it would "seal" the tape and prevent the red from leaking underneath it. I touched up the runs with a tiny paintbrush and used the same spraypaint I'd sprayed in a little puddle on some masking tape so the color would match. At this point it was never going to be perfect, and trying to sand the ridges smooth made the red paint smear onto the white. I just called it a day and sprayed on 4 coats of clear. I could do it better if I did it again, but I think it looks pretty good. FYI I used VHT high temp paint for primer, white, red, and clear. If I had to do this again, I would sand it down and cut out the casting defects. Then have it sandblasted and the holes welded up. This would have saved me about a week of work.

I've got a set of the marugen shoukai "street" flares, and I can say after fitting them to my car that they match the body contours on the front PERFECTLY. It is pretty much impossible to put the flare on the wrong side as they are contoured to the body very well, and they fit without bending once you figure out where the "sweet spot" is. The rears fit the body very well too, but the back of the car is flatter and you can kind of move them around a fair amount and still have them "fit". Mine are bent slightly in the rear to make the flares more circular and match the body contours more, although you certainly don't have to do that. I wish I had pictures, but my car is still at the body shop getting new paint/rust/dent removal. (since mid november....).

You can get any kind of lug nuts you want from here: http://www.gorilla-auto.com/ Also, thanks for the tip on the NISMO 350Z long stud kit Tony. I'll be going with that if I need longer studs in the future since then I won't have to buy new lugs.

I get excited when it's 40 degrees here! Most of this winter has been below 20 degrees as a high. For a few weeks there even 20 degrees seemed warm with highs around 0. This winter was a little more awful than normal, but you get the idea. A little ceramic heater wouldn't be able to even defrost the windshield at those temps, much less your hands! I'd be cautious about unbalancing your pulley though. I do remember hearing that the pulley is not a harmonic damper on the L series, but at the same time unbalancing it might not be the wisest thing. It might not be noticeable in the short term, but over time you could see the crank widening the hole in your front cover, or just generally ruining bearings. If I were you I'd use that mounting to get me going, but find a balanced solution in the future. Just my $0.2

haha I guess your heater explanation makes sense. Although I'd personally not want to do it since I wouldn't want something like a space heater inside my car to potentially burn things, or the load on my alternator. But in Chicago it gets WAY colder, so I need some serious heat if I ever want to drive in the winter. Your wheel mounting solution is pretty creative. Are you concerned that the differently weighted custom bolts will throw your rotating assembly off balance?

Truth. I find that any "deal breaker" just requires me to take a step back and get my emotions in check for a day or two. Time, logic, and a fresh perspective make just about any problem solvable. Glad your build is going well!

Yea I hear ya on the brakes sucking. That's why I did the toyota upgrade. Still my results are lackluster. Better than stock, but not by a lot. So I'm giving these hawks a shot. If they suck, I'll probably try whatever the nicest ceramic pad autozone has, and if THAT sucks, I'll suck it up and spend like $2k and get a real big break kit front and rear like you RebekahsZ. As for dust, if people are interested I'll try to remember to report back my experiences with these pads. If it stops being winter ever... and if my car ever gets back from the body shop!

That's pretty awesome. The best solutions are ones where you use your brain and a bit of free stuff lying around!

Dang... I literally just bought a complete set of Hawk HPS pads! Well at least they won't be that dusty haha. Do you just use Autozone ceramics for autoX now?

I'm also interested in the answer to this question. I have the non-vented toyota fronts and I thought they would stop better. I use my car for autoX and cruising. They heve generic semi-metallics on there, and I was looking at getting some Hawk HPS but it looks like they don't make them for these brakes... at least according to tire rack. So the next best thing is just generic autozone ceramics? EDIT Nevermind, I found some on JCWhitney http://www.jcwhitney.com/1979-1994-toyota-pickup/hps-brake-pad-set/p3039768d2183y1979-1994j1.jcwx

The import ban is starting to lift on the R32 depending on the date of manufacture. As long as it's 25 years old, you can import it legally. Just sayin.... I love my Z though, got a rust free California car for a good deal and it was a great purchase. Not having to do rust repair saved a ton of time and money and headaches. Also starting with the 280Z platform has been nice since I didn't have to swap anything to get all the desirable engine and drivetrain parts. I plan on just turboing the L28, and I should be good to 350hp easily on the stock bottom end. If you're looking for more power than that, its certainly been done on the L28, and for a lot cheaper than an RB swap. But if your heart is set on an RB swap then just go for it, it's your car after all.

Thanks JMortensen. I'll give them a call later. and I'm not keeping the stock springs?

Mckinney motorsports will modify your tophats to accept their coilover kit if you want to keep them for reduced road noise or you want to just adjust your camber with an adjustable LCA or whatever. Thanks for the tech videos JMortenson. That dude sold me on getting nicer bumpstops. Unfortunately I still dont know what size I should get haha. I'm thinking a pretty hard (300#?) progressive... maybe 36mm? His video was about miatas, and the Z is kinda similar to that...

Hey there, I'm doing something similar but using the mckinney motorsports megan coilover kit http://mckinneymotorsports.com/prod_240+260+280Z+parts. Mostly I have some poly bumpstops and I want to get some nicer ones, but I'm not sure which to get. http://www.koniracing.com/bumpstops.cfm Would you use progressive or linear? I was leaning toward progressive, since that makes more sense to me. I can't find any info on what size struts this kit uses though...

Do you have any more pics of those recaros in your car? I'm looking for seats and those were the ones I fell in love with. If you decide to sell them to get red ones I'd take them off your hands! also fwiw They look slightly out of place in your car with all your red interior bits. They'd look nicer in mine with my black interior

Fixed, for your pleasure.

They just switched from gross to SAE horsepower. The engine still makes the same power, just a different way of measuring it.

That's me! Thanks dude, I'm not in a huge hurry, I'm just spoiled with getting confirmation emails on the stuff I buy online haha.

Hey Pallnet, I sent you payment for a fuel rail earlier this week, did you receive it?