Oddmanout84

A true Z fanatic... Spring break vacation to the garage!!!

Maybe... My reservoir is good, but my motor cavitated long ago. I think someone was running straight water through the system for a long time (Californian POs....). Its quite humorous to look at, nothing left but a shell and brown dust inside.

...Says the guy who just fiberglassed two rust holes in his floor pans.

And on a further note, I've pretty-much confirmed that the 5 speed installed in this car is the later (1980-198?) ZX model. Motorsport auto explained this to me over the phone when I was attempting to order (you guessed it) a short throw shifter. The model I'm getting will require some modification to the dog ears to install, but it supposed to shorten the throw by 70%. Holy crap! Hopefully I don't regret this (ie. being reduced too much for comfort). Its no small wonder why that plate between the bellhousing and the engine is missing now. The two first POs of the car were women + California mechanics = shoddily installed new tranny. All chauvinistic jokes aside, California mechanics, in my experience, are extremely shady on average.

I don't think its his... But it IS the most well done and clean 2+2 I've ever seen.

Yeah, unfortunately the radio issue is a problem of mine as well. I thought I was going to leave it out, but I quickly realized after listening to music in my garage and on the road every day how essential it is. That and dashboard gauges... need those connected too. And come to think of it, windshield wash fluid tanks. Its so bloody hard to find those anywhere!

Hey!!!! That's one of my units of measurement!! One that I was told I couldn't use on this internet forum!

That engine bay is a McMess! Haha, though I can't say much since mine is pretty hideous too. Your Z looks like it has a lot of potential!

I'm hating myself right now. See illustrations below for the explanation. Holes!!! Rust was cut out and "cured" with converter. | | | | | | | | [___--> Holes, no more. I can only hope that I don't forget to do this the right way later on. But right now, without a welder I'm left with little choice. Each hole is covered with glass 2 sheets thick, and the two forward (more severe) ones also have 2 extra sheets tacked on the bottom side of the car. I hope this at least holds tight for a little while, and doesn't blow out over the first puddle I hit. I forgot what its like playing with this resin stuff, its been years! Like fondling a giant ball of snot...*retch* Mmmmm! Tasty!!! I have some more legitimate areas of the car that will be covered by this method too, namely my mirror holes in the door and.... well, ok, that's the only legitimate area. The rest are more small rust holes that have been hit with converter and sanded down. Please don't hurt me!!!

In my previous line of work, we had a way of making initial judgments on the severity of wear on a component. It was called "Clink, Clank, Clunk". Clunk would be the worst possible (needs replacing) sound. My engine's certainly not making a clunk sound, and the origin is certainly on the top end. It could be the injectors, as it was hard to narrow it down to a single point. The noises sounded like they got louder through the stethoscope toward the #6 cylinder though. This could still be an injector though, as that was one that provided an abnormal reading on my multimeter tests earlier. The engine also makes an annoying, high pitched buzzing/whining sound that gets somewhat quieter after warming up, and it sounds like its coming from around the EGR or BPT valve (and as you know the connection from my exhaust to EGR is disconnected and plugged with duct tape).

On a side note... You will find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to install the sway bar bushing without loading the suspension. The bolt provided is too short for you to thread the nut on the other end otherwise. I had a real hard time doing this, even with loading each corner, then compressing the sway bar end into the control arms with another jack or a block of wood.

Using some ramps or dunnage may work, or maybe a jack with a piece of wood (with the rest of the car raised) to slightly compress each wheel might work. ramps are probably safer though.

The fact that the first few words of fine print read "Funeral services" is classic. Great marketing strategy!

MSA probably uses the Energy kit. They rarely have stuff that's directly made in-house. That certainly doesn't mean that their stuff is of a lower quality however. I bought my kit from Modern Motorsports though, because I liked their rear brake disc conversion.

1. Yes, you're supposed to avoid fully torquing the suspension h/w until the suspension is loaded to avoid "preloading" the bushings. 2. Yes and no. Usually the kit will tell you which bushings to grease and where. Some bushings are not supposed to be greased. The energy suspension kit comes with silicon grease (clearish-white icky sticky stuff), though I suppose you may be able to use white lithium grease as well.

Well, not directly. I read several of your schpiels in other threads. Sorry I didn't elaborate, but yes, its the MSA system (which isn't a "true" twice pipe system). So I would be getting a new downpipe from MSA or make one myself, because that stock 90 degree bend crap on it has to go. Then I'd just have to fabricate some way to connect it to the exhaust. 300hp out of that system would be fine for me, the only thing is people seem to whine about not only the "size" of the pipe (which I think is fine), but the sound. Guess I'll have to find out myself.

LOL. You didn't get a ticket I hope. Much better than getting stopped while cruising on the HWY. Sorry, if I could have seen the future, I would have posted this a week ago when I first saw that picture.

I'm pretty sure if I remember right its illegal to have any sort of blue/red lights that can be seen front the front of your car... Looks nice though!

That's heartwarming! Lmao! I'd hope it wouldn't come to that, but the possibility is certainly clear in my mind. I've thought ebout this before, just swapping the heads of my two motors, or just slapping on the turbo manifold. Well, maybe not that simple. I'd still have to route the new oil cooling lines and whatnot for the turbo, etc. Only thing that's been a block in the road; Megasquirt. I think I need to first get a better grasp on the car's factory electronics and how it all meshes together before I dive into it. Also there are a few tuning maps I've seen on this site from others that have done this before me, but I'll be honest, I'm completely lost when I look at them. Some areas click, but its still fuzzy. I think I'll save myself some potentially expensive mistakes if I wait a bit until I have a better understanding. Oh yeah, and I'd have to get rid of my twice pipes (maybe?) and headers that I've grown to love so dearly. I say maybe because there have been a few threads I've seen with people flaming the use of the twice pipes as a viable option for a turbo motor. Thanks guys, you've lifted my spirits a bit. I'll just have to wait a little while longer.

Yeah... I think the past few days of cleaning up mouse feces after I thought I had seen my last chunk of mouse fecal-matter is getting to me. That and the little patches of rot/surface rust I keep finding while stripping and cleaning my interior. My suspension is done, thankfully, and looking back on it was a huge undertaking. Well, at least for me since I've never done that before. So my list goes as follows: 1. Finish the interior 2. Remove rear bumper, shave, smooth out the rest of the body 3. Get all the lights hooked back up and get them working 4. Get the engine running top shape, discover origin of ticking noise (probably valvetrain) 5. Register the Z, insure 6. Get new rims/tires, install ZG flares (though I may just keep the old rims and get spacers to fill out the flares for a while) 7. Paint the exterior 34. Rebuild turbo motor, megasquirt, EDIS, etc. Everything except item #34 I'd like to get done before summer. The turbo can wait until next winter, or an off project that I'll tinker with every once in a while. I guess its just depressing that I spent the money on it, where I could have spent it elsewhere on something more pertinent. It just isn't priority #1 anymore, like I had thought when I purchased it. Another note with the lights though, a while back when fiddling around with wiring and trying to get the engine to start (and trying to figure out why my running lights were on, but not my instruments and headlights. I could get one or the other, not both), I think I crossed a wire leading out of my light switch by hooking it to the wrong wire leading from the chassis. I heard a sharp popping sound, and all my lights went bye bye. I'm hoping I didn't burn out the multi switch stalk... So that might hamper future progress in getting this car roadworthy.

Since I started this project in August, I've had an early ZX turbo L6 sitting in my garage. When I was just starting to undertake this "labor of love" in doing a performance resto on my Z, the prospect of a turbocharged engine swap excited me. So much so that I went through great pains to find one locally, which cost me $800 because it had to be removed from a donor car by the man who helped me find it. Although the motor looks to be mechanically sound from when I partially disassembled it, the PO appeared to have tried a half-attempted rebuild. He could not get the motor to run afterwords, and hence the car sat, and subsequently was sold. The problem was likely electrical. I received almost everything, wiring harness and all, except for the computer (MIA) and the crank angle sensor. The car was auto, so there was no clutch/flywheel included. Other than that, I was pleased. Months have gone by, and the motor is still sitting in the same spot in my garage, untouched save for the various extremities that I removed and set aside so I could remove the head from the block. Oh, I guess I forgot the one thing that was screwed up. Some goober crossthreaded the #1 spark plug. Not incredibly terrible. But as my project has progressed, all I can do every time I look at, step over, or touch the motor when I have to move something near it, is get an overwhelming sense of regret. If anything, it will be a long time before I even attempt to swap it into my Z. The fact that I just got the original equipment running has been an odyssey in itself, I don't even want to think about breaking everything again. That and fixing the rest of the car has become rather... costly. Add to that the fact that I'd want to FULLY rebuild the turbo motor and do everything right, and the money + time keeps adding up. Don't get me wrong, I still love the idea of turboing my car, its just with everything else that's piling up its pushing that endeavor further and further back in line. I'm having difficulty deciding now; do I sell the motor and get something later down the road? Or do I sit on it for a later time, maybe using some of the parts as spares in the mean time? As such I flatly refuse to display any sort of HybridZ sticker or emblem on my car until said named swap is completed. It just seems wrong to do so otherwise. Taking that further, maybe my car shouldn't even be posted on this forum... yet. I'm at a loss. My overzealousness at the conception of this project got the better of me. I'm not going to post this in the vendor forum yet (due to my current indecision), but if I get any worthy offers for local pickup, I may just give in and sell it, and find something else down the road...

That tub of acid could definitely double as a mad scientist thing. The kind you invite people over and push them into.

Stealth is all fun until one of those evil trees jumps out and runs into you.

Got my brake fittings in from Summit today. Guess what? They solved the problem with flying colors. The fittings sealed perfectly and I was able to bleed the brake system without a quibble. So... after bleeding the brakes, I decided to test drive the Z. Good thing it was just up and down the driveway, because driving in the dark with no headlights is scary!! Everything is working great now, although there is a bit of valvetrain noise and the engine does not like to be pushed beyond idling when its cold. So, I celebrated with a glass of Jim Beam (I'm out of Captain Morgan) and that was that. Still have a lot of work to do, but at least I've had physical proof of progress!

No, they are not the same to my knowledge. I'm pretty sure Blackdragon and Motorsport auto (thezstore.com) both sell the kits for 280ZX models.