EF Ian

Thanks, looks like my sub frame connectors will have to be custom, it will help that my roll bar mounts are already lowered by 6mm as I had to mod them in order for the R33 GTS-T diff flange to fit. Good to Know

Looks great.

I was wondering if the bad dog sub frame connectors let you still run the rear anti roll bar or if the connectors will stop the bar from fitting in the original mounting position?

Love the tucked chassis harness, I am thinking of going this way also. Just curious how you routed yours past/round the headlight bucket area?

So they might clear my 16's. Would be close though, current 310mm setup has some room left.

Not too bad, but would make mine too close to what my Honda is like on the motorway, I am also running 4.11 FD and I like only being at 3050rpm @70mph. That is good though because it means if I were to run one the same as yours all I would need to do is switch to a 3.5 final drive. I'd love to see some more videos of the box in action.

That gearbox is bloody awesome. Always wanted to add a PPG Sequential to mine. I looked at HGT boxes but they all seemed to have ratios to short for motorway driving and made a lot of noise? How are you finding these. Entire car is awesome by the way.

Looks like superb work so far. Love the brakes, I fancy an upgrade to AP racing sometime. What size are those discs?

I hope you get it sorted how you want it and it turns out to be everything you wanted it to be. A top spec traction control setup seems like a good idea, no point in having loads of power if you can't use it. Look forward to hearing how you get on.

Such a fantastic car and epically well done project. Does it drive as good as you hoped?

Interestingly NA's actually requite larger filters than force fed motors. I had a table listing what minimum size your filter needed to be for a given hp for both NA and turbo engines, I will post it if I can find it. If you can fit a filter with a v stack it makes a big difference.

Thanks. Not as sick as I felt I'm sure. I was meant to be heading to the Biggest Jap car show in the UK the next day and I'd got a space on the Top 20 arena, so gutted I didn't make it, had the ferry and B&B's booked and a friend arranged to come other with me, properly gutting. Thanks, its nice to have your own place, and I'm super happy to now have somewhere my own to work on the cars inside, no more lying on wet ground in the rain for me.

Then this happened. Someone old lady pulled out in front of me in a 60mph limit, I had no chance of stopping in time. Then she claimed it was my fault later on, I didn't want to loose my no claims and wanted the car repaired properly so I took her to court and Won of course, but it took over a year since the accident. Its not that bad but still is about £10,000 of damage, the airdam, bumper, bonnet, headlight bucket, headlight case, headlight, headlight cover, wing, indicator front, indicator side, grill, diffuser plate and two wheels where they touched the kerb are all damaged, as is part of the inner panel meaning the engine will have to be removed to straighten and repair. So, the car hasn't been on the road in over a year, between breaking my fibula and tibia wakeboarding to getting my first house and my Job commitments I just haven't had time. In good news however I bought my first house, and it has the all important triple garage, so I now have somewhere to store and work on my cars. That was the main reason for going with this house tbh, petrol head prioritys. The garage isn't much inside at the moment, but I have big plans for it, once the Datsun is sorted again it will be my next project before I can start another car project. Plan to extend the two right side bays longer to allow room for cabinets and benches with room to work on a car all round while it is on a scissor lift which will be recessed into the floor. Walls will be painted, floor will be tiled, insulation added to the roof, the two left bays will get a loft for storage and I'll fit flat led lighting panels recessed into the ceiling throughout. Got most of the parts needed to fix the Datsun now, I decided I would try and cut some weight So I got Marugen Shoukai FRP wings, amazing quality and only weigh 2.15kg each. I wanted a carbon fibre Bonnet, but nearly all available are actually fibreglass with a cosmetic skin of carbon. I wanted full dry carbon. Only two options I could see were Topstage Composites and Restored.JP. I went for the restored one, it weighs 5.7kg. Inside will stay carbon, topside will be body colour. Skillard full length grill I decided recently that I would go all out, so the whole car is going back to bare metal, only rust is a few spots in the floor plans, this will be repaired along with some more seam welding in the rear, some minor mods in the engine bay and I will be extending the frame rails to join the rear sub-frame. Currently trying to decide if I want to add a half cage or not. Stripping in progress. The sound deadening was a pain to remove, even with dry ice. I plan to re make the interior wiring while building her up again. Work should be commencing when I am on leave in July. So can't wait to drive her again. My sump needs better baffling and the flange isn't flat so I plan to either start from scratch or cut off the flange and re make the current one with a new flange, wings and an improved trap door setup. This will be done while the engine is out the car for the body work. Got some RB26 flanges ready to go.

Some random Photos: Some interior shots courtesy of Speedhunters: Had a great day driving about with some mates in out jap cars, shooting some video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKPQeYRkjYU

Just a few updates since I've not added anything here in a while. My Custom Blueprint, ordered this in A3 size but it was so nice I had to order another in size A2, good news is I can now have one in my hall and one in my Garage. Plan to get one for my Civic also so I can have them on the garage wall behind where the cars live. Changed some rubbers Overflow tank fits perfectly: Received some lovely parts from T3: Unfortunately the hubs won't fit without spacers Fitted them to find they leave the disc sitting about 8mm further out than the stock hubs so I had to remove them again. T3 have now sent me a spacer which should leave the discs sitting correctly. Not sure if I will use them yet though as its seems that almost no wheels will fit them without a spacer, does anybody know if they will fit Watanabes? T3 sent the spacers to me, I had asked for new bearings also because I had to fit the first new set back into my old hubs, I had expected to pay for these but they sent everything for free, I'm always happy with their customer service, top quality parts and great customer service. Working on a carbon fibre splitter Got myself a VBOX, yet to try it out properly but will post results once I have. I decided my washer bottle was letting my bay down, so I decided to have a nicer one made to my specs: It wasn't cheap but its a work of engineering art and respect of the skill levels required to make it: Upgraded my carbon wrapped taillight panels to real ones, didn't want the shiny look so went for satin finish. They look good but the mounting tabs for the lights are really really weak and half broke off so I am thinking I am planning to real carbon skin my stock ones if I can't repair the tabs with some Sikaflex.

I hope it fits, this way my first choice for an engine for my S30, but I figured I wouldn't have had the money for the fab work or the time to be able to carry it out so I went for the RB26 instead. I doubt it given that he seems to love the engine he is not going to ruin it by turbocharging it, plus 1000hp in an S30 isn't really useable like a 550hp NA S85 would be.

Well make sure you get every single last minuscule grain of rust or you will find it reappearing after only a couple of years, then you have to do a lot of hard work all over again. Thats why I like blasting, I get it cleaned and in primer within a day of being blasted maximum.

Why don't you get it media blasted? Bet way to make sure all the rust is gone.

I get all small parts sandblasted, then I prime them and paint them with a durable chassis black paint, I prefer this to powder-coating and its easy to do.

Thanks. Only in America. In the UK we got the 260Z up to 78 (actuallty after 78 but they stopped making them in 78, I think the last were sold in 79 which is when mine was bought), because we didn't have all the power sapping emissions shit on the L26 it made around 160hp so we never needed a 280Z which was not released here.

I was thinking that the slight flex in the system takes some of the shock out and prevents the wheels from breaking free as easily as they would if everything was solid. Hence me thinking my planned upgrades might not be an upgrade. Still considering the T3 drop mounts though as they would allow me to run a finned cover so I don't fry my OS Giken CLSD.

So this may be a stupid question, but I am sort of worried about changing things at my rear end too much because I actually have really good traction with how my setup currently is, much better traction than it seems most other people with S30's are getting. A lot of other modified Z's are running upgraded moustache bars and drop mounts but don't seem to have good traction so I am just wondering if it was possible that having some flex in the system could actually improve traction and if changing my stock ones for T3 might not be a good idea. So am I being crazy?

I'm not sure, might be able work with it: What doesn't help is that I work away from home, so I can't actually physically check things, doing all my planning from my memory and photos.

Thanks for your thoughts. I can say now that whatever cage goes into my car won't be perfect, it will be a compromise because I'm trying to have a car that car is good at many things, its mainly a street car and I want to keep that classic feel to it and don't want to loose interior functionality. It also has to be capable on a circuit and on a drag strip. 1 - X up high - good point, I can do without an x and just use 1 diagonal bar to save weight. 2 - I would like to do the backstays to the top of the tower, but doing so would mean loosing my seatbelts and I sure as heck don't want to be running harness anywhere other than on track. If you have any idea as to how I can re-engineer my seatbelts to somewhere else them let me know. 3 - Will do without these bars 4 - Again, I want to keep the interior nice looking and as original as possible so I don't really want to have bars running there. 5 - Not sure what you mean, the bar is straight across the towers, albeit slightly forward of where would be ideal, if this is what you mean I could always have it right across the middle and have this bar separate from the rest of the cage. I will be connecting with a plate to map light area. This is about as good a cage I get while keeping the seatbelts and keeping weight down, will it still have enough of an impact on stiffness to be worthwhile?