bthomp Posted June 1, 2011 Share Posted June 1, 2011 So after being part of this group for a few years now, I figured I should do a write up finally. Guess I'll start at the beginning. Back when my older bother got his first car, it was a 76 280, which ironically wasn’t that long after my mom sold her 280zx 2+2. He took it off to college a few states away from here and the shocks went threw the towers. Shocker... He junked and left it at the college for them to deal with. On his way back home with his buddy, they ran into a guy with a 240z. It had no glass, seats, or doors installed, but it was all in the trunk. Now mind you this was back in the early 90s..., he drove it home from TN-MD and left it at my house so he could work on it one day. Many years later my dad found an almost running 78 280z for $200. At first he was going to buy it so my brother could take some parts maybe from it, but then I stepped in saying I was going to need a car soon and would be willing to restore it, with the idea upping the HP and what not in the back up my head. So I bought it with a ton of body work that needed to be done to it. There were holes in the floor panels and fire wall. Rust everywhere because the sunroof that was installed came loose at the seal, along with a front windshield that had a huge gapping hole in it. The engine though was swapped by the other owner that was going to mod it with a working engine, so that part wasn’t so bad. And as you can figure there was water damage on just about everything on the inside, and the outside was rusted every few feet, along with a holy rear bumper and a minor dent in the rear fender. As I was sanding and grinding at everything, I came across a few more rusty/flick it and it gone, spots. The frame rail on the drivers’ side was no good at all. I also found out that there was a huge gapping hole near the front left shock tower about 4in. high, and 6in. long ... After that was done, my uncle lent me his paint booth and books to help pick out a color that he would order from me. I was looking for a smoky silver look that I saw on a few Nissan cars in the area, which would let me keep a grayish look on the car still. But my dad really wasn’t too happy about a dark color, so we settled on polish silver metallic, a newer color that Nissan came out with. During the painting process, we painted the air filter box without thinking about the fact we had an aftermarket air filter at home. The hood vents, grill, and side mirror we painted a black metallic, can’t remember the exact color name. Some of the interior that was replaced after paint and when we started to put things back together was the carpet, hood liner, dash cover, shifter boot, ing lock, rear view mirror glass, front windshield (the guy we got the car off of had an extra one in the back that he jut never got around to replacing), most lights, radio, antenna, and the side speakers. In the truck right behind the seats, we cut out the board and put in 6x9 speakers. (Most of the time I have 80% of the sound going to the rear and didn’t ever use the side ones) The exterior gained a new rear bumper, brake lines, wheels and well that’s about it other than some lights. So before we got started on trying to see if the engine would start, we wanted to make sure the rest of the electric was working. Save the engine for last. Anyways, when we started working on things, about the only things that would work were the map light, stereo system and the right head light. Why the right, beats me. I replaced all the fuses, and that fixed most of my problems. The left front head light wasn’t working still and nor were m turn signals half of the time or my high beams. After a few days of trouble shooting, it all started to work. On to the engine now... things that we replaced were spark plugs and wires, air and fuel filter, all the liquids, and a few hoses. We put in some fresh gas and tried to start it. A few seconds in we got an attempt of the car to run, but then died quickly. First thing we looked at as fuel because other than new gas and a filter, we left it untouched. We started to check fuel pressure to see if anything was even getting to the engine and it wasn’t gas that was already in the lines that made the car start for a second. There was nothing... The fuel pump was running good when we tested it. After looking around online, we found out that the car needed a full tank of gas or some extreme pressure pushing in the tank. Thankfully we happened to have our 80 gallon air compressor tank next to the car After a few attempts on trying to get the fuel moving threw the lines to the pump, we finally got it, and not long after we got the car running We then took it for a test drive to see how it was doing. The next day my dad took it out to show some friends and he soon realized how far 3gl of gas would get him in the car... On the way back home the car was having problems with engine power lost. After taking some things apart, we found out that the fuel pump was clogged. We didn’t think much of it and thought that it was going to clear out soon, after all that car sat for 10ish years... After a few times of cleaning out the pump, we then got a filter for in front of the pump. Things went good for a while till the filters were clogging so fast, so we took the tank off. Turned out that the whole interior was rusted on the tank. While we looked for a hot tank to dip my tank in, I also started replacing things on the engine and testing things. The reason was that the idle would seem to stick at times, and the car had problems starting while warm, not hot, but warm. I ended up mass trouble shooting by replacing every hose I could along with the injectors, thermo stat and sensor, and a few other things that I just can’t seem to remember. I even was checking the AFM. Cleaned the wire connections and grounds. While I was at it, I even painted a few things. The tank we ended up dumping various acids that we had, some of which I questioned why my dad had such large quantities just laying around After we got the tank put back on and everything hooked back up, the car was still having problems with sticky idle and starting warm/ now hot as well. I took it to a few friends on mine and they thought it was an air:fuel problem and I was getting too much air causing a chain of problems. After looking around on here for my trouble shooting problems, I found out that some people were having problems with their BCDD. Seeing how that was an electrical thing, I ended up taking the car to an automotive electrical specialist to see what he could find. The guy ended up finding that the EGR was not working at all and disconnected it, and that the BCDD wasn’t working most of the time. He asked me to find a replacement incase he couldn’t fix mine, or at least use parts from it to fix mine seeing how he couldn’t get a hold of anyone that could sell him a kit or really anything for it. Bought one off of someone on here, and the mechanic tells me that he just took it apart and it was just sticky and needed something to lube and free it up So after all of that it was finally running good, but then a friend of mine bought an evo8 as if his talon that he semi supped up wasn’t good enough... Naturally I had to try and at least come close to the evo if not beat it And since the two of us had been talking about turbos soo much I decided to turbo my NA during the winter while the roads were covered in salt. At first I wasn’t sure where I was going to go with this project and just took the engine, wiring, and exhaust out of the car. After reading many builds on here I finally had a plan. My buy list till I became ok with the large power inc, and a lot more money was this. MS2, Turbonetics t3/t4 turbo, cxracing intercooler with piping and bov, booze racing air filter, 440cc supra injectors and fuel rail to match, fuel pressure regulator with gauge from a good company, minor port job on the head and exhaust and intake manis, 280zxt manis, 240sx throttle body, flame thrower coil, Taylor spark plug wires, cleaned block with new rings/baring/and all that good stuff, larger fuel lines, hallman boost controller, 3in exhaust, electric cooling fan, DNA motors wastegate, innovative O2 sensor, and 224 clutch. While I was at, I put new poly bushing on the car along with painting the engine bay Being that I just finished high school this past week, learning about everything in my build list in a few weeks before I bought anything/ built(MS2) was quite a challenge. Also seeing how I had wrestling practice 6 days a week and multiple friday-satuday tournaments didn’t help with the learning. The inability to get a job during this time didn’t help with funding of this project. Nor did black dragon taking 3 weeks to send me a single piston oil ring that was missing from the set Here I am now though, coming close to an end with just putting things together and getting ready to hook up MS which should be in 2 weeks after I get the exhaust system here that I have to build and install. Ill look for pictures that I’ve taken over the build and post them soon, just figured I would type something up here first and wanted to thank the various people that I have either bought something from, or got help from, either by a post they put up already, or by just flat out answering questions that I sent them Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bthomp Posted June 1, 2011 Author Share Posted June 1, 2011 i later hope to get a better head, along with boaring the head 3mm, along with all forged internals. Better turbo oil pump, and the list could go on for a bit. But that's probably a bit down the line, have to pay for college now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bthomp Posted June 2, 2011 Author Share Posted June 2, 2011 (edited) Edited June 2, 2011 by bthomp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bthomp Posted June 2, 2011 Author Share Posted June 2, 2011 most of any good photos were lost over time due to computer fail, or cell phone loss Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
503Alex Posted June 2, 2011 Share Posted June 2, 2011 Nice build! I just finished high school also, and am working on a '77 build. I like where you're going with yours. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bthomp Posted June 2, 2011 Author Share Posted June 2, 2011 Well I'm planing on just making a horse power machine in the end. But this build is going to work for me for now, probably going to change the shocks soon when I get the money Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bthomp Posted June 21, 2011 Author Share Posted June 21, 2011 some more pictures. I have the engine finally in, have not really done anything to it in the past 2 weeks, been down at my brothers house in Carry, NC working on restoring his 72 240z. Guess ill have to start another thread for his project. just realized looking at the pictures, i forgot to put the throttle body back on... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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