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simplicity and reliability, ZX turbo track toy


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Dude, update your thread!

 

So to all:

I got to see the car up close last weekend. Marshall has one of the best sorted S130's I've seen in person. Not exactly pretty, but mechanically speaking he's heading the right direction on all fronts. The work he's done reverse engineering the ECCS alone deserves a freakin' award, so hopefully some of you think twice before knocking a "drift scene kid's build". Honestly, I'm betting he'd lay down better track times right now than my S30 would, and I've probably got.... 350+lbs advantage on him.

 

Keep up the good work. Maybe one of these days the S130 will be worth something...

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  • 2 months later...
On 12/13/2018 at 9:53 PM, Gollum said:

Dude, update your thread!

 

So to all:

I got to see the car up close last weekend. Marshall has one of the best sorted S130's I've seen in person. Not exactly pretty, but mechanically speaking he's heading the right direction on all fronts. The work he's done reverse engineering the ECCS alone deserves a freakin' award, so hopefully some of you think twice before knocking a "drift scene kid's build". Honestly, I'm betting he'd lay down better track times right now than my S30 would, and I've probably got.... 350+lbs advantage on him.

  

Keep up the good work. Maybe one of these days the S130 will be worth something...

Thanks Gollum!  
Its good to have some appreciation for my work.

The car still needs a lot of sorting for grip configuration, the tires are still too small.  Lots of tuning left to do. 
Last time on Thunderhill west with 205 tires all around I had a best lap of 1:33.844, that was with the old motor and stock ECCS running in the 10:1 AFR range spitting 6" flames out the exhaust.   I really want to do more grip days with the car, but most of my friends drift so I've been doing that most of the time.  
 

On 12/13/2018 at 11:52 PM, Zlived said:

Just found this thread thanks to Gollum on resurrecting it from the dead. Keep us posted on your work/events please! great content and who gives cares weather its for grip/drifting? He's driving hard and having FUN! got instagram?

@Datmarshall on instagram, I haven't updated it in a long time.  I used to post something up after each event. 
My youtube page 'Initial Bonk' has some in-car content from various track days.  I try to post a video for every event I go to. 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_Prm-4M1uRIb1Ulg_umy5Q

 

 

@swiftsurfer 

I stopped posting here when I lost interest in continuing public documentation on my build.
 

Continuing from December 2015, the crank case was full of water but the head gasket and all the seals were fine when I disassembled the block.

I ended up getting some spare heads and blocks and assembling a completely new drivetrain, although pretty much the same setup as before. 

Everything from the radiator to the stub axles have been changed at this point, including new rear wheels(not pictured).

The whole car, every nut and bolt forward of the seats, was rebuilt in 2016 and only running again in  late January 2017.  

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I proceeded to Bash to the Future V and wrecked a door unfortunately, so this was the end of the livery.
 

 

 

 

Since then I've attended a few more events, but generally the car has been sitting more than driving. 
I replaced my 510 with a geo metro some time in 2015, so I drive that most of the time.  

There's been some more development on the car, such as issues with too much amperage draw with the taurus fan causing belt slip whenever it turned on. 
I switched to a quest alternator with some better belts, and a pair of spal fans.  
Also started a write-up on mounting issues with the quest alternator, but haven't finished it.  
A lot of smaller changes were made, such as adding a gauge panel for the radio slot. 

The power steering rack blew out on the last trip drifting at Thunderhill West, so I finally rebuilt the whole power steering system. 

 


I also finally figured out that 205mm tires are tiny, and completely insufficient for the chassis weight.  I've been drifting on 225's, but they're still too small for any serious track performance.  


I have only about 5000 miles on it since the fresh drivetrain. 
The miles are racking up again since I started developing tuning methods for the stock ECCS, details can be found on my thread over in the EMS section. 

 

 

Here's some pictures on various tracks from last year.   This is the last you'll see of those center line reps, I decided I like grip more than fitment. 

Please note I do not own any of these photos, they're re-posts and credits are due to the photographers who come out and shoot these events without pay.

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On another topic, I've also joined a Lemons team with a BMW E36.  I will be driving the upcoming March 9/10 event at Sonoma Raceway. 

 

 

 

 

Edit,

Decided this was a good place to post my Nissan Quest 125amp alternator swap. (around 5/2018)

The taurus fan was pulling too many amps, I had belt slippage issues when it would kick on and low voltage. 

I used a file to flatten the top of the alternator casing to fit the v-band pulley. 
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Lapped the spacer down to get the pulley as close to the alternator face as possible. 
It doesn't wobble even though I did this by hand. 


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The vbelt was still significantly misaligned with the water pump & crank pulley, I had to cut the tab a bit to bring it into alignment again using a file.  not ideal but kept it flat enough to align properly. 
 

Couldn't get the camera to focus properly on this one. 

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Added a spacer in the mount to compensate for the lost material.

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The result was good.

Checked alignment to the water pump pulley and the crank pulley.  

 

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The setup now requires a shorter belt & adjustment rod. 

I used a generic domestic alternator adjustment rod that comes with 3/8" rod ends and added bushings to drop down to 5/16".  

Belt part number is an A34.
A43 belt works for power steering. 
I used gates hi power belts, they're great.  they actually tighten up when they wear instead of loosening up. 


However this was only a band-aid to the real issue, which was that terrible taurus fan.
I swapped over to dual spal 12" fans, they flow about the same and pull a lot less current. 
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I also remounted the oil cooler right up against the radiator so the fans actually pull through it now, although oil temps aren't an issue I want to keep it that way.

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Finally centered and leveled my seat bracket properly

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Also I learned small tires suck, and started running a 25" tall rear tire.
Changed the diff to keep the gearing the same. 

The M30 open diff is a very interesting design compared to the old R200's. 

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No matter, its metal and that means it can be welded. 
As I've started plate welding diffs, I added some small plates inbetween the gears as filler material.  The carrier will split in half before this breaks. 

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Here's an S13 diff I did not long ago, you can see its much stronger than the first one I did on my car. 


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I did the PRW2 swap.  Going to add some accel 8.8 plug wires later as well, they're on the shelf somewhere. 


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Details are important.  Added a gauge panel to fill the empty hole in the center console, as well as house my chippernut shift light. 

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After adding an oil temp gauge worrying that my oil temps were too high, I actually came across the opposite issue.
My oil temps were actually too low cruising on the highway, so I added an oil thermostat.

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The ZX has a strange notch sticking into the rear arches, I don't like tires rubbing so I cut it out. 

Don't mind the booger welds... I ground them back after :( 

 

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Summary,
almost everything I've done on the car since the 2016 rebuild has been fixing details, correcting small issues or replacing parts of the setup that don't work properly. 

 

Edited by stupid_fast
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  • 4 weeks later...

An update, which will be expanded upon with more technical posts later on when I'm able to dig into it.  

With a rebuilt rack after the failure at my last Thunderhill west event 9/23/2018 I rebuilt my power steering with all new seals.
The pump was also rebuilt including a very expensive OE reservoir cap to fix all my leaks.

 

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On returning to Thunderhill west a couple weeks ago on 3/17 I show up to the track, turn my car around in the pits to unload my track gear and there's a puddle of ATF on the ground. 
The rack blew out before I even got it on track!

The driver side boot was full of ATF, same side that failed last time.  Unfortunately with the smog test due and some other personal things getting in the way I have no time to fix until later next month, I'll be recording here and hopefully finding a mistake in the rack rebuild that caused the seals to blow out again.


I still ran on track, just removed the PS belt & drained the rack. 
In car footage will be on youtube once I get around to splicing all the good bits together.

 


Anyway, its been a long time since I washed my car and I finally did it today. 
Also haven't taken many pictures of the car in its current state. 
Goes to show what a bit of cleaning can do even to a beat up car! 

 

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Edited by stupid_fast
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  • 1 month later...

 

The steering rack issue ended up just being a small installation oversight due to the way I put the center seal in, I had pushed it over the gear and it cut the seal.

I assembled the rack from the other side of the main shaft and was able to get everything to seal up no problem. 
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After a proper alignment on a nice dug-in rack and a new set of tires, I was ready to head to my next event at jackson county sports park in Medford Oregon. 

Dropped the cars off at the track, and went back to town to spend the night.
We arrived at the track in the morning, attended the drivers meeting and I ended up being the first one on track, drove for a few laps and started getting comfortable and BAM!  Stripped out 3rd gear on the initiation into the first corner. 
 

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This is was a late KA / SR larger gearset. (there are two gearsets for the KA with the same ratios)

 

I pulled the gearbox at the track, cleaned up the bits and resealed it and dropped it back in to drive home.
A waste of a track day, but at least I got home without a tow. 

 

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Luckily I have a spare gear set on the shelf, so all will be fixed soon. 
 

The blown gearbox being pulled apart.


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Here's my spare big gearset vs another early KA box I got.  The big gearset is about 2mm bigger on each gear.   

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The state of my new garage is bad as well, so lots of things need to be addressed before this thing will be back out. 

Edited by stupid_fast
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This is likely my favorite current build thread, really enjoying the deep dives into everything from gearboxes to ECU definition files. Your pragmatism and ingenuity are fun to watch. Keep up the good work and keep sending it. :trippen:

Edited by Leon
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Leon,  Thanks!  Its nice to know someone finds my ramblings entertaining.  

I'll  do my best to keep this updated as things progress with the car.
Although I have all the parts, I'm taking my time rebuilding the gearbox for now as there's several tech discussions I need to go back and read. 



On another topic, i just ran another lemons race in my friends E36 on the Thunderhill 5 mile.  I really want to get my z on that track and make it set some respectable lap times. 

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Great thread and keep it coming!  I went to my first drift event, Lone Star Drift this past Saturday with my 16 yo son.  We had a great time.  I was surprised how many Zs were there.  There were mostly 350z, but there were a few S130 and Z31s in the mix. 

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Thanks Rossman, drifting is fun but the scene here is annoying me. 

There are a few Z's drifting out here as well, but they're not great cars for it. 

Here's a bit more details on the gearbox I blew up.

The annoying part of all this is that I replaced the T5 since it was known to strip out gears!

The S13 box was rebuilt before I installed it in 2016.  It received fresh bearings, synchros and clearances checked to FSM spec. 
I also blocked off the oil passages in the sandwich plate (jb weld held fine for this) , and relocated the rear bearing oil scraper to 5th instead of on 1st to reduce oil transfer to the back of the box.
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Note, there were also two main shafts available. 
The top one has a larger diameter, and longer splines on the output shaft.
I threw away the larger one, the output splines were twisted so I decided it was unsafe to use.

 

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Another topic from mid 2017,
The turbo CV ends I had were worn out and making very loud horrible noises.

They never completely failed, but the noise was unbearable for driving the car any significant distance. 
As the axles were over $700 each from Nissan, and rare to find used I needed to find a better solution.
 

These were toast!  My other pair were just as loud, even though they still had plenty of grease in them.

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So what's the solution?

Most nissan CV axles used the same spline through the 80s and 90s. 

The 300zx CV joints aren't an option anymore, as they're either expensive from nissan or not available in the aftermarket. 

 

I looked at the Infiniti M30 based on a single comment I found here on hybridz.  It has an R200 long nose with the same differential spline, and suspension similar in design to the z31.
Its also a newer model, and it only came with an NA VG30e and automatic transmissions.  Junk yard axles are likely to be in good condition. 

 

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The stub axles are required to run M30 outer CV joints. 

They're similar to Z31, use bigger bearings and significantly larger spline.

 

M30 on left, S130 on right. 
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The M30 stubs kick out the track an extra 5mm, and the brake caliper requires a spacer to function properly.
 

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The next issue to deal with is the axle lengths, the M30, Z31, and pretty much all newer nissan axles are too long. 

 

The two shorter axles are S130, the longer ones are M30. 

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The S130 turbo axle shafts are pretty much identical including the spline. 
The only difference is that the tripod bearings are pressed onto the s130 axles, vs c-clip fit for the M30. 


Another benefit, the CV boots are now readily available for $15 aftermarket or $40 from Nissan. 

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The end caps are a pain to get off and on the first time, slap them against the tripod bearing a few times they'll pop off.
They're press fit need to be clamped and sealed when replaced. 
I used sleeve retainer 640. haven't had an issue yet.
 

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The M30 factory axle bolts come with some sort of thread locker, so I always put more on when I replace them.

 

$75 replacements are much better than paying over $1500 for a custom axle solution. 

 

S13 inner tripod CV joints are functionally identical to M30 outer CV joints. 
New aftermarket S13 inners are available for $40/each from febest.
I've found that usually the outer CV joint wears out before the inner.

Since I stripped out my gearbox before having an issue with one of these axles, I'd say they're strong enough for most use cases. 

 

The M30 long nose 3.91 also fits with minimal modification, just need to swap over the input flange & grind a bit off the casing.

 

 

Edited by stupid_fast
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Nice, I've run Lemons four times now but all at Sonoma. We keep wanting to build a car and run more of the West Coast races but having the time to do so has prevented such ventures. Came really close to buying a $400 IROC Z Camaro lol! The E36 is probably the perfect chassis for low-buck enduros. It's cheap, easy to work on, has great parts availability, and is fun to drive.

 

It would be cool to see the ZX at a track event sometime. If there are ever any old Z's at the days I go to, they're always S30s. I run mostly with NASA but also Trackmasters and Speed Ventures. Once in a while, I'll do a day with some other random club. Let us know if you sign up for any!

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Leon,
My first time in lemons was at the last Sonoma event in the rain, the E36 was fantastic to drive!  Its a monster in the wet. 
I'm in the unicorns aint U's car #201. 

It'll be a couple months before I'm ready to go to the track with the z, after moving and all.  Also waiting on funds for a new wheel & tire setup. 
I'll definitely let you know, it should be either sonoma or thunderhill.  Probably will be with SpeedSF to start out as I've already gone to several of their events before.  

I'd be interested in some other track events as well, as long as they aren't super novice oriented.  Open passing and plenty of run time makes me happy. 

Edited by stupid_fast
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Right on, I've been running the Works Mitsubeastie in Lemons. It's slow as hell but the most fun I've ever had on track!

 

I'll be sure to say hi if I ever see an S130 in the paddock. :) I may come up to Sonoma next Saturday for the Speed Festival in case you plan to be around.

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  • 2 months later...
On 5/27/2019 at 9:16 PM, Leon said:

Right on, I've been running the Works Mitsubeastie in Lemons. It's slow as hell but the most fun I've ever had on track!

 

I'll be sure to say hi if I ever see an S130 in the paddock. :) I may come up to Sonoma next Saturday for the Speed Festival in case you plan to be around.

 

Leon, I think stupid_fast will also be at the autox at sonoma September 14th... You should come out. Fuel filter issue or not. :-)

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1 hour ago, Gollum said:

 

Leon, I think stupid_fast will also be at the autox at sonoma September 14th... You should come out. Fuel filter issue or not. :-)

 

Nice, we'll see if I can make it. I'm already planning to run the road course with NASA the weekend before so the wife will take some extra convincing if I'm going to make it happen. :)

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Having trouble uploading the video, but if it worked here's a lap from my recent visit to buttonwillow. 

Had some running issues, but overall felt great to get out on track. 

 

 

edit; re uploaded w/ youtube.  Fasted lap was 2:21.374. 

https://youtu.be/xv4rmxQ1vH8

 

Edited by stupid_fast
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  • 1 month later...

I lost a bunch of pictures from recent work when my phone died, but here's a brief update. 

When I slapped in my cam in a few months ago before the Buttonwillow event I also installed a new Powerbond crank damper PN# PB1212N.
Last weekend I went to check the timing after my dizzy cap screw backed out and couldn't find the crank mark.
Pulled everything apart and re-checked the balancer against a degree wheel, the outer ring has rotated by about 35 degrees. 
I bought the new part because I was afraid of the 40 year old factory unit slipping!

During disassembly I found that my new aftermarket engine mounts are also starting to fail again. 

Going to just order up some OEM nissan units, the original factory parts never had issues. 

 

Annoying to still struggle with reliability at this point, but at least there's less things to fix at this point. 
 


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After ignition issues at Buttonwillow I realized I simply hadn't changed my dizzy cap & rotor for several years!
Finally took the time to finally install these Accel 8.8 plug wires that have been sitting on the shelf for over a year.
Really can't tell if they've helped anything, but they look good. 

 

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As it sits today, waiting for the decision on what crank balancer to go with. 


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From Buttonwillow a few months ago.


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Edited by stupid_fast
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  • 3 weeks later...

Looking at your video it looks like you are still running a locked diff which will be jerky in corners and not give a smooth drive transition like a really good clutch type LSD will. OS Giken FTW.

Getting a 280ZX track worthy is a huge job so well done there, the 280ZX is one of those in between cars, still old school and lacking in powertrain development that benefited later model Z's.

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  • 2 weeks later...

260DET, thanks for the comment.

I'm still running a locked center, and really can't justify the expense to upgrading to an LSD for this car since I'm not doing any level of competition.
A huge contributor to the high speed instability is the alignment settings, my last alignment was optimized for drifting and was almost ideal for that purpose.
An LSD has been on the list for a long time, but with how beat up this chassis has gotten over the years I'm starting to only do the maintenance required to get as much seat time as possible rather than upgrades.

I'd like to also start messing with some front air dam and basic budget aero as experience to apply to my lemons team car. 
Nothing crazy like a big wing, probably just front air dam, under body panels, and a simple diffuser to keep the end back down. 
Cooling is still an issue, typically Its creeping up to 220* water temps after a hot lap session.  


I'm currently working on a few more maintenance bits and optimizations, going to be on thunderhill 3 mile in a couple weeks with SpeedSF. 
 

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