traininvain Posted August 10, 2015 Share Posted August 10, 2015 (edited) Finally got my project on the road after a long few years! Though I know it's decidedly less enjoyable for someone to post an entire build at once, I didn't have the patience to upload pictures along the way so that's all I have. As with most things I took way too many pictures at the start - and then have only a handful to cover months of work later. Thanks to all those who helped - both those here who lent a hand with the car when I needed it and those here on Hybrid who hooked me up with parts and advice when needed. Bunch of bulk pictures up here: If some of the build looks familiar, I did start a thread a while back but didn't bother to update and I think most of the links are broken anyway. Figure it will take a few posts to put the pictures up, and that may take me a bit, so in summary: Over the last two years this collection of parts which was supposedly an SR20: And this rusted out 73 that spent 40 years in Syracuse NY and was probably not worth calling a parts car: Has been brought back to life Work was made a bit slower by lack of a real garage, but my roundtop held up through winter and all. Burned a lot of propane through the winters, learned how to weld (and got too much experience), bought a lot of new tools, pretended I knew how to paint, and spent countless hours carting crap in and out of my basement to the tent. Victory! Edited August 13, 2015 by traininvain Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terse Posted August 10, 2015 Share Posted August 10, 2015 Looking great! I think most of us understand the amount of work and money that goes into a restoration project like this and can truly appreciate the work done. Looks like your photobucket album is set to private, so can't see the rest of your pics Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leon Posted August 10, 2015 Share Posted August 10, 2015 Looks like you did a fantastic job! Great work getting this Z back on the road. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
traininvain Posted August 13, 2015 Author Share Posted August 13, 2015 (edited) Engine build actually started before I found the car itself - found a deal on an SR20det that was packed away in boxes and rags. Initially I had intended to do a fairly stock build, and put a considerable amount of time into getting every bolt and hose accounted for, cleaned, and bagged up. It ended up that I utilized virtually nothing from this initial motor purchase - I think I used the head, valves, and the tranny along with a few misc sensors that seemed to be in decent condition. Everything was dec-greased and sorted - Then I found a crazy deal on an already-worked block locally. Bored .5mm over, decked, cleaned and ready to go. The block ended up being from an S14 (65F) bottom end so there were some minor issues to work through with the older not vvt head which was from an S13 (52F) motor. Mainly additional oil passages that needed to be blocked, and the front cover / oil pump don't share the same bolt pattern. Which of course meant I needed new pistons for the 86.5mm bore . . . and new pistons need new rods of course. Edited August 13, 2015 by traininvain Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
traininvain Posted August 13, 2015 Author Share Posted August 13, 2015 (edited) For the head I went with BC springs and retainers and BC stage 2 264 cams. A subset of the BC retainers ended up having the wrong inner diameter and the valve stem keepers wouldn't fit. Even though they were second hand BC next-day shipped me replacements no charge - great service Thankfully I had the sense to keep all the head innards in order when I disassembled Bled lifters - but then ended up having to re-bleed them again later after the motor sat for over a year Shimming the head was one of the areas I was least comfortable with - I couldn't find the tool that used to be made which sat in the SR lifter wells, so I made something from harbor freight goodies that ended up working out well enough but was difficult to use Tomei 1.5mm headgasket = more than I paid for the block haha All together - Edited August 13, 2015 by traininvain Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
traininvain Posted August 13, 2015 Author Share Posted August 13, 2015 One of the nice things about taking a long time for a build is you can really scoop up deals and aren't forced to track down parts as you need them. I had been on the lookout for a larger T28 turbo, was thinking of a GT28 but then this minty fresh 2871R .64AR came up locally for really cheap and I scooped her up - Greddy/Denso 720CC topfeeds to feed the beast Found out later that topfeeds are low impedance and you need to run resistors on them or you'll smoke the injector drivers in your SR20 ecu. Caught that oversight just in time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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