flatout Posted Sunday at 12:44 AM Share Posted Sunday at 12:44 AM After about a decade of talking myself out of buying something as Ive spent a lot of time building and tuning a handful of other cars in road racing and drag racing disciplines, as well as starting and building a machining business 5 years ago, I finally started the search for something to build to race myself. I tossed the idea of a lot of different chassis options. S30, 240sx, Mustang, Corvette, MR2, ETC. The 240sx made the most sense considering I have a S13 240sx as a high performance street car, that I have also raced in a few different forms so I am very knowledgable in that chassis, but my search always ventured back to the S30 because I have always liked them and not to mention beating up on modern sports cars with a 50+ year old car just really sparks and interest for me. My main road race car i support and tune is a gt40 so going to the track with a couple old cars and beating up on Porsches sounds like a good time. I searched far and wide in the north east, USA looking for a quality candidate. Unfortunately rust made that a challenging feat. Randomly a friend of a friend posted a 1jz for sale and my friend had a suspicion that it meant he was giving up on the 280z he had been trying to build for 10 years. I reached out. showed "interest" in the engine. showed up and talked him into selling the whole deal. The chassis has some really "questionable" work done but overall the chassis is a super low mileage fairly clean car that i wont feel bad modifying and making a track oriented build. The deal ended up being a package deal with: 1jz-gte with 350z trans a pile of T3 suspension parts R200 short nose conversion fortune auto coilovers 300zx front and rear brakes Universal wiring harness bunch of misc parts. wheels not included, I planned on going 5 lug so they where not use to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flatout Posted Sunday at 12:47 AM Author Share Posted Sunday at 12:47 AM first order of business was to add a fuel cell since i didn't have a fuel tank. Went with a radium 14 gallon unit. Cut the trunk out between the factory frame rails and built a basket. Cleaned it up with some bead rolled panels. plan to add a fill behind the license plate like an old muscle car. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flatout Posted Sunday at 12:58 AM Author Share Posted Sunday at 12:58 AM Next order of business was to get the 1j sitting in there. It came with some cx racing motor mount kit but I really didn't like them so decided to make my own to put the engine where i wanted it. Apparently i only took 1 photo. but just imagine a second one of these mounts. once the engine was sitting where i wanted it i decided to cut the factory radiator support out and make something removable to make service easier. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flatout Posted Sunday at 01:00 AM Author Share Posted Sunday at 01:00 AM spend some time planning out the front, bending up some tubes and getting the tubular front made up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flatout Posted Sunday at 01:03 AM Author Share Posted Sunday at 01:03 AM the 1j factory throttle body is big is dumb looking so i decided to trim it down and remove all the unnecessary pieces. made up a little billet spacer to remove the cruise control pulley. I may go dbw eventually but this will do for now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flatout Posted Sunday at 01:16 AM Author Share Posted Sunday at 01:16 AM The car came with s13 front knuckles. Apparently this was a thing a long time ago but the geometry is terrible. So I 3d scanned a knuckle and started designing a knuckle that will work. in the mean time I am modifying these with the corrected geometry I came up with for real word testing before I made a set from billet. My new design will use the 370 wheel bearing so I modified these to accept that as well to go 5 lug since I'll need that bearing eventually. They need more changes but I figured i needed to get moving on other projects like brakes, turbo stuff and body work so these will have to wait a bit before any more modifications. Went with a custom set of wilwoods. after talking with the reps a few times settles on a set of superlites front and rear. The piston volume front and rear meets the common spec of twice the front piston volume compared to the rear. designed and 3d printed calipers brackets that will get CNC machined when i have some spare time. Plan was to do 7075 for the front brackets but may get made from titanium because I have some in the right size, but rear will be an alloy steel because of the design I want the strength. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flatout Posted Sunday at 02:26 AM Author Share Posted Sunday at 02:26 AM started tackling the turbo system. designed and machined a stainless exhaust flange because I couldn't find one I liked. 304ss that seamlessly transitions the oval port to round so i can use sch 10 stainless. Went with a billet turbo flange from elmer racing. I make these kind of things but no way I could have made one for what they charge. beautiful piece. I ordered 321 sch10 stainless weld els to make the rest. after a little "writers block" i finally got a decent layout for a turbo manifold. The car came with a precision turbo but unknowing the condition and the size wasn't ideal i ended up going with a garrett gtx3076r with a v band inlet. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FastFloridian Posted Sunday at 02:34 PM Share Posted Sunday at 02:34 PM Love the build so far, looking forward to watching the progress. Same reason I decided to go with the s30 chassis for my build, wanted to (my skill permitting) beat some modern cars with a 50+yr old car. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flatout Posted Sunday at 05:25 PM Author Share Posted Sunday at 05:25 PM got some more photos uploaded. Switching to manual brakes per the recommendation of wilwood. moved the pivot point for the pedals to give me a 6:1 ratio. Also added one for 5.5:1 and 5:1 incase i feel the need to. welded up a gusset to the "bend" on the pedal as well as machined bronze bushings for the clutch. Designed and 3d printed an adapter plate for the firewall to accept the wilwood balance bar adapter raised to match the 6:1 pedal ratio better. Made a few design changes and machined it out of anodized aluminum. Real happy with how it came out. Ignore the mismatched hardware. thatll get changed later at final assembly. Didn't take any photos but took the factory pedal box assembly out and added some stitch welds around all the spot welded areas to reassure myself that it would hold up to the added abuse of racing. I went to PRI and talked to wilwood and tilton and couldn't come up with a real good reason to spend the extra money on a aftermarket pedal box. so well see how this holds up. I can always change it later. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flatout Posted Sunday at 05:28 PM Author Share Posted Sunday at 05:28 PM 2 hours ago, FastFloridian said: Love the build so far, looking forward to watching the progress. Same reason I decided to go with the s30 chassis for my build, wanted to (my skill permitting) beat some modern cars with a 50+yr old car. Its so much fun being in the pits and having the Porsche guys come over and be so surprised how fast an old car can be. "I expected to blow right past you and I did everything i could to even keep up". We get it all the time in my uncles GT40. Hopefully this year we can have both cars out there doing the same. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Novice Petrol Head Posted Monday at 03:28 AM Share Posted Monday at 03:28 AM Fantastic build so far! My favorite thing about this forum is learning new ideas for my build from more experienced builders. I always learn something from the different ways the rad and front supports are built to improve on the factory design, but I also love adding the small stuff to my list, like the gussets on the pedals. Great idea, that I would never have thought of. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flatout Posted Monday at 12:42 PM Author Share Posted Monday at 12:42 PM 9 hours ago, Novice Petrol Head said: Fantastic build so far! My favorite thing about this forum is learning new ideas for my build from more experienced builders. I always learn something from the different ways the rad and front supports are built to improve on the factory design, but I also love adding the small stuff to my list, like the gussets on the pedals. Great idea, that I would never have thought of. Thanks, Im trying my best to build something fun, reliable and something I'm proud of. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flatout Posted Monday at 12:51 PM Author Share Posted Monday at 12:51 PM (edited) over the christmas break I got the rest of the turbo hot side plumbed. the manifold is like 3/4 welded up. My purge bottle was getting real low so instead of risking it i held off and started working on the rest. Notched a hole in the "wheel well" to go around the new added strut support bar I did that allowed me to run the 4" intake tube thru the front end and put the filter out in fresh air. Just made a piece out of 4" stainless exhaust, notched and welded it into the chassis. welded an elbow to the turbo. simple intercooler pipe made up. tial BOV on the throttle body side. have the downpipe fitted and tacked together back to about the bellhousing. Forgot to note. ditched the 350z trans for a tremec TKX. The size, weight, and gearing of the 350z transmission were all turnoffs to me. having run the tremecs in other cars i knew it was a good choice for this build. Much smaller. better gearing and options for a saftey blow shield made it my first choice. The car already had the factory trans mount cut out (poorly) so i cleaned it up and added a new mount system off the full frame rail pieces. that were also "added" They are so poorly welded that i used "added". I'll finish welding them in. Edited Monday at 12:52 PM by flatout Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flatout Posted Monday at 01:03 PM Author Share Posted Monday at 01:03 PM Next order of business was electric fan and shroud, and radiator hoses. I chose the 2016-2019 Camaro single SPAL 18" fan. it will be PWM controlled and is a very popular choice according to the internet as it can flow 5000CFM. Although I cut up the factory shroud to "work" I felt like I needed something fancier. modeled up a base to start working from and had my friends at laserbros in NC laser cut and bend it up. Should have gone one or two AWG thicker so added some bracing as well as some mounts and very happy with the final product. Cut down the radiator and inlets and outlets on the engine and welded on some -16an bungs, made up a couple hoses. in the last photo of the "hose installed" you can see the end of the pipe for the intake I welded into the chassis I mentioned in the previous post. Also decided to move the alternator to the other side of the engine to get it away from the heat. When i pull the engine to paint the bay i'll design and make a bracket to permanently mount it over there. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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