veritech-z's Camo ZZZap!

[veritech-z]

just typed a writeup so long that it timed out, and I lost it all...I'm a bit fed up so I'll just put the pictures in for now:

 

edit: Ok, let's try this again. My car is a 1977 280z. It was originally blue with cream interior, and automatic. The interior was nasty, so it got the boot. The paint was shot, so out came the rattlecans. The first paint scheme was modeled after a Veritech fighting mech from the series Robotech (specifically Roy Fokker's Skull One). At this time the car was using the original N42 L28 with early round SU carbs. I had swapped the auto for a 4-speed manual, and then swapped that in turn for a 5-speed and R200 combo. This 5-speed has 5th gear pop-out though, so I'm not especially fond of it...

here is the aforementioned veritech fighting mech:

These wheels are 14X7" western wheels (came with my first 280, carried over to this one which came with steelies and hubcaps, now they are owned by BradmanQ45. In all honesty, now that they're gone, I kind of miss them...

getting the tranny and diff installed.

 

 

I got bored with the white paint job, and decided some flat black was in order. That too got old, so I decided to add a bit of flavor to it. Enter the ZZZap! paint scheme. Of course, that was a little too dated as it sits, so I had to kick it up a notch. I blame Olderthanme. For the discussion and conceptualization of this paint job, visit these charming threads:

http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=111961&highlight=s30+drawing

 

http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=112218&highlight=s30+drawing

this is the car after the ZZZap! paint job. In this photo you'll notice my fender mounted power mirrors that started their lives as OEM parts from a 1979 Mazda RX-7, but they aren't currently hooked up to power. You may also notice the filled gas door and Acura RSX type-S side skirts (shortened to fit), with Acura mud guards. I've also got a fiberglass front spook of unknown origin. As it sits right there, I'm using the tokico 1" drop with the non-adjustable blue cartridges. I've gotten most of the way through my uerethane bushing install, but I've sort of run out of steam...I'm in the process of building my own pin puller right now. The wheels are Impul Hoshino Racing RS III's. Front are 17X7" with 205/50ZR17 tires, and the rear are 17X8" with 255/40ZR17 tires. I think when it comes time to change the tires, I'll do a 215/45 in the front for a slightly lower profile. The wheels are +38 offset, so I've got 1.5" hub adapters all the way around. I've been repainting those too, since the graphite was getting old. Here are the two I've finished so far, white is front, black is rear.

 

 

This is my alternate wheel, MOMO Quasar 15X7" +30 offset. Front tires are 195/50R15, rear is 195/55R15. WAY too low profile, but the tires were free, so I'll worry about that when they are bald. It may never come to that...

This is my engine bay now, I'm in the middle of installing a megasquirt I ver. 2.2, fuel only. I've got a JSK fuel rail set up to run stock injectors. 16 gallon plastic summit fuel cell with the foam, stock fuel pump. -8 braided feed line to the pump, -6 everywhere else. I'm feeding the rail from both sides, regulating it out of the middle, supposedly this is better for consistent fuel feed but since the car isn't running yet, I can't confirm or deny this. I've got a smoothed and EGR deleted N42 manifold ported to fit a KA throttle body, with the JSK throttle spacer. Wrinkle finish black on most of the underhood stuff. MSD blaster 2 with Accel cut to fit wires, otherwise ignition is stock. I may have the worlds ugliest header, but we haven't counted the votes yet so I can't be sure... N42 block with P79 head, by the way.

Here is some stuff I keep in my closet:

[veritech-z]

bump for the text edit.

[veritech-z]

Had a minor setback with the megasquirt install, although I had my car on the lift for the first time ever (I've been too afraid of rust, but it held fine.). Turns out you need to clean the board with denatured alcohol, so we did that. Then the guy that put it together for me noticed he had accidentally bridged one of the map sensor contacts, so we fixed that....Now it turns on, but I get no voltage to my fuel pump and injectors. I'm thinking I'll just switch them independantly, and go from there. Got some welding done on my pin puller, I'll probably give that a try tomorrow and see how it works.

[veritech-z]

Alright, progress at last! Turns out my stock fuel pump was bad, so I had to go pay a "visit" to the trusty old parts car and "borrow" the pump off of that one...45psi to the rail... Operation: Camosquirt is coming along nicely! I actually got the car to start and run (poorly) on the base code, with no laptop interference at all! Turns out when you jump XG1 to X11, you have to run a ground wire from pin 25 on the ecu harness or you won't get an ignition signal, and I neglected to do that the first time around (even though it's right there in the instructions...). Problem solved, and voia la! So tomorrow we'll fool with it, and hopefully the smoky burnout pictures won't be too far behind.

[veritech-z]

In an attempt to send a smoke signal to Oregon saying that the ZZZap! was ready for business, I learned that my megasquirt doesn't like to do burnouts...I'm not sure what's going on, but it doesn't sound good right now. It sounds like I'm not firing on all six, and I get a lot of vibration and no power (this all came immediately following the clutch drop...). I guess I'll have to break out the old laptop and see what's going on yet again...

[veritech-z]

I still haven't got my engine running right, I'm beginning to suspect mechanical trouble. It sounds like it's got a miss. I just pulled the valve cover, and everything looks to be in order, but it was a fairly cursory inspection. Cam lobes all looked good, and all parts appeared to be in place. Plus I ran out of gas. I'm thinking at this point that my cam timing may be off. When I changed the head gasket, I didn't use a new timing set, and it was a little hard to determine which links were the "shiny" ones...The problem with this theory is that the car ran well enough before the megasquirt (that is to say: after the head swap, but before the megasquirt), so I'm tempted to point the finger at that...then again, it ran slightly better before the attempted burnout, so maybe it jumped time? Anyway, here is an updated picture of the car equipped with the MOMO quasars.

[veritech-z]

OK, I made a TON of progress today. I had just about given up on my L28e after discovering that I had a bad ring. Until today the car would not exceed 20mph, and it took a LONG time to reach that terminal velocity...well, in a last ditch effort to try and do something about it before pulling the plug on this engine, I decided to replace my timing chain tensioner and re-time my engine from scratch. After this was done, it still didn't run right, but at least my timing was reasonably within spec. I discovered at that time that my exhaust rocker jam nut on number 2 had backed itself all the way down and had all kinds of play in it. I fixed that, and still no good, and at this point I was really starting to despair. Another problem I noticed was that my CTS and IAT wiring was both reversed and melted together, so I rewired them and hooked them up properly, but it still didn't fix anything. I realized that number 2 injector wasn't doing much (pulled the plug with the engine running and nothing happened), so I took it off and cleaned it with GM top engine cleaner (part number 21992483), and it was working great. So great in fact, that it was the only injector that i could feel clicking when the engine was running. So today I opted to take them all off, and soak them all day in this cleaner. Once I put them back on, it worked AWESOME! So it turns out that all my power was getting choked out by gummed up injectors. Now I just need to work out the funny spots in my fuel map, and I should be good to go until my V-8 swap. Also, I found a replacement for the Spindle Pin that I cut up and air hammered out the other day. 5/8"X10" fits PERFECT, with no slop, and I used grade 8 throughout. Also it only cost me about $7 for the whole thing, bolt, nut, and two washers. Oh, and I finally got some decent pictures of the Saturn Vue Redline fascia that I modified to fit on my car. It's not too proffesional looking, but I kind of like it. Here is one:

[veritech-z]

Update on my turbo collection. I'm not sure which intercooler I'll be using. The square one is from a Nissan Sunny Pulsar GTi-R SR20DET that my friend had in his classic SE-R before he went front mount ($40), and the busted looking rectangle one is an aftermarket unit that came from my buddy's 1995 Saturn SC2 making 350hp to the wheels (even with that big dent in the bottom...darn raccoons...) ($20). I got an SSautocrap T3 to T4 adapter (modified to fit my SSautocrap wastegate). Also, I picked up a .83 on center exhaust housing from an ancient Rajay T4 (the turbo is a Garrett T04) that I'm using partially for the smaller A/R than the one that came on it (1.15 tangential housing) but mostly for the 4 bolt exhaust flange built into it (the old housing didn't have a flange). I need to make a decision on an intercooler, and then I need to figure out how I'm going to route the plumbing. Then I need to do a smoky burnout...

[veritech-z]

Just realized I never posted my newly painted and re-tired wheel shots to this thread:

[veritech-z]

This post was just cut and pasted from my Operation: Camo Zzzap! thread, since it said pretty much all the stuff I needed to say abou the pics. Just figured I'd put it here too in case there's anyone that browses Member Projects more than body/paint where that thread is.

 

My turbo parts sourcing has been a long time coming, I started way back in like '03 or so when I bought a Garrett T04 for $295. It sat in a drawer for so long that I finally sold it to some guy with an Integra for $300. Shortly after that, I picked up a Nissan Sunny Pulsar GTi-R top mount intercooler off a buddy's swap for $40. He was going front mount at the time, though somebody broke into his car and stole the whole setup before he got it going. I'm not sure what ever happened to that car, we kind of fell out of touch (but it was running 12.98s in the 1/4 at the time). That same guy's brother bought a used Garrett T04 (no letter designations evident on it, otherwise I'd be more specific) off some dude, and quickly lost interest in it. I picked that up for $50. then I bought an SSAutoChrome Tial-look 35mm wastegate off Ebay for $100. I was fooling around with trying to make my own turbo manifold out of an old header flange, but I gave up because I'm just not good enough at welding to get it right without warping it. So my birthday rolls around this year, and everybody donated money to the "We know your car needs help, but we don't know what you need" fund. This got me some new Falkens for the Impuls with enough left over for a factory L28et turbo manifold and the miscelanious fittings and hoses left over. I had a friend that's been talking about doing a blow-thru 4-barrell on his 76 2+2 since I met him 4 or 5 years ago, and in that space of time I bought a non-running Z, got it running, and was in the planning stages of turbocharging it before his really even got out of the garage. Anyway, I asked him if he'd sell me his manifold, and he said to let him sleep on it and page him (that's right, I said "page") in a day or two. I blew his pager up all day, and finally got tired of waiting. I drove over to Z-docs (the local z parts/service place) and spent $100 on one. I called him at work the next day and he said he'd sell me his for $25...I was like I think I'll buy it just to hit you over the head with it! Argh! I went back to my buddies at SSAutojunk and got a t3-to-t4 flange adapter, and had to get a 1.5" hole saw to cut a path for my wastegate. Luckily, my wastegate came with two extra weldable flanges and a dump tube. all my IC pipe and my downpipe are courtesy of a take-off Saturn Sky NA exhaust that came off of a car that I managed to convince my General Manager needed a GMperformance Parts Cat Back setup...Anyway, I spent all weekend putting this stuff on a week or two ago, and spent all day today pretty much re-doing my drain hose to the oil pan and fabricating a downpipe. If anybody is planning on using a -10 nipple fitting with a bulkhead nut to drain your oil back into your non-turbo oil pan, be sure you use a 7/8" hole, and not a 1" hole. That's too big. It's going to leak. That's why I spent all day working on it today. I welded a thick steel washer over the mega hole, and went through two unibits (other people's unibits I might add) and a carbide cutter to hog it out to just big enough to thread the fitting in. Anyway, if you've read this far, you deserve some pictures. here you go:

And this is the view from the driver's seat, just to show how not intrusive the intercooler is to my view (and how poor your visibility really is from my fender mirrors)

Also, this is what happens when you use right angle snips and a sawzall to cut out your hood:

 

Driving impressions: I think my R200 is shot...anybody want to trade an R180 or a broken-ish R200 for a not broken R200? Also, I've not connected the boost reference line to my wastegate. 25psi boost spikes according to my Datalogviewer...that can't be good, but damn it feels fast! Also, no BOV yet, so when you let off the throttle you get that CHCH-Ch-ch-ch noise. I should probably get one of those so that sound will turn into PSHHHHHH!!! instead. By the way, it sounds SO much quiter with the exhaust on it, and it actually feels faster too (contrary to what I'd always heard, that being that the best turbo exhaust is no exhaust at all).

Stuff that still isn't done: I need to finish fabricating my underscoop that's going to be ducted to the front air dam to pull fresh air up the bottom, and out the hood. Not sure if the one I'm making is going to fit, though...Also I need to come up with some kind of modified cowl dealy that covers the edges of my hole, and comes up to the top of the intercooler without covering it.

[veritech-z]

Just wanted to post a correction: the car never hit 25psi, it was actually 25.2ms of injector pulse width and I was reading the wrong display on the datalog. Turns out it was actually 12.765psi of boost, which is still too much for the fuel system I've got on here right now.