N00b l28et ZX Build

[CerebralSponge]

My name is Taylor, I'm 19, working and going to school full time, and this is my build thread.

This thread will be to get advice, provide you with some reading entertainment, and keep me motivated so I keep getting stuff done so I can report back. This is as much for facts as it is for me to just rant about how I don’t know what I want to do. Everything in here is to the best of my knowledge but I am here for the sole purpose of learning so please correct me or chime in whenever possible.

First of all a little about the car. It's an 83 280zx-t, I got it in Norfolk Va, and drove it home to (just outside of) Annapolis Md. My friend drove me down, we got the car kinda late at night, took it to a random parking lot and jacked her up, changed the oil and spark plugs till about 1 in the morning, then drove her about 6 hours home going 50-55 mph cause the cluster didn't work and I didn't wanna push her too hard without knowing anything about her. I kind of like to get to know my women before I mount up and ride ‘em hard. Ummmm yeah. So...the car. About 250k miles, stock everything as far as I'm aware of.

My plans. The car plans revolve around my life plans which as of now are to go to Academy of Art University in San Fran for 3d animation in the fall. So my plan is to put money into the engine, while working on the body and everything else as cheaply as possible, more for experience. Then while in Cali, find myself a nice true frame car, mate it with my turbo engine/tranny maybe/and diff, and the rest I will have researched for when the time comes. I’d like to start with a chassis only (plus a little), as I’d like to build the suspension (not completely because I don’t know that much yet) and I don’t care about interior. I’d like to keep the car drivable for now but I don’t drive it too much so if I could get some serious work done I’d be ok with pulling the motor/tranny. I have a garage when I need it but my parents don’t want the car just chilling in there. An engine is negotiable though. The 2 reasons why I want to keep my engine but get an older Z: my frame rails look solid but pretty much squish when I try to jack the car up, plus the other rust you’ll see(not the small stuff, mainly up by the tow hooks), and the obvious smaller lighter car, with my turbo motor, with way more aftermarket support. I really like the ZX but at my skill level it’s just a little impractical/demotivating to think of how much harder it would be to do an s130 vs an S30.

My big dilemma with moving is, being in the middle of the city. How am I going to work on a car? Does anybody have insight on how I might make this work? I could ship the engine(and bits) out to cali, then mate it with a car out there. This would help me decide where my build is going. I think my best bet would be to make friends with somebody outside the city that has some land or a place to stuff the car where I could keep it. I doubt I can/want to pay for storage, and it sure would be a nice way to make friends out there as I won’t know anybody. At all.

Basically this leave me in a position to only put money into what would get swapped, and chalk the rest up to experience.

MY LIST

--Bodywork is my saving grace in terms of a new skill that I can practice and feel like I’m getting a lot done while not spending too much money! Stripping down to metal, bondo’ing, and priming right now.

--Nothing is horribly wrong with the car mechanically so most of its just petty stuff I need to get around to in terms of maintenance. (much of this is still learning for me so it’s a little slow going)

--Boost only shows about 2 lbs (mmgh) of 7, but I can feel it kick in so I don't know if that's really only 2 lb's or if I have a leak. (Needle stays solid so I don't think there is a leak in the line to the gauge)

--I’m in the process of fixing rust.

Questions:

-How structural is the dog leg? I was just going to cut it out (yes, rust) and work some metal in there to look nice but will basic welding work or do I need to make it structurally sound?

-I’m going to replace all vacuum and boost lines. Is it a specialized type of hose (like fuel line, radiator hose, ect.) or is it just generic hose.

-There’s a line running from the rear of the transmission up through the engine bay, through the firewall. I assume this is the speed/tach. It’s leaking gear oil from the hose like apparatus about 3 ft from the back of the tranny. Where it’s leaking looks like fuel line hose, and connects on either side in the same manner, but is really stiff. My question is if I can just replace the hose, or if I need a whole new cable assembly.

 

Enough talking. Here’s some pictures.

The car when I got it.

 

Parts car I swapped the interior from.

My work on the fender.

Work that needs to get done. (The other tow hook is almost as bad on the other side)

And here's a happy one.

Thanks for looking.

[CerebralSponge]

In 3 days I have done more work to a car than I have ever imagined. It's been the best/most productive spring break....for cars. I've kind of done nothing else, but that's cool with me. SO here it goes.

This is how the engine started out.

 

DAY 1.

From 8 p.m. until 6 a.m. my friend Josh who's a certified master tech (the only reason I've gotten all this done and learned so much) helped me pull the motor. He's the brains behind it but let's me do the interesting stuff or at least keeps me informed if he's doing something, so I know what's going on.

The pull went pretty dang smooth except for the very end when it was late, we were ready to be finished, and the EGR valve absolutely refused to be compliant. So we had to bust out the sawzall and dremel, and make it see things our way. So at the end of day 1 I had a complete engine on a stand in my garage and I was happy as hell.

Day 2.

Getting to know you're engine.

Good condition parts make me happy, broken parts make me happier?

Day 2 was engine tear down and basic clean day. We stripped the engine down to the block and maybe a tid-bit or 2. We found that the clutch and turbo are in pretty good condition. In my first post I had mentioned my boost gauge only reading 2 lbs of boost. Well this along with the fast that my turbo sounded like a focused hurricane wind while spooling all started to make sense once we took things apart. This is a picture of the coupler coming directly from the turbo.

Another hose was cracked and messed up pretty badly too. This may sound like an odd thing to be very happy about but I'm assuming that by simply replacing these 2 hoses I should gain about 5 lbs of boost (up to stock 7).

e used degreaser on the engine bay and engine just to freshen things up a bit and make working with the engine a little more bearable. Actually getting to tear into the engine was a boatload of fun. There's so much to learn 1. just from getting to blunder in headfirst and really be hands on, and 2. to have somebody who knows what their talking about to guide your blundering and answer all your questions. Helpful hint, When buying tools today I found out that Evolve (the brand that uses cardboard to package their stuff) has the same lifetime warranty thing as Craftsman.

A little more about what I found in the engine. It looks like it was rebuilt a while ago and then sat for a few years. The cylinder walls still has clearly visible cross hatching, the pistons don't looks bad and there's practically no ridge at the top of the cylinder. Everything was pretty stuck together and obviously dirty which made us think it had sat for quite a while. The only bad thing we found was the bearings needed to be replaced (obviously, it's a rebuild), but on 1 or 2 of the bearings there were islands of wear, which my friend explained as most likely being caused by a lack of oil. If anybody would care to explain how this would happen please do.

 

 

Day 3

The Deep Clean

Only spend about about 9 hours today instead of about 15 like yesterday but we still got a lot done. We loaded up the block, valve cover, oil pan, head, intake mani, and little bits into my car and went to the car wash with a whole load of degreaser. A few rounds of pressurewashing and scrubbing later, I looked like I got attacked by a raincloud, but I had a bunch of clean parts and I was happy. Until I got home and found there was waaay more little cleaning stuff to do. We were excited to get to the wash so we hadn't removed gaskets and the like. So the rest of the night was spent playing with razor blades and brake cleaner.

We also made a run to the store to get spray paint/self etching primer for aluminum, and clear coat once I decided on a color scheme. So here it is. Gunmetal block, cleared head, gunmetal valve cover, with hot pink Nissan TURBO. At least I didn't go with the idea of a white block as my friend is so in love with the idea of because "nobody does it". There's a reason nobody does it. But seriously, I like people to know I have fun with cars and enjoy them so I figure the pink should hint at that. So the valve cover is primed and pinked, but the gunmetal we got turned out to bed more like greenmetal. So that needs to be switched. We got through a lot of razorblades scraping, and there's just a bit left to do, then he'll bring over a compressor and cookie cutters to finish off all the gasket surfaces.

[CerebralSponge]

Not too much has happened but when I get time I'll expand and add pictures.

The paint has been coming along. The greenmetal turned out to be pretty nice and not so green once it's dried. The valve cover is all done and if I can resist the temptation (and things don't take too long) I'll wait to show pictures till everything's back together so you have something to look forward to. All gasket surfaced are cleared except the valve cover. ALMOST everything is cleaned, just need to touch up the block and head for painting.

Oh and I ordered a bunch of parts from Ron's Precision Machining (RPM).

For about $410 I got: Master Gasket Set, full timing kit, oil pump, all bearings, and piston rings. Everything looks good so far. Aside from needing to order an water pump I think I'm pretty much set. Anything else you would suggest to get for the BARE ESSENTIALS. I'm really going bare bones on this due to trying to save up for college.