My Z thread *pics*

[drumpet15]

I haven't been around this forum in a while...I used to lurk around the 240 forums, but then I got my Z!

This thread is for anyone here that cares about my Z and the rebuild that it's going through. Please feel free to post comments. I am open to all sorts of opinions and suggestions!

Brief History:
For those of you that don't know, I bought my '85 n/a 300ZX last August. My S12 was going through a lot of different problems, so I was forced to look into another car. I bought the car from an older man that owned 6 Z31's and needed to sell a couple of them.





Needless to say, he took pretty good care of his cars. The interior had been recarpeted and the seats had been recovered. The car is a Canadian SF model, so the speedo is in km/h which was kind of weird at first, but I got used to it.

[drumpet15]

It ran pretty good for a while, but as the winter months approached...
This:


Soon became this:


The car had about 110k miles on it, and I'm sure it would have had many more, but at this point in my life, I need a car that's going to be somewhat dependable. I also thought that as long as the outside and inside of the car looked pretty good, there was no reason that the engine bay shouldn't look good as well.
I decided that I wanted to do a very basic rebuild and add a few performance parts along the way.

[drumpet15]

I am very lucky to have a neighbor that used to be a mechanic! I have never attempted something like this before, and am learning new things about my car everyday! He decided to let me keep my car in his garage this winter while we did the work.
It took us about 12 hours of work to get the motor out of the vehicle. There were many problems along the way, though...otherwise it probably would have gone a bit faster.
But once the motor was on the stand, we had it torn down pretty quick!

[drumpet15]

There were a few things that we decided right from the beginning. Before we pulled the motor, we checked the compression and it checked out okay. We decided that if the pistons looked okay when we got the heads off, there would be no need to replace them due to financial reasons. Sure enough, all six of them looked just fine.
We also decided to take the fuel injectors from my S12 SE and swap them into my Z seeing as how they only had about 50 miles on them since my local Nissan dealership did the fuel injector recall. The injectors from the Z were working just fine, but I saw no need to give away prefectly good injectors with the S12 if I didn't need to.

[drumpet15]

To turbo, or not to turbo?

^That was the question. A turbocharged Z31 is very appealing. A stock VG30ET puts out approx. 200hp and 225lb/tq. That is a very siginificant difference between the VG30E's 160hp and 174lb/tq.

Unfortunately, to do the conversion you need:
* T3 Turbocharger and exhaust elbow from 84-87 300ZX Turbo
* Drivers side exhaust manifold
* Downpipe
* Front crossmember
* Drivers side engine mount
* All intake piping (from Airflow meter to Throttle body)
* Alternator mount, tensioner and longer V belt(mounts on pass. side instead of drivers side)
* Oil pan
* Turbo oil lines (and water lines if applicable)
* Fuel injectors (260cc/min instead of 180cc/min)
* Correct ECU
* All applicable gaskets
(information from www.redz31.com)

I found that if I wanted to buy all the pieces individually, that the money would add up very quick. I did manage to find one person that had a Z31 turbo that he was parting out. He had all the pieces listed above, but he lived in New York...shipping would have been pretty bad, but he was willing to let it all go for around $250. I jumped at this opportunity, but unfortunately he fell through on the deal.
I then got very discouraged when all I found were people with either "the turbocharger for $100", or the "front crossmember for $75", or even "all fuel injectors for $150". Most everybody I've asked has told me to do the turbo conversion anyway, because you will get more power from a stock Z31T then you will from a modified n/a Z31, but why not try to build a pretty quick n/a? It was than that I decided that my Z31 would stay n/a...for now.
I am hoping that if I still have this car in a few years, I can afford to do a complete turbo conversion, but I guess we'll see what happens!

[DeleriousZ]

holy freakibg crap dude that looks Amazing... that's gotta be one of the best exterior/interior's on an early z31 i've ever seen... good to hear you're keeping it for a while

i would most definitely recommend the turbo conversion if you're wanting more power out of it... staying n/a and making any kind of reputable power is very tough to do... it sounds like you've got everything under control and have done your research well... good to have you around, hope you can stick around and join in on the shenanigans that go on around here...

also if you're looking for some tough information check out 88hybrid.com, the people over there know the z31 inside out, upwards backwards and any way you can think of... that or zcar.com, but its layout isn't nearly as good as 88hybrid's site...

anyway good to have ya around, and again, nice Z man

[k3smostwanted]

impressive, very impressive...

good luck and if you are craving power, go with the turbo.

[drumpet15]

Thanks, guys. As far as turboing the car, I would like to do it right and get a lot of power out of it...eventually. I'm a college student right now, and money is very hard to come by! I'm hoping that this minor n/a build will get me a little extra horsepower and be reliable enough to last me a few years until college is done. Then I'll do a proper turbo build-up.

[drumpet15]

While this was being done, I ordered new floormats from zcarparts.com. I am very impressed with them! They are very durable and fit great in the car!

[DeleriousZ]

sweet! i'ma need to get some new mats when i'm done redoing the interior on my 88...

if you're going to be doing up the n/a a little bit, then i HIGHLY recommend modifying the upper intake plenum... you can do what i did and chop off the top with an angle grinder, and then have a buddy that works at a machine shop to hog out the insides of it, and weld an aluminum plate back on the top of it (which is probably the easiest way to do it) or you could spend a sick amount of money and get one that's premade for you like this one from L&P Performance

people have said it makes a Massive difference even on an n/a car..

[drumpet15]

Yeah, I've seen those gutted plenums before. I'd like to try and avoid buying one, though...do you have any pics of the process that you did?

[DeleriousZ]

yeah for sure.. however i'm only about 1/4 of the way thru the project at the moment... i've kind of stalled it because i might be switching it out for a maxima intake

because it has the exact properties of the 300zx plenum only the throttle body has been moved to the front of the plenum to allow for easier routing of intake piping after the intercooler...

anyway, i've gotten this far on my plenum...
when i first got it:
after the first bit of cutting:
what it looks like now:
nicely ported/polished to 60mm:

i'm trying to decide if it's worth it to a. hack off the rear arm/throttle body assembly thing and weld it onto the other side, or b. start over on the maxima plenum...

however, for your n/a car, i'd recommend something like this

[drumpet15]

Lol, that's off of that clown car, isn't it? With the upside-down bumper on the front? That thing's weird...
Thanks for the pics, though. I know what you mean about the Maxima plenum. Could the Maxima intake be turned sideways and bolted right onto the Z31? Or is there some custom work as well?

[DeleriousZ]

aside from modifying the fuel pressure regulator (moving it) it bolts up to the 300zx perfectly as far as i know... after all, they are the same engines in both the cars...

[drumpet15]

I knew that, I just wasn't sure if there were a lot of things that needed to be moved around for it to work. I'll have to look into doing that.