DJZ

Yeah mine locks, it's a different key to the ignition so may not be original. Locking them is a pain in the ass anyway. I used my spare gearbox in my R30. Depending on what you are doing you can use a later model Nissan box with a modified L series bellhousing, that can be done pretty cheaply and they are a better box.

It should probably have bump strips down the sides, I haven't seen a Jap import one that didn't except for the Fairladys unless maybe it's a very low spec one. What kind of clock does it have, if it has one? Where are the rust bubbles that it has? Definitely check the bottoms of the front guards, they'll rust out if it doesn't have the inner guard liners in. Check around the crossmember mounts behind the front seats too. Have a look around the bottoms of the quarter panel windows, water collects under the chrome trim and around the windscreen Swap it to a manual and it'll be a whole different car.

Not original paint? Looks reasonably tidy though.

Picked up the new car today, this is what it looks like at present: These are the wheels that are on it, can't find much info on them but they are made by Pismo? They are 14's. Came with these ugly 280ZX wheels too, will get some tyres for them just to roll the cars around on Got my new flywheel for the RB Z too, also some R32 GTR front brake rotors This is what the engine bay looks like currently: Took the crossmember out and gave it a clean, painted the radius rod mounts too

Don't use maniseal. Anybody that can get NZ Gaskets stuff can get Three bond, Repco etc etc or you can get the same stuff in a Nissan tube from Nissan, my RB gasket set came with a tube in it.

Not much progress this weekend, nothing infact. Bought a lightweight flywheel, hasn't turned up yet, haven't decided what to do about a clutch yet. Also won the auction for the FD RX7 seats I was bidding on so I should get them later this week or next week. I've been looking at gauges and trying to figure out what to do, what I really want is one of the Japanese after market 300k/10,000rpm clusters but they are out of production and impossible to find these days. Also with the RB25 gearbox they have an electronic speedo sensor so I'd have to swap by the sounds of it either to an R32 GTR speedo drive or to a Navara sensor I think. So I'll probably look at replacing the gauges from some ones I've found on http://www.speedhut.com they are some pretty cool ones and also do GPS speedos so you don't need to have them connected to a sensor at all! The problem that I've got is the holes in the standard Z cluster are quite large So the gauges sit kind of funny in there, but it doesn't look too bad. In other news I bought this this morning, these pics are a few years old and it is in a million pieces now.

Got a bit done during the weekend, got one more hole in the engine bay to weld up then I can start grinding them back. I'm trying to get it ready for painting the engine bay by the end of next weekend. The RB block has been bored, I dropped the rest of the bits off the other day for them to assemble it. I got an R31 front sway bar and radius rods, they look like they are going to work okay, the radius rods might be a little on the short side, it's a bit hard to tell with the front control arms. Hopefully they will be finished this week so I can get it rolling again. I pulled out the front cross member, I had the axle stands under it so I thought I'd use another handy tool from my work. So I need to pull the steering rack off the crossmember, give it a good clean and a little bit of paint and jam it back in. I've found some new seats that I'm bidding on on Trademe, hopefully they'll look okay in it. I've some GTR front brake rotors on the way too.

Are you installing or removing? A socket + heavy hammer will bounce the collets out without much trouble, just don't hit the sides. I bought some of these for installing them.

Just an observation but wouldn't there be a chance of the pickup getting pulses from the cam pulley itself? It's a bit hard to tell in the pic how close they are together. Can you configure the Link to work okay with the speed the cam pulley is turning? For dyno tuning I had good results from Soichi at ST Hitec and mixed results from Auckland Performance Tuning in Papakura.

Talked to the certifier today, gave me the thumbs up to do the modifications that I wanted to do to the front arms so I gave them to HBI to start work on today. What I need is another inner control arm bush, according to Trademe these cars have them: Datsun 180B 9/72=77 Nissan Silvia S13 (180Sx) 84-97 Nissan Silvia S14 (200Sx) 10/96-00 Nissan Skyline R30 81-86 Nissan Skyline R31 87-90 Nissan Bluebird 910, Series 1,2,3 81-86 Nissan Cefiro A31 9/88 - 8/94 Nissan Gazelle S12 85-88 Nissan Gallelle S12 85-88 (For Rear IRS - Incl crush tubes. Nissan Laurel C31 11/80-84 Nissan Bluebird R31 86-90 So if anybody has a spare one let me know, I actually only need the outer steel sleeve but will consider anything. I got a new master cylinder, 1" bore from an S15 - bolted straight on to the later booster I'll just have to adjust the push rod thing by the looks of it. Pulled the old master & booster out and discovered the locknut on the clevis eye bit was loose, whoops. Also pulled out the engine bay wiring harness. I've been keeping an eye on an RB25DET gearbox on Trademe and decided that I'd buy it. So if anybody wants a strong gearbox to put behind an L series my RB20DET FS5W71C box with L series bellhousing is for sale. Also heard from the shop doing the RB, they've started work on it finally so I hope to have it back maybe next week or the week after, just have to order the rest of the bits to put it back together, bearings & timing bits etc

Wheels look awesome, what offsets did you end up choosing?

If you worked as hard as I do Damien... hah. That diff listing is very vague.

Got my chur-bro today, finally. It didn't come with the other half of the v band or clamp which is a bit of a bummer, hope one of the Trademe special ones will fit. You can see the oil and water lines that I got off eBay, cheaper than buying only the oil feed line I had made up for the L28! Also got a drain flange and a nice stainless gasket. Just noticed the manifold isn't tapped for studs, bummer. Not sure what to do I don't really want to run nuts and bolts and the holes are too big to tap now. Might have to weld bolts in from the underside?

Alright, had a go at mocking up the S13 coilovers today. Front looks like it's actually going to work out pretty well, need to modify the arms to take some other bushes, the factory R30 steel sleeved bushes are too wide, the arms are actually slightly too wide as well because of a lip that they have down the sides. I put a cut in the lip and bent it downwards just to see if they'd fit. What I'm going to do is drill out the arm so I can put a piece of 38mm OD pipe in there, then I've found some Ford spring eye bushes that look like they'll fit. Need to open up the hole in the strut tower a bit more so I can actually adjust the camber! This is how high the rear guard was sitting before I started. It only dropped by 2cm after fitting them at the settings they came at out of the box but it's much much stiffer. I had to drill a new hole in the strut top and slot one of the other holes a bit, need to tidy it up and fit some washers. Almost impossible to find factory front bumper mounts, the 280ZXs usually came with big heavy shock absorbers due to the dumb laws in the States, thanks to Brnwgn. This is a late model ZX booster, a later model master cylinder should bolt straight on, I'm looking for a 1" Z32 master. I bought some 550cc RX7 injectors, still need to get some lower seals for them. Tial wastegate, 44mm. I bought it off a dude on Trademe, never used with extra flanges for $100 less than they are new. XS Power staino manifold, fully divided except for the wastegate, second hand off Trademe Ordered my turbo today, should be here by the end of the week hopefully! Still waiting for my rings to show up.

If you get one out of an R32 gearbox it should work. I'm pretty sure all the FS5W71 gearbox speedo drives interchange, I've got a 280ZX one in my GTS-t box. You might just have to swap your drive gear on to the new one and make sure it goes in up the right way (some are offset more than others) or else it'll chew up the gears.

What's the deal with redrilling strut tower tops? I need to drill at least one more hole in the top as the struts I want to put in use a 2 bolt top mount where the old ones were 3 bolt. Any strengthening etc required?

Stupid earthquake has slowed things down a bit. Got a few more bits and pieces on the way, a 44mm Tial wastegate and some 550cc RX7 injectors. I bought and fitted some Tomei rocker cover baffles, I'm not really sure whether they are necessary but a lot of people recommend fitting them, the factory ones are just open at the front so if any oil gets in them it'll just go straight through the PCV valve and into the intake manifold by the looks of it. Still trying to decide on a turbo, I'm leaning towards the larger side of things, maybe a GT4088R. The GT3582R looks alright but they have brought out the GTX3582Rs now that have billet compressor wheels, lots of people recommend the T04Z but then lots of people say they are old style wheels are inefficent, it's pretty hard to decide! I've chopped up the 200ZR sump and I'm going to extend it, the "bowl" could be increased in size by probably 1 or 2 litres pretty easily. The cheap Chinese manifolds are pretty interesting, the good ones are split between the front 3 and back 3 cylinders and could be made fully divided by fitting 2 wastegates, they vary heaps in price even though they all look exactly the same, the cheapest I found was $245 but he has no stock, next ones are $375 and $400. Got my new intercooler and chopped it up hah it's quite large but once the end tanks are modified it should fit pretty damn well. My rings turned up and the idiots sent the wrong ones, if anybody needs some rings to suit 87mm SR20DET JE pistons let me know. Sold the front suspension so it's full steam ahead with the S14 setup.

It's been a while since I've updated this, I've mainly been working on the Z but still doing little bits and pieces to this. Decided to put the coilovers on Trademe, if they sell I'll probably swap it to S14 suspension like I'm doing to the Z. It runs and I've taken it for a couple of little drives, it has problems idling (too high) and doesn't run very well under boost, not too sure what the problem is, I'm thinking I might just share the Link between this and the Z, I'm going to make a new loom for the RB going into the Z so I can chop up the old loom to put in this, would make it go heaps better I reckon. I bought some 550cc injectors for the Z so might reuse the GTR injectors it used to have in it for this. I'll probably just put this on hold till later in the year till after the Z is finished.

Had a bit of a look at the front suspension, don't think it'll be too hard. The R30 arms look pretty much the same length as the Z ones, I'll need to change the sway bar and radius rods as they mount in different places. R30 or R31 bits should work okay. The R30 arms look pretty flimsy so I might have to add some gussets or something in there. Sold the original turbos, looks like I'll definitely be going single turbo, just have to decide which one. Painted the rocker covers, coil cover and cambelt top cover and inlet plenum, any colour as long as it's black. Finished porting/cleaning up the head, there are lots of little bits and pieces that people recommend doing so I've done pretty much all of those! Cleaning old gaskets off things is a real pain in the ass, the throttle body gaskets are rock hard, I tried everything to get them off nicely and ended up with a brass wire wheel on my die grinder and also a drill. I need to pull the gearbox out and change the bellhousing over. Bidding on some bigger injectors on Trademe, pretty sure I'll max out the 444cc GTR ones I was using in the L28. I really want to get the motor back so I can start putting it together, the rings only just left the States on the 18th even thought I ordered them 7 or 8 days ago, got ripped $60US for shipping so they better be here pretty damn fast. My mate and I parted out an '83 280ZX 2+2 ages ago that's why my car has rack & pinion power steering, I kept the brake booster & master cylinder out of it as well as I knew they'd come in handy one day. The booster is different, the mounting studs for the master cylinder are more like the later Nissans - side to side instead of top and bottom like the earlier Z's, so a later model master should bolt straight on, I'm keeping an eye out for a 1" Z32 master.

Dropped the motor off today to get bored, took the crank down too to get polished & measured, the rod journals are 0.25 under according to the bearings that were in the rods but I don't know about the main journals. I've done a bit of work on the head hopefully I haven't made it any worse, these aren't my pictures but you can see where the problems are Got an OE Nissan full gasket set off Trademe for about $150 less than what Nissan sell them for, probably just going to run a standard head gasket for the moment. I also got some R30 front lower arms and some S14 5 stud hubs and uprights, by the looks of it it won't be too hard to swap it to S13/14 coil overs and the R33 brakes that I've got. I can get some custom ball joints made that have the S14 taper on them and I can also get them made a bit longer so I won't need to use roll center adjusters.

Yeah, it's a hard top, the parts car was as well. The parts car probably would have been quite saveable to somebody with the time and patience. Next time I'm round at his place I'll try and get some photos of it. He already has the RB25 to go in it.

Nah, it's a 240K, is that a GC110? He's had it for a few years, it's silver. He bought a greeny blue parts car as well but that was stripped and taken away not long ago. It'll be a long time before anything happens with it, he has a lot of projects.

Nope, who's Aaron?

Block is ready to be bored, head is completely stripped ready to be surfaced and I'll probably try a little porting as well. Where they mill cut in from the combustion chamber for the valve seats is a really rough transition so I'm going to smooth that out a bit. Acquired this week: Tomei type B Poncams JE forged pistons Linished & shotpeened factory rods Factory fuel rail fitted with a Nismo adjustable FPR RB26 crank fitted with a Jun oil pump drive, grub screwed, enlarged oil galleries Got some new rings on the way from the States And another complete inlet side minus injectors for my mate, he is planning on fitting an RB25 into his C110 with RB26 throttles, it'll be in the distant future though.