85_Z31's 1985 Nissan 300ZX Turbo

[85_z31]

Hello I am James

This is my 300zx Turbo Build, owned the car for ages, its coming along ok.

I would suspect the only modified Z31 in the South Island, If its not I would love to hear from the other ones.

Watch this space, pictures didn't work but I will get onto it. Check back later guys.

Discussion Here

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=23465

[85_z31]

The Car As I got it

[85_z31]

Pulling out the old donk

SOHC VG30ET single turbo, 7.8 to 1 compression Bottem end is good for 450 Wheel HP as proven by many setups in the USA

Rebuilding the bottem end

Things Looking sharp

Porting and polish on the Cylinder Heads , Kelford Cams and schneider Racing Cams double valve springs

[85_z31]

The Snail

Hotside from a RX7 and a T4 front cover, should do well at a conservative 15psi for a reliable track day car

Built some headers but these are more a longer term project and need finishing

Getting it all back into the car

[85_z31]

Some of the Suspension and Steering Work

Rebuild and cleaned up Power Steering rack with new boots and tie rods

Spent hours getting the engine bay nice and clean ( this all happened before the engine rebuild )

Koni Adjustable Shocks, King Springs, urethane bump stops , machined rotors and new pads

New Ball Joints and new bushes in the control arms

[85_z31]

Built my own Mandrel Bent 3" exhaust system

1x Straight through muffler and 1x massive long resonator

Spent some time to paint it up with ceramic 1200deg header paint, it wont stay pretty but at least it wont go rusty and look like shit after a week

[85_z31]

Some pics while the gearbox was apart for its full rebuild, Its a Borg Warner T5 as found behind many Ford and GM V8's

Clutch industries Heavy Duty Clutch, not a puk but im going to see how it holds up

Having a full rebuild of new Bearings, new syncro's and having all the preloads and shim stacks done professionally made the gearbox the best one i have ever felt, and for $1000 it wasn't even that expensive.

[85_z31]

When I got the car it didn't have a front under tray, as far as i Understand it forms part of the radiator cowling system and needs to be in place for it to cool efficiently

so i knocked one up out of some panel steel, welded some 5mm rod on the inside to give it some strength and bolted it all up, currently primered to avoid rust but it really need powder coated

I think it looks pretty tidy under there

and the wheels i am awaiting delivery on,

Ellipson 3pc mesh, i believe these are a mid eighties Japanese wheel

16x7 front and 16x8 rear but i have been in contact with arrow wheels so i can get more dish and better offsets

looking for 16x 9.5 rear and 16x8 front with the new wheel halves i want to order

[85_z31]

For engine management I am using nistune, which is a modification of the origional ECU to make it fully adjustable with 90% of the features of a Link G3 and the ability to keep wiring stock this is a great product.

and it also means if my car is ever worth anything it can be restored to stock easily ( but who would do that )

And you can see the USB port in the old 1985 original ECU

[85_z31]

For Road tuning and data logging I have ordered a Wide band oxygen / Data Logging unit

This will allow me to do 90% of the tuning myself , and then get final checks and tweaks done on the dyno.

I also spent some time to tidy up the turbo intake into the Air Flow Meter

[85_z31]

Brake Upgrade Time !!

These are the pentagon Hubs simialr to many datsun hubs, I have spoken to a certifier and it is cert legal to have the corners turned down on a lathe so it can fit Inside a 280mm R32 GTST brake rotors

the 30mm thick rotors ones not the pussy 25mm thick ones

you can see here what i mean about the pentagon shape

My Awesome Missus got me these for Christmas Last year, as before 280x30mm thick, these can fit under my stock 15" wheels which is a bonus. The old rotors were 276mm x 20mm and for a heavy car that is simply not up to it for track day work.

And I have had the R32 GTST 4 pots for quite some time meaning to get around to this, I will be rebuilding them myself

( its easy as , just done the 4 pots in my Hilux the other day )

Probally not doing anything at the back, the fronts will be slotted by the same engineer doing the Hubs

[85_z31]

Since last update

* Exhaust Re Fittied

* Wide band sensor fitted into Exhaust

* Power Wires and fuses run through firewall for data logger

* DIY wheel alignment done

( close enough to get me to a proper laser alignment place )

* Fitted a Flash new K&N high performance/race oil filter and dropped the running in oil with cam additives for some mineral 15/40 to finish running in before a switch to synthetic Ams Oil

Wired up my new Ignitor module, the old one still works fine but i don't want miss fires under boost in 5th gear at high rpm when something could easily be ruined from it.

This car has also been fitted with a brand new crank angle sensor and other "prone to failure" on old cars kind of stuff

Bled the clutch up & bypassed the stupid clutch damper with a 280zx brake hose, clutch still feels a bit light considering its a heavy duty one. Must investigate this further.

Picked up my 3pc rims, i love them they are pretty dam 80's bad ass.

Center bore needs to be opened up to fit so here is a pic with them held up to the car instead & other misc pics.

tomorrow is day 1 of Road tuning.

To anybody thinking tuning an EFI system is going to be cheap or easy

"cos its a computer and it can just sort itself out"

is way off the mark, it seems you need so much crap to do it.

*Laptop

*ECU which connects to laptop ( http://www.nistune.com is what I used in my original ECU )

*Data Logging unit

*wide band Sensor for Data unit

*Display gauge so the driver can see the air fuel mix ( and back the hell of if it lean spikes or something )

and the hardest part of all is somebody who knows what they are doing.

I don't but my very experienced engineer/fabricator/expert on many things has tuned a lot of cars and is doing this with me.

As you can see here I have added a proper spare tire as the space saver requires pumped up by a tiny air compressor to save on space aka supercar style

[85_z31]

Started tuning which went well got it running good at light to mid load across most of the fuel map.

however it wasn't making any boost before about 4500rpm and the turbo was getting really bad surge.

So that turbo has to go. the factory T3 is getting improved slightly by cutting off the horrible cast iron down pipe and boring out the flange to 3" to accept a 3" bit of pipe right off the back of the turbine wheel

and even though it looks tiny I'm told by an experienced man that its the best option until i have the rest of the car finished up ( LSD, back shocks , inter cooler etc )

..... a couple of days has passed since this was posted on Datsun NZ and copied over here.....

Well I'm still waiting for the Turbo to be finished, the machinist hoped to have it done by tonight but he has had problems with the carbide cutting tips he is using.

So with all this downtime and so much energy I decided to make a "super Intake Pipe"

So far i have done this with some offcuts and $15 of unwanted mandrel bend sections from the exhaust shop.

Welding this is going to be a bitch because my welding isn't great and the metal is thin.

The factory Right Angle Bend.....qualiy........

And the mock up of the super intake bend. ( still needs some tweaks to get it to fit but you can see it steps down smoothly from 3" to 2.5" and then onto the turbo

And a comparison of both.

[85_z31]

Well you guys already know that my big flash turbo didn't work at all so here is the modified turbo i have been promising.

I really want my car going so I'm less concerned about making power than just having a nice but fairly quick street car

I'm not made of money so i chose to do something to my Factory T3 to improve the flow from the exhaust housing. I will probably have this turbo rebuilt as a t3/t4 at a later date since I already have the t4 front cover and compressor wheel from the turbo which nearly cooked itself.

Step 1 was to hacksaw off the horrendous cast rear elbow > see last pic for an OEM disgusting one

Step 2 was to fully disassemble the turbo so that the turbine housing could be put on a 3 jaw chuck on the lathe

Step 3 is to machine all the crap off the waste gate flange to give us something clean to work with

Step 4 once the waste gate housing was fully machined smooth was to slowly taper the flange outward to the edge

Step 5 was to make up a new flange to bolt on top of the waste gate flange which would allow us to merge the OD all the way out to 76mm or 3" to allow a really smooth flowing rear housing.

Step 6 was to weld a stub onto the new flange to allow for the making of a fully custom high flow down pipe.

Step 7 is to build the rest of the exhaust which I have already done, if you want to see what that looks like scroll up a bit

This is a far superior to a stock t3 and will flow a shit load better without the dog shit rear housing/elbow

300whp should be easily achievable Keep in mind my engine has a performance valve job, Kelford Cams, ported and flowed heads , Nistune engine management 440cc injectors and now there will be zero parts of the exhaust smaller than 3"

and here is the master piece

and compared to a random internet pic of a normal t3 you can see straight away what we have done is going to help a lot

[85_z31]

And for some more Brake Upgrade Stuff,

these areZ31 1985T 5 stud turbo hubs machined down to accept an R32/Z32 30mm Rotor, I believe the longer wheel studs shown are z31 1988 rear wheel studs I sourced these from the USA as they were amazingly good value compared to Repco & other places

the way they are currently the rotors have a bit much float, I will have a alloy shim made up so that its all nice and hubcentric so there are no problems with getting a Certification

At a later date I will get some wheel spacers to allow me to use my stock 85T wheels, I do have other wheels But I would like the option of factory wheels fitting anyway. ( and i have a set of mint tires I would like to use up )

When pay day rolls around I will be ordering stainless front brake lines & caliper rebuild set

So to those of you wanting to do a brake upgrade on something with the 100mm spacing, Z31 5 stud hubs are what you need.

Same result as getting R31 4 stud hubs re drilled but the Z31 hubs are reasonably easy to find

[85_z31]

have also cut the hole in he bonnet for the hood scoop. Because i got a mint non turbo bonnet it didn't have the hole for it but as its a factory turbo car the scoop needs to be there for cool air to blow down onto the turbo.

You can see I started to fix the old bonnet, it was totally ruined and i didn't make a very good job at all it was really well beyond my skills as most of the frame was gone. The Grey one i picked up for $50 which was awesome as i had mega trouble finding one, had a quote of $1500 for a brand new one from nissan, or $750 from Z spares in Auckland

[85_z31]

Also did some mega overkill headlight wiring

4ga cable to the fuse block

8gb Cable to each relay

and 5mm2 power cable to each headlight.

I think the signal cable to the relays is a bit ligher as it dosn't have to carry any current any longer as its only tripping a relay.

Fuse block and 4ga red cable- The Bling shiny cable is the 8ga

Where we ran the split loom...

x1 is the RHS old headlight wires that are soldered and extended to provide signal to the relays.

x1 is LHS Power Wire

x1 is RHS Power Wires o the headlight bulbs.

And the Bosh Relay blocks mounted just above the cable entry into the fender. I have allowed a 3rd relay for misc / something else in the future.

The 50/65 watt bulbs in there are a similar brightness to the 90/100 watt bulbs in my truck

This system provides practically zero volt drop and allows me a very reliable circuit for running mega uprated bulbs

[85_z31]

Here are the Carnage Pics

the shaft on the turbo is mega bent and big chunks missing from the turbine wheel.

Last turbo took me 3 hours to remove

this time it took me 90 minutes taking it easy and looking at stuff on the PC i have in the Garage

[85_z31]

Been a while Since I Updated Oldschool

After seeing the Old school Nats in NZPC i decided i should start posting here again.

Got some Spacers for the Back

Machined my Pentagon Hubs into round hubs and had a alloy ring pressed on to locate some spacers & GTST 280mm rotors

Still Fits the factory 15" wheel's for Super Stealthy Sleeper styles

Wheels are much further out to the Guards and look 10x better

Made a Sweet Strut Brace that cost me like $5 in materials

Un Spotted the Horey old front crossmember

Busted out the sheet metal and made a new lower half from scratch

Got Some Panel Beating done on the top half to keep it looking nice N factory

Welded all back together with some chassis undercoat on the top- i think it came out mint considering the disaster it started out as

Decided the Rear Bakes need some love

Upgraded from 290x10mm solid to 288 x20 Vented

[85_z31]

So this is the LSD I acquired minus clutch plates.

Then as if it was meant to be this popped up for me

Not actually Nismo but a complete clutch pack setup from an R32 GTR in good nick, I checked all the part numbers and everything is compatible

So Then I moved onto Sorting out a diff cover, I had this Z32 NZ diff cover just laying around so I decided to clean it up a bit for use

The mounting bolts were too wide for a Z31 Diff Mount So I welded an extra plate on the rear to move the mounting holes out, and then fully welded in several different places, cooling in between so the rubber didn't burn, If it Passes NDT crack testing for Cert I will use it, but I am expecting to have to Purchase an Aftermarket Diff mount Sometime in the Near Future