| My trip to zcon started over a year ago. I knew I wanted to go as Phoenix is close enough to make the drive to and my brother lives on Phoenix as well. In August of 2011 we had Specialty-Z fly out to Denver for some tuning. Shortly before that my Z started making a knocking noise. After Greg and Seb arrived and heard it on the dyno we all seemed to think it was a thrown bearing. I've thrown a rod bearing before and it acted and sounded the same. Was really weird as I had no issues before. I had just put the engine back in after fixing the cam timing gear issue I had posted about. I was going really easy on the car waiting for them to arrive and get a good tune on it. That said I went ahead and had them tune it since they were here. It never blew up and made more power than I ever thought it would but I knew I had a project ahead of me. I did not want to drive to Phoenix with the noise and risk something happening on the way. And being I no longer tow my Z I knew I had to find and take care of the issue. Here is my 91 pump tune. This is at a max of 15psi due to my higher compression pistons. Adjusting the cam gears really helped bring in the low end which what I wanted the most because of the higher altitude here in Denver. We lose a lot of power here.
 And here is the motor maxed out. 28 psi on GT104 race fuel. Turbo was maxed out. That dip in the graph is from compressor surge.
 Kinda hard to read, but here is all the tunes.
Stock 91pump with no changes, 15psi
91 pump with cam gears adjusted,15psi
91 pump with the meth injection,18psi
100 race, dont recall
104 race, 28psi. 
Was a great day and well worth the money to have them flyout. That October my son was born so things got put on hold. Had to take some time off from the garage/shop. And when I did come back since my wife was staying at home, working on customer z's became more of a 2nd job to pay the bills rather than a hobby/side thing. So I still didnt get much free time to work on my Z. I knew Zcon was coming and I was behind so I tore my enigne apart early this past summer. Sad thing is I never found an issue. All the bearings looked great, all rings were good, No problems with the heads, etc. So I was relieved and at the same time wondering wtf. Talked with lots of people, asked lots of questions and everything got double to triple checked. Still found no problems. So I dropped the engine parts off, had them cleaned up. Got new bearings and rings and had a light hone job done. Talking with Mike Smith he thought maybe it was piston slap. But being it was never there before and it has 15k+ miles on it already it was just an idea. With that he suggested I Swain coat my pistons. The coating will fill the slack if it was there, plus the other benefits of it. So off they went. Turn around time was less than 2 weeks which was amazing.
 Also had my bearings WPC treated
 I like to paint my blocks silver so that you can see leaks easier.
 
RameyZ pulley studs
 Put on a set of the VTC caps
 
I like to do this mod to the passenger side tranny bracket. This way you can remove it with the oil filter tree and turbo still in place incase you ever just want to drop the pan. Just loosen the bolts and it slides out.
 
Also picked up a set of the 370Z filters. They use the same venturi mount as the Z32 filters. They allow the filter to get tucked up higher.
 Old filters
 New
 Also had my polished parts chromed and a few other parts done.
 
All back together
 
Redid my pcv reroute using more hose than aluminum line to make it easier. I didnt have enough of the new black hose after redoing my fuel system so I had to use small aluminum pipes in the corners which was fine. 
I got a new clutch as well. Picked up a SZ max clutch and had the rps flywheel reworked. I've had the old-old-old RPS max clutch and it was a leg killer. This one is much nicer and easier to push in.
I also redid my fuel system as mentioned. I swapped out the steel braided lines for the black cloth covered lines and black fittings. I got a new FPR as well and moved them over to the fender wall for a cleaner set up.
I had these battery terminals for awhile now so I put them on to clean things up.
 And then I also added the electric fan project I posted about.
 Picked up a MegaZ radiator panel and clean up the efan wiring. Everything was back together. 
I also put on some new brakes. New front rotors.
 And the Royalty rear kit
 
I got it running 2 weeks before zcon. Engine ran great. Felt nice and smooth. I wanted to get 500 miles on it before heading off on the long drive. I would go for drives everynight after work and on the weekends. I hit that mark exactly right before we left. Threw in an oil change and away we went. More to come in my actual Zcon post.
JackB nimble JackB quick JackB can suck my dick =P - james-lee 11/02/01
Arrogance is the #1 weapon against Supra Owners - MikeH 08/06/02
Dallas with a Z: I like the bulge dude 05/02/03
Bezbefootball: Does dick have anything for me? 10/21/03 |
My pre-Zcon adventure. - 
