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So I've been working on my z for almost a year straight now. Always meet to take pictures of my progress and make a nifty build thread about it. But never found the time between grabbing new sockets and wrenches to do it. So ill start my write up now.
This time last year (March 2014) I was browsing the local classifieds in search of a z32 because I loved the look of them and did some research online looking for basic modifications that I could easily do to make big power out of this little car. it took a few weeks of looking to find one that was a tt and a 2+0 that I could actually afford. The only issue was it was a 9 hour drive away and I was pretty much spending every dollar I had to my name to go down and pick this car up. It was by no means in good shape. Engine tore out timing belt broken. As disassembled as the front end could get. The owner had said that it needed a new motor because he took out a main bearing. But that he had the new motor in his garage and I just needed to put it in. I thought cool, I'm very mechanically inclined. Built a few turbo snowmobiles and fixed my dirt bikes for years but had never tackled a project like this, figured screw it let's give it a go.
on the drive down there I had the cash for the car and about 500$ left in my bank for fuel and food until the next pay day. Got to my first fuel stop and got tricked into buying 200$ worth of auto detailing products. Immediately regretting what I just did. oh well, kept driving second stop decided to stay the night cause a few friends lived there that u hadn't seen in a while. Woke up the next morning and noticed that someone had stolen my license plates off both truck and trailer. Oh shit I thought. Being unfamiliar with the city of over a million people and it's a Saturday so nothing is going to be open. After a few hours of phoning around looking for a dmv that was open i found one but it was all the way on the other side of the city. Oh well I said just drive down there get new plates and then I can get this trip over with.
I had made it there without getting pulled over thank god. Got my new plates and was on my way. Nothing could stop me now. Or so I thought...
I got there looked at the car and the mountain of parts that were suppose to be on it but weren't, oh yay. How the he'll is all of this going to fit in my short box pickup and small car trailer. 2 engines 2 transmissions 2 hoods both fenders, 4 big rubbermaid tubs full of bolts intercooler piping intake piping brackets. Anything and everything that buddy decided he wanted to take off.
Well long story short my tetris skills were challenged but everything got packed up.
By this time it was already about 6:00pm. I had gave my grandfather a call to see if he wanted to meet for supper.
We ate supper and he offered to let me stay at his house and leave for home early in the morning, I didn't do that. I wanted to get home so I could get this car in the garage and start working on it as soon as I could.
I'm glad I didn't stay because about 3 hours into the drive as I was coming up to a stop sign to cross the Canada #1 highway it felt like a balloon had popped under my brake pedal. I was already slowed down to near crawl so I jammed my truck in park to get out to see what had happened. My rear brake caliper had been braking on the hydronic ram long enough that it had wore through and the balloon feeling I had felt was in fact my caliper popping spewing brake fluid all over the underside of my truck.
Shit now what am I going to do. It's midnight and no one is answering their phones. Figured oh well, I'll make it to the nearest truck stop and stop there until I can figure out what to do. Being young and dumb I drove my truck like that. When absolutely needing to stop using my ebrake and trailer brakes to slow me down and park pin to stop. I had always left lots of room for me to coast to time traffic lights and what not. Never once running a red or even coming close to needing brakes now. Lucky.
I got to the truck stop which was another hour away in Edmonton and looked at my situation. It was 2 in the morning I hadn't seen any vehicles on the road. I've got no money to fix this thing, I've got to get home now while the roads are dead. So hit the road again. Drove all the way home like that an a 4 lane highway. It was unusually slow that night. Saw maybe 1 or 2 vehicles an hour on the drive back. And if worst cane to worst I'd ditch it to stop if need be.
Well I made it home. Safe and sound. Backed the trailer up to the garage pushed the car in and shut the door.
One of my room mates had drove me to Napa so I could get parts to fix the truck cause rent was sitting on the table so I had just enough money from that to buy a new caliper pads and fluid.
Went to work that Wednesday with a smile on my face cause I had just bought one of my dream cars. And it was going to be uniquely mine. I researched parts while I was at work for my 2 week shift and when I had got back I started to get at the car pulling crazy amounts of hours each day just trying to figure out how this thing was suppose to go back together. After probably 3 or 4 days I had got the hard pipes all in and bolted down the exhaust put back under the car everything all ready for the motor to go back in. Went back to work for 2 weeks researching parts and bought a z1 race 3" exhaust for it and a new wiring harness from wiring specialtys.
I got home from that 2 weeks and started to work again looking at what goes where before I put the motor in.
The next day I get the motor up and in place bolted down transmission bolted on everything all ready to go. Sweet good day.
Next day was tasked with getting electrical hooked up and engine running. Got everything hooked up the best way I could see that everything fit together because the harness didn't come with any instructions. The car wouldn't start. Turn over strong but wouldn't start. Couldn't figure out what was wrong.
I called over a couple buddies and they helped me troubleshoot the electrical. The put only had one connector going to it and there was 2 spots for connectors. Hmm could that be it. Searched for the other connector and couldn't find anything. Finally came to realize that it had the wrong connectors on it and that I was using the maf connector to try to generate spark. Cut the connectors for the put off and put the old ones on and it the car started. Ran like shit and on 3 cylinders but it ran. Awesome.
I drove it around the block. I had to ride the clutch with foot to floor on the throttle to get it to move so parked It back in the garage to keep figuring.
Off to work again looking at more parts.
Came home looking forward to the day I actually get to drive this beast. Could this be the set of days off that I've been waiting so long for.
I had bought a voltmeter so I could check the spark and voltages on the injectors to see why it was running this way. Couldn't figure anything out everything looked good spark on all holes and reading on injectors were all good.
I had contacted wiring specialtys to see if they had any ideas and they directed me to the online instalation guide for my wiring harness. wow I wish I had this a month ago.
Switched all the connectors around so they were actually right and low and behold it ran. Like a top. Sick!
Go to hook the newly unwrapped z1 exhaust up and fuck it won't fit with the factory downpipe a. Shit. Now what. I ordered ams 3" downpipes that day and had to go to work the next. So wasn't going to get to drive it this time.
Off to work again looking at stuff to buy. Pulled the trigger on a fmic.
When I got home the intercooler and down pipes were waiting for me. But in order for me to get those down pipes on I needed to pull the motor again. Shit. So another day and a half waisted pulling the motor and installing downpipes then putting it back in. Everything looked good ran good sounded awesome. This was going to be the time I get to drive it. Yes. I got it all put together with the new intercooler and took it for a run. Didn't seam to run right. Hmm weird. Took it home put the factory intercoolers back on and same thing didn't run right. Was missing or something.
Parked it for the rest of that days off and started stripping the interior out of it. Cause it was all worn and ratty and I just personally did not like it at all. 3 trips to the dump with my truck later the garage was cleaned out from all the spare junk that I didn't need.
Back to work.
Got home the next days off and start tinkering wiggling wires trying to get it to run right.
2 days later I get it and it's running awesome. So coveralls on time to take it on the town. See what she'll do. After months and months of working on this thing I finally got it. Good day.
Drive it to my girlfriends work to show her that all that time in the garage wasn't waisted and that she can have her boyfriend back now. Took her for a ride. Pulled out of her work and stomped on it spun the tires all the way up the block. She screamed and laughed with excitement cause this thing was finally done and was faster than she had thought. I dropped hher back off at work then went to the car wash to wash the grease and dirt off it cause it still had road grime on it from when I trailered it back from lethbridge.
She had got home from work and it was time to go show my parents that I had finished my car.
We both loaded up and drove out to my parents acreage to show them. My dad came outside to look at it and when I opened the hood he wasn't impressed, because I had bought this fancy overflow container that goes beside the battery for a clean look but It wasn't hooked up. Instead I still had the nesquick bottle with the hose shoved in it that I was using cause I didn't have a hose long enough to reach. He went into his shop and got me the proper hose and hooked it up for me.
I took it for a test run after, just down the road to the next road and turned around. Once I turned aaround the car kind of hesitated then went good again, and when I pulled back into my parents driveway it started to knock really bad. Shit I just blew the motor again.
So I left it at my parents locked the doors and went back to work again for another 2 weeks.
We I got back I talked to my dad and he mentioned that maybe the clutch could have came apart causing it to knock cause it sounded like it was coming from the back of the engine. Makes sense I thought and loaded it up on the trailer and brought it back home again. I pulled the transmission out the next day and found the clutch to be fully in tacked. Shit.
So just pulled the motor out went to princess auto and bought a engine stand took the motor out to my parents and set it up on the stand in my dad's shop.
Off to work again. Looking at rebuild kits.
I bought a full set of acl race bearings from IPP and started to tear into the engine when I got back. Fist pulling all the extra stuff off of it intake that sorta thing. Opened it all up and found the bad bearing. It was a rod bearing that had spun. Thus taking the rod with it. So back to the trusty z1 website. Bought a used rod.
Back to work again. This time I was looking at other parts. Internal engine parts. Cause I figured since I'm already pulling the engine down I might as well give it a full overhaul. I had bought eagle Rods and jwt 500 cams from specialtyz.
When I got home from work they weren't there yet so I took that days off to relax and do other things than work on this car.
A month went by and I had started to loose interest with this thing. I had bought new wiesco pistons for it and we had got the motor tore apart and bottom end redone. The crank was some warped. Out almost 30 thou so onto the laithe it went with a bottle jack and some wood straightened it to within 1 thou. Better than new.
Put the new rods and pistons in and all torqued to spec. And you could turn it by hand not free spin it but could grab the side the flywheel bolts to aand move it over. This thing is going to be fast my dad had said.
I started into the heads cause I needed to change the springs to the jwt high lift for the cams only to find that the valves were pretty much shot. Huge grooves in them and it needed a valve job. So I took the heads and all the parts I had bought for them to the local machine shop to get looked over and redone with a quick port and gasket match.
I started talking to Nick at Czp and IPP about a turbo setup that would make full use out of the jwt cams and head work I was getting done. They had both suggested I do something with ashspec. Have him build me something.
So I got IPP to contact ash and build me a set of gt3071 with 2.5 vband intake piping. I had already bought ams manifolds cause they said that they flow better than any other manifolds on the market. And had bought ams fuel rails that were suppose to come with sard 850cc injectors but they didn't have any in Stock and couldn't get any so just sent the rails and credited me for the injectors. I had contacted multiple places trying to find injectors that would fit these rails and no one had any. So that was money waisted cause ams wouldn't return them. So I talked to Jonathan at specialtyz and got bde top feed 1000cc injector kit and billet motor mounts so I can clear these turbos.
I asked IPP if the ams manifolds I had bought would fit with those turbos and he informed me that no they would not, that MS manifolds would though. Soo. I bought MS manifolds and specialtyz 5 bolt downpipes to go with it. Tried contacting ams to return the manifolds I got from them and again same story no we can't return them.
So more money waisted. I had bought a clutch from whitehead performance before I blew the motor thinking that I should prob have that cause who knows how long he clutch is going to last. And flywheel from z1. All unable to be used now.
So now even more money down the hole. Turbos showed up and man they are a thing of beauty. Attention to detail was amazing. Only problem was that he had forgot to put the vband and the jetted oil lines in the box. So I contacted Kyle at IPP and he contacted ash and got the missing items sent out to me. I contacted the local machine shop to see if he had touched my heads yet and he didn't really know what I was talking about. So I went in and looked for them and they were under a pile of other engine parts right where I had left them a month prior. So fuck that guy I took them back and started shopping around for quotes from z shops to see what it W's going to cost me. Ended up going with z1 doing a stage 3 sent all my parts down with the core.
When everything got there I had also sent the vtc intake gears in for cores on bde. (That guy makes awesome stuff)
Still waiting for the heads from them but it's going to be so worth it. Jon at z1 really treated me good with them.
And recently been talking more with Nick at Czp ordered the RPS triple carbon clutch a week or so ago and just today ordered full haltech ecu with all the goodies and ashspec massives.
Also ordered a while back from z1 a set of used 2.5 ashspec intercooler piping that was installed for a short time.
A 1 piece driveshaft and more 8qt oil pan with oil filter relocation from Dane at Houstonz.
Full fuel system including stainless braided fuel lines aeromotive a1000 fuel pump installed in a 15 gallon fuel cell and pressure regulator. all black stainless an fittings.
Corbeau fixed back racing seats with mastercraft safety 5 point harnesses.
Upgraded oil cooler from z1 hicas elimination kit
New style put
Fully gutted interior cut the dash down and removed all the heating and ac components.
Going to put in a full roll cage just for chassis rigidity so I don't wreck the uni body with all the horse power.
Spl solid suffrage and dif bushings. We're a pain in the ass to install. Hopefully they will be worth it. And energy suspension bushings for everything else. Still currently on stock suspension components and stock brake system. But once this car is on the road those will be coming. Don't plan on leaving it like that forever.
I've stopped counting how much money I've sunk into this build because it was starting to make me depressed that I've got so much tied up in it and it's not showing any progress. Man hours.... oh man I don't even know how many. Probably somewhere in the 4-500 in just my time not including the hours from my dad and select friends that I let work on it.
Sorry for the lack of pictures. I broke the phone that did have my pictures on it. But I'll post more when I take more.
Thanks for reading. Big shout out firstly to Nick at Czp. His customer service is the best I've ever experienced anywhere. From any company I've ever delt with and extremely knowledgeable.
Second to jon at z1. Again great customer service and a pleasure to talk on the phone with.
Jonathan at specialtyz.
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