| (pic heavy and long – don’t say I didn’t warn you) I've been "offline" for quite a while and I think it's safe to say there haven't been any "Where's Dave N??" posts (is that a good or bad thing?) - but like clockwork, I noticed there are still "Where's Ash'z?? popping up when I was catching up on old posts last night...some things never change. :-) For anyone who has been around longer than 5 years, you may remember my post from late in 2011 where I reported that my engine finally gave up: http://www.twinturbo.net/nissan/300zx/forums/general/view/2466737/164156.html ]">(164,156 miles is when the world stopped spinning).
(sigh….)
 For the longest time, I had planned to build up a spare motor and have it drop-in ready if/when the time came. Well, that plan never materialized due to a multitude of reasons, so my car was without motive power while I figured out how to fit an engine build into my personal and work schedules. A few weeks after this event occurred, I took on a Z project for someone (we had discussed doing this project for over a year) but it wasn’t until around the time that my engine died that things lined up for his project. I approached this project with the intent of having it help fuel my rebuild from a motivational and financial perspective. The goal of this project was “simple”: TT.net member bondztt had an accident with his car some years prior (slid off the road) and the car was never proper after the repairs. We discussed numerous ideas but settled on finding a rolling shell and transferring all of the good bits from his car to the new car. First, the rolling shell arrived (from KY if I recall) and several weeks later, bondztt’s car arrived from MA. Suddenly, there were 3 Z’s sitting at the family shop and only 1 was in running condition. Without going into boring detail, I’ve got a few pics to show the before/after and hopefully they will tell the story better than my words: bondzttz project: Rolling shell:
 
Engine pulled from old car:
 Cannibalization in progress:
 White Z transformation in progress:
 Engine going in (after getting a 120K kit, new turbo CRHAs, and 300degree fuel rails) – I had three generations of my family there (my father, brother, and son) to see how easy it is to install a Z motor. My father and brother pull/install Model A Ford engines on a regular basis and were surprised at how quickly the TT motor went into the car:
 
Interior coming together:
Part way into the project, I ended up having to completely gut the interior and strip out flood-damaged wiring. The donor car provided most of the necessary harnesses while we had to source a couple of '90 MY specific harnesses - that was an unexpected detour in the project.
 
Before:
 After:
 Exterior: Installed blue LED in door key lock lightpipe
 
New Exhaust and JSPECS:
 More exterior:
 
At this point the car was mechanically done and ready for the front end to be painted. Local bodyshop quotes were in the $4K range to paint the front and rear bumpers (which needed some cosmetic fixes), so we decided it was better to ship the car back to bondzttz in MA and get the work done locally after the car arrived home.
Loading onto transporter: Going….
 Going…
 Gone…
Still with me??? Need to take a beer or bathroom break? Go ahead, I’ll wait…. That project wrapped up in late ’14, and for the better part of a year, I had this shell lying around taking up shop space:
 I couldn’t find any takers for the shell, not even the doors. So the carcass sat while I struggled to find the motivation (and time) to work on my engine build. I originally planned for a fire-breather, however, the more I worked on the build details the more I started talking myself out of such lofty goals and decided to focus on more conservative expectations. That led me to a plan where I’d stay with stock internals and turbos with the idea of 350 hp at the wheels being a good target. As more time passed, I became increasingly impatient with having the car sitting with a dead motor. Almost daily I found myself thinking of what I needed to do to get it running again. Fast forward this merry-go-round to about 4 weeks ago where I began to rethink the engine plan to find for a better way to get the car running without taking another 5 years to actually build a motor. So I considered a JDM engine as an option that might save some time. I looked up local importers for potential engine candidates and even thought about buying a full clip (rationalizing that I could sell off the unused parts to offset the cost of the clip). After about a week of scanning importer websites, I was ready to go check one out a front clip. But before I could schedule the time to see it, I came across one of those "once in a lifetime" craigslist ads for a low mileage wrecked Z. Typically I'm too late on these deals, but not this time. :-) To make a long story short (who am I kidding - it's too late for that), I struck a deal on the complete car and took delivery of a barely recognizable Z (you'll see what I mean in a moment). But…I had to get rid of the old carcass. Calls to countless junk dealers were dead-ends. And when I finally had someone who said he would come by and get it, he never showed. Knowing that I had the other car coming, I had to do something and ended up grabbing Sawzall to put this thing out of its misery: From this....
 To this....
 and this....
 Half of the car waiting for any random scrap-metal collector to come by and take it:
 And this is as far as I got after a couple of hours. I’ll be cutting up the remainder this weekend. I guess it could make for a nice man-cave couch if anyone is good with leatherwork. :-):
And now the journey begins to get my TTZ back into running order. But first, here’s what I’m working with – a ’90 TT with just under 52K miles:
Oops - that wouldn't have anything to do with causing the accident:
?
While the engine swap could be knocked out in a matter of a weekend, I do not want to rush this. Plus, I have other personal commitments that need to be finished before I start diving into this project. The target is to have the car back on the road by my b-day in late August. It’s a milestone birthday and it would be fitting to have the car done in time to celebrate the birthday in style: 
(I should/will make this my new sig pic)
Before any sharks start circling around the carcass of the new black Z, ZXRider has already picked up the scent of blood in the water. Yes, I will be parting out whatever I can salvage from the car that’s usable – be sure to keep an eye on the classifieds for my posts. I haven't been keeping up with other people's projects (other than seeing ZEngineer selling out (he will now be known only as "Engineer") , but wonder if I will have my car back on the street before Seedy :-P Thanks for reading! Dave/Garth/OG PS: In case anyone was curious….on a dare, my 6’5” son stuffed himself into the back of the new GT-R to prove....nothing, not a blessed thing. ?
This car is probably owned by a snowboarder. Sig Quotes: "I JUST saw your polls post" email from BigTDogg on March 24, 2009 in reference to this polls post from Jan 7, 2009. "Your sausage scares me!" - TT-XTZ 6/13/05 "Or he's having a rough week like the rest of us and decided to take out his agressions of not being breast fed on me." BigTDogg 15:45, 09/25/03 "Pick her up from day care and take her to Dairy Queen for a snow cone." YugoBernie 1/7/04 of course those are canadian bannings and beatings, which after the conversion rate is really only a "hey! stop that!" Chris(NJ) 1/14/04 see the green "n" next to my name? what's COZ? (n/m) - 300zx88 8/11/04 |
Don’t look now, but guess who’s on his way back? - 
