Fairlady - Diff and Rear Suspension removed.

Me and a buddy dropped the rear suspension and diff in the Fairlady. The job went better than I expected thanks to this post from dirtys30.blogspot.com. We were able to get the rear end dropped in just over an hour. Not bad for the first time I have done anything with the rear suspension on a Z. I think I got lucky because none of the bolts were siezed tight with rust. It was actually scary how loose some of the bolts in the front diff mounts were. There is no telling how old the gear oil is so I am not looking forward to cracking open the diff cover.

I have ordered an energy suspension master bushing kit and stainless brake braided soft lines for the brakes.

I noticed that the right side brake drum was seized which explains why the car was so hard to push when we loaded it onto the trailer the day I picked it up.

Before:

After:

 

CZOT Dyno Day - COBB Tuning Austin.

The Capital Z of Texas club put together a dyno day for the Nissan owners in the area. The event was held at COBB Tuning in Austin. The facilities are amazing and the cars were quite a sight to see. I have never seen so many skylines at the same place at once. It's time to get a real camera. It's too hard to get decent pics with an iPhone.

 

Fairlady - More progress on the L28 motor.

It's getting closer!

I am using an LD-28 water pump. The impeller on the LD-28 pump is larger so it does require some small modification to the front cover to make it fit but it was pretty simple. The Nissan part number is: 21010-17SY7.
More info here if anyone is interested: HybridZ link

Comparison:

You need to trim the a little from the front cover. The gasket makes a good reference.

ARP head studs installed:

Head torqued down and cam oiler installed:

Timing chain installed:

Front cover installed:

 

Right now I am waiting on some parts that I forgot to order and a few things that I decided to go ahead and upgrade while I have everything apart.

I dropped the gas tank tonight to clean it out and it was worse than I expected. The gas had to be at least 5 years old (judging by when the car was last registered) and had turned red. The tank will probably need to be boiled, it looked like the inside was coated with rust and I was afraid it was ruined but I sprayed the inside with a water hose and the rust washed away and there was nice bare metal underneath. Hopefully the tank won't cause any headaches.

240Z - LS1 going in the 240z.

I just got a motor for the Datsun 240Z project.

After much consideration of what motor I wanted to put in the Z I finally decided to go with a gm LS1 V8. I have always been against putting an American v8 in Z cars, but here I am joining the v8 club. I was originally considering either the Nissan VQ35 or VH45 but decided against going that route because of how tight the fit was going to be with a DOHC V motor, not to mention that the VQ35 is so integrated into the 350z body harness that you need an entire donor car to realistically do the swap. I also like that I will be able to retain A/C with no additional fabrication.


So here it is. 2004 LS1 crate motor for a Chevrolet Corvette - 0 miles.

Fairlady - L28 re-assembly started.

L28 block honed:

Bottom end assembled using ARP bolts and studs: