My Dirty S30 ( Garage San Maru 2.0 )

[44014]

So I have owned by current Z now for about 3 years and I don't have a build thread, so  though I should start sharing a few things that I have been doing and how it all started.

 

I have always wanted a z ever since i first seen one driving past it as a kid.

 

I started life with a 1600 and damn near ended it as well.

 

Came out of a corner doing roughly 70 mph and a tyre blew out..

 

At this stage i decided i needed more power and i had always wanted a Z so i found one at a dodgy used car yard and promptly got myself into debt and purchased it.

Well what a mistake, This thing was held together with news paper and bog and maybe a little paint.

I Don't have any photos of this car ( Jake or Myself have a photo of it some where towing one of his old 240z's ) it was nothing special had a 2.6 l was painted British racing green. I decided to part this car when the left caster arm actually came away from the chassis rail due to the rust being so bad.

 

Living with Jake at the time there was significant peer pressure to buy another zed..

Garage San Maru the early years, That's me fixing Jakes car for about the seventy millionth time as I'm a mechanic and he fixed computers...There were 2 more in the garage behind the camera

 

 

I then thought it would be a great idea to then get into more debt and buy another 240Z! this one had new floors and had just had a new paint job ( Stupid Doug ) 

 

 

The red 240 and delivered to Alan Stean ( Brisbane z shop ) and he proceeded to put custom wound king springs in it and custom shortened Koni Adjustable shocks and I put these wheels on the car 

Had a few bushes replaced and drove it around for a while.

At this point I lost my licence and the car ended up sitting in my dads front yard for about a year next to the beach and well, The poor body repairs quickly became evident and i had lost interest in the car.

 

I had a few years of no car due to no licence and i ended up at this time inheriting my girlfriends car, A 84 Corolla Seca to run around in, The need to have something fun in the garage soon bit and I decided to try the whole V8 thing.

Enter the Fairmont , It was an ex drag car when i bought it so it had a lot of the good stuff, 351C c10 manualised transmission and big disk brakes all round.

I basically Painted it replaced a few bushes and put the wheel on it and drove it around using more fuel then i thought possible and doing big skids.

  

 

I had this car for a few years and it was great fun but i then sold it and made great money on in that big Muscle car boom about 7 years ago and went on a 6 month holiday in Europe.

 

I came home and at this point had absolutely no interest in owning another z.

 

Its at about this point Jake bought his 240 and well it all started again, So i looked around for a bit and i found a interesting car come up for sale so i Purchased the car sight unseen from Sydney

It had a 20B 3 Rotor fitted to the car, Something i had wanted to do since i had started and revved a cosmo as a teenager in a import yard.

.

 

The car was actually not to bad rust wise, Front and rear of the sills were rusty and a little around the hatch slam panel.

 

 

It turned out someone had replaced the sills at some point but had used flat steel and formed the shape of the sill using bog... Less than ideal.

 

I was not discouraged at this point though, On paper the car had a lot going for it, Ohlins Coil overs all round R33 gtst front calipers with some 330 mm Mercedes commercial rotors on the front.

The car had a complete R32 GTR rear cradle adapted to the rear of the car so had the short nose GTR mechanical LSD differential with GTR rear brakes and Modern suspension geometry.. As i said on paper it sounded amazing!

Unfortunately at some point the car had been in a substantial front end impact and the whole car was twisted and the cradle had not been installed straight as it appears they were taking measurements from the front wheel. I decided to sell this car but keep the 20B dream alive and removed the drive train from it.

 

I started looking around for another good S30 and this little Gem popped up, Same owner for the last 15 years and had been stored in his garage for the last 10 after having it resprayed it was driven around the block once a year when he renewed the rego. 

 

So i handed over my folding stuff and Jake drove it home for me as my licence was temporarily unavailable again 

 

It was fairly stress free drive home Jake commented that everything felt very tight and all the switch gear was like new to use.

We ran into a 280ZX on the motorway and had ourselves a little cruise that Jake got a bit caught up in and we missed out turn off.

 

We continued on and got off at the next exit and tried to figure out where we were.

After about 10 minutes of driving a little warning light for the hand brake came on and after having a go at pulling on the handbrake and releasing it multiple times we thought no more of it until Jake mentioned that the brakes were going to the floor.. We pulled over ( eventually ) and had a look and sure enough we had no brake fluid in the rear brakes reservoir, We limped it to the closest servo and topped that up with brake fluid and bought a few bottles just as insurance.

 

She was not running the best, The car had been fitted with a 350 Holley carb and anything more then about 1/8 throttle it would start blowing copious amounts of smoke and chunks of carbon the size of golf balls would come out of the exhaust. we just put it down to being putted around the block and not getting to temperature in over 10 years.

 

We stopped for a impromptu photo shoot on the way home.

 

While she was in fairly good condition it needed some new trims and so on and the suspension was pretty tired.

I purchased new door handles and a center console and a few rubbers with all intentions of just changing a few things and driving it.

but we all know how that goes.. Next minute Jake had bought be some crazy lift and duration cam shaft for my birthday present that i then spent about $1500 on actually installing it with new springs and rockers.

I got a set of triple OER 40mm carbs and bolted it all up and bought Jakes Koni reds and king springs.

Put on a rear disk conversion to get rid of the leaking wheel cylinders and changed the wheels.

At this point i had to clean the ports as there was so much carbomn build up in them there was only just enough room for me to put my finger into the port. the rest of the port was taken up with oily carbon deposits. I wish i took a photo i had never seen anything like it.

 

I had it running like this and ran the cam in but had a constant issue of a misfire. it kept oiling up #6 really badly but i just put it down to the extreme carbon build up in this engine and the rings were probably stuck in and a good drive to get it hot and carby clean would fix it up.

At this point i was moving house so i actually got to drive it for the first time ever! other then up and down my dead end suburban street in 1st gear.

 

Unfortunately a "wog tune" did not fix the poor old L26 and it seemed that the valve guide on #6 inlet valve was so badly worn it was flooding the combustion chamber with oil and fouling the spark plug.

As i had absolutely no intentions of spending any money on the original ( did i mention this car is matching numbers? ) engine started looking at getting the 20B installed and quickly came to the realization that i was going to spend minimum $35k to get it going so it sat like this for a while and started buying bits and pieces for it,  MCA Coil over, 6 piston brake kits, Adjustable camber tops.... you know the essentials. I decided to flare it and bought some appropriate wheels to fill the flairs as well.

 

 

330mm x 32mm 2 piece rotor with 6 Piston caliper front brakes, 1kg heavier then stock brakes.

 

MCA Blue Coil over adapted to TTT camber top

 

TTT Camper plate installed. I'm actually taking these off and will be going with the weld in variety very shortly.

17x11 -53 rear wheel

 

This is how the car sat for about 12 months while i lost inspiration.

 

 

I was looking around for engine packages to fill the void, I found a 280ZX running a RB26 for 8K, then i wanted to install a RB25 neo but the Rb thing is just kind of a bit over done and i liked the idea of having a tough L series in it.

Well with Jake having surrendering his left testicle and first born on his PMC L34 i thought i had better do something besides cam and triples to keep up with him.

I then came across a L28et set up that Lindsy from the z shop had removed from a car he bought and was converting back to NA.

I got the engine and it was a good package had all the minor mods. 

XF throttle body

VL turbo injectors

R34 Ball bearing turbo

EMS ecu and wiring loom tuned ready to go.

And i was getting to the point where i was going to pull it apart and do a freshen up when Jamo advertised his L28et set up.

Link to run down of engine here

 

http://www.viczcar.com/forum/topic/15053-l28-turbo-powertrain-for-sale/page-1?do=findComment&comment=179191

 

After reading his add i just had to have it. Problem was i Was in the middle of moving house again and just couldn't get organised at the time, I Spoke to Jamo and he agreed to hold the motor for me with a deposit.

 

So the z got to move again but not under its own power this time.

 

First wash in 2 years

 

I got it to the new house and seen it in the sun for the first time in well over 2 years and fell in love with it all over again.

This is the first time the car had sat on the coil overs and these wheel, Even though they had been fitted for over a year on stands in my garage.

 

Front wheel is running maximum negative camber to fit in the gaurd ( about 7 deg neg, it is 17 x 9.5 -35 and will fill the flair nicely when not running stupid camber.

 

 

So I instantly started pulling it apart.. Again 

to start the installation of Jamo's Engine and had all intentions of just putting the engine in and getting it going, But my ocd just wouldn't let me as Jamo had the engine in his shed for about 6 years there had rust and cat hair and leaves and well. it just want pretty enough

So I tore it down on the stand and started making it pretty.

 

This rusty mess is currently out getting ceramic coated 

 

Air research turbine housing freshly painted.

 

Dump pipe after being Ceramic coated

 

And this is how it currently sits waiting for all my bits to get back from the ceramic coaters.

 

I have plans of putting the engine all back together this weekend and possibly intall it in the car ans tart the wiring for the Motec.

I usually update on the Garage San Maru facebook page if you would like to see some of the mods and updates in a bit more detail.

 

if you have made it this far im sorry about the grammatical errors and poor spelling.. 

 

Cheers Doug

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[260DET]

Well, that's a story and a half  Love the black multi spoke wheels on the purple car, they look like a modern version of the Wantanewbe classics.

[KatoKid]

Good story.

 

Geeze you really hammered your licence!

[d3c0y]

You have no idea... that's not 1/5th of it...

[gav240z]

I like how Jake put you up to all this, as if you were protesting all the way through it haha.

[CBR Jeff]

That's a story.

Jeff

[d3c0y]

The best bit is, in the approximately 10 years doug has owned a zed, he would lucky to have driven a zed in total for more than a year, maybe 2?

[Gordo]

Wow. You've been around the Block a few times in different zeds. Haha. It's a good read. Love the Rotary Zed.

[Brabham]

I like the purple color. Is that the factory dark purple metallic perchance?

[44014]

No, Is a custom mix derived from a BA falcon colour.

[d3c0y]

No, Is a custom mix derived from a 90's ski boat with extra flake.

 

Fixed.

[44014]

Started reassembly this weekend.

Unsure what to do about inlet manifold.

I know it's a fairly big restriction and it's ugly as hell....

I just don't want to wait any longer to put it in the car but I'm kind of torn at wanting to do it right the first time.

[260DET]

For an inlet manifold that's a pretty good looking exhaust manifold

[nizm0zed]

Change the inlet manifold.
Mod the factory runners and put a bigger plenum and throttle body on it.
Ideally you'd start from scratch and fab up something real nice, but the L28 inlet manifold can be welded nicely, just preheat it before you weld.
Theres enough meat in the manifold to open it up a bit and match the inlet ports.
There is even a casting line along the manifold wich makes a great cutting line and leaves the injector bosses untouched.
Just bear in mind you'll have to get it retuned to suit the new plenum and throttle, but it'll be fairly close if you dont change much else.

Edit, Just to really tempt you.
If you mod the factory one you'll have it running while you save a small fortune for the awesome looking gear that gets custom made by CPC
http://www.customplenums.com/

 

Edited October 6, 2016 by nizm0zed

[44014]

Change the inlet manifold.

Mod the factory runners and put a bigger plenum and throttle body on it.

Ideally you'd start from scratch and fab up something real nice, but the L28 inlet manifold can be welded nicely, just preheat it before you weld.

Theres enough meat in the manifold to open it up a bit and match the inlet ports.

There is even a casting line along the manifold wich makes a great cutting line and leaves the injector bosses untouched.

Just bear in mind you'll have to get it retuned to suit the new plenum and throttle, but it'll be fairly close if you dont change much else.

 

Edit, Just to really tempt you.

If you mod the factory one you'll have it running while you save a small fortune for the awesome looking gear that gets custom made by CPC

http://www.customplenums.com/

 

Yeah had already contacted them as i was interested in the carbon intake manifold ( its a theme on my car ) but they wont do the carbon for the L28 due to the heat of the exhuats under it effects the glue.

And there Billet ones start at $4000.00 so i figured i can probably make something 95% as good for about $1000.00 so plans are to do that.