My 1990 300zx Twin Turbo build by megaDan

5 minute(s) of a 731 minute read

As usual life has gotten in the way of working on the Z, as it seems to do nearly every year.

Late fall I got a new job and moved back home to Wisconsin in December. I stayed with family until March, when my girlfriend moved up and we found a place to rent. Over the winter I joined forces with a group of friends to build a 24 Hour of Lemons team/car. Our first race was April, and that sucked up nearly all of my free time.

 
Formerly the Putt Pirates, now Priority Fail

While trying to get a street car fully prepped for the track in under 4 months, I was also 'training' for a half ironman I competed in @ the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Over the course of two months I somehow found time to pull the bumper and intercoolers off the Z, but thats about it. After our first lemons race and after completing the tri in early May I had a few hours a week to spend on the car.

Ironman trip

I should probably cover this years planned modifications first. Over a year ago I got a set of 2.5" intercooler piping for a price I couldn't say no to. All of the mods to my Z so far have been focused on making it a fun street car. Sport 500's, exhaust manifolds, 13" brakes, etc. Nothing over the top cost-wise, and mods focused on getting on the power earlier. Last fall I got a set of 2.5" Ashspec V3 Massive intercoolers, and had hoped to install them in the fall with the piping which did not happen. I also picked up a 7" touchscreen to run a carpc with for nistune and gages and etc, but that will have to wait until next year. Ah, almost forgot, I also had RobZ CNC my OEM throttle bodies and I ported my plenum to match. This is gonna be a riot when it is done!

So...I removed the OEM intercooler piping over the course of two days. The girlfriend was at a bachelorette party or something like that so I had the night to myself. Without even realizing it I spent 7 hours in the garage on a friday night and got most of the car ripped apart and half the piping out. Total to remove the piping was probably about 3-4 hours. Not as bad as I expected, but it could have gone better. Recirc bolts were seized, and almost impossible to reach with the condensor fan still installed. I wish I would have taken pictures. The first thing to remember is to unbolt the dryer bracket from the car, and this will give you all the wiggle room you need for the passenger side. The drivers side was much easier.

After I got this done the car sat for quite a while before I was able to start installing everything once again. It took a while to figure out how the 2.5" piping would go back on. I installed the intercoolers first, as everyone said to do, which was a good idea. However it took a lot of trial and error to get the right pipes in the right place and in the right direction. I spent a lot of time in front of the computer looking at other installs, but I still had to figure most out myself. I'd say I probably spent 8-10 hours (over the course of multiple days) getting everything fit up right.

We had another Lemons race last weekend, and our next isn't until November so I can finally focus most of my time on just one car. I got to work on the Z Thursday AND Friday this week, which was enough time to finish the piping install and install the upper plenum.

This evening's plans are to do a boost leak test and if everything holds up....try and start the car!

The big challenge this summer will be tuning the car, as I will need completely new maps with all the power I'll be putting down. Technically I should have rescaled my map with the previous round of mods, but the car ran great and I knew another extreme round of mods was not far away. I plan on renting some dyno time and doing it myself but I haven't messed with timing maps before. I've done lots of reading regarding tuning so I think I'll be able to get the hang of it, but I also want to make sure I do it right.

This is the last set of power-adders I plan on going with so whatever I end up doing for a tune this time will last quite a while. I'll install a LWFW and 1pc driveshaft some day, but aside from that all future mods will revolve around looks and functionality.

I'll get some pics up later tonight. I'm bored in front of a computer so I figured it would be a good time to update this thread.