My 1990 300zx Twin Turbo build by megaDan

7 minute(s) of a 731 minute read

Long overdue dyno graphs.....

Overlay is 14psi and 18psi after Harry was done.

Enjoy :-)

2-24-2015

Definitely going to take things a little easier this year, getting married in the fall really eats into the car budget and we planned the wedding around the midwest Lemons Schedule. (TRUE 24 HOUR RACE IN JUNE!!!!)

I've been trying since the fall to finish my HICAS delete and NA power steering conversion but all my free weekends have been wedding or lemons related. I think this year I'm just going to drive it and enjoy it. I really need to refresh the bushings, especially in the rear, but its not causing tire wear issues yet so I'll probably try to hold off until next winter. I have so many plans in the fall....and then it gets cold and I don't want to do the work.

Power additions are done forever I hope. Impending mods are an interior refresh including getting the seats redone and hopefully an appradio setup. I haven't done much planning to be honest. I'll try to update as things progress. Last year was a good one, and didn't have enough updates.

4-7-2017

24 month overdue update?

2015 summary:
Got engaged right at the start of the year so I knew between wedding planning and racing I wouldn't have much time for the Z (recurring theme). I did get it out of storage in April though, which might be a new record. First job was to delete the HICAS lines in the engine bay to clean everything up. Got plenty of driving in, between April and May but the car didn't feel right from the get go. Felt a little down on power. I replaced the plugs towards the end of May which helped but didn't totally solve the problem. I drove the car from time to time throughout the summer while troubleshooting the power issues but didn't have much success, and didn't really have time to devote to it. Meanwhile I had an oil leak that looked to be getting worse and worse, all over the PS front of the engine bay. Thought it was coming from PS valve cover, but couldn't tell for sure. Parked the car in September and never got it out again. It was hard to be TOO frustrated as we spent 2015 working on our RWD converted golf GTI for lemons. Moved the engine to the back in the winter of 2014/2015 and got to our first race with a non running car. Finished middle of the pack, which we were thrilled with. July saw a true 24 hour race which we spent 14+ hours of doing an engine swap in 90* heat. A nightmare. Finally, the race gods smiled on us and we took our RWD swap golf to a thrilling B class victory in October at the 2nd Joliet race! Yehaw!!!!

2016:
Got engaged January, 2015. Married Oct 2015. Bought our first house Feb 2016. It's been a whirlwind. Luckily the house came with a 3 car garage so the Z has a permanent indoor parking space! Started early this year, and got to work tearing apart the top end to get to the PS valve cover and do it right. Spent a Saturday afternoon with some friends working on everyone's projects along with the Z. We had some great weather and March so everybody brought their toy over. Viper, C5 Z06, Porsche Cayman S, and a CLK 500. Was a good day, and the valve cover got done. And after my test drive...still leaking. Ugh. Not from the valve cover. Decided to do things right and pull the motor and replace EVERYTHING (minus removing the heads. I ordered a new gasket kit, plenty of loctite, and got to work. Pulled the motor with the wifes help in just a few hours and tore the motor down. My goal was to have the car ready by my birthday weekend (great present right?) so in the span of a week, I removed the motor, pulled everything apart, replaced every gasket, retorqued and loctited every nut/bolt, and put it back in. I was thrilled. It was a long week, but I was glad to have the work done. While the motor was out I removed the plugs to check them, and lo and behold, found some cracked plugs. I replaced those with new plugs....some of which were cracked brand new (WTF?!) and got 6 GOOD plugs in the car. Test drive.....and......car felt like it did when it rolled off the dyno in 2014 WOOOOO...so is the oil. God damn. I just replaced the RMS when I did the clutch in 2014 so didn't think to remove the flywheel. Turns out I should have. Crap. From test drive, to car back up on jackstands with the transmission on the ground.....45 minutes. I'm not sure if I should be proud of that or not. That's with out a lift mind you. Replaced the RMS, put everything back together and the car has been BONE dry since. I've been putting plenty of miles on it. Not as many as I would like, but still trouble free, oil free miles. Got it out to Cars and Coffee in June and got plenty of admirers. It feels great to finally have the nagging issues addressed. My ONLY upgrade this year was going to be finally installing a sub enclosure, but our dog (and only 'child') recently had some serious health issues which tabled those plans. Instead I'll continue to enjoy the summer and get as many miles in as possible.

Summer 2016:
Spent a week in April 2016 pulling the motor and replacing all gaskets. Spent June installing ~900 feet of picket fence. July 3rd took the Z out for an all day TSD road rally, finished third! Got out to every cars and coffee, had a blast enjoying the car for the first half of the summer. Second half of the summer lack of power gremlins showed up again and life got busy. Didn't have much time to troubleshoot or drive the car.

Winter 2017:
First full winter in the new house and I didn't have much motivation to get in the garage. Oh well. The Prosport gages I had installed years ago both gave up the ghost and to aid in troubleshooting my power issue I decided I would install a datalogger. I purchased a DLP-IO8 usb data acquisition cable and obtained a 5v fuel pressure sender from Amazon. I purchased some higher quality wire and removed the bees nest of crap in the dash feeding power and data to my gages. The previous owner had hacked everything up pretty good, and when I initially installed my gages and boost controller it was mostly one at a time so it was never done....'right'. I spent the month of March changing that. Using some distribution blocks I consolidated all of the power and ground draws behind the dash, and ran new grounds straight to the block and pulled switched 12V from what used to be the dash clock. I installed the data acquisition cable under the dash, ran power/ground/data to the gages under the hood, sheathed everything, and built subharnesses for the cable itself so I can add/remove gages at will. I'm currently only using 3 of the 8 inputs, and at some point I would really like to install thermocouples before/after my intercoolers just because. I like data.