Asher's 280ZX

[DJZ]

I've taken on finishing off a few bits and pieces on a mates car so thought I'd start a project thread for it.

I'll get some photos of it over the next couple of days but basically it's a 1983 NZ new t top 2+2, it's had the facelift bumpers and a few other bits removed and now has an RB25DET from (I think) an R33 Skyline sitting in it, I made the engine mounts and sump for it a few months ago.

There's a bit of a list of jobs but I'll post up pictures as I go through them. The first thing that I did was mount the power steering reservoir, I drilled two holes and put rivnuts in then used the old bracket off my black car as it'd already been shortened. Pictures to follow.

It's getting fitted with S13 coilovers, he has purchased some 2nd hand BC reds. I did some measuring and a quick CAD drawing to see if I could get away with not slotting/welding up one of the bolt holes in the rear like I did with my black car and it turns out that the S13 pattern fits inside the original pattern with a bit of room to spare, I might make up a steel plate to go over the top of the strut tower just to spread the load a bit hopefully I won't have to muck around with doing anything to the original bolt holes.

Cut out a drilling template on the mill, the red strut top is the S13 one from the BCs and the silver one is from a set of R31 coilovers I bought ages ago.

[DJZ]

Drilled the first rear strut tower, drilling template worked perfectly, had to drill the holes from under the car as my air drill was too tall. It was a bit hard to line up, the original strut top bolts are 10mm so that's what I made the template but the holes in the strut tower are more like 12mm so there is heaps of slop.

I put the strut in as it was and the car is very very low, I couldn't get the jack out and had to use a scissor jack to get it free.

Noticed while I was under there that the left rear caliper is missing as is the rear sway bar.

[gman]

Got them if you need them.

[DJZ]

Did some more work to this thing, got the coilovers all fitted in the rear, wound the adjustment down (which raises the rear end) to pretty much the maximum so I can actually fit a jack under the car now, one of them was pretty stiff so I spent quite a lot of time with the WD40 and a soft hammer working it backwards and forwards till it moved.

Got the missing brake caliper for the left hand side, went to put it on and it didn't fit, the control arm has been swapped for an early one (this is a late car), so I got the original control arm off the car which was missing the stub axle, replaced the bearings and swapped the stub axle out of the early control arm into the correct one, then fitted the brake caliper. Spent quite a bit of time tightening things up, pretty much everything in the rear end was loose.

Still need to fit the sway bar, get some new washers for the companion flange to stub axle bolts (8/12 are missing the washers), finish off fitting the hand brake cable to the left hand side and then hopefully that should be the rear end done.

[DJZ]

Finished putting the axles in, the sway bar is in and tight with new link bushes. I've put the driveshaft in, twice, the dust cover was missing off the back of the gearbox and I didn't realise that he still had it so I had to take the shaft out and put it back in after installing the dust cover.

Started on the front end, I think the easiest way to put the S13 coilovers in the front (which now I realise is what I should have tried on my car) is to make an adaptor that uses the factory Z ball joint bolt holes but takes an S13 press in ball joint, should be pretty easy to do, just need to get an S13 ball joint to get the correct OD and thickness, it'll be something like this:



This will mean that the factory control arm can be used which means the factory front sway bar and radius rod can be retained, I had to change both of these on my car.

Today I've been working on a few little bits and pieces, the main mission was moving the dipstick tube from the front of the block to the rear of the block, this is a 5 minute job with the sump off but it took me about 2 hours with the sump on, I forgot to tell him that we needed to do this before he gooed the sump on and I couldn't be bothered taking the motor out and taking the sump off again to do it. I've bolted in the starter motor and started working on the wiring, the RB25 loom was complete so that was about a 5 minute job to plug it in to the motor, the R33 firewall grommet fit in the factory Z hole which was nice, I've fitted two new relays to replace the original IGN and EECS relays that were missing and am just working on figuring out the rest of the wiring, luckily there are heaps of diagrams and info available for the RBs.

[DJZ]

Got this thing started today, only need to connect 5 wires to make an RB25 go. Sounded okay, got lots of little jobs to finish off on it and I've only temporarily wired it. I can't remember how the fuel pump system works in the Z, I think the later cars had some sort of fuel pump amplifier or something like that, it's got a bigger fuel pump in it so I'm just going to rewire it with a new relay and bigger wire.

Need to sort out the throttle cable for it, it came with an aftermarket cable which I might be able to use but it requires modification to the pedal and possibly the throttle wheel but we'll see how it goes.

Found a brand new bottom radiator hose off something in the garage that should work, I think it's off an R31 but I don't remember buying it. Need to figure out how to mount the radiator, I would like to weld tabs to it and bolt it to the factory holes but I think the factory holes are gone, the top ones are at least as the radiator support has been hacked up. Maybe I'll weld tabs to it and put rivnuts in the new radiator support.

[DJZ]

Mounted the ECU today and started to tidy up the loom at bit. Also made up a little bracket to mount the J pipe before the throttle body as it was just hanging loose, not sure what's missing there. I love rivnuts.

Had a long conversation with Zac about making the factory tach work with the RB, got a couple of things to try.

The car came with an aftermarket throttle cable, these things have a horrible ball linkage from the factory, the way it was set up was using part of the original ball linkage which I didn't like so I removed what was left and make up this bracket, the pictures are from my white car, it was too dark outside to take photos of Asher's car.

The way I mounted the cable on the black car was pretty yuck so I might make one of these for that thing as well, might try and get the curve around the clutch master a bit closer so it matches nicely.






The throttle cable it came with is something like this kit. I need to drill out the ball on the pedal and attach the ball that came in the kit as it's smaller in diameter. Bart suggested I cut the clevis off and solder on a normal round piece which I think I'll do, I can't see any way of easily making the clevis attachment work. Will probably have to add an additional spring on the pedal like I had to do on the black car.

[broke]

Nice work. I never liked the linkage on other L series cars either, surely it would be affected by the rocking of the engine under acceleration etc.

I'm trying to envision how that control arm adapter works but I can't picture it. I'm sure it will be pretty cool though.

[DJZ]

I'm trying to envision how that control arm adapter works but I can't picture it. I'm sure it will be pretty cool though.

Yeah if I had a model of an R31 ball joint it would make a lot more sense. I've got two R31 ball joints on the way and they should be here next week but basically:

The Z ball joint looks like this:



The R31 ball joint looks like this:



Where the ball joint goes into the S13 etc (A31 in this case) knuckle is angled (not parallel with the ground):



So the S13 control arms angle the ball joint like this:



So basically you would press the R31 ball joint into the adaptor and bolt it in place of the standard Z ball joint, if you bolt them straight to the Z ball joint it cocks the ball joint over hard one way before the suspension even moves.

[DJZ]

Rear strut towers now:



Motor looks something like this now:



Bracket for the j pipe:



Throttle cable bracket installed: