DJZ's 280ZX

[DJZ]

I've thought about slotting the holes but looking at it tonight as it is the bottom of the sump is pretty much level with the bottom of the crossmember, the motor could go down probably 25mm but then the sump will be really vulnerable to damage so probably not worth it, the motor is clearing everything at the moment I just need to bolt the gearbox up to get it sitting at the right level front and back and see what it looks like.

Got my freshly modified control arms back today, they look pretty awesome. Bolted everything up and struck a few problems, the ends of the control arms are extremely close to the brake rotors, I might be able to solve this with camber settings and might try and flatten off the end of the control arm. Also the radius rods that I got that I thought were going to fit are too short.

The other problem is now the track width on the front looks about 50 or 60mm narrower, so the wheels are sitting in heaps (more than they were before!). Might be time for some new wheels but it's hard to find wheels that look good, clear the brakes and have offsets that fit.

[Bartman]

Got any pics of the control arms you'd like to share?

[DJZ]

Haven't taken any pics of them yet, I'll try and get some today. Don't know if it was the best way to go about it but it looks like it's going to work out okay.

[DJZ]

So I took the motor out again today and attached the gearbox to it, spent ages putting it back into the car which is not very easy.

I put the timing belt on it properly while I was at it, I bought a power steering pump yesterday so I cleaned that up too.

The trans doesn't fit very well, I'm probably going to have to chop off the ears that are inside the tunnel to make it fit. Anybody know what the rules are on either making new mounts and welding them to the tunnel or bolting through the tunnel for mounting the trans?

This isn't my car but similar to what I'm thinking:
Remove these ears:


Do something similar to this:

[Bartman]

Perhaps ask Cletus at old school? (He's an LVVT cert engineer by trade)

[DJZ]

Modified control arms, this is the strengthening I had put in at the crossmember end, you can see where the lip on the sides has been bent down to fit inside the crossmember.


This shows how short the radius rod is, I can get one stud in the wrong hole but it's loose at the bush end, you can see how close the rotor is to the end of the arm


And this is the problem at the moment, the end of the arm hits on the rotor whenever you go to about 1/2 lock either way. If the balljoint was shorter the end of the arm would be inside the rotor. Out of interest with the ball joints 10mm longer and the car lower than I'd like it the control arms are still at a good angle, I think if the ball joint wasn't longer the arms would be higher at the wheel end than the crossmember end.

[DJZ]

So I chopped the lip off one control arm, not really any better. Slotted the top hole in the strut to give the hub a bit more angle, not really any better.

Had a look at my mates S13 and the ball joint is really close to the outside of the control and the end of the control arm is really thin.
Something like this:


On the S13 there is about maybe 10 - 12mm between the rotor and control arm with the wheels straight, might cut a bit more off mine and see what it looks like.

Seeing as the R31 radius rods were too short I did a little research and came up with the idea to make something like this:


So I bought some of these:


Mounted them up to have a look and bolted to the top of the control arm they are on the wrong angle and point above the hole in the bush mount by maybe 15mm+. By the looks of it if I cut a hole in the control arm and slid the radius rods through the hole and then bolt them they'll come up in about the right place.

[DJZ]

Got the okay from the certifier to chop off the ears in the tunnel and make up a new mount as per the pics above.

Needs to be minimum 50x5mm steel, 8mm 8.8 grade bolts or 10mm if I only use two, with plates on inside the cabin. Have to pull the motor and box out again tomorrow so I've got enough room to chop them off.

Been trying to decide what to do about wheels, I don't really want to buy new ones but the current ones don't really fit on the back and now on the front they sit really far in. I was thinking about these:



They are very common looking drifty type wheels but reasonably cheap for 18x9.5s & 18x10s, but that means I'll need to buy new tyres too.

[DJZ]

So I bolted the engine mounts tight onto the block as they were a little loose as I didn't have the right bolts and now the mount on the LHS doesn't really line up. Did a bit of research on the interwebs and a few people were saying to use R31/VL mounts as they are a direct fit and the motor will just slot in, the Z31 mounts were supposed to work for S30s but I couldn't find much info for what people have used for S130s.

So I bought some VL mounts, the LHS on is exactly the same as the Z31 mount and the RHS mount is about 40mm longer which makes things even worse. Have pretty much decided to use the LHS mount as is and cut 50 or 60mm out of the RHS mount, this will mean I can tilt the motor over a bit more towards the drivers side, which will give me quite a bit more clearance for the turbo and also around the clutch master cylinder.

Haven't really made much progress on anything else, need to get the mounts sorted first. I bought a 4" 45 degree bend for the inlet to the turbo and bought some fittings and stuff for the turbo water feed/return. The kit I bought had the wrong fitting to go into the block and one of the lines was too short, so I bought some more line and a weld on fitting to weld onto the radiator inlet pipe. Got misc other bits and pieces, new oil and fuel filters and some 3" silicon joiners.

Took apart the oil cooler setup and cleaned out all the lines and the cooler itself, most of it is in pretty good nick except for one fitting. Ended up ordering the wrong fitting to screw into the block from Nissan so the correct one is coming from Japan.

Also ordered my new gauges which should be here hopefully next week.

[Bartman]

Sounds like you're having lots of fun n games there Daniel. If it was easy, everyone would do it.