I haven't really posted up much of my stuff in here and just started into the more intense fabrication part of this project, so I thought I'd share some. This is a customer's car, it's a 1990 TT 2-seater, guy bought the car a few years ago with everything intact and a blown motor. It ran "like a rock tumbler" but the damn thing ran, when I pulled it apart there were NO bearings in two of the rods. I built the engine with a new crank, Eagle rods and Wiseco pistons over the winter. Also replaced all the suspension, completely deleted the HICAS (Nissan 4WS), installed aluminium subframe bushings, new tension rods, rebuilt and powdercoated the brakes, etc etc. Pretty much we started with a complete but old car, now it's all back to good running order with some add ons. Anyway, the turbo kit....

We kept the stock manifolds and had them ported and ceramic coated, so they are now like this:




Upgraded the stock snails to twin GT2860s, they bolt right up to the Z manifolds but clearance is VERY tight. You can see a comparison here, but we ended up going with the GT style or whatever housings later on because there was no way a coupler was going to fit on either one of these.





This is how it looked all loaded up and ready to go in



Somehow it got decided that we'd use the ATP V band adapters, which I'm hating now due to the fitment of the driver side turbo and firewall clearance, it's gonna be a tight fit for the downpipe in there.

So finally I'm getting a lot of the actual fabrication done, with all the work on this car it's taken too long to get the motor finally mounted in the car where we can make what it's going to need to run. I've done plenty of turbo kits and the like before, but never on a Z like this, and damn it's tight!

Working on the intake/charge piping today, trying to keep the engine bay as clean as possible, crossfeed piping and 4" intake using a Ford Lightning MAF. We're shooting for 600rwhp and will be tuning it on NisTune.

Made some drop-in cats for the once-a-year inspection, these are just fusion so they look all pretty since they won't be seeing much use, they will have test-pipe counterparts that replace them for normal use:




The piping this morning, I'm not going to use red couplers it's just what I had lying around to hold stuff together:



As you can see fitment is tight, not just with the piping but even with the turbos, the passenger side needs a little more massaging of the frame rail. I don't have a clear picture, but I also needed to modify the wastegate arms quite a bit, to clear the car on the driver side and to snake between the turbo and the oil filter tree on the passenger side.





Here's a crappy pic of a pipe I just put together when I came in this morning. It's been a long time since I did any aluminium, I haven't really done any since I got here in October/November, so it's taken a little bit to get back into "it". I still don't have a ton of experience with it so every time I do weld aluminium I have to sit down and run a few beads before I get into my rhythm.



Using this bad boy, set to max 150A, using 2% thoriated 3/32" tungsten and 1/8" 5356 filler. This is only the second welder I've used for aluminium but compared to the Lincoln I used before it seems to be a lot easier to start and weld at lower current when it gets hot. It might just be that I'm getting better at it/have more experience too, but overall I've been having little to no trouble with it.


Anyway, just thought I'd share, I'll update more as I make the rest of the charge piping and the downpipes and exhaust and whatever else we need for the thing. More pics can be seen here: http://wickedinnovation.net/downest/...%20300ZX%20TT/

 

looks real good Tom, this isn't the car you were talking about getting on the dyno is it?

 

that does not look like it is fun to work on.

 

Yes, this car will be dyno tuned as soon as it's together.

No, it's not fun to work with at all. It's funny we also have an S13 with a VG (non-turbo) swap and there is a LOT more room in there, a TT kit would be simple on that car. I'll be making an intake and headers for that soon.

For comparison:

 

there is another, similar z that we actually need to dyno soon that i think he was referring to

M@

 

keep up the good work man, she looks like she will be fun to ride when she is done.

 

you should have modified the engine mounts to free up some room for the intake

 

There's enough room for intake, we actually didn't make the mounts on the S13. The guy who did made it so that the tranny fits in the "stock" location and the engine sits on some mounts welded to the crossmember. It's nice to have the room, and I don't think there's really any LESS room than the Z has in front of the motor.

 

Nice work . we are going to dyno my friends 300Z with twin gt28rs and dual 4" exhaust and a huge front mount.

 

Sweet! I don't see many at all with this particular setup. Friday we are going to the dyno with another Z with JWT 500s, we'll see how that does. My damn welder's high frequency went the other day so I'm waiting on parts from Miller to fix it and get back on this thing.

 

that looks like a really nice port job on the manifolds....ive only done a clutch in a tt 300zx and i hated every second of it....so nice job sticking through this! id like to see some results.

 

We had it done at GrimmSpeed, they are a Subaru company mostly, but we send them a lot of non-Subie parts for porting when appropriate. Also had them do my buddy's Audi manifold and turbo, took quite a bit out just gasket matching the ATP manifold and hot side:





This is what the old housing looks like before porting, it's a 3076.

 

Fixed the damn welder yesterday. I had some problems back when I got it: https://honda-tech.com/forums/welding-fabrication-53/no-high-frequency-my-dinosaur-2464833/. Well the HF quit on me earlier in the week again, so I pulled the board out and checked the relays, looked to me like the one in question was just done, there was some kind of grease or something leaking out of the coil to the point where you couldn't see the windings any more. I tried to clean it again and also clean and regap the points but no dice. Ordered some stuff from Miller and put it all in yesterday.

Here's the old relay from back then, you can see the difference in the two (the one on the right is obviously the bad one).



Here's the new stuff:


New relay compared to the old one:


Removed and installed:



Then I replaced my old points with the new ones. I had cleaned them once before as well, and I know you aren't "supposed" to clean them, so I figured I would replace them this time to be sure, and they are probably 30 years old anyway so it can't hurt.



this is after some quick brushing with a scotchbrite pad:


but the new ones are much much better:



So I put it all in, fired it up and still nothing! I went through the diagnostic with Miller again like I did back in January, and it seemed to indicate the HF transformer. $220, fack... so I tapped the transformer with a rubber mallet, and now it works perfectly. Also of note, the HF start works a **** ton better now. I used to have a lot of inconsistent starts with it on DCEN/HF start, but now it seems to be perfect. Back to it...

 

Now get cracking on this project man

 

just thought I would post the graph from the black tt z that was on the dyno

 

This one should blow that one away haha. The one with the above dyno is relatively stock, Sport 500s, a piping kit, upgraded side mounts and a catback, more or less.

 

and injectors tuned on nistune with 4 stock catlytic convertors holding it back

M@

 

yea, i would have ditched the cats. ive done a tt swap in my dads z32. super gay. then after i put it in i found out both turbos are toast. so i guess il have to putt it back out to do them since there is like a inch on both sides of the turbos before the rails.

mad props, sick under rated cars..just gay to work on

 

Got my pie cuts in from Brewspeed today for the downpipes, and got the hardest part of the piping finished up. The driver's side was pretty damn bad, worse than any car I've ever worked on! Taking the pipes out and putting them in takes the better part of a most frustrating hour.

Don't mind the masking tape, just scraps and pieces I use for fitting the smaller pieces of tube together.





they are tight, but no touching. Both pipes bolt to the turbo housing, the lower/intake with a 2 bolt flange and the outlet with a 3-bolt (o-ring sealed). I can't really get down in there with a camera even, it's a huge pain. I'm debating whether I should bracket the upper smaller tube to the timing cover or something on the engine.




Also got the intercooler all welded up, had to cap off two of the end tanks and route them straight out the back, and make new mounting tabs (the Greddy uses a bolt-together 2 piece tab on top, lame). Just have to get one more small piece welded on one tank and it's ready for some smoothing and polishing.

Next I have to drop the radiator back in so I can finish the pipes that go around it to the intake. There's almost no room for 2.5" there, think I'm going to have to notch it out a little so it sits all nice. We're using a lightning MAF with a 4" intake, should fit nice and snug in there.

 

man tom, that does not look like fun...eta for completion?

 

As soon as possible! Come on up sometime Joe, it's not a long drive.

 

looks pretty neat!

 

More stuff's been moving along, on track to start up this week! Sorry for the lack of updates, been really busy... here's what I finished up today, 4" intake for the Ford Lightning MAF we're using.

Step one:



Step two, 4" down to 3" bells made and welded on:


Step 3, down to 2.5" to match the turbo inlets:



Very out of focus... oops!



My aluminium is getting better, I've never done this much before so I'm noticing myself get better the deeper I get in this project:



Also got one of the downpipes started, here's a crappy shot. It's 304SS, used some laser cut pie slices (thanks to Brad Campbell) to get the tightest angle I could between the V-band adapter and firewall. These things saved me a **** load of time, and Brad was fast and awesome to deal with, thanks man!



More to come! I had some more pics from today but I guess I didn't upload them before I came home. I'm starting to feel really happy with this thing as the time to start it gets closer. This is my first solo fab project really since I moved to my shop and I've been learning a ton, always thinking of ways I can do it better, ways I would have done it differently, and of course when I run into problems asking myself "how would [insert some guy on this forum] do it?"

 

Looking good man. We took my friends 300 to the tunners and he could not tune the twin mas airs with the auto tranny. Here is a quick vid of the car coming off the trailer. Time for a 5 spd swap now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GSoEJsNzOE

 

Exxxcellent fabrication in here!
One question for the TIG newbie: ok, maybe 3...
-On THIS set of welds, was there no filler added?
-How much does just simply 'pushing puddles' decrease the potential strength of the weld, particularly in an exhaust/HOT apps?
-And lastly, do you have a stretch-gap (forgive my terminology, or lack there of ) on the butt joints? like a 1/16" or w/e gap between, to let the metal move around when heated and not throw off your angle.

Looking great thus far! Can't wait for updates.
-Andrew