| It was one thing after another. Once we got into the engine I found that one of the bearing housings was actually machined from the factory incorrectly. With the Nissan OEM bearing in (based off the crank and journal stamps) it turned out the bearing housing for the #2 journal was actually smaller than the crankshaft (explains why the #2 journal was torn up on my first crank). After line boring we brought it out to spec. This car to me was kind of a risk, like I said it was taken care of by 1 guy (NA rear end, 1 piece drive shaft, underdrive pulley, and some nice electronics). Then it was sold to a kid who blew a turbo, and hit a barrel on the highway. I took my time building this motor but it was still not cheap. After reading all the horror stories about people blowing up their motors after a rebuild, and spinning bearings and general engine hysteria on TT.net, I wanted to invest my money into this car carefully. Once I got the engine in, it was not running right and that deflated my balloon rather quickly. I found the previous owner put a NA injector into the fuel rail. After a used TT injector and a new wiring harness, she was up and running, only to lose two more injectors to what I am guessing is Ethanol. So $1400 later, I had 740cc Nismo injectors and the car purrs (idles horrible but idle controls are on the way). Now playing with that kind of power the braking makes me nervous and so I rebuilt the brake calipers and put stainless steel lines in. I am waiting on funds to do one of the vendors brake upgrade kits (bracket and 350z track rotors). So that was the long answer, short answer is yes $3k is a lot of cash especially since I paid $2k for the car. I have not stopped upgrading this car by any means. I am pretty efficient at pulling the 300zx engine (done at least 10 of them), so popping the engine out is no big deal (M3 is my backup car). To me this dyno is only one thing: a baseline. After thinking about some of the people’s posts, I considered hitting another dyno to see how different they are. As I said before though, I am in no hurry, and I am slowing moving the chains towards my goal. That being said, I am really considering the GT28RS (Disco Potatoes) for the turbo upgrade. I don’t have CAMs or the MSP manifolds (want them), but for the first round, probably not going to have them. I am proud of my hand porting that I did on my manifold, but I know it is probably only slightly better than stock. The NA rear end on the car really helps with turbo spooling and she gets off the line quick. I am assuming that the lag with those big turbos it not unbearable for those that have them and will be less for me. Any thoughts on this?
Jeff Cieslik |
