| Jason put up a post last week about his Z. Figured I would post up a write up for it. Here was his post: Jason's post. So the project from hell as I like to call it :). Some of you may remember Jason's posts in late 2012 asking for advice on what to do with his project, where to take it, etc. Most of you probably remember him most as the guy that shot up his Stillen Ic's. He lived here in Denver but his Z was in Seattle still. My name was thrown out there but he had some guys he knew in Seattle that ran a shop so he took it there. Make sense as they were close to the car. They had a high horsepower mustang so they must know what they are doing right? Wrong! So Jason has his motor he just had built by Specialty-Z shipped to Seattle and they started working on it. Well things went south and Jason hit me up early last year. After talking we decided to have the car shipped to me in Denver so I could "finish" it. The car arrived in early April. It was a complete mess and the inside was packed full of all his parts. It was mentioned that it had been sitting outside for a few years and it showed. Stock spoiler was rotten, outside needed a bath, etc. Had stock Na wheels all around with 225 tires (yes this is a turbo car). Now I/he was told most of the work was going to be done on the car already and it just needed a few things to get it finished up. Vaccum lines, boost controller, etc. We even thought it may have been driveable when it arrived. I pop the hood once I got the car and its far from being even close to ready. they bolted the trans to the engine and put it in the car. But once I started looking there were so many things missing I knew I had to pull it back out. no o2s installed, no lines to the turbos were installed at all, and more things you'll see through the post. 
I yanked the engine and trans out and threw in on a stand. I don't like working on a dirty car so I unpacked it and gave it a quick bath. the engine bay was a mess so I washed it out too. 
All cleaned up 
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Onto the fun and issues. I may bounce around here while I try to cover most things. I'll cover the bigger things and leave out a lot ( I mean a lot) of little things. One thing about this car that drove me crazy was there were tons and tons of little things wrong and parts missing. One example was every exhaust bracket was missng and had to be replaced. Even the ones are the very rear of the car. Why were they even touched? And because the car was in pieces when it arrived, I wouldn't notice things were missing until I went to do the work. So this slowed things down a lot. There were major parts missing as well. the back half of his SZ exhaust was missing. No radiator. Test pipes gone. So we had lots of orders for parts placed. One issue I found was the PS return line to the res. It had a splice in it that made no sense since it still used the same stock hose that was worn out. I removed the stock crimp and hose and put on a new hose. I put a barb on the hard line to help with the new hose. 
The engine had the 300 Degree rails and 740 injectors already installed. I decided to pressure test the system and
it's a good thing I did. It didn't hold air at all. Anyone see the issue here? 
They had not installed the upper oring. But the lowers were there. when I removed the rails from the engine I found
the upper orings. They used them as the lower insulators 
Also the way they routed the lines off the back was so bad they were unusable, not to mention I don't know how I could have got to them with the engine installed. The drivers side was pinched in there really good. I had to
remove the water pipe to get it out. 
You can see the back of the vtcs were pretty trashed as well so we picked up a set of the aluminum caps. RTV nightmare. They used RTV eveywhere they could and in places they didnt need to. Downpipes to the turbo, turbo
to the manifold, oil filter housing. It was all over. so I had to tear it all apart, clean it up and put in some new gaskets. 
Oil drain hose on the drivers side turbo. 
Jason didnt like the powder coating that was done and wanted to redo it. So I tore things apart and we threw in a
bunch of other parts to get coated this time as well. I had to take the water pipes off for the powdercoating. Figured while they were off it was easy to get to the timing belt to check it. Figured with everything else I found I better. SZ built the motor but I wasnt sure who did the timing belt so I wanted to check it. Damn worm clamps and positioned in a way that made them no fun to loosen. 
Besides that everything else looked great. Going by that and the different color and better applied RTV I found I'm
pretty sure SZ did the belt which I'm sure was a good thing. Jason spared no expense on the engine. I believe his
total was close to $10k. Didn't need/want anything going wrong in this area of the engine.
 We left the timing covers off as he plans to do some cam gear tuning when SZ comes out next. He got his re-powder coated parts back and I started putting things together. Did coolant lines and boost lines and such. He also decided to get a 2.5" intake and IC pipe kit. He also picked up a Ash turbo oil line kit with the filters so that was installed as well. 
Clutch time, oh boy. Not sure how he got sold on this clutch but its way over kill. He only has Sport 700's. But
it's the worst clutch I have every dealt with. Tripple disc, super expensive, chatters very loudly, there is no slipping at all. It's on or off. So I would stall the car multiple times every time I drove it. I hated it and hated driving the car because of it. Deff no need for it and I suggest he get it changed out. Greg and Seb checked it out when they were in town over the summer and even they were not fans. 
Engine installed. New wiring harness, ic pipes, hoses, etc. He had Stillen ICs installed on the car already. When I swapped in the Ash Massives I made sure to not let him shoot up this set of Stillens as well :). Another local z owner now has them. 
Started the car up and it ran great. He had bought a Zemulator to install. Since he was gonna have SZ tune the car I talked him out of it and he bought a chip tune from them for now to get him by. Seb emailed me the file and I burned it to a chip. While on the jack stands I started looking over everything. Tranny drain plug looked too far undone. Figured I better check it. Of course, they drained the tranny for some reason and it was empty still. I happen to have some Royal Purple tranny fluid on hand so I filled it up. Good thing I found it now instead of after/while driving. 
So now the car drives, but he decided to get bigger brakes. He bought a Stoptech 14" kit for the front. 
And some rear replacements 
So now with bigger brakes the stock wheels are not gonna fit. He buys a used set from a guy over on 300ZXclub. He
may be on here too, I don't know. But it was a nightmare. The wheels get dropped off. They are 19's. He had new rear tires put on, 295s. I look at the offset of 25 and say to myself wtf, these are not gonna fit. Hard to tell by the
pic but they stuck out a good inch as expected. 
Well the other guy had them on his Z somehow so I had to figure out what was going on. I message the guy on 3ZC, He doesnt give me a real answer. Then Jason remembers they came with some spacers to change the offset so he drops them off. They are 2-piece wheels and the spacer goes inbetween the hub face and where it bolts to the rim itself. They were an inch thick. Hard to tell by the pic but you can see it laying in place. It changed the offset to roughly 45. Much better. 
But you can see in the pic the next issue. By spacing out the face, now the fill valve is too short and you wont be
able to put air in. So I had to order longer air valves. Issue with that is the tire has to come back off in order to change those out. Also another issue is by adding the spacer, the bolts that hold it all together are too short now. Jason thought he had the bolts at home but he was out of country. Sucked for me as his car is on jack stands
and his wheels are apart. So the car wasnt gonna move for while. 2 months go by and I can't have the car sitting around anymore. I order new longer bolts, get the spacers installed, drop the wheels off and get the tires removed and new air valves installed and finally the wheels bolted onto the car. Since the previous owner had these on his Z, why were they not set up and ready to go once we got them??? 
And finally in all its glory 
Jason had bought even more parts for the car during the past couple of months while away at work. Collegeboy's
coilover set up, race logic system, etc. But as of now it was Jan 2014, 9 months later. Way longer than I ever
planned on it taking. I needed to just get the car driveable and moved along as I was way behind on lots of things.
Also Jason was leaving again for 6 months for work. I couldn't have the car sitting around for that long taking up
space. So we decided to end the work for now and he came and picked up the car. Finally an "end" to the project but I
may pick it back up again later to finish some things I didn't get to and to installed these other items. My future
is kinda up in the air right now as we are looking at maybe moving out of state. So we will have to wait and see.
JackB nimble JackB quick JackB can suck my dick =P - james-lee 11/02/01
Arrogance is the #1 weapon against Supra Owners - MikeH 08/06/02
Dallas with a Z: I like the bulge dude 05/02/03
Bezbefootball: Does dick have anything for me? 10/21/03 |
Zsgetyoulaid's project write up. - 
