Tools!

I love Harbor Freight.

Safety goggles and dust masks to keep our eyes and throats safe while we strip the paint off the body.

I have a Drillmaster Angle Grinder and I love it. A second grinder for my lovely assistant will speed up the stripping process. Also, it was a $10 tool since I'm an Inside Track member. Three abrasive wheels should get us though the whole car.

A stack of metal cut-off wheels for cutting out the damaged floor panel and for cutting the original transmission mounts.

We now have everything that we need to prep the body and to get the interior ready for rust repair and welding. Can't weld on paint or rust.

Our cost for all of this great stuff? $30. With tax.

Ebay!

This is an install cradle to bolt an RB20, RB25 or RB26 into my S30 chassis. Normally a kit with this cradle and a transmission mount would cost $500-700 once you factor in shipping and possible tax.

Our cost? $85. Shipped. We need to fabricate a transmission mount, but with the engine handled that will be a lot easier.

So 1JZ is out, looks like we're sticking with Nissan for our power train. Next week we detail further costs of the RB20DET and RB25DET swaps.

Engine: Narrowing down the choices

So, lets talk about engines again.

So engine choice is a very personal decision. There's a lot to consider and after some reflection I've narrowed it down to 2.

Let me clarify a bit. If I want to build an example of a great Japanese sports car, there's a couple of points that need to be made.

Japanese automotive design is all about efficiency and reliability. Take a good design and make it better. When Datsun wanted a grand touring sports car, they took a great looking and performing car and fixed all of it's faults. They built a better mousetrap, and by mousetrap I mean deathtrap and by deathtrap I mean the Jaguar XKE.

Toyota did it too, but they didn't do it on the scale that Datsun did so the 2000gt was never the commercial success the Z was.

In the spirit of improving and efficiency we're going to run a style of motor that screams Japanese design. The small displacement, high output turbocharged motor.

No VQ35de. To large at 3.5l and no turbo.

By using a turbo we are the very definition of making more with less. By using exhaust gas to spin a turbine wheel we are using every part of the engine's power cycle to produce horsepower. Recycling at it's finest.

By keeping displacement low we are limiting ourselves a little bit, but the 2 motors we're looking at still have the potential to make anywhere from 200 wheel horse power all the way to 800 wheel horsepower, all through the magic of turbocharging.

The Toyota 1JZ-GTTE 2.5l Twin Turbo Inline 6 with it's 280hp and 315ft/lbs of torque and the Nissan RB series. I found another RB motor that I want to talk about that might be a spiritual front runner right now. We know about the RB25DET, but what about the RB20DET?

Nissan RB20DET

The RB20DET is by it's name pretty easy to tell what it is. An RB family engine that is only 2.0l, making it the smallest inline 6 available.

A little under-powered at 210hp it uses a single ceramic turbo. With a few key modifications like a better turbo and better fuel injectors 250-300whp should be doable. Problem is it's more work to get to 300whp with this engine than an other. On the other hand, with it's 2.0l engine size this motor can spin to 8000 rpm pretty easily, and lest we forget the special Fairlady Z432 was also a 4 valve twin cam that was only 2.0l.  It's also the cheapest engine to get for our needs.

Which leads me to next week. I'll be detailing out exactly what it will cost to swap and RB and a 1JZ motor into our chassis. How much will it really cost? Both engines have special needs above and beyond what was talked about in our intro to engine swaps in order to be fitted to our chassis and I will detail them here.

Crazy idea?

I hadn't even thought about this, electric motor conversion!

This guy cut out the fuel tank, made a battery tray and put 250lbs of batteries in. The math says he should have a 60 mile range with a  top speed of 80mph. Tempting, but I think I'm too hooked on exhaust sounds to not have a true gas engine.

Interior: Trunk and safety.

So our trunk is going to look pretty plain. Once all the trim pieces and carpet is in, we're going to make some small additions that hopefully won't ruin the overall look of the interior.

There's a small container behind each seat, I hope to move the battery in there. That way it's out of the way, gives us more room in the engine bay, and moves 30lbs of weight from the front of the car to the back. If this doesn't work out, I'll get a plastic box and mount it in the trunk.

Eventually, this car will see time on a race track. Due to the increased power and speed we will need a roll bar in order to safely be on a track.

This might be a little aggressive, but it gives the correct idea. We also will need to run those harnesses. I'm not sure I trust 40 year old seat belts so some correctly mounted harnesses make sense. The harnesses will depend on our seats.

In order to keep our cabin quiet enough to talk in while flying down the road, we'll have to install some sound  proofing. The factory sound proofing will have to be removed (Dry Ice!). The factory sound proofing was put on before the body was painted so it goes "Bare metal-glue-sound proofing-paint". That means that 40 years later the glue is gone and there's a gap of air and moisture under the factory sound proofing. That means there might be rust. Hopefully we can remove the old sound proofing and not find giant rust holes.

Once the rust is fixed, we lay down a rust encapsulation paint like POR-15, then lay down rolls of Dynomat or some other sound proofing material.

That's about it. If everything goes right, then we'll have a nice 70's interior that's comfy, quiet and has a nice sound system. Perfect for a race track or a 400 mile trip.

Interior: Dashboard, Gauges and Radio.

So we showed yesterday what the stock cluster and dashboard look like. We need to make a few changes, but overall we want to retain the look and feel of a 70's Japanese car.

To start with, we need new gauges. The factory gauges were engine speed, vehicle speed, oil pressure, fuel level, battery voltage, engine temp and a clock. Two 4" gauges and three 2 and 5/8th gauges for the center gauges.

So, we need to decide what information we want quick access to. Vehicle speed and engine speed are definite so that takes both the 4" spots.

We'll be using Speedhut custom GPS Speedometer for our car. Since your speedometer reading changes depending on transmission gearing, rear differential gearing and overall rear tire size the best way to make sure our speed is accurate is to use GPS to track our speed in real time. An added bonus, this gauge has a fuel level gauge built in so no need for it's own gauge.

We'll probably end up using all Speedhut due to the high quality product. Also I would like to keep the shade of lighting and text font the same on all gauges.

We're most likely going to have a turbo on our engine so our quick info readout is going to be (in order) Boost, Engine Temp, Oil Pressure. We might at an Air/Fuel Ratio and Oil temp but those would be for tuning purposes and would be in the glove box.

Basic idea, like this but no gauges in the heater controls.

So we have our gauges, now we need a steering wheel and shift knob.

Light wood with a black spoke just screams class. We can tinker with finding the right brand and size, but this is about it for me. Shift knob to match, but that depends on the transmission we use.

Last part of the dashboard is a radio. I have an old Alpine that I'll be running. We'll get some speaker pods for under the dash and for the trunk.

Here's an installed front speaker.

And here's a box made for rear speakers. Throw a small sub in there somewhere and you have a great little sound system.

Next time we talk about the trunk/luggage area/hatch and safety.

Interior. Baseline and seats.

We've talked engines, bodywork, wheels and 70's style exhaust. Let's talk about the most important part of the car from a passenger's point of view. The interior is where passenger's have to sit and be carried by the car. Let's start by looking at a bone stock 240z interior.

Simple, well laid out and plain functional. Look at those gauge pods. 5 round gauges from left to right. Those three on the center dash held double gauges so you had speedometer and tachometer in the big rounds and fuel, oil pressure, engine temp and voltmeter with a analog clock in the three middle gauges.

A better shot of the center gauge cluster.

And here's what our trunk SHOULD look like.

So. We have none of this stuff. We have a cracked dashboard and a beat up steering wheel and that's about it. Since we need to start from scratch we can make some modern changes while still retaining the 70's look and feel.

First of all seats.

The factory seats are very 70's. Flat, wide and vinyl.


















So we need new seats. I want to keep the same basic shape and size, and I want to use factory seats from a modern car. I figure factory seats will be safer design and construction. Aftermarket seats from eBay would be made by unknown hands. So we need a modern seat that looks like the original. I've found two that are easy to mount and look good.



Honda S2000. Available in Black, Tan, Blue and Red leather.
About $500-$600 for a pair.

I'm partial to these myself. Dodge Neon SRT-4 seats. Very similar to Datsun seats, but with better padding and noticeable bolsters. Can be found for $300-400 for a set.


















The interior will be broken up into three sections. Seats, dashboard and luggage. Tomorrow, we talk about the dashboard.

Do we even need to Wide body?

If we go with 15 inch wheels, we would be limited to a 225/50R15 tire. These would fit in the original wheel well perfectly. Example.

These also show off the Black banana style wheels better.

The only problem with this is I'm not sure if a 225/50 is a wide enough tire for our power goals.

Ideally, I would like to run a 245 width tire, but I haven't found a 15 inch tire that wide.

Honestly though, I'm not sure if it's the lighting but that might be the best looking S30 I've ever seen. The color is perfect, the wheels are perfect, the ride height is excellent. Twin exhaust stack and duckbill wing? Yes. If my Z turns out half as nice as this, I'll consider it a win.

Body: Other Wide Body kits

There's a couple other non-ZG style wide body kits available, but I think their all too aggressive for our needs.

The IMSA-GTU Wide Body

Molded in fender flares combined with a molded in wing and a variation of the G-Nose. Accommodates 11-14 inch wide wheels. This is a serious race quality kit that improves handling through ACTUAL aerodynamic tweaks. Very rare and hard to install. Requires a lot of tweaking to get right because if any of the panels are not aligned correctly the handling will be ruined.

The Arita Speed Wide Body

Kind of like a way more aggressive ZG flare, again with the G-Nose. Very similar in function to the IMSA kit. Also can be done without the G-Nose, but without the G-Nose your losing your main aero advantage.

We're not using either of these mostly due to cost and availability. Also, we don't need to be that wide. Regular ZG flares with cut wheel arches will allow us to run a 9 or 9.5 inch wheel all around with 255/4017's. More enough contact patch for 300-400hp. Any wider wheel or tire and we start talking supercar sizes and those are big money.

Body: First grind.

Not much of a post today. But we did get to play with a grinder and start stripping some paint.

Eventually the whole car will look like this and we won't find too much body filler.

Body: Wheels.

There are two things we need to talk about with wheels, style of wheel and size of wheel. Lets start with style of wheel.

The vintage Japanese car does not respond well to giant wheels with rubber band tires that seem so common on the modern car. Small and wide wheels with tall sidewalls are the correct. Lets start by looking at what is one of the most iconic wheels in all of automotive history, the 8 spoke Banana wheel.

8 wide, round spokes. Called a banana wheel because the spokes....

.....Look like bananas. This is a British Minilite. Most fast, nimble British sports care ran on 13 and 14 inch Minilights. This wheel has been copied many, many times.

These are 15" Panasports. Another very popular Datsun racing wheel. Usually in a 15x7. Their light, and incredibly strong, but not quiet there yet.

What would Japanese enthusiasts have available? RS Watanabe. The Watanabe wheel has been in production since the early 60's and are custom made, so you could get them as wide and in what ever low offset you needed. Want a 15x12 rear wheel for your Skyline? Sure. Want a 16x8 front wheel for your Datsun? Of course. The low offset and wide wheel made the Watanabe sand out from the other banana wheels.

There are other good vintage style wheels though.

The Hayashi is available in a staggered setup. 15x8 in the front and 15x9 in the rear.

Maybe a modern wheel like the Grid? Comes in a wide low offset, and all kinds of colors.

So what about Size?

Our factory wheel would have been a 14x5.5 with a 185/70R14 tire.

Depending on whether or not we use the rivet on flares, our ideal wheel width is 8", maybe a 9" wheel in the rear.

But what about diameter? I've always felt that going more than a +2 is too much, so that means the biggest wheel is a 16". Problem though. No good tire options in a 16" size. 15" isn't much better. So, do we go to 17" and get better tires for less? Does a 17" Banana wheel look good on a Z?

I worry the 17" is a little too big, making the car look like a Hot Wheels toy.

So that's where we're at. We haven't decided on wheels, but we have a long way to go. Most likely we will do one of two sizes/styles.

15x8 Black Banana Wheels with a 225/50R15 tire
or
17x8 front 17x9 Rear Black Banana wheel with 225/45 Front and 245/40R17 Rear.

History: Fairlady Special Models

So in order to talk about what a 70's Japaneses tuner owned car would look like, we need to look at the Japan market cars, and the three special models that all kind of roll into one look. First of all, the 240z was referred to as the Fairlady Z. That would be your standard 240z with a 2.0l Inline 6.

First, the Fairlady ZG.

In order for the Fairlady to be competitive in Group 4 GT Style racing some body modifications had to be made. In order for the changes to be race legal, they had to be on the street car as well. The "G-Nose" with it's extended nose and headlight covers were much more aerodynamic than the open air scoop on the standard 240z. We'll be addressing that with some home made engineering later. The Rivet on wide-body flares were purely cosmetic on the street car, but the race models had the body and wheel liners trimmed to allow for proper race wheels and tires almost three times as wide as the stock 14" tires. The engine remained the same, as most race teams had race legal engines they wanted to use.

Fairlady Z432.

The Z432 was a special edition created by using the 2.0l S20 from a Skyline GT-R making about 160hp. The 432 stood for "Four valves per cylinder, Three carb's and Two camshafts. Used S20's sell for $10-15k.

Fairlady 432Z-R

Looked the same as the car above, but only in a darker shade of orange and only with black hoods.

The 432Z-R is a VERY rare and VERY special model. Only 30 were made and only 20 still exist due to crashes. The 432Z-R was a competition only car made for and only sold to licensed race teams. Made for Rally circuits, the engine was the same S20, but tuned to whatever the race teams needed. Weight was heavily reduced, using thinner sheet metal and Lexan windows that kept curb weight below 2000lbs. Roll bar style cage was standard. No power brakes, because rally car's didn't need them. The most hardcore factory Z ever made.


So, what do we need? Depending on our wheel and tire choice, we pull the ZG flares and mirrors. 432Z wing. Lower chin spoiler, but not the G-Nose. Those black wheels are aftermarket, but I'll be talking about those tomorrow. In the end, we paint it all white, with black flares and we get this.

Body: Vintage style exhaust.

I mentioned yesterday that the exhaust would be period correct. I've used the term "period correct" a few times, but I've never talked about what that means. The idea is to make it look like it would look in the 70's.

More specifically, what would our car look like on the streets of Japan in the late 70's? We'll talk about the body and style later, for now I want to talk about the exhaust, more importantly the muffler and tail pipe. This is a very important part of the style and sound of this car.

Lets look at a stock 240z to compare to.

This is all I can find. Single pipe from the manifold back. One resonator (11) and one large vertical oval muffler with a single tip. Very boring.

The under vehicle portion is simple. Single resonator (kind of like a muffler) with homemade piping. Lets look at some vintage exhaust setups.

The popular look at the time was Dual Stacks. That's two exhaust tips stacked vertically. Like this.

You can see one glasspack (tube style) resonator and one large oval muffler with two slash cut tips.

Then you have things like the Fujitsubo Legalis. This is a full exhaust with twin tips, very simple and one of the best sounding units. Although, I think it looks a little boring.

Like I said, kind of boring. Also, not race car enough. How about a real race car style exhaust?

BRE style. A Y-Pipe splitter branched off to two trumpet exhaust pipes. Awesome, but too loud for our needs.

No, what I need is something home made along these lines.

These are out of production, but their not hard to make. A Y-splitter, two short glasspack mufflers and two slash cut tip's. Resulting in something like this.

Maybe put a slight bend where the tips meet the glasspack so they point a little upward.

Basics of swapping a modern engine into our vintage chassis.

Once we decide our engine and transmission we have to mount it safely in our chassis. lets look at the finer points of the swap process.

Engine and transmission.

• All of our engine choices fit very well so there's no frame modifications to be made. All of the engines have the same basic mounting process. We buy a custom made engine cradle and weld the cradle into our chassis.

• Pictured to the right is the engine cradle and crossmember for the VQ35 swap. The grey cross bar welds on top of the frame acting as a brace stiffening our chassis and the red stands bolt to the motor and the cradle.

• Here's the cradle installed with the motor in place. Notice the factory crossmember has been notched Basically, a section was cut out with a plasma cutter then it was boxed in so it's still stiff. Since the engine cradle acts like a crossmember the factory crossmember is only there to hold the steering rack and for the lower suspension to attach too. The VQ35 is the only swap that requires that.

• Transmission mounting is simple, that black bar is a transmission crossmember style mount. Once the engine and transmission are in place the transmission mount bolts in.
• The driveshaft will probably need to be made. The transmission will need either a splined shaft or a flange on it, and our differential will need a flange on it. The length of the driveshaft all depends on how long of a transmission we use. It's easy to measure and shafts are easy to get.

Once these steps are done the engine and transmission are physically mounted in place and are good to go.

Cooling.

• Now that are engine is mounted, we need to run coolant through it. Again, this process is fairly similar to all engines. Mount a correct thickness radiator and run coolant hoses to engine. Depending on how far away our engine is (V6 or Four cylinder) we might need to make coolant pipes since 3-4 foot straight radiator hoses will be more likely to fail.
• Once the radiator is plumbed in, we need to make heater hoses to go to the heater core in the cabin through the firewall. While we most likely won't have A/C with our swap we will retain the heating system. This is optional, but I feel like there's no reason not to take the time and have a working heater.
• Depending on our engine there will probably be little cooling lines to the manifolds and throttle bodies. These will most likely come with our engine.
• Not only do we need to cool our coolant, but our engine oil as well. True vintage racing car shakotan style is to have an external oil cooler mounted on the outside of the bumper.

Not sure if we'll go this extreme for daily driving use, but a small wire mesh cover on that cooler would protect it from small rocks and debris.

Electrical.

• To start with all of our wiring is 40 years old and from a time where electricity was dark magic created by time wizards and cased in black boxes. We know more about automotive electrical now, so we can make sure we have enough and it always works. Ask a vintage British car owner about their wiring and they'll either punch you or sob quietly in a corner mumbling about "points" and "tube fuses".
• All of our engines are fuel injected with computer controlled ignition. Our original car was carburated with points style ignition and distributors. In order run our new engines we need to run new thicker wires and connectors. The engine will come with a wiring harness that will connect to an Engine Control Unit, or ECU. The ECU will need constant 12v, switched 12v (ignition switch) and a chassis ground. We're going to mount our battery in the trunk so all these wires will be custom cut for our chassis. 
• The VQ needs a lot of other wiring done, but it's all simple once the parts are together. All the extra unused control modules and wiring just need to be connected to the ECU. We can zip tie them together and tuck them behind the sash board.
• The basic idea is to have two wiring harnesses for the car. A chassis harness that controls lights, radio,  and accessories and a separate engine harness that powers the ECU and starter. our gauges will be tapped into the engine harness for their input signals and into the chassis harness for their power.

Fuel.

• Because we have a 260z we have a fuel tank from the fuel injected 280z. That means it is already baffled. Under hard cornering 240z's would get fuel starvation because the fuel pick up would dry out. This doesn't happen with 260/280z fuel tanks.
• Our original system was carburated with a mechanical fuel pump that operated at fairly low pressure. The more fuel was needed, the higher the pressure would go. Even at its highest flow rate the factory pump was very low pressure, about 8psi. A fuel injected motor needs 40-45psi at the fuel rail. A simple frame rail mounted electronic fuel pump will provide as much fuel as we need.
• One or two hard fuel lines will have to be made and run from the fuel pump to the engine bay. Then braided soft lines from the hard lines to the fuel rail. The number of lines depends on if the engine needs a fuel return line or not.

Exhaust

• Depending on whether or not we have a turbo the exhaust is fairly easy. All of our engine choices have exhaust manifolds that fit in our bay. 
• I'll be detailing our muffler choice later because it needs to be period correct since it will be visible during everyday use.
• We need to make one or two pipes that will go from the outlet of the factory manifolds and terminate at the rear muffler. This exhaust will be sectioned with flanges so that a resonator can be bolted in to control sound levels if needed. If we run a turbo, piping will be 3" wide with as little bends or restrictions as possible. No turbo's means slightly smaller piping.

So with those all addressed we will have a car that moves under it's own power. Not done, but at least it would move and drive.