IT'S ALIVE!!!!!
 

For those of you who have heard, or have been by the shop to see this piece of shit, I have news!

The black 300zx I've been working on for nearly a YEAR now finally runs!!!

Tested fuel pressure and oil pressure, and everything checked out okay, so I crossed my fingers and turned the key... Vroom! Fired right up!

I found a little oil leak at the turbo feed line on the passenger side, nothing too difficult to fix, but the DP has to come off to get to it. :mad:

Sorry if nobody is too interested in this, but I am FUCKING ELATED, so I had to share!

Sweet, man. This going to be your new project car?

No, it belongs to some asshat here in town. It's a racecar he commissioned our shop to build. The guy who WAS working on it, quit, and left me with a car with no engine in it, and an engine on a stand, utterly disassembled! It's been a nightmare!!!

It made about 650 to 700 hp at the flywheel before the rebuild, and Jim Wolfe Engineering says it should be 950-1050hp with the current tune/boost...

WOW! Test drive that bitch?

Hell no! I'm not driving something that's supposed to make 1,000 horsepower, that's got probably $50,000 into it, that doesn't belong to me!

Dude, just do it so you can say, "I drove a 1,000+hp car." The only way you will regret it is if you put it through another car, which would have a fifth of the power ;)

I think you need to Autocross it this weekend.

:lol: That would be a lot like watching the ESX drag car do "hot laps" at Buttonwillow a couple years ago.

rumble rumble rumble VROOOOM rumble rumble rumble

The stinkin thing doesn't have enough brakes to slow it down from the speeds it would get between corners! There's now way I'm driving it, even down the street!

I'll take my helmet one day with him to Fallon, and ride along on a 1/4 pass, but I want nothing to do with the driver's seat. Hell, I might just PUSH it out into the lot for him to come pick up...

Eh, I'm pretty good with "I BUILT a 1,000+hp car!"

Yah, brakes are a waste of money. They only slow you down anyway.

Yeah, it's kinda scary how this dude has spent SO much money making this thing a MONSTER accellerating, but has put nothing but stock size cross-drilled rotors on for slowing it down... Not even better pads!

No way... Your flat space will be empty... How will we ever find your work area now? that car was the landmark I used for my turn in. :)

It is really cool that you got it done though.

I agree with you though. In your position, I wouldn't want to do anything other than start it, say, look, it idles, and get the hell away from it.

Anything making that much out of so little is a failure looking for a place to happen. I'd just want it out of the shop when it does.

No Kidding! I had to cut the ROOTS under the tires before I could put it back up on the lift!!

Basically, that's what I'm doing. I fixed the little oil leak, and I'm gonna put a new upper rad. hose on, as it's leaking too. Other than that, he can come get this pig!

Whaaats? You have to test it out to make sure everything's done proper, Cory. ^.^

Not even down the street 5 under the speed limit?

You know how some high-powered cars have clutches that are basically on/off switches? Well, that's how the throttle is on a car like that, except it has a variable delay. :p

Casey quit?

Yeah, this thing has that clutch too! Twin plate, carbon surface. It's son-of-a-bitch just to move it around the shop! I'm just gonna make the owner come down and I'll ride with him on the initial drive!

Shawn: Yeah dude! Casey quit a WHILE ago now! Like 6 months or so! I figured Rob would have told you! Essentially, he quit because he got into a little argument with Steve (the Z's owner) and didn't want to work on it anymore...

Well, I just got kicked in the nuts...

There's little oil passages in the cylinder heads that have simple little plugs in them to keep oil from coming out. They hold back full oil pressure. Well, when the heads were assembled at the machine shop, these were NOT SEALED! They are pissing out oil whenever the car's running. Basically, it looks like I may have to pull off the entire upper plenum, and the turbo boost pipes, to get to these things and seal them up. About another 5 or 6 hours worth of work...

dammit

Bummer... Sounds like the machine shop should be paying for those hours...

Six hours compared to six months, that's not that long.

My Dad doesnt bring up Casey anymore around me. Casey and I got into a nasty little fight about a year ago. I figured he was still there.

Don't worry dude, I didn't like that little red-headed bastard either! :lol:


The machine shop will likely be paying for the labor to fix their f* up, but I'm still pretty pissed that they screwed me in the first place. I hate when someone else can't do their job right, and I end up being the one to repair it properly...

OK, again if no-one has any interest in this, that's alright, because I'm really just venting...

Now, the oil leaking pressure plug in the right cylinder head is *relatively* accessable. It's behind the header pipe, but above the flange. If I grind down an allen wrench, and heat it with a torch so I can bend it to an angle greater than 90*, I can get the plug out and seal it up. The other head is a different story...

The left cylinder head plug that's leaking is behind the header flange, between the first two exhaust outlets. I put florescent dye in the oil, and can see the bright orange oil coming out of the bottom of the header flange, between the cylinders, but it does not appear at the top of the flange. Basically, the header pipe has to come off to fix it. Here's the problem: In order to take the header off, you have to remove the turbocharger. Doesn't sound too bad huh? Well, in order to remove the turbo, you have to REMOVE THE ENGINE!!!!! Yes, the whole thing has to come back out...

I have essentially told my boss that I am NOT removing the engine from this car. He agrees with my standpoint, and frankly, just wants the car out of the shop. Looks like this guy may be pulling this thing down to Cali. to Z-performance and having THEM pull it back out.

I'm so pissed off at this whole thing that I can barely maintain myself...

That's so rice

It's straight hotness yo! It makes your oil glow just like those shit undercar neons! You just need a UV light to see it... :P

BITCH, how about some PICKS!.. :D

What a rollercoaster ride this thread has been. At the beginning, I was all ready to post, "w00t!"

But now. . .

So I guess the car's owner came by last night to see the car and talk with me, but the dumbass came by at like 5:30, and I had been gone for about an HOUR already. He's supposed to come back today I guess...

It's really hard to maintain my composure with this whole thing. I really want to just see the guy who built the long block, and SPLIT HIS FACE OPEN, simply because he can't do his F*ing job correctly!

I'd pay to see that... :) Hopefully it gets resolved today, and you are rid of the beast.

In "Cory's World", it appears 300zx = Albatros...

Wow. crazy that car is almost done. Sux about that oil leak / plug problem :(

It appears that the resolution may simply end up being: I take the motor out of the car, fix the leaks, and put it back together. I think I'd rather take a walk through hell with gasoline drawers on...

That poor car has spent more time in that shop than it has on the road. The last time the other guy put it back together, the "ASSHAT" as cory put it broke the transmission on like his second run.

Did you get to move to the other stall after whats his name left? I remember him driving that thing up and down Kietzke screaming after he put the twins back on it.

update :?:
Something good hopefully! big money! big money! no whammies! STOP!

whammy... The dude from the machine shop still hasn't come by, but he wants to so he can take a look at what he f*ed up...

Basically, I will more than likely be pulling the motor back out of this pig. I don't know how to begin telling you how much that sucks...

my condolences on the 300ZX .

Is there anyway you can just throw an SRT4 motor in there I hear those cars are fast. Maybe the guy won't be able to tell the diff cause the car will be uber quick.

That motor is racist.

But the car is BLACK! The engine block is even painted black... I don't see where the racism comes from!

I, for some reason, think that this guy might notice that he's got an SRT-4 engine in his car instead of the 1k hp motor he's supposed to have...

Black on black crime is so sad. :(

now that makes me laugh out loud

Well, the guys from the machine shop came by yesterday. I showed them the leaks, and they looked like I had just kicked them each in the junk. Honestly, they're lucky that I didn't...

They said that it's obviously their fault, so they have to pay for it to be fixed. The problem is, that after receiving a quote for 30 hours, (22 to r&r the stock engine, plus a few to remove the turbos and fix the problem) the owner almost had a COW. He said it was too much. So, I began cursing, and explaining that the 22 hours is to remove a STOCK engine, and this thing is FAR from that, and easily twice as complicated. We're really giving this job to them at 30 hours.

I feel like I just dropped the soap in a prison shower... I'm about to get F*ed...

On a related note, we totalled up all the hours and parts that the actual owner of the car owes our store for this thing. Holy shit. It's $10,000. No, that's not a typo; TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS! Damn. And this only includes THIS time around. I don't even want to know how much he's spent total, including the other 2 motors. That just makes me ill...

And yet it still sits in the shop....sigh

Bump for update!

I took the motor out on Monday, and disassembled the LH turbo and manifold. With the help of another tech, we were able to get the whole thing done in just one day! Called the machine shop, and they said they'd be down first thing this morning.

So the dude shows up at 10 this morn. (first thing?) and pulls out all of the head oil plugs to seal them up. Well, much to my surprise, he whips out some JB Weld, mixes it up, and applies it to the threads of all of the plugs! Holy crap dude! Overkill!?

SO, now at 3, I've got the motor back in, the clutch re-assembled, and the tranny installed. Good news is, that the whole job hasn't been too much of a bastard so far...

JB Weld FTW! :lol: Just hope he didn't use it on something somebody's gonn ahave to disassemble in the near future... because we all know who that would be. ;)

Not only overkill, not the right stuff IMHO. I'd hate to be the guy that ever has to remove those again for some reason...

No Shit! He told me, "Well, all the threads are good, and I swear I put some thread sealer on those plugs," (which I didn't see any...) "So I'm gonna make SURE that they don't leak!"

Not to stereotype, or unsult any one, but it was a very "redneck" approach to the problem... If they ever need to come back out, I'll be calling them right back down here to take care of that!

Well, if he contends that he *did* thread lock 'em, then just re-thread locking 'em is basically telling you "well, it failed before, but I'm just gonna try again and screw you a second time if it fails again".

Really, he either had to admit he didn't thread lock 'em, or take it to the JB weld level. And chances are, he actually thinks he did thread lock 'em, since that's gotta be what they'd normally do... so there you are, with some JB welded in plugs. :lol:

'Long as they don't leak, I could really care less right now! :lol: F* it!

And it runs again! And no pissing on the floor this time!

I didn't know it was possible to have this much animosity toward an in-animate object, but I really do hate this car... I hope I never see it again. (knocks on wood)