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