The rebuild of my Z.

Noticed I was still losing water but I found the culprit. One of the hoses on the heater core bypass had a hole in it, like someone drove a nail through it, right in the middle of the hose

Went to check up on the TPS, which for this car only has 2 states: idle, and on the gas. I'm using an adjustment screw on the throttle body to adjust idle speed since the idle control has been removed. Thought I had adjusted TPS correctly, but since it has a cover riveted to it, I drilled it open to double check and I was way off. Had to adjust it all the way out because of the throttle body setting. Result: it idles at 800rpm now instead of 1100. And you can very much hear the cams, sounds a lot like a lopey V8 at idle now. Interesting.

So next up is a new hose. Functionality over cosmetics. 30yr old vehicles that were not taken care of are a pain haha.

sound clips please!!!!!

OK heres an exhaust clip. Its upside down because my phone was being idiotic. Vid still doesnt do it justice. Phones mic quality is crap.

very nice sir!!!!!! if that doesn't do it justice, it should sound amazing

Thanks :)

Had enough spare hose to fix the leak. Took some foam rubber seal material and patch the gap on the sides of the hood. When good weather comes, I'll probably be sanding paint for days, it looks hideous.

Also just put in a Ground Shaker sub box, 1 gigantic round port. Its magnificent over the last Walmart sealed box.

Test pipe is rusted on now, having a hard time getting it off to put on thunderbolt cat.

Capacitor comes today, to even out the dips in the electrical. The alternator can keep up just fine but the regulator takes a couple seconds to adjust to loads so I wanted to even out the voltage a bit.

Got a decent loaner sander from my father, gotta buy some fine grit pads and go to town on the exterior.

Outer t-top seals are shredded. Took the seals off. They are incredibly hard to find now unless you want to pay 50$ EACH ugh. Looks like I won't be going out in rain any time soon.

If I can do all that, I'll consider it done for now.

Yay, cut the pipe in half and managed to get it off. Lots of water in the exhaust from condensation that never burned off, because not enough heat because no cat.

Anyway, thunderbolt cat is on and its perfect. Fits to the mm. Sounds a little smoother without losing the rasp that I like, also is slightly quieter, but not by much.

Looks something like this, some kind of minimal interference cat, no welds, no seams:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Onto the cap and sanding! Whew.

Ever feel like you just can't win? lol

Found the nagging brake fluid leak. Put fluid in it last night, this morning it was gone. Saw drips out the bottom but couldn't figure out where it was coming from, up above all the brake system parts were completely dry. Turns out its coming out the back of the master cylinder where it hooks to the booster. Hard to see because its behind several heat shields. This thing is an absolute bitch to bleed brakes on also. grrrr Anyway, new one on the way, gives me some time to worry about the exterior. Everything else is working fine besides that. With my luck, I'll fix the brakes and spin a bearing.

Oh well, turn the frown upside-down. Will use this opportunity to install some nice red braided steel brake lines. The current rubber ones are probably ancient anyway.

You're really making progress though, and not replacing with junkyard parts either. This is going to be a nice car all said and done.

tkromer wrote:

You're really making progress though, and not replacing with junkyard parts either. This is going to be a nice car all said and done.

completely agree.. def want to see this one in person

Thankses. I try to put stuff on it thats better than what came off so that the issues don't happen again, at least for a long while. Do have 1 junkyard part, though. The internals for the distributor/camcrank sensor. The brake lines are gonna be red braided stainless with full length coating over it to prevent road crap from deteriorating the inner line.

Think the outside is gonna have to stay ugly. Can't afford to get it painted, don't own a compressor. Maybe I should do it up ratty. Don't have many options other than rattlecan at this point, and I suck at that. Meh.

Car is coming along nicely! If you do paint it with cans I would go with flat black. I have painted many things with spray paint. Flat paint is by far the easiest to work with.

here are some wheels I did: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

and more recently I did these

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Yeah I had it flat black, and it looked good, but a lot of people were asking why it wasn't painted. So I shot a clear coat over the flat which didn't work out so well. Maybe I'll have to re-do it. The flat was the easiest spray to make look good by far, you're right.

Did a little magic to the outside. Still looks bad but not awful. Secret recipe, same one I used on my first car. Also the master cylinder is in. Now I have spongy brakes instead of no brakes. When I get the braided lines in, will bleed and finish it off. Also discovered the heater core bypass hose has multiple holes in it. One every 3 inches, looks like it was done deliberately. It didn't show originally because the bypass was the highest point in the system, but now that its been re-made better, the holes are down low and always in an area filled with water instead of in a bubble of air. Get this stuff knocked out and I'll probably call it done for a while. I guess check your hoses whenever you buy new ones. Never expected that.

As predicted, as soon as I fix the brakes, something else goes wrong. The water pump just ate itself. And on this car, that means stripping down the whole front. Timing cover, harmonic balancer etc all back off again. New ones in the mail.

@#)!@*%^&!%)!)

Well now, somehow the water pump fixed itself. Not losing water now, no rust, runs cool, all good. Dunno what the deal is. Still, I have a new water pump I should put in since I have no clue how old the one on it is. Possibly an original. But need to find my custom harmonic balancer removal system I misplaced. Found out when the starter died on my (nearly 5000lb) Xterra lately (fixed now) I gave it a tow-jump with the Z, but my idiot friend rode the brakes in the Xterra, and, in addition to what was probably a lot of clutch wear, it ruined my rear trailing arm bushings. Now on hard acceleration, it feels like the chassis is twisting, but its just the trailing arm bushing letting the whole wheel move forward a bit. Kinda odd. Good excuse to put poly bushings in, though. Still tracks dead straight when not massively on the gas, for now, so that will have to wait until I can find some money for it. And now that warm weather is here, I gotta get to work. Still have to put on the braided brake lines.

Cant wait to see this project finished.

Its mostly finished. I feel it serves its purpose now and doesn't need much else. Here's a vid tour, all I have is a Droid 3, so the camera quality (although supposedly 1080p) looks like ass. As does the car, which you will realize if you take a watch. But its been a long journey. Started with a broken lump with bent valves and dozens of different color scratches all over it, and ended up with this, 2k miles on the odometer and a year later. Like I said, I'm just glad its drivable because despite how it looks, driving it makes me happy, simple as that.

Sidenote: I'm planning to do one more vid where I actually drive it around in the hills, when I can find a suitable camera or mount for cheap.

cool man. Whats the speedo registered for ? 165?

145mph, and it will do it. Doesn't need much power, stock the drag coefficient is supposedly .30 and the headlight covers help. You can feel it cut through the air when you coast at over 80mph, it barely slows down. The point of it all is, I guess, just a weekend toy. It looks like crap, but its extremely fun. And one thing thats hard to show is the work that was actually put in. An example is that I didn't just put the rebuilt heads on, I disassembled them, re-coated them with assembly lube, hand cleaned every single part before I put it on since there is so much sand in there, etc.

Took it today to ride up to a classic VW shop in Caimbridge OH, was almost a 200 mile round trip on I-70. Handled it great with no issues. Able to pass people up hills in 5th at 2k rpm no problem, with extra weight from my friend lol. The thing accelerates forever. Wish I had a runway or something to see just how fast it would go. Thats not something I was trying for in my build, though, just a bonus. And I don't make a habit of doing 130+ on public roads.

sounds like a blast... yeah usually cops will let you get away with 120-lol...

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Well I may or may not have done that speed in the past, but I only ever got a ticket for going 63 in a 55. Oh, and parking somewhere at 0mph. But that got thrown out. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]