Z32 project, "six month build"

[anti.engineered]

great to see it cleaned up and out of the way, yeah. hopefully when I go over it and replace the solders it should be as good if not better than OEM.

[anti.engineered]

Alright time to really catch this thread up. With the old motor going kablooey and me reeeeally taking my time building up the shell I've also put some good money into the new donk. I just want a street car, nothing mental and not a lag machine and still totally liveable. Mid-range cams, hydraulic lifters maintained but still eating air like tom brady eats pussy.

- 0.5mm (20 thou) oversize JE pistons
- Eagle rods
- ARP main and L19 head studs
- ACL race bearings
- Ferrea 1mm oversize intake/exhaust valves
- Ferrea valve stem steals
- Ferrea titanium valve guides
- Ferrea bronze valve guides
- JUN valve springs
- JUN 264*/9.5mm camshafts (god these were dear)
- Tomei 1.2mm head gasket
- Tomei adjustable exhaust cam gears
- BDE intake cam gears
- New OEM hydraulic lifters x 24
- acid dipped block, decked block/heads etc etc (standard race rebuild stuff)

very soon my buddy and I are going to be going loco on the heads. he's been building engines at home with his dad since he was a kid so so I'm really looking forward to taking this on with him. my approach will be something along the lines of "cut the guts out of them."





forged pistons are one of those things that you hold and just think are thoroughly cool. these weigh next to nothing and are machined to such precision that even german engineers would get a little excited at the sight of them.



love the packaging on this JUN stuff. came with a super nice decal too (not that I'll use it, but still). these were actually quite cheap too (by JUN standards anyway, lol).



these fucking weren't





Keen to get started on the porting. The bottom end is just about good to go so there'll be nothing stopping me having this thing together. Truth be told though I'm in so deep with the shell that I've really let the motor build go slowly. Even if it was ready tomorrow I still probably wouldn't have the motor permanently in for another year.

Lastly, something I'm super looking forward to using;





I picked these up as part of a big single kit made by a fabricator on the other side of the country for his own personal Z32. now I don't have that much interest in lag machines so when it initially went up for grabs I wasn't that keen 'til I realised what I could turn it into a compound kit. I get my jollies from taking on shit found on the road less travelled and for those into boosted cars that love response but also dig power, you can't beat a compound. I was never keen to get into the massive amount of fab to make it work happen for the first time on a VG, but with this as a starting point it's a total game changer. i'll be enlarging the wastegate port to 60mm then making up the rest of the plumbing for tie the two turbos together. the primary (small) hairdryer will sit in the standard low mount position, and larger unit in the battery tray.

-A

[anti.engineered]

So now the fun shit starts. I tucked just about everything out of the bay while I had the last motor and promised myself that I'd redo the metalwork if the motor ever went. So when it blew very shortly after I pretty much couldn't hold myself back.

I bought myself a gas MIG and things started out really easy.



Out came the battery tray.



and my buddy cut out a big lump of ugly from my driver's side wheel well not long after I cut another big ugly lump form the strut tower just behind it.



Trying to learn to weld on paper thin vertical metal was seriously, seriously damn hard. This was one of the better runs but I did cut out a bunch of shitty stuff that I did and ended up redoing it. Not proud but it is what it is.



For the remaining hoses that have to run outside the bay I am doing everything I can to make them disappear. In the case of the power steering feed line that means routing via the frame rail.

So after looking at the bay with a few things done and a whole lot of shit left to go I was sick of it being such a mess. About this time a wise car guy taught me to do just one thing at a time and nothing else 'til it's done. If you don't you end up with a whole lot of mostly completed jobs, no accomplishment and you never really know where you're at in terms of progress.

In the beginning I just hopped from one part of the bay to another cutting off studs, welding up little holes all over the place and it didn't take long for the whole thing to look like a big damn mess.



so I started breaking up each part of the bay that was getting modded and decided to not work a different section 'til whatever part I last started on was done. this started out with some box section supports being welded into the strut tower, replacing the small flimsy factory crap.

There were a few parts of the metalwork that fell under the "that'll take longer to make look nice than it will to cut out an fabricate a replacement." the piddly factory strut tower supports fell under this heading



dicing up some replacements from 50x50mm box section



fitted up and tacked... the strut tower itself is far from flat, so there's a fair amount of flap wheel finishing involved to get it even close. should be a good amount beefier and help make up for a lack of front strut brace.

-A

[LCG]

Sire Pink Panther.



Subscribing.

[anti.engineered]

next project was extending the upper rad support. The factory support is pretty lame and I wanted to close it off to tidy it up and make it as clean as possible.



As you can see there's a big gaping hole behind the nose panel. A few people have closed this off before but I wanted to take it a step further and extend the support over the backs of the headlight housings too.



part 1, cut up a wreck.



The hood latch is staying and I wanted to mirror its cut out while closing off the surrounding area. like a permanent, welded in air guide. I'm really not into hood pins from an exterior aesthetics standpoint and there's no way I'd put them in so I could clean up the looks of the bay.



What better way to do that then with the exact same OEM shape... the doner car's front end was bent up, amazingly only the centre of the rad support coming out unscathed. Getting better with the MIG, but still room for improvement.



continuing from the last piece, the centre rad support extension was bent up. It covers up to just under the nose panel, so there're no gaps visible once the car is assembled.



simple bends and simple weld makes for a happy anti



before the piece permanently attached I fully welded the underside so the bend could be smoothed down later on.



plenty of "measure twice, cut once" went into final positioning of the panel



aaaand fully ground down ready for a touch of lead, filler and primer. next bit was extensions for the upper rad support to cover the backs of the headlights.

this will mean the entire upper rad support is the same width as the new centre section and some uglyness behind the light will be covered up.

in terms of the actual process I started with a rectangular piece of 15 gauge (1.8mm) mild steel and slowly bent it to suit. this was actually a much more complex shape than I initially thought and by the end of it there were a good 25 or so bends.



also not to plan was my inability to bend this stuff by hand, haha. to overcome this I traced out a straight line on the back of the panel where I wanted to bend it, then ran a cutting disk back and forth along said line a few times to thin the metal. it then bent exactly where I wanted with ease



at first the plan was to work from the rad support towards the headlight, until I realised it would be ten fold easier to work back from the only straight edge (underneath the headlight weatherstrip) rather than to create one.



the back of the headlight had have as much height taken off as possible. this including removal of the top weatherstrip retaining bracket with workaround devised, cutting down some a sizeable amount of glass below it and converting the underside mounting brackets from studs to nuts. the latter means the headlights can be slid straight in without having to lift the front section to slot through the pair of studs. every little bit helps, it's a tight fit.



with one side completed the plan was to flatten out the piece and use it as a mirror template for the other side. then reform, back weld for strength and additional thickness then grind down topside to hide the obvious fold lines. it can of course finally be welded into the car.



So I went and did just that.



Back cut, bent up, trimmed to suit. Unfortunately in the end despite my best efforts I was unable to make the covers from one piece of material. After I was finally happy with the positioning the two innermost sections were made separately as the original pieces turned out too small

You can see the new portion tack welded in place. funny talking point in my garage is the gold plated magnets I use to hold metalwork in place. they are disconcertingly strong, left over from a home made rail gun project of mine when I was a kid, haha.



Back welded (and top where necessary) and ground down









The passenger side headlight was welded in first. hugely satisfying after all the work to actually start the final welding!



getting better with the mig



One of the parts of the front end seal up project was that I had to make a custom hood latch lever as the original unfortunately fouled on the new metalwork. Things you never could have called yourself doing when you buy a car...



Chop chop, had to redrill the locating spring for said lever and mount it further inboard too.



New lever was cut from the same box section steel that I made the front tower supports from.



welded up, clears now and is reachable. not sure what to do about final shaping at this point. suggestions are welcome?



as you can see, once the covers were welded in and ground back I back welded the underside for some extra strength.



So next up... digging out the lead work. I'm sort of getting the hang of it - it's all about heat modulation. There's a small window between the lead filler being not hot enough and crumbling under force and too hot and simply running. workable temperature is reportedly between 180 and 250*C.



When working the filler down, filing 100% is the go. Cuts through more material faster and the chunks coming off are too large to be airborne which is a plus (poisonous and such). sharp eyes can see where the transition between filler lead and steel below.



Finally, after a final skim coat with regular body filler to make it 100%, PRIMER. P-R-I-M-E-RRRRR. This was a really satisfying thing for my bomb-hit-it-bay.

With the outer sides left the driver's side was tackled first. Body soldered, filed, soldered, filed, filed, filed, filler skim coat, sand, skim coat, sand, sand, sand, high fill. with all that said and done I wasn't entirely happy with the outcome first time around;



sorry for the shitty photo. as you can see, there was a very visible dip present through the transition from OEM to aftermarket metalwork.

after looking at it from many angles (none of which left me any more satisfied) I cracked on with the passenger side, determined to go at it a different way.



Layering on the lead here. after a bit of practise this is how the raw filler looks, being applied by blowtorch and roughly shaped with wooden paddles. the excess is then filed down and finally smoothed with high grit sand paper. Hard work but if in 1000 years the remains of my car are found, these leaded components will likely be all that's discernible.



much better

a wire wheel made short work of the high fill and bog and I redid the driver's side shortly after.



and there you have it, custom upper front end finished.







I am very happy with it. Some time down the track as a cherry on top I want to close off the ridge in the underside of the nose panel (visible in the last photo) and have it flush with the metalwork. Silly to have that little detail off after all that work.

-A

[jalenda9]

What kind of mig did you end up getting btw? This build is indeed fire as the youngsters say haha

[Randomofodication]

I'm blown away by that rad support/headlight cover/hood latch work. Lot of time into that! Looks great though

[Queef|Chief]

Very cool stuff in this thread! Its awesome how you added the metal filler by the headlight gap, those details are what makes it

[anti.engineered]

thanks guys, and yes I agree on the details factor. Some people get so stoked when they feel like they've ticked a box of having a mod done but you get your eyes up close and it's like... dude... we're a totally different fuckin' breed if you think that's cool.

with the welder, I just walked into a big well known chain, asked their recommendation and bought it on the spot. i'm all about second hand tools from classifieds but not with a welder; set myself up properly with something decent with warranty. it's a BOC 180, entry level as hell and unfortunately starting to restrict what I can do a bit these days. still going with it though.

So this another project I was really keen to take on. On these cars the coil packs bolt to the inlet plenum inbetween each runner. I'm looking at going to an after market plenum, so I needed to figure out what to do with the coils. the answer was SR20 Splitfires.



Now unfortunately despite sitting so well on the factory spark plug guides, in that position the coils fail to reach the plugs. So next up was dropping the height of the coils.

The initial plan was to open up the guide, drop the coil 20mm or so, sleeve the hole with some doner piping that the coil pack skirt would seal up against the ID of and plastic weld/smooth it over topside. the guides are well sealed up for a reason - no material dropping down near the plug that could fall into the combustion chamber during a service, so it was important to maintain this seal.

Unfortunately at the time of taking this on I didn't have a drill press, so I made a little jig to keep the hole saw centred.



fitting the guide up to get an idea... uh oh. piping sleeve is going to foul on the cam covers. this is why we test fit!



After a bit of head scratching including and not limited to contemplating flap wheeling out the covers, I realised the coil pack doesn't have to be dropped as low as planned. in fact it looked like it could be positioned so the rubber skirt was flush with the top of the guide, saving any sleeving. it's mad when you work out a new solution that is way way way less work.

Cutting out a new guide with the perfect 46.2mm hole saw, was pretty lucky I had that lying around haha.



This meant getting pretty close to the seams the seals are mounted through, so some scrap secured with my super magnets (through the plastic) made sure everything stayed in tact as I did my thing with the grinder.



The tops of the tubes were then cleaned up with the most adorable little file you've ever seen



All fitted up.



The rubber skirts of the coil packs are hard up against the ID's of the freshly drilled holes and seal well.





To hold them down I nutserted the guide.



I managed to snap one of the guides in a pretty repairable spot which meant starting again from scratch with a spare but eh... set backs are a necessary step before reaching your goal.



Ordered some solid 12mm aluminium rod to cut up and make into crush tubes. I use some genuine old school blacksmith cast iron tongs for handling material when hot, haha.



Still waiting on some hex key button head bolts to finish it all off nicely. Super happy with these, came together like they were factory.



-A

[anti.engineered]

I like this "do one thing until it's finished" approach, it works well.



As probably most of you don't know gauge placement in these cars is a pain in the ass. There are very few places in the interior that are open for "clean" installations and there's no way I'm just going to screw holders on top of the dash. Here's my last install which honestly wasn't bad - looked slick, placement was great for visibility but two things bothered me considerably. The first was that if a globe ever blew - dash out. Secondly the simple premise of cutting a hole in the dash and tacking something on top just didn't sit well with me. Looked good in the end and the holder fit surprisingly well but it still irked me.



This is the stock radio surround. Most guys fit up a triple holder to one of the din slots which is fine but the viewing angle is balls. I definitely didn't want to lose that changing my set up.

When the dash came out for rewiring/seam welding I started weighing up my options. As an alternate option three gauges mounted in the din slot makes for a great use of space (who needs two din slots?) but I didn't like how low down the viewing angle is. So I put together an idea, checked/measured thrice for feasibility and... busted out the grinder.

Here's the idea: relocate air con vents to upper din slot, mount gauge holder in initial place of air vents, fabricate new ducting to suit new vent placement and bob's your uncle.



The gauge holder I selected was much smaller than the air con vents, so in order to minimise work required I cut the vents from a spare doner piece.



All plastic welded up here and ground back. Both sides of the join were welded for the most strength.



With the vent centre beam cut out and small trims to either side of the gauge holder all pieced together. The gauge holder itself is from 300 Degree and is designed specifically to fit in the lower din slot of a LHD Z32. It's odd that out of any design on the market this is the one I ended up with, but it's the exact design I was after - and it's also plastic. I was hoping to weld it in too, but no dice. I don't know which plastics weld and which don't but this one just didn't want to play ball.



While the gauge holder location was pretty much fixed, the height placement of the vents was very deliberate in order to try and avoid big open spaces on the trim piece.

The holder was fixed in place with copious amounts of epoxy, then filler added and shaped to uniform the appearance. It's great not having to worry about moisture or (relevant) vibration when considering your filler!



Something I failed to anticipate was having to close off the dips to either side of the holder - filler strips (they looked like saxophone reeds heh) were made up and epoxy'd on before being welded on the sides. I was hoping to keep the strength of the original structure supporting the gauges in place, so I didn't cut out the plastic below.



Few rounds of filler, a bunch of sanding and voila





Bloody satisfying eyeing off perfectly smooth feathering from filler to base material after a whole lot of sanding... also gives you an idea of how consistant a finish plastic welding with a regular soldering tip gets. A flat welding tip would get better results.



Few coats of high fill then some regular primer and here we are.



Quick shot showing the gauge angling towards the driver. Wasn't sure at this point about adding on some spacer rings to angle them towards the driver more.



Very conveniently (and rather awesomely) the factory vent that bolts to the rear of the bezel can un-clip and split in two. It will then bolt on to each single channel in the new location separately, like it was designed that way. The ducting to these two vents will have to be made up once I have the dash back in the car.



Plenty of instrument clearance.

Quick mock up with three gauges I had handy.





There was about 10-12 hours in total for this project. Not too bad and nice and leisurely all carried out while sitting down :p for the final finish I'll have it professionally painted in OEM piano black.

-A

[EasySpeed*Inc]

Very clever cluster!

[anti.engineered]

Hey thanks man! I would love your feedback on the shit I make. Tips and tricks would be very appreciated

[saturnstance]

Hot damn. Just read through everything. Definitely can't wait to see the end results. Such attention to detail I love it.

[carpenterlan]

As a fellow Z owner/fanatic this makes me both sad that mine doesn't get the same amount of love as your vehicle does and happy that someone takes as much care time and attention to detail as you do. Mad props man. Ever thought about putting up your build on 300zxclub or twinturbo.net?

[JoshR]

Alright, I won't lie.

I'm not big on Z32's the motor scares me, the shape didn't do much for me for years. Recently I've started to like them more and more.

Your car on the other hand, wow dude. Not only seeing the work you've put in, but also some of the parts you've bought at the same time.
Modena's perfect, Tommy Kaira and Veilside bloody wicked.

This is one of the few builds I'll be keeping tabs on, awesome work!