Z32 project, "six month build"

[loekaaz]

Damn that bumper-diffuser combo is so sexy

[rice4life]

I was pretty sure Pentroof a division of Ab-Flug, but I may be wrong. It's cool that they still do their old parts, I come across them all the time second hand on Yahoo too. I'm familiar with that bar and it's not bad at all, but too angular for me. Impul did a front bar that looks like a cross between that and the stock Z32 S1 front, nice looking piece.

Pentroof is an engine builder who takes projects for other companies and private parties.

IIRC the main engine building players back then were HKS, Top Secret, Trust, Tomei, Re Amemiya, Pentroof, Auto Garage TBK(mostly porsche's), Hosoki, JUN, and OS Giken. Oh yeah, and all RH9 shops not mentioned.


By looking into those shops, watching old Option videos as well as reading the magazines you can find out who some of the original Midnight Club members were.

Kitabayashi runs Pentroof and Uwabo runs Abflug. Not going to say if they were members of the club or not, but I'll let you decide.

Don't link anyone to the group though. Some of these people really don't want to have anything to do with the Midnight Club.

[anti.engineered]

you can do it through their website directly, or you can use Crooober which is what I do because it allows me to save search bookmarks (much better than having to use a translator app to search in Japanese every time you want to have a look). I have a line up of searches that I middle-click whenever I'm bored, keeps me on the ball. same for yahoo and a few other places.

I just started mechanical. you're dead on, it's full on to say the least. I didn't think I'd have literally no time to work on the car, but it's the case. I made the choice to maintain part time work because without the cash flow only so much can happen on the car anyway, so I figure I'm better off scoring parts during semester (can order from lectures lol) then swinging spanners in the breaks.

[dubs&boost]

I never caught what engineering you are taking? Id figure mechanical. Im half done an industrial systems degree and i have to give you props for keeping this going while in school, i know the struggle! Also, How does one browse UP garage's inventory? I have a jdm evo 4 and am always looking for rare parts and such. I haven't had any luck on yahoo japan so far though. Anyways keep it up man, I am loving the car.

[anti.engineered]

I was pretty sure Pentroof a division of Ab-Flug, but I may be wrong. It's cool that they still do their old parts, I come across them all the time second hand on Yahoo too. I'm familiar with that bar and it's not bad at all, but too angular for me. Impul did a front bar that looks like a cross between that and the stock Z32 S1 front, nice looking piece.

[rice4life]

now that IS a compliment! I do follow what Ab-Flug still produces, but am not really terribly keen on anything else.

Glad to see someone else who is a Midnight Club enthusiast.

IIRC Abflug still has all of the molds for their older body kits(like the pink Z32 widebody.) Have you seen this one? Always thought it was the most modern looking z32 front fascia while still being older than the Greddy Gracer and other kits.

http://at.abflug.jp/catalog/index_page.php?pkey=item_info&i_code=ABF20321110003

ReAmemiya, Abflug, and Pentroof(who regularly worked with Abflug) still offer a lot of the same parts they did 20+ years ago.

[LCG]

t

LCG I'll have you know I actually am planning to re powder coat all the gauge rings and the GReddy bezel so they match, in a batch with my other gauges (centre console), pedals and shifters.

now that is more like you

[anti.engineered]

thanks a lot guys, glad to hear you like it.

LCG I'll have you know I actually am planning to re powder coat all the gauge rings and the GReddy bezel so they match, in a batch with my other gauges (centre console), pedals and shifters.

Very nice! This reminds me a lot of some of the Mid Night club's cars. The abflug stuff isn't too crazy expensive new, have you thought of picking up some more pieces from them?

now that IS a compliment! I do follow what Ab-Flug still produces, but am not really terribly keen on anything else. I have the bodywork mapped out more or less how I want it for now.

[philohlean]

This is awesome, love the detail and crazy cool parts coming together. Keep it up man

[LCG]

While the needles not matching being fixed by not matching symmetry is ok with me I don't understand why you think you don't have to paint the bezel piano black too.

It looks completely different to me

[rice4life]

Very nice! This reminds me a lot of some of the Mid Night club's cars. The abflug stuff isn't too crazy expensive new, have you thought of picking up some more pieces from them?

[Tate]

All the rare parts and attention to detail. This is amazing

(PS: My 69th post goes to you good sir. )

[anti.engineered]

Alright, so I just started my new degree. It's been character building to say the least, and between full time eng study, working part time and maintaining my relationship I have had literally no time to touch the car. It's simply going to have to be a between semesters type deal from now on.

Fortunately in the mean time I've been keeping up the parts flow. I haven't had the same cash to burn obviously, but my constant Yahoo scouring as well as general priority from-the-top-of-the-list-down parts have been coming in as I can afford them. Let's start off with some most expensivist shit. New rods from Carillo. These are stupid dear even when the dollar is good, which it's not, as I'm sure you all know...



I had a set of Eagles, but with what I'm putting together on the boost side of things we were really sitting on the edge of what they were up to. Took some convincing for me to cough up for these but it's better than rebuilding the motor. I got the CARR bolt upgrade too, no weak links here.



Next up is something I've been waiting for for a god damn age and a half. Back at the beginning of the year I sold off my Tommy K Recaro SR2s (never even made it into the car) and at long last placed the order for my dream seats, a pair of VeilSide VSD-1Rs. Now when I say an age of a half I'm damn well not kidding; they quoted a two months made-to-order lead time and they took a whole fucking 7 months to arrive. No shit.





Back on black, reclineable, in full carbon fibre (not an overlay! very happy to discover that upon arrival)





Thankfully they feel great (never sat in any before) with exception of the chequered backrest padding. I ***** it when I was oggling them online, ***** it when I ordered them, ***** it while I was waiting for them to arrive and unsurprisingly **** them just as much in real life. However not only do they look bad, but they're so thick that they space the user literally completely in front of the side bolsters, defeating the whole damn idea of racing seats. Thankfully they're only held in with velcro, and much much better to sit in once removed. I'll knock up something simple and thin as a replacement.



Next on the list of interior accoutrements I picked up a Tommy K shifter to match my steerer. Landed this off of my buddy who's parting his car, as well as a sweet amp and a few odds and ends. It's completely flawless like the wheel, super nice looking unit.



Sorry about the selective focus, I bought a new to me Nikon D3100 and am trying to wrap my head around it.



Next up more interior additions... got another unicorn part



Took me 6 months to find an original GReddy 3 bar. These were made back in the 90s when not many cars ran that high a boost level, so they didn't sell many. They're the perfect match for the OEM cluster and in my mind the best pick for an as close to seamless install as possible. My centre bezel triple holder is full (water+oil temp, oil pressure) and I wasn't able to find a period correct high reading unit in 52mm anyway. A close runner was this unit from HKS, and although it has a matching needle and displays vacuum, it doesn't read high enough unfortunately.



All stripped down, I've done this so many times I reckon I could get a stock cluster to this state in three minutes blindfolded



Test fitting the GReddy unit in the useless OEM temperature gauge location, bezel matches my CZP piano black gauge rings almost perfectly



Trimming trimming trimming. One back light bulb (no longer necessary anyway) is removed, some useless screw bosses cut away and one wiring plug shrunk down to size. Still enough meat left to remain operational.



Wiring run out the back, everything buttons up more or less as it was



All in all this was a staggeringly straight forward job - not only does the GReddy unit look like it's meant to be there from the front, it's almost as though it was designed to be fit to a Z32 cluster. the back of the gauge lined up perfectly with the back panel of the cluster (just!), the relevant pins of the wiring plug on the cluster that I had to trim lead to nowhere anyway (cat warning light, etc) and even the OEM screws that held the temperature gauge in wound into the back of the GReddy unit, securing it to the cluster.



My endlessly critical best friends were quick to point out that the needle doesn't match, and they're right, but I'm planning to swap in another GReddy unit to the OEM fuel gauge position on the other side so at least it'll not match symmetrically. Fuel gauge will be getting moved to the OEM oil pressure gauge location similar to this.

Next up are some cool hard to find engine parts! yay



I sold my fake HKS BOV's ages ago, and needed to pick up something at some point... but there're just so many items on the market that all do the same thing. I'm kind of meh about it all... 'til I came across these with; "BEE*R BOV'S? THAT'S MAAAAAAD" then this further thought process;

"Hey dude wanna hear my Bee*R?"
"fuck yeah I've never heard one in real life, hit it!"
Vrooooom psshh
Spectator is disappoint
I am lol

SOLD

It then took me 6 month of looking before one came up on the local Facebook drift group for next to nothing, and simultaneously an immaculate one on Yahoo. Awesome!



Next up is something I don't even know if I'm going to use, but when this thing of mythical legend came up for sale on Yahoo I just had to have it.



I've read about these things - fitted to RBs and 2Js back in the 90's. In all my years of regular searches of my favourite brand I've never seen one for sale before so it was just kind of a no brainer to grab it.



It's 100mm, and seriously fisting jokes just don't cut it because this thing could make it all the way to anyone's shoulder without issue. It's fucking massive. I'd love to rock it but it's going to come down to the best way to make up the plenum with flow coming first.



Next up I picked up a GReddy thermostated sandwich plate and an NA oil filter tree.



In researching how to plumb an oil thermostat best on a TT (after I already picked up a remote mount thermostat somewhat recently), I found out that the factory Nissan oil cooler port is only fed with excess oil pressure, as part of a bypass valve that flows directly into the sump. This obviously limits how much cooling can be carried out. With the NA oil filter tree (pictured, no oil cooler port), and the GReddy thermo'd sandwich plate, oil always flows when necessary to the cooler before being fed back to the filter - way more cooling potential.



Thermostat port is tiny but these guys know what they're doing so I guess it's okay.



Last up for today is a big one, a body mod... more old school jap cool



IT'S SO HAPPY



Those that know me are aware that I've had a long long long love for this bar but never really planned to pick one up as it's quite OTT... but when the Ab-Flug bumper, carbon fibre diffuser combo came up dirt cheap on Up Garage I just ab-solutely couldn't say no. here's a an idea of how it looks fitted up, and no I won't be using the outer winglets or a centre exhaust.

The diffuser is "generic" in the sense that Ab-Flug fit it to a range of cars (most notably their FDs). as such it doesn't fit the car/bar what I'd call properly, so I am going to cut the absolute hell out of it to make it work on the car 100%. I thought about it for weeks and weeks and have a game plan that has more or less turned into a complete rear end overhaul project so it will be sweet to see how it carries out.

That's it for tonight, I'm just about done with the first project since semester end and will post it up shortly.

-A

[anti.engineered]

I would imagine their wives would be sick to death of being repeatedly killed.

[LCG]

Anyone who's done something like this can attest to this (and their wives probably)

I guess most of them would be dead if your theory turns true.

I congratulate the effort of tucking the radiator in.