OST Micah

LHD 350Z pedal mounted with a custom bracket. Pretty simple bracket, can't get much easier than this. Still had t tweak the pedal rod a bit to get the pedal to sit in the same spot. GTR pedal swapped over onto the 350Z rod.

Got a bit more done this past week. Added in an exhaust pressure sensor. I had it in the wiring harness in case I felt like adding it one day so just did it now. Never watched this data before on any car so that'll be nice to see and learn from. Next up was a mount for my pressure sensor bank. I found this machined sensor bank online and thought it was a really cool piece. The first few ports are one chamber and then each port after that is a separate chamber. This allows all the pressure sensors to be mounted in one place for easy changing. There are multiple 1/8" npt fittings per chamber. Made a mount for the bank that doubles as a battery tray. Installed my throttlebody and inlet pipe. Next I'll be getting the radiator in and doing some wiring changes for the DBW. All wires were run in the new harness I made earlier, they're just not terminated.

Thanks, Duncan. I was going to use a Honda tensioner cover because I thought I had one but I can't find it. It has a nice pull tab to remove. I think I will leave a plug out of it as I'm afraid I may accidentally push it through the cover when trying to remove it. I run an undertray on this car so if something gets up into that area of the bay I've got other issues! Yes, the trans comes out often to check the clutch or change it out. Looking forward to any added speed for that job. Thank you for the kind words!

Hardline for cabin heater finished. Factory coolant fitting modified for -10 on the main outlet and the smaller outlet blocked. Turbo drain fitting extended. With the new turbo position there is much more room below the turbo and that makes room for this extension. Now getting a wrench on the fitting will be easy since it will be below the comp housing. Motor assembly started. One thing I always wanted was access to the tensioner with the damper installed. I feel that Nissan dropped the ball here. Put a hole in the lower cover so I can remove and install the cams more easily in the future because I seem to need to do that a lot. Also switched to a Gates belt. No real need but want to test it out and see if I can reduce some of the changes I implemented to make the factory CAS work. All together! Switched to the Outsider Garage billet half moons as well. The cam cover some off all the time and I got tired of piling rtv on the factory ones. A photo of how little is under the intake now. Super happy about this! Will make removing the intake easy and no clutter. Cabin heater hose attachment. No clamps! Finally back in the car. Not long now!

It's finally done. What a long road. Time to go back together. So far I've got it out of the crate, inspected, painted, final freeze plugs in, oil pump, windage trays and sump installed, and a couple other smaller bits. Was going to get the head on but got sent the wrong gasket. Deleting the hardlines under the intake but still going to use cabin heat. Turned down this spare cam cover breather for a .004" press fit aided by some loctite. Tapered the first bit to get it to go in nicely.

So after 6+ months of waiting for my motor I threw in the towel. The machine shop did my motor two years ago so I wanted them to do it again and look it over to check for any damage/condition of the parts. They obviously did a good job last time as it held up great. This time however progress was just so slow and ground to a halt when they could not line hone the block due to not having the correct mandrel. Last week I drove down, picked up my parts, inspected everything, made some corrections, crated everything up, and shipped it to our Hemi engine builder. He bumped me to the front of the line and the day the block arrived it was on the line hone. The next day it was getting the cylinders bored and honed. He measured the rod big ends and mains and bearings will be there Tuesday. What a guy! While he is doing the shortblock, I got to work on the head. It was at the same first machine shop for a crack repair. This did get done and looks to be a good repair. I had them cut the seats and valves as well because there was evidence of valve float and the seats were beat up. Switching to a dual spring to fix this. Assembled with Supertech dual springs, Supertech guides, Supertech seals (made a tool to get these on), and stock valves. Polished up the buckets on the lathe as well. Then torqued the head to a mock-up block and got the shimming sorted. I'm getting a decent collection of shims now so I only needed to order two. Why torque to a block for shimming? I found that the clearance can change (mostly increase) after torquing. I suspect valve seat distortion. Finished up the oil filter relocation. Lastly was a new location for the oil drain. Unknowingly, I placed the first drain at the front and on the side. The front wasn't good because in the car the bottom of the oil sump slopes rearward meaning there's probably a quart or so of oil I couldn't drain. On the side was a pain because the oil drains in a long arc and you have to stand there the whole time and keep moving the catch tray as the arc shortens. Cut a bung down to fit flush with the bottom of the pan. Now welded up in a much more convenient location.

Thank you. As many times as these covers come off I really wanted something that would be durable. The paint was nice for a couple months but quickly started to deteriorate. Good to know your coating is holding up still!

Well the shortblock STILL isn't done. Starting to get a bit impatient. Apparently it's being machined now but that's been the case for a week or two. In the meantime my cam covers and other parts came back from powder coating. Everything is looks fantastic. Really a shame they're going to get beat up eventually but I'm going to try the best I can to keep them nice. Lots of other parts got coated but I only unwrapped these. Laid my shop's ornament cover on the valley cover and sat my freshly painted CAS on the timing cover. Going to look mint!

Found some old pictures of what the original brake line routing should look like. Removed the lower two lines, rebent them, and covered some of the nicks in one of the lines with heat shrink. Did the other line to match. So much better! Pistons came back from getting the skirts coated and the tops coated. Motor is going to finally start going together!

Got a bit more assembled. Brake lines are installed. Going to either remake the one or straighten and rebend. It has a goofy bump by the firewall from someone removing these and reinstalled before me. Bugs my OCD but I needed the lines in so no fluid leaked on the paint after I installed the master and ABS pump. All new hardware being used. New brake line clips as well. I'll clean the reservoirs another day. Rerouted the body harness in this area. Didn't want to see anything but the turbo parts here.

Been a while but I finally got some time to start plucking away at this thing after hours. Made up a reluctor pickup for the driveshaft speed sensor. Not because it needed it but because I thought of a way to do it and wanted to. 3D printed prototype pictured. Then I started on an oil filter relocation. I wanted a larger filter, a common filter, and placed in a spot that didn't get everywhere during changes and, if possible, let me keep the oil drain pain in the same spot when draining the sump. This is a rough draft. We'll see how it goes. Next was to strip the bay (not the entire front clip, no time for that) and paint. I also had to fill in the hole I made a few years ago for the turbo outlet. New metal welded in, filler to smooth on the top and bottom. Cleaned, smoothed, and prepped the bay for paint. Painted! I'm not a professional and it's not perfect but I think it came out very well for my time input and skill level. Starting reassembly.

Hot side piping chopped up and remade to give lots of AC line clearance. This one really fought me. I already mentioned I seem to struggle with making too tubes meet in the middle. This was even harder in the very short distance between the comp outlet and bulkhead.

Thank you. It's just my phone. Samsung Galaxy S7. We have really bright lights in the shop which is probably why they're crisp. For engine bay shots I use a stick light otherwise they're really blurry. Thanks! I feel you there. Very tedious and you can't cut corners on fitment or it'll bite you later.

Also converting to DBW with a 2014+ Hemi Challenger throttle body. Got an IO box for Christmas! We have lots of take-offs from customer cars and the bolt pattern is almost identical to Plazmaman's cable throttle. Cut the throttle and clamp down to match the dimensions of the cable throttle so can switch back if needed with no fabrication. Also makes the conversion easier. Got a 350z pedal from a yard for $25 so I'll try to use that. Apparently it's pretty close to bolt on.

Turbo system is complete! Downpipe is connected to the exhaust and wastegate dump made. Unfortunately I made a silly mistake and did not bolt up the AC pump lower bolts, just the top bolts. It was not rotated counterclockwise all the way and with the AC lines already bent as much as possible and clearing by a couple mm, they now do not clear with the ump bolted up correctly. Downside of doing things after a long day and trying to hustle I guess. Going to have to remake the top section of intercooler piping. This is always the hardest part for me; make two pipes meet in the middle at the same angle and along the same line. Seems to take me a lot of time. Does it take everyone else that much time or am I doing it wrong?

Chipping away at it some more. Got the cold side piping finished. I am doing better at aluminum welding and getting more consistent with adding filler. I don't do it often enough to perfect it but progress is progress. Started on the downpipe as well. Had to use stainless this time because there is no aluminum available anywhere thanks to good old Joe. Let's go Brandon! Exhaust is on the car again and I'll be connecting it to the downpipe and making the wastegate dump next.

A bit more progress before the end of the year. Manifold fully welded and wastegate added. It didn't quite fit where I initially thought it would but I made something work. The hot spots on the manifold are not from welding (not that my welds are fantastic!). They are from using the torches to move the runners back where they needed to be after welding. Manifold is now done! Fits with PS, AC, ABS, and no cutting the hood. What a chore. Huge props to those that do this all day everyday. This is only my second manifold and my first with a true collector. I wish I did this more often so I could get better. For the charge pipe I wanted to go through the factory hole and fill in the one I made for the first turbo setup. Cut the v-band off the comp housing and tacked on a Plazmaman clamp. It's tight between the housing and the AC lines so I had to cut about 1/4" off each clamp flange and even with a donut it barely clears. I'll do another clamp flush with the factory hole so the entire pipe can come out and it's not in the way when working on the car. Second section of the donut is just held up for reference; not a final piece.

Last two runners finished tonight. #2 was a bugger. Now to weld it all up and add the wastegate. It will go right behind the motor mount at the join between the collector and the 3.5" 90 (unless I change my mind).

Thank you! I ended up removing the fist vband to gain some space for the downpipe. Gained me about 2". First runner tacked together. Did this one in the car because it will be my space limit towards the rear. Bolted the manifold up to a spare block and head in the newly sorted fab room. Really happy to be doing it this way. Making the last one in the car without a welder was miserable. Made up a couple more runners. Coming out decently so far.

Started some fabrication while between other jobs in the shop. Added a cutout to the expansion tank to allow the throttle cable to pass through. Currently it bends sharply coming out of the firewall against the tank. The pedal feel was choppy because of this (I assume). Next I started on the collector as I figured that's the hardest part of a manifold. I've never done this before so go easy. It's not perfect but I learned a lot. I made a template with some math, CAD and my printer. All pieces tacked together. Welded. Going to smooth out the inside a bit but couldn't find my long steel die grinder burr when these were taken. Tacked on to v-bands and a short radius sch10 3.5" 90. I won't be using thin wall on a manifold again. Too many issues with the wastegate area getting cracks. Currently waiting on the turbo to come back from getting refreshed and I'll get the manifold completed. Then the bay ill get prepped and painted. It's pretty much stripped right now, just don't want to paint it and then be working in it fabbing.

Well the plus side is that now I have a mock up block for the shop that I won't mind bashing around like I would a good block. Threw the cracked block back in the car and a spare head. I wasn't totally happy with the turbo position and the manifold was my first one ever and there was room for improvement. Mocked up where I want the turbo this season. Still keeping ABS, AC, and PS. Not sure why I didn't do this in the first place. Next was the wiring harness. I had been adding in sensors as I needed them and planned to one day integrate everything into the engine harness. I'm out of inputs now and I feel that I have all the sensors I should need. Removed the harness and stripped it down. Started by removing the wires for the MAFs, factory O2s, second TPS, and a few others. Added in the wires for my aftermarket sensors, outputs, and solenoids. All pressure sensors will now be on a block up by the battery to keep wiring and servicing easy. I also added in wires for an exhaust backpressure sensor and DBW should I ever get an IO expander. Going to throw a few spare wires in as well. Modified the jumper harness to be removable from the main harness and the two sensors I have in the interior. Ran all inputs, outputs, voltage supplies, and grounds through the firewall grommet and to the jumper harness. First time doing this as well and learned a lot. I'm happy with the result and the next one will be nicer. All crimped though! No more solder for this guy.

Took the car to the track a few weeks ago after driving to and from work for nearly the entire summer. We were focusing on our chassis car at the shop and at the track so I didn't play with the car much after getting the exhaust finished. As I always seem to do, I changed a few things in the days leading up to the track day in effort to make the car "better". You'd think I'd have learned my lesson by this point. I added Full Throttle Shift activated off clutch pedal position and on for a set time for each gear. Tested on the street to get the right cut time and percentage and it worked great and shifts were smooth as butter - much smoother than before. I also tested at what clutch position the new clutch engaged and set my hydraulic slipper to start the delay at launch at that point. Couldn't really test this on the street - need a prepped surface. Things did not go well at the track. I couldn't put much thought into the car throughout the day as we were helping customers with their cars and we had the chassis car there which sucks up a lot of my time. The car would not leave the line at all. I would release the clutch which would instantly lock up and bog the car. I turned the hydraulic delay valve to completely closed (no flow) and got the car to launch a few times like this but changing nothing and the car would bog next pass. Couldn't figure this one out at the track. When I did get a good launch with successful slip the car would roll through the beams and start the timer showing a terrible 60'. All of these passed were then shut down by engine protection as soon as I shifted into second gear. ECU showed a lean condition due to FTS being engaged partway through first gear and finally hitting the time limit for my lean condition. This was because my FTS clutch position was before the pedal slipper started its delay and the FTS would remain activated by the delayed clutch pedal. I cranked up the FTS active time but oddly this had no effect. So no 60' data even though the butt dyno says it was launching way harder than before. The logs show a 1.31 60' when the time the car was rolling through the lights is subtracted. The car did bog one pass but I ran it out anyway to get data on the shifting. This was the only positive for the day - nearly 153mph! One of the launches that did work only to be shut off in second gear. Looked over the logs the next few evenings and found the car was rolling through the lights because Launch Control (which is deactivated by MPH) was remaining active after the car started moving (as determined by the RPM drop). MPH would occasionally go negative at launch. Likely a software bug and I didn't feel like troubleshooting that one. I added a clutch switch which was just splitting the clutch position sensor signal wire to another input. Set this up to deactivate launch control at the point the clutch starts to engage. Problem solved. Next was the clutch not slipping at the launch ... sometimes. I found that the rate at which I released the clutch made a big difference. When releasing it more slowly, the clutch would slip nicely. When releasing it quickly the clutch would not slip. I had set the slip to start when the clutch pedal was at the point the clutch started to slip but I had not accounted for the time it took the solenoid on the slipper valve to activate. Apparently this was a lot longer than I thought. I played with this in the driveway and found I needed to activate the slipper valve 17% pedal position over when the clutch actually begins to engage. Okay, that one figured out. This percentage was really touchy though and changes to a tenth of a percent were what I was playing with. The following week I went back to the track thinking it would be the day to go 8s now that the issues were at least very close to sorted and the MPH was there. Sadly, again, no dice. The car blew the tires off on the first (and only) hit but I ran it out because I wanted to test my FTS changes (bumped up the activation percentage to be outside the pedal slipper delay). I got out of the throttle as soon as I shifted into fourth. As I turned onto the return road an enormous cloud of white smoke caught up with me. The motor was still running on all cylinders although a bit poorly. I drove it back to our pit as I didn't hear any noises or feel the car was down a cylinder. Got back to the pits and pulled the radiator cap. No fluid. Pulled the plugs and cylinders #3 and 4 had water in them with #3 being pretty bad. Turned the motor over with the plugs out and water shot out of #3. Great, lifted the head again this time with a Nitto stopper gasket. Only 39lbs and 18° of timing at 7800rpm (where coolant pressure says it lifted) on race fuel. Coolant pressure shows a 20psi spike about a second before I got out of it in 4th. Got the motor out and apart because I figured I'd refresh it over winter. Had a nice surprise when I removed the head. Block is toast. Piston at BDTC. Crack goes all the way from the bottom to the top of the bore and out into the deck. Bore is about 4.2mm thick in the crack area which is more than enough I should think. Had a close look at the head gasket and the underside of the head and it clearly lifted on 3 and 4 towards the intake. I am guessing it sucked in water and that cracked the cylinder. Going to tear down the shortblock and make sure the rod isn't bent (piston comes up as high as the others by visual check). Going back together with a spare block I have and will be stainless wire o-ringing the block and using a normal MLS gasket. Going to try to scrape up the money for some 625+ studs as well. They're expensive but I'm tired of lifting the head. The silver lining to all this is that if I still had the open downpipe the water may have put the car into the wall. The exhaust served its purpose already. Until next year!

Finally got the exhaust welded up and finished. Here's some progress pictures and final pictures. I haven't weighed it yet but the tubing and downpipe are likely in the 5-10lb range. The resonator is probably another 10lbs. However I can not take my downpipe off without getting under the car! This means the turbo can come off without getting under the car. Fantastic. Love the way the car sounds and looks. Drove the car to and from work for a week with lots of WOT through the gears and no issues yet. Mocking up different ways to sit the resonator. Adding an extension like this and lots of angle did it for me. Used aluminum to get the extension length right as it cuts quickly. Plugging away Tucks up nicely Resonator on To make the extension I needed some polished 4" SS. Well I couldn't find just a 1ft section anywhere and I wasn't paying for a 4ft stick to use 8 inches. So I gave polishing up some raw 4" SS I had sitting around. Turned out well enough for me. I then cut the edge in the lathe to give it a clean look. All done. Hangers are this wall stainless tube. Two are attached to the aluminum by t-bolt clamps to prevent the aluminum from tearing and one is welded to the resonator. I may try to get a WOT clip soon but this is all I have for now.

A while back I purchased a lot of aluminum exhaust parts to one day put a full time full exhaust on the car. The main reason was safety. I had seen a couple open header cars at the track put oil under the tires from engine damage and wreck. Now that I'm going to start pushing this motor harder I would rather eat the power loss for the sake of safety. The reason for choosing aluminum was for the weight and the low cost compared to stainless. The Promod guys use aluminum and I've done an aluminum downpipe on another car before and it worked well. The downpipe material is all schedule 11 and the exhaust portion will be schedule 14. The schedule 14 will start where the factory cat normally sits. This is to make all significant bends from schedule 11. The downpipe is 5" and tapers to 4" for the exhaust. A couple things I wanted to change from my last design: wideband sensor must be accessible from the engine bay for quick changes on the roadside or at the track. Downpipe needs to come out for turbo removal so this must also be able to be done from the engine bay with no jacks/lift. I want to be able to remove the turbo quickly at any location should the need arise. This is the reason for the v-band partway down the downpipe. The exhaust will be mounted to the mounting ear on the transmission and hopefully that will hold it well enough to R&R the upper downpipe section without getting under the car. Downpipe all welded. I'm not a pro at welding but certainly seem to be improving. In the car From underneath

Finally got a chance to install the new clutch. Took some pictures next to the OS Giken TS3B. The DCS 9" dwarfs the OSG. Found the TOB clearance to be within spec with the recommended 18mm sleeve. Measured finger height on the cover for future reference. Not sure when I'll be able to go to the track next but I'll be using the time to break in the clutch as much as possible. All laid out on the table OSG disk on top of a DCS disk Thickness compare Holes in the floater and in the pressure plate In the car! Love the OS Giken alignment tool.