^ this except don't even waste your money on a JDM, if this isn't going to be your daily, give him 1 k for it, pull the motor and see because a melted piston is one thing but if you have cracked ring-lands than it could possibly have damaged the cylinder wall where you will have to bore it in which case you are looking at more than 1 piston and some rings. Minimum (best case) you are looking at honing and tanking the block ($200) getting used TT piston ($100), getting a set of rings for all 6 cylinders ($60-$400) depending on what rings you go with, a engine gasket kit ($10-$400) depending on quality of gaskets, and figure in another $500 min for odds and ends.

this is an old-new thread... for 1k, go for it.

considering you only want it running and as stock as possible...
cheapest route may just be getting a new/used motor ($1000-2000), have a few buddies over to help and you're golden.

you'll be able to get some money back from parting out your bad motor

Pieceofsand wrote:

es.biggs wrote:Definitely burning some oil...that's scary man. I wouldn't be running it like that because it might be starving certain parts of the engine from oil which will make those parts wear 100x faster. No bueno. Compression testtttt

This.

Cytrakz wrote:In the video did it look like the smoke was more blue or white? Does one color mean a different problem from the other?

I think it could be a combination of both. Your car's problem really looked similar to my TT a few years ago. That was probably one of the saddest day of my life. Anyways OP, sometimes it's hard to distinguished between blue and white smokes, especially for if someone is inexperience. You can try to smell it, I think the coolant smoke has a sweet scent.

Listen to es.biggs, get that compression test done, it can tell you a lot.

Good luck and keep us updated OP.

^yes coolant has a sweet scent.. Oil smells like d|ck and is blue.. Coolant is white
Do me a favor pull the oil stick and smell it tell me if you smell fuel on it... Then get back to us

NolimitZ32 wrote:If its as you say pretty damn clean and complete Id ask more than 1k however few would be willing to pay it but you could find someone if you hold out long enough. All in all 1 k sounds fair for a complete, clean native TT with blown engine. Someone who would do the work himself/herself could get it back on the road for as little as new piston or pistons (depending on how many are busted) which used TT pistons can be had super cheap or some Wiescos for $600 a set. To get someone to do a rebuild I'd say you're looking at anywhere from 2k to 6k depending on how deep into upgrades you get.

I could part that sucker out for 1k.. If your willing to do the work or pay someone to get the work done, Buy the parts, possibly stress your self out, then DO IT!

$1,000 is a good price IMO. Basically if it was mine I'd get the valves cut (and have the heads checked out), bore the block and put everything new into the bottom end. Put it back together and you should have a decent car -- if it was worth anything close to 9k to begin with.

$3-4,000 (plus a LOT of wrenching) and you will have a good TT - sounds like a great deal, if you have the time and motivation to do it!

Thanks for all the input guys I appreciate it! I'm gonna go for it and buy it, I figure 1k is a pretty damn good deal. As far as what I'm going to do with the engine situation. I'm leaning towards putting in a JDM and parting out the old engine. I'd love to save some money and just have some of my boys and my dad to help me put it, but none of them have ever worked on one before. So I'm most likely gonna have to go to a shop to get it done. Plus I just want it done right the first time and not have it sitting in my driveway for weeks lol. There's a local shop where I live (PA) called first state motorsports. He gave me a number of about 3-3.5K with the engine being about 1,500 dollars. Does that sound like a reasonable price. Also if I get a shop to do it will he most likely let me keep the old engine?

A JDM engine is the most unreliable choice you can make.

Alright well if I build up my engine I have now will it be in some what the same price range as a swap....if I just want to get it back on the road as stock as possible? Or I really can't tell until its all torn down right?

basically, like i said before it could be one bad piston or it could be worse

I gotcha..after reading that JDM thread a minute ago made me understand lol. I'm gonna call down to my shop tomorrow and talk to the guy about rebuilding it. Any advice on what I should say to the guy or what to look out for?

Have you ever had this shop do any work for you before and do you have any feedback as to how they are business wise? I would seriously consider doing it yourself cause the shop could still mess things up. You will have to get to know this car eventually, so now is the perfect time to find out all about the car. Having to do a similar situation and pulling the motor definitely made me a lot wiser and allowed me to know what and where everything goes. Plus when doing the motor pull yourself and researching everything from this site and others you will find out that there is a lot that you can either modify or eliminate that I'm sure the shop won't do for you. EGR is one of those items, most shops i don't think can eliminate it by law (don't quote me on it but i think the egr falls in line with cats). There are a lot more that in order to get rid of you are going to have to pull some of your motor apart anyway. Like you said, the 300 is a complicated car.

Make sure they have everything checked out by a reputable machine shop - not joe schmo's engine builders, etc. I'd try to choose a shop that does a lot of engine work - it's much more specialized than regular maintenance, brakes, alternators etc. If you are confident with your shop then they should take care of you. Just make sure they use a good machine shop, and make sure they walk you through everything - if they are gonna need to do anything you haven't talked about previously, make sure they are calling you keeping you updated.

edit - yeah man, if you can, maybe do it yourself. it will take longer, but everything he said ^^^ is true and they are very good points! You will save tons of money too. Just gotta pay attention to details

Thanks for the quick response guys! Yes a lot of my buddies get work on there cars at this shop. He is well known in my area. I've never had any of my cars done there because me and my dad did all the work on my trans am. My dad use to be a mechanic but he only really worked on muscle cars not imports of this difficulty lol. My only experience with the guy is when I took the Z down to get it compression tested and that's when he found the piston was melted down. He's a nice guy and said he's worked on 300Zx before. He had mostly supras in the shop when i was checking out the area. It was a good looking place and not some crappy shop lol. I will Deff consider the rebuilding myself if my dad would be up to it. But I'm looking to get her on the road rather quickly so if the price is pretty good i might just go with the shop. But I'll keep you guys posted!