Gino's 300zx build

[catnipple]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pXfHLUlZf4

i agree!

[tg]

dude what am I supposed to do for a week while you're at the beach with the wifey, wait for updates???

[DCaff300ZX]

^^Vids of your beast hooking up better, and making better runs???

[tg]

^^Vids of your beast hooking up better, and making better runs???

Needs a quick visit to the shop and some suspension work before I put the slicks on and go back for more.

[DCaff300ZX]

Ah, the life of waiting for those who would go FAST...

[Gino]

haha, well I got the fuel issue fixed. The clamp that held the pump in actually loosened up, not one of the AN fittings. So that's fixed...and now it seems that my PS exhaust cam seal is leaking very slightly. Trying to think of a way to get it seated better without taking the timing belt off lol. It is a very slight leak- but don't want to risk it. It sounds bad a**. You can hear the turbos slightly just idling, then after shutting down if you listen you can hear the air being pushed out of the exhaust from the turbos spooling down for a good 45 seconds...and that's just when it's shut off from idle. Videos next week!

[catnipple]

gino! amazing ride man!!! the z is f***ing beautiful! i know this has nothing 2 do with ur car but how the hell am i suposed 2 post up pics??!?

[tg]

haha, well I got the fuel issue fixed. The clamp that held the pump in actually loosened up, not one of the AN fittings. So that's fixed...and now it seems that my PS exhaust cam seal is leaking very slightly. Trying to think of a way to get it seated better without taking the timing belt off lol. It is a very slight leak- but don't want to risk it. It sounds bad a**. You can hear the turbos slightly just idling, then after shutting down if you listen you can hear the air being pushed out of the exhaust from the turbos spooling down for a good 45 seconds...and that's just when it's shut off from idle. Videos next week!

I love turbo whir... its mental when you only have the test pipes on, lol. I love when people ask if its turbo and you're like uh... dude you don't know s*** about turbos if you don't hear that.

[Z32man]

S*** dude thats a damn sexy build. I was looking to make my z like that (same color as yours ) but ended up not doing it because of money problems . I love ur car and everything u have done. Good luck with everything

[MICRoS13]

Oh my gosh I have to get me one of these badboys

[DanDrath]

I'm putting some new videos from today up now. I fixed the power wire, nothing was fried haha- but now one of my bulkhead fittings decided to come loose and start leaking (which it wasn't doing yesterday)so I'm only getting 20psi of fuel pressure, which is why it kept dying and would die when driving and getting on the clutch.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBlgYGiSN0U

just cought something funny, apparently its 424 degrees out damn

[nghtrain88]

keep up the good work

[Gino]

I'm putting some new videos from today up now. I fixed the power wire, nothing was fried haha- but now one of my bulkhead fittings decided to come loose and start leaking (which it wasn't doing yesterday)so I'm only getting 20psi of fuel pressure, which is why it kept dying and would die when driving and getting on the clutch.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBlgYGiSN0U

just cought something funny, apparently its 424 degrees out damn

lol I didn't have the ambiant air temp sensor connected haha.

Just to give an update, I gave up with the original tuner and now next tuesday it will be at a shop to be tuned. The guy didn't quite know what he was doing with this car, resolved a lot of s*** that he didn't do right and now a reputable shop is doing it, which happens to be 5 minutes up the road lol and they just started selling VP fuels also, so who knows maybe I'll get the race gas tune out of the way to

[Z32TT]

You should of had this tuned months ago, hurry! haha

[Gino]

haha tell me about it, been very very busy and trouble shooting and figuring out a lot of crap out that most of it ended up being the tuner lol. But other than that, I barely have spare time between full time work and full time school, so it gets hard nailing a day to actually get s*** done on it and I didn't want to just trailer it some where and tell them to deal with it- I figure the more I learn with it the more I can tweak it if I ever change anything up, so I wanted to have it tuned on a day that I could actually be there and check everything out. I know the basics of it, just want to get more in depth with the haltech so I have it down for the future lol. Either way, expect HD videos as long as he can get it completely done while I can still be there

PS some kind of new shots that I haven't posted up on here yet...

[GsaSlick]

I love your car Gino, I was never really sold on the Stillen front fascia, but your car shows just how an aggressive setup pulls it off wonderfully. I like feeling like there's more than just the 99 spec as a viable option. Beautiful pictures, can't wait to see it tuned. Good luck!

[Z32TT]

haha tell me about it, been very very busy and trouble shooting and figuring out a lot of crap out that most of it ended up being the tuner lol. But other than that, I barely have spare time between full time work and full time school, so it gets hard nailing a day to actually get s*** done on it and I didn't want to just trailer it some where and tell them to deal with it- I figure the more I learn with it the more I can tweak it if I ever change anything up, so I wanted to have it tuned on a day that I could actually be there and check everything out. I know the basics of it, just want to get more in depth with the haltech so I have it down for the future lol. Either way, expect HD videos as long as he can get it completely done while I can still be there

Understandable, thats how me and my buddy been going with his turbo M3 on MegaSquirt, just been tuning it and working out the bugs on the days we can. We finally were WOT tuning last friday, pulls pretty damn quick at 6lb. Cant wait to see your WOT vids when done

[bartZ32tt]

Your engine bay is so clean it sickens me with envy! Lol great job on it. Where did the fuse box end up? I'm really considering a battery relocation-what gauge of wire did you use?

[DCaff300ZX]

Nice to see something new on Gino's ride, looking great as always and can't wait for the updates!

[Gino]

just another update, hopefully it will be done tomorrow...they traced (at least) part of the problem to the PTU...now the funny thing is that I had already thought that and THOUGHT i ruled it out (by using a friend good one)...BUT...that was before we caught all the issues with the map and apparently the plugs were fouled beyond cleaning...SO, they ordered me up a new PTU today and hopefully got it cranking. It makes perfect sense that that's what it would be, i just thought I ruled it out...but between the s*** original map (which was all screwed up) and the plugs being so fouled it is very likely that switching to a working PTU wouldnt have made a difference anyways because of those facts. So hopefully tomorrow I have some good news fingers crossed

[ffrpwner]

Im crossing my fingers man =)

[Gino]

yea man! I think i'm passing on the suby, the timing belt wasn't done at 90k, it has a little hole in the front subframe from rust (was a CT car originally), and needs a few other things for me to feel good about using as a DD...so i really hope the Z is done for the meet sat lol otherwise I'm going to skip out on the ISP meet, I'll go for a little but will be pointless in the infiniti lol

[es.biggs]

I'm a little late tuning in on this thread, but I have to say...AWESOME build. It's pretty epic, not even exaggerating.

Hope to see your car in person one day! And I'd like to shake the hand that built it.

[300zx-r]

Jesus, i Admire your work! One great looking Z, thats for sure! Keep it up!!

[Gino]

I'm a little late tuning in on this thread, but I have to say...AWESOME build. It's pretty epic, not even exaggerating.

Hope to see your car in person one day! And I'd like to shake the hand that built it.

I'm sure you'll see it in person some day man thanks

Jesus, i Admire your work! One great looking Z, thats for sure! Keep it up!!

thanks man

Well no new on the car today, so hopefully tomorrow...if not then next week but at least it's getting there fast now

[ffrpwner]

Man you gotta come to the meet tomorrow.

[Gino]

if you're talking to me, I'm still coming lol I hosted the damn thing, I am def going to be there..I just won't be going to ISP Totally pointless in the DD. Last time I showed up in the infiniti I ended up staying for like 30 minutes then just leaving lol. I was really hoping it would be done today

[Gino]

WOW...so it's been a while since I've been on these forums or updated this thread....so here we go...it is FINALLY running again. I had a lot of pauses on the build due to many many life events (getting married, having a house built/moving, going through the police academy, having a baby boy), but I managed to stick it out and not give up on the car, which brings us to this past Saturday where we FINALLY got it running again.

If I remember correctly (i.e. reading from my last post in here), the car was at the shop waiting to be trouble-shot and tuned...well I gave the shop a month to figure the car out, and they were unable to...so after a frustrating month, I decided to pick the car back up and bring it home. My brother, my buddy Aaron (Hummer96 on 3ZC...not sure if he's on here, or what his username is if he is), and I decided to start tracking things down ourselves. After countless hours of checking continuity between connectors and haltech pins, we came to the conclusion that something in the haltech flying lead had actually shorted and was crossing with the grounds. That being discovered, I pulled the flying lead off and wires the OEM harness directly to haltech ECU connectors. In hopes that this would solve the problem, we gave it a shot...no dice. All it would do was crank. We checked everything we could think of and were coming up with nothing...after a couple different attempts with pulling the harness and removing some unused wires and connectors, we found that something in the stock relay box was now not playing nicely with the now slightly modified harness.

That being said, the next thing on the list was to completely pull the EFI harness back out and build a fully custom one. I essentially yanked every single wire and connector that was not being used out of the harness and again wired directly into haltech connectors. I also added built in relays for the ignition circuit, injector circuit, and ecu/sensor power. After a little bit of fiddling with the setup of the harness setup, we still couldn't get it going. We did a little more trouble shooting, and found that 2 of the 5v regulators in the haltech were bad...one was putting out about 6.5V and the other almost 9v. We replaced them with new regulators and viola, she started right up. With the old map loaded in we were actually able to drive the car again! The idle could have used a little help, but it drove and was fairly smooth. All exited, I contacted the guy that was originally tuning the car, back when it actually ran, and set up a day to try for round 15 of street tuning. That day came two weeks later, and viola...the car wouldn't start...again. After a couple hours of trying different settings, we called it a day. I pulled the plugs and saw that they were absolutely destroyed with carbon and fuel. My tuner sent the map to haltech and I ordered a set of new plugs (NGK BKR7E copper plugs...rather melt a plug than a piston). A couple days later my tuner emailed me a completely new map (haltech recommended a couple changes in the setup and he built a completely new VE tune), and my plugs showed up. (somewhere in there I also had to repair my shifter bracket bushing by welding in some angle steel as the support. I will be making my own version of a solid bracket once it's tuned...I also got a set of Ash manifolds and will hopefully be doing back to back dynos to see what kind of gains we get from just the manifolds).

Which brings us to Saturday...I made the trip back down to my parents house, swapped out the plugs, loaded the new map, updated the firmware in the haltech, and boom...it started right up. On a blind map (not made in the car), it started easier and quicker than it ever did before, and also revved smoother and faster than any previous version that it actually ran on. With this big bit of progress made, we let the car cool down and restarted it with no problems. We unhooked the battery, let it sit for about an hour, re-hooked the battery up, and it still started. Feeling like we made about 500 steps forward from every other time we tried something, we are now hopefully at the point where we can street tune the car again and FINALLY get it on a dyno! We are set up for this Saturday to touch up the map with a street tune, then it will be hitting the dyno (if all goes well). Since it's been so long, obviously I have some pictures of what we have done, and a couple video's too...so here goes nothing...












https://youtu.be/JIarr3LN4wk
https://youtu.be/FXnSWvFWwKE
https://youtu.be/uU4aC7tH1Q8

[DCaff300ZX]

That's awesome to have a great ending (so far) to that ordeal, here's hoping everything is working right and no more fouled plugs.
Been wondering for awhile now what you were up to, glad you updated us!

[Gino]

Thanks! Im happy that we finally got it back to a running state. Ill be even more happy when its on the dyno and putting out some numbers! See if all this trouble was worth it lol