Brace yourself, this is gonna be a long post. Some of you may remember me from when I was more active on the forums a few years back. I had a red 93' 2+2 Z back then with the gloss black mustache(I always mentioned it in posts).
I got the car at age 15 and hopped right into working on it with my brother. Some of you may know him here too, his screen name is fattymcbaggins(lol). He's got a clean blue S13 hatch with a fully-running VQ35 swap.
We were still working on that S13 when I got this Z, and for me all of it was a huge learning experience. That was in December 2009. I spent a good year fixing up the car, with all your usual Z32 issues...rough idle, missfires, bad EFI harness corrosion...you guys know. Then in February 2011 I decided it was time to move towards upgrades and not repairs. After much research between a TT swap and a VH45DE swap, I decided I liked the VH45 more for it's simplicity and lighter weight. Plus a fabricator friend of mine who worked down the street from my house at BEGi/Bell Engineering, a local performance shop, offered to do the fab work for free. So we fetched a $200 junkyard special VH45DE to swap in:
Well, that never happened...first off, my autotragic died a few months or so after I got the motor. So the money I saved for that ended up going towards a 5spd swap on the car, along with some miscellaneous parts like the 94+ spoiler...
Looks great on a 2+2, imo. Anyhow, in November 2011, by the time I'd finished the 5spd swap(remember I was 17 and still learning the basics!), my fabricator friend was gone and the VH45DE swap seemed a distant prospect. I loved my 5spd N/A's fun-to-drive characteristics but still just wanted more power. Plus, I'd torn the motor down and deemed it in need of a rebuild-which I couldn't afford. A TT swap would have cost just as much as the VH45 swap and rebuild. So after some months spent perfecting my Z as it was, I decided to call the 450ZX project a failure and sell my N/A for a TT...
I got the TT in Waco, just a few hours north of me. It had a straight body and only 80K miles, and it was for sale at $4500! It'd even been in Waco since it was sold on April 19th, 1990. Yeah, a Z32 doesn't exist in the world without a drawback and this time it was rod knock. Confident I could fix it after my experience with my N/A, I grabbed the car and tore it apart.
I just had to add my signature glossy mustache to cover up that fugly faded urethane:
Z's being expensive, it was hard to afford a TT build when you work at Valvoline Express Care. Luckily enough, a buddy of mine managed to get me a job at BEGi/Bell Engineering, the same company my VH45DE free-fabricating buddy worked at. After a few weeks an idea hit me. All this time my VG30DETT build was going on, I still had that VH45DE sitting in my garage, doing absolutely nothing but being a massive display piece(A pretty one at that).
And my Z32 was also just sitting there, no motor in the bay, waiting on everything from Wiseco pistons to a new EFI harness(REPLACE IT IF YOUR MOTOR IS OUT!!!!). So I put the two together and went to my boss, Corky Bell, and asked for approval to design and market a 450ZX Swap Kit. Corky's a big fan of Nissans, having won numerous SCCA races with his Datsun Roadster and Datsun 510 back in the 60's and 70's.
Apparently he was even invited to one of the first unveilings' of the Z32 in Dallas back in 1989. So naturally he agreed and a few weeks later my Z was on the lift at BEGi with a VH45DE in it.
So there you have it, the story of how a Z32 enthusiast started off learning how to work on cars and is ending up making parts for them. Right now we're almost done with the motor mount design, and once that's done we're going to move on towards making the prototype set of longtube headers. We're trying to spread the word and let people know we'll be offering a FULL KIT for this swap-from the headers, motor mounts, A/C and power steering lines, even a wiring harness service if you're shy on that factor. Best of all you don't have to get a different oil pan-contrary to popular thinking, the stock VH45DE oil pan fits just fine. Right now I'm working overtime to get this out on the market sooner rather than later, and we'd like to have it out by October or November.
For those of you who remember helping me with some questions I had a few years back, let me say I'm honored to have this as a way to give back to the Z32 community that has done so much for me. Thanks for reading, and I'll keep you guys updated.
It must run in the blood, my father is an aerospace engineer himself.
There's been alot of support from the community for our VH45 stuff too, so needless to say I'm very thankful for everything that's unfolded these last few weeks.