Hello guys and gals!
Let's start from the beginning and prepare fore some scrolling...
I'm 20 years old, named Hampus, from Sweden and absolutely LOVE the 300ZX , this is by far my dream car. The reason for starting this thread is that I want a build thread about my at the moment red lady and I want to take part of peoples opinions, ideas and help.
I'm totally new to this forum (actually forums in general) and will do my best to keep it professional.
I have always been interested in cars and bought a red BMW e30 as my first car when i was 18 (the age limit for drivers license in Sweden). I made a mild restoration of it because it already was in good shape (e30:s are known to have the floor missing due to rust). At the moment I use it as the daily car to the work. Hurts a bit, but what should I do? I don't have the space for one more car and I'm definitely not selling the e30

Shortly after buying the e30 (actually after the restoration that lasted half a year, was going to school by that time) I found the Nissan 300ZX Z32 and fell in love with her immediately, especially the engine bay. I started looking at blocket (Swedish site for used things, in my case... CARS!) and found some cars. The ZX isn't that common in Sweden, i mean I have only seen 3 st since I bought the e30. I kept looking and reading about the car. I wanted to know what was common to fail on these cars as you always want to know when buying a used car. There was a lot of other ZX:s that I was interested in before buying the current, but the problem with them was that they either was non maintained, to expensive for a bad paint, really far away and so on. Finally I found a car that was in OK condition. It wasn't to far away and it had some mods to it, forged pistons, proz chip, aftermarket mufflers, OZ rims and some more things. It had (and still have) bad paint. It also had one bad turbo and one changed (witch I realized was just as bad as the other later on). The interior probably was the worst s*** I have ever seen, someone had dressed it with leather (on top of the fabric) and used a glue gun to fasten it.
Well, I decided to buy it anyways as it was kind of cheap.

And it's here everything begins. The plan is to only rebuild the engine and tune it. My goal is somewhere between 600 RWHP - 700RWHP. This is hard for me to estimate, because I have never really been in to tuning before. Sometimes gonna be the first! And no I'm not new to the workshop.

Here's a list of things I'm planning to do/change to the engine/powertrain:

Eagle rods
Wiesco pistons
ARP head/main studs
Engine mounts
All gaskets (obviously )
Oil pump
Water pump
Timing belt
Lightweight pulleys
Lightweight flywheel
Clutch
Spark plugs
Fuel rail
Fuel pump
Injectors 2000cc
Fuel lines
Camshaft R5 (maybe later on)
Valve springs
Vtc springs JWT
GT2860RS/GT3071R (not sure yet)
Intercooler SM/FM (not sure here either)
Manifold (going to be welding a tubular myself)
3" Exhaust system all the way
Haltech ECU
Rebuild the gearbox since it scratches in fourth gear (very common)

Port heads exhaust/intake Stage 1 - 2
Gasket match upper to lower plenum and lower to head. Exhaust to manifold flange
Level cylinder heads
Topdeck block
Hone cylinders
Weld the crankshaft counterweight

That's it for now, probably going to change my mind a couple of times since this project is going to be long. I'm not going to stress it through and the money is sadly a limiting factor, but everything is possible!

At the moment I have already removed the engine, disassembled it, and am at the moment porting the heads parallel to producing the manifold flange. When I removed the cylinders I had a little shock. The cylinder walls looked terrible and I would probably have to bore them up to get rid of it! Picture below. I measured them and realized that they already was bored out to 88 mm It maybe be possible to bore them out even more but I don't want to take any risks so I went back to blocket and found a almost complete NA motor near the location of where I bought the car. It was really cheap (only 1000 SEK, ~110 USD atm). I bought it, disassembled it and discovered to my relief that they where 87 mm! Yay So I went ahead and used a Dremel to clear the water canal and blasted it (sorry don't know if it is called that in English), picture below.
I will post a lot of pictures, love threads with it.

Here's the first ones I snapped the day i bought the car. (s*** quality sorry)



My 300ZX to the right, my buddy's Volvo 940 in the middle and my red BMW e30 to the left.



After some cleaning.





In the garage.




And then the disassembly began. Love that you can put the jack in the center of the car



Now for the pictures with the better camera





Some nice rusty coolant.




More progress, a lot of cables and hoses that needed to be named up. Probably going to remove the majority of them but better safe than sorry.




Well time to pull the engine!






Pretty close there




And it is ready to be disassembled.








Pretty oily here from the leaking turbo.








It was at this point I saw that the cylinder walls was really worn. I have never before inspected other cylinder walls but here you can really feel how bad they are. Measured them and realized that they already where oversize, 88mm. I don't want to take any risks so I deiced to buy a new block.






Saw that it was CP pistons in it. Want to use them, but is guess i still go with a new block.




Did some cleaning of the hydraulic lifters, two from the left head had air in them.



So smaaaal.



Here is the new NA engine I bought.




After some more hours of work.





This was one thing I didn't really understand about the crankshaft. Why is it machined after it has been molded? Both my engines crankshaft looked like this. Is this original? I understand that you have to balance it, but still looks strange to me.



This gear was really hard to remove.





Cleaning the new block.



And preparing it for blasting (<--- that word sounds sooo strange to me XD)










Time to fix the water canal. Could not see through it at first.






Ah that was better!







Looks new after some hours of work, sadly I couldn't get all the angles because it didn't fit in the blasting mussel.







Well this post is starting to get really long now, so I cut it here and post more pictures of the porting/work to the heads later.


I have a Instagram account (mullefan, instagram.com/mullefan) as well about the car project, but it's a bit less serious. So this is the main site, and maybe I will be starting a thread on some Swedish forum later on.


I have a plan to widen it in front and back as well as giving it a nice paint job and more cosmetic things, but that is far away and is not going to be on my mind when building the motor.


If you have any thoughts about the parts, the way I'm rebuilding the motor or things I've missed, just leave a comment. I appreciate it!
Well that was that, I'm going to post more pictures as time goes. Thank you for reading!
Zee you later!

Welcome! FYI I fixed the title of the thread.
Very detailed work and lots of pics, very nice!

Thank you! Received some new tools today so probably going to get some work done

Wow! must say i will be following your build, so far all the cleaning/restoring looks great, makes me wish i had the tools and skills to do the same. one thing for me that crank pulley slid right off no struggle at all. anyways keep us updated!

Thanks
Lets hope that the gear comes of easier on the TT motor later on.

beautiful car, awesome work, one word of advice, not sure where you got info on 2000CC injectors but that is WAAAAYYYYY too big for your build, the Nismo 740cc will be optimal.

Thanks! Well I actually read a little more about that today, and 2000cc probably is overkill, but can you really have to big injectors? I've read somewhere that injectors have a minimum duty cycle (2%?) and if that percentage goes over what your car want in fuel per minute at idle it's going to be a bad/rough idle, nothing more than that.
My plan is to tune it for E85 as well, so i want it to be ready for that.

*Update*

So I started with some porting on the intake side. It's kind of hard to know what I should do, I mean smoothing the surface down to 80 grit isn't that hard, but I wanted to do more than that. So I have been researching for hours, days, months, even years... nahh I'm just kidding, but I have spent a lot of time reading other threads, websites, talking to people and so on. To start with the VG30DETT isn't the most common engine to work with. It's not the average Supra, 200sx or BMW. Still I managed to get some guidance and decided not remove too much metal but still some, in Swedish it's called "lagom" (hehe). If you remove too much you will increase volume and by that you lower the velocity of the air/fuel mixture.
The surface is also important, some say that you want a mirror like finish all the way from the intake to the exhaust because a smother surface have less friction than a rougher (and will flow better) and some say you don't want it on the intake side because you want the fuel to mix better with the air due to the rougher surface producing turbulence.
I'm going for a mirror like finish all the way through except after the injector down too the cylinder chamber. Think I'm going for a 120 grit finish. I read somewhere that you want to raise the roof on the intake side and you want to lower the floor on the exhaust side. I also decided to widen the spray protuberance (called that?? )

Before any work had been done.




And after some hours.









I tried to remove the little edge just before the valve seat. I've understood that this is where a lot of performance is gained in the portjob.
Hard to take the pictures but I managed to get some. Those are untouched.







After some work.







This is far from finished as you can see but you get the idea. I want to remove the valve guides first (witch i today realized was a pain in the a**, and I still haven't got anyone removed, still trying to figure out a way) before I give it a total finish.
I opened up the oil channel a little bit more. Before.




And after.






Well that was is for this time. Head work is really time consuming and require patience. As you may have noticed some of the pictures isn't in the right chronological order but you still get the idea, nothing will be forgotten!

Quite the project you have going there, and interesting goals...sure you have the room to enjoy 700-800 whp in a Z32? That will be one crazy car to drive and keep in one piece doing so, unless the track (hopefully!) is the plan and that you also possess some advanced driving skills. BTW, I also agree that the 2000 cc injectors would be waaaay too much unless you run e85 in which case they would be fine...I run 800's in mine and they run at well under 50% duty unless the pedal is flat and even then never approach 100%.
Nice to see people who have the guts to just plow right in as you have, and doing things such as the porting and such that you have...have you done this work before? I noticed a few things that would concern me, but then again I am not sure of just exactly where you are at with the porting and I also am NOT anything close to knowledgeable about doing that work...so I will watch you go and hopefully learn!
Congrats finding a Z32 in Sweden, and here's hoping you really get what you are looking for!

Great post, keep the updates coming!

DCaff300ZX wrote:Quite the project you have going there, and interesting goals...sure you have the room to enjoy 700-800 whp in a Z32? That will be one crazy car to drive and keep in one piece doing so, unless the track (hopefully!) is the plan and that you also possess some advanced driving skills. BTW, I also agree that the 2000 cc injectors would be waaaay too much unless you run e85 in which case they would be fine...I run 800's in mine and they run at well under 50% duty unless the pedal is flat and even then never approach 100%.
Nice to see people who have the guts to just plow right in as you have, and doing things such as the porting and such that you have...have you done this work before? I noticed a few things that would concern me, but then again I am not sure of just exactly where you are at with the porting and I also am NOT anything close to knowledgeable about doing that work...so I will watch you go and hopefully learn!
Congrats finding a Z32 in Sweden, and here's hoping you really get what you are looking for!

The goal is to get it street drivable and it's probably going to be some track as well. I'm new to track but are a frequent driver otherwise and i will of course get to know the car before releasing the beast. Regarding the injectors, i will be tuning it for E85 as well. Was making some easy calculations and 1000cc ($780) would be able to do the work. The duty cycle will be about 90% though and that's a bit to high for me i guess. Maybe 1300cc would fit better? Whats sad though is that it's a big jump in the cost ($1,350) and it's almost the same as the 2000cc ($1,440).
I haven't done any porting before so lots of reading! Well the porting isn't complete yet, i just wanted to get a feeling for it. I will give it some more work and a total finish when i have removed the valve guides.
Thank you for posting!

*Update*

Long time since last update, but here it comes!
So I have been busy with a lot of other things. And then summer came, so I didn't want to spend all the time in the garage since it's nice weather outside. When the Swedish summer is here you have to make the most of it. Anyways I'm back in the garage now and ordered a lot of things from Conzept performance. I have made some changes in the parts that I'm buying.

I ordered:

Rebuild kit A1 W cometic head gaskets
-CP pistons 87.5mm
-Carrillo super pro A beam rods
-ACL standard main and rod bearings
-Cometic head gaskets 88mm 0.060" thick
-Nissan oil pump
-Complete Nissan Gasket Kit
Ferrea S10039 heavy duty dual spring
Ferrea VS1012 / VS1014 valve stem seal viton
Ferrea E11017 titanium valve retainer dual spring
Ferrea SL1012 spring seat locator
ARP L19 main & head bolts
120k timing belt kit
-Gates racing blue belt
-Nissan OEM timing tensioner
-Nissan OEM water pump
-Nissan OEM idler pulleys
Unorthodox Racing pulley set with overdrive water pump pulley and belts
BDE billet urethane engine mounts
OEM Knock sensor w. harness
BDE exhaust valve cover half moon billet aluminum plugs

I changed my mind about the lifters, fist I wanted to go with the OEM hydraulic lifters, but changed it to solid. Since the hydraulic "steals" a lot of oil it can in extreme conditions lead to oil starvation. It also feels better to have solid I think, they aren't the limiting factor anymore of how high you can rev. I'm probably not going to rev that high anyways, but still feels good to have eliminated that risk.

So what have I done since last update? Well I have removed the valve guides (real pain in the a**), almost finished the port job, polished the OEM valves, started to polish the combustion chamber, port matched lower plenum and made an exhaust flange.
To the pictures!

I started to remove the oil stem seals by dragging them upwards with this cheap tool I ordered from eBay. I have put masking tape on it to not damage the hydraulic lifter hole surfaces.





I then started to make a tool that I could use to remove the valve guides with.






The plan was to thread the valve guides with a M7 X 1.0 tap and then screw my "tool" in and drag the valve guides out. I used the plates shown in picture below.



Unfortunately my "tool" went to two pieces and the valve guide didn't move a single bit. I forgot to take a picture of it. Anyways, I started with my next idea. Instead of dragging them out I was going to force them out with hammer the other way. So i made some other tools.
This is an ordinary stainless steel screw that i machined to a flat surface, and the threaded it.






I then threaded the valve guide so I could screw the new screw in from the top.






And this is what it looks like from the other side.



I then could push my other tool into the valve guide and start to use the hammer. I preheated the top to 60 degrees Celsius, or 140 degrees Fahrenheit.






Ah! I moved the valve guide a little bit It' s the first millimeter that is the hardest.



And here I got it out.



Here you can see how it all was putt together when it sat in the head.



Anyways, some of the valve guides broke along the way, and so did my tools as you can see.




Well now when I have got all the valve guides out of the way I could finish the port work.

There will only be pictures of the exhaust side since I'm not finished with the intake. I got some minor fixes left, will be in next update.
Well I started by removing the big lumps or what you call them. The material surrounding the valve guides. I have been reading a LOT about this if I should remove them or keep them. If I keep them they provide better cooling for the valve guides, valves, and give them a little bit more support. And if I remove them I get higher flow potential (lower velocity) for the air, but since I probably will be going with the GT30R71/76 turbos I will need more flow potential. Some say it's okay to remove them and some not. I used telescope gauges so I could measure and be sure to remove the same amount of material in every port. It's still really hard to know if they are totally equal since i don't have a flow-bench. I have done as good as I can with my tools and hopefully I have at least not lost power...




















I was not happy with the result that i got with the dremel, so I did it all again by hand, and trust me this took LONG time! I'm happy with the results though.






And some polish



Here is the results. Oh yeah!


















The tools that I used.



Now it's time to make the exhaust flange. I started of by making a wooden template with a 1:1 scale Inventor drawing that I printed.








I then used the wooden template to transfer the lines to the 10mm metal piece.
















I hammered the metal piece out.



And then used a dremel to smooth it out.








Matching the flange and head together.




Finished and mounted with a gasket.






Haha found some pictures that my friend took :P (Me holding the piston/rod)



Lovely beer.



And there you got my satisfied face xD



And the obvious selfie.



Anyways, back to what you came here to see! I polished the valves as well, or are in the middle of the process. I'm going to leave them to a machine shop to recut the contact surface later on.










Oh almost forgot that I port matched the lower plenum as well.





Did not remove much material since I don't want to change the characteristic of the injector spray pattern.





Lots of aluminum removed.

















When I ordered the rebuild kit which included the cometic gaskets I needed to calculate the compression ratio.
You need the following:
Bore; 87.5 mm
Stroke; 83mm (83.1mm not sure)
Head volume; ~46.5 ml
Piston volume; ~9,94 ml
Gasket thickness; 1.524mm (0.060")(Original is 1.143mm / 0.045")

This info gives me a compression ratio of ~ 8.6:1 which I think is fine, since I'm tuning on E85. I'll just buy another thickness on the head gasket if it doesn't work later on.
The head volume was not 100% accurate since I'm going to remove some material on the seats/valves which means that the valves will be a little bit longer in in the head, resulting in bigger chamber volume. The chamber I measured the volume on had a lot of coal left, so that decreases the chamber volume by say, 0.05ml (didn't take that into calculation above). The only thing I included above was the little extra volume that the "right" VG30 spark plugs will eliminate, but since the previous owner have installed wrong ones, I corrected that by 0.5 ml (measured it). Those measurements are extremely theoretical, so I'll wait until the heads are finished, I got the right spark plugs and, I can measure my own stroke (googled the number above).

Some pictures of the measurements. I sealed the valves with ordinary motor oil.







Did the same thing with the cylinder dome. The cylinders I'm measuring here are the same as the new ones I bought but 88mm instead, so I'm just recalculating the measurement to 99,43% of the volume.



Well that's all for this update, hope you enjoyed it!

Fint jobb Kommer bli ett monster

Wish i could do this kind of work also, just dont have the cash or knowledge. The space and machines are no problem lol, think this winter ill do some deletes, new Ic´s, plenum removal and some 740cc nismo injectors. Preparing for engine lift and turbos...

Thank you!
Well cash is a boring factor to consider The main reason everything is taking so long time for me is that I have to read and speak a lot to people before deciding to do things. There is sooo much to learn! Hopefully the engine doesn't brake within the first week at least
Nice to hear about your plans on the engine, where do you live?

Im located in Jönköping

Should be fine with proper tuning, cant remember if you wrote about taking it to the track or not. I feel like putting down power to the ground, bad brakes and enginge compartment heat is a issue with the 300zx. Mby your should look this over to

Oh and id totally do 2.5" piping with those HP numbers in mind.

I see! Looks like you got a nice car
The plan is to be able to drive it on the track as well as the road. Later on I want to widen the car and mount something like 335 tires in the rear to get traction. The brakes are "upgraded" but I will probably change them later on since it will be a lot of force to stop. I will definitely install at least 2.5" pipe.

*Update*

Time for an update don't you think? Well let's get on then!

Okay, so I went ahead and started to polish the combustion chamber. I used an old head gasket to protect the edges of the chamber. I then thought i could use some old NA valves to protect the seats from damage when I sandpaper and polish. As you can see they wasn't really flush with the head which resulted in no progress.





I ended up cutting out 1mm stainless steel plates that i then glued on to the seats as you can see.







With some hours of work it did result in this wonderful finish, and you can compare it to the other head besides where no work has been done.








With one head finished I went ahead and started to remove the valve guides on the other one. On this one though, I wanted to improve the way I remove the guides. My idea was to mill down the top of the guide and then push it out with a hydraulic press. The reason I milled it down is that I don't want it to crack due to the pressure from the hydraulic press. Since the valve guides are at an angle, my dad helped me make a wooden fixture to lock it in a horizontal state.







Here you can see when me and my dad mills the guides down in the fixture.






And here we press them out. 3 tonnes of pressure was needed.




So now when they where out I started to make something that could install the new ones properly. They need to be installed perfectly straight and they need to be at the same height. I made a drawing in inventor to get something started.



I then went ahead and produced it.







It did not end up with the exact same dimensions since there where some things that did't work out with the first ones.









So the idea with this thing is that it should be placed like the springs are mounted. Then the valve guides are placed inside and pushed in to position with the other rod. All this will be done mounted in the wooden fixture.







Oh! Found two more pictures of when I made the flanges.




I revived the items I ordered form Conzept performance. Lots of shiny nice parts! Easily the most expensive package I have ever revived




















I also went ahead and meassured the crankshaft to see if it still was within spec. And it was!




So now when I had the engine mounts, I wanted the aluminum part that holds them on to the engine to be fresh as well. This is what I did.




Cleaned.



Blasted.





Sprayed with Etch primer.





Baked in oven.



Spayed with aluminum paint.





And baked again.






Mounts mounted.





That's it for this update. Thanks for reading!
Zee you later!

Great to see you are still hard at work with your project, and making progress.
I really appreciate your eye for details, it will pay off with a VERY clean looking engine for sure.
Keep it up and thanks for sharing!

DCaff300ZX wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 16, 2018 9:48 am

Great to see you are still hard at work with your project, and making progress.
I really appreciate your eye for details, it will pay off with a VERY clean looking engine for sure.
Keep it up and thanks for sharing!

Thank you! Happy to hear you enjoy it
Yeah hopefully all the little details will pay off in the end!

Absolutely incredible work!

Very impressive work and attention to details. Me Like.

NolimitZ32 wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 17, 2018 6:01 am

Absolutely incredible work!

Thanks!

itsa300zx wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 17, 2018 3:16 pm

Very impressive work and attention to details. Me Like.

Happy to hear that the details are appreciated!

*Update*

Hello there fellow readers! Let's get our hands dirty again!

As you saw in previous update I managed to renovate the engine mounts.

Now it's time to disassemble the car a little bit more.







Hmm, something has happened here.













Relocated the fuse box.





Removing the HICAS system.









Found an old label on the wiper motor.



This contact was really nasty.

Apparently you can only post 30 pictures per post, so here comes some more.





I ordered two new inter coolers and some 2,5" pipes. Exciting!



Oh, our cat is interested as well.




Let's build some brackets/mounting points for the inter coolers!




















Satisfied with the result







That's it for today. Hopefully i will get better at updating, since i have a LOT of more picture on my computer waiting to be uploaded.

*Update*

It's update time!

So I continued with the IC mounting bracket. Decided it would be easier to have it cut in half when mounting/demounting it.





Then made some holes to get the IC screwed into place.




And some spacers to get the bolt head flush with the steel profile.




So it can look like this





Some rubber to eliminate vibrations. I hope they are enough.











A aluminium bracket for the top of the IC.
Started with this.



Or nah. They where made of different types of aluminium so it was really hard to weld them.
Went with this instead.








Wasn't a 100% satisfied with the bracket, so I maybe change them later on.

Bracket for the other side of the IC, welded on later.





And that's almost 30 pictures.
Zee you in next post!

*Update*

Okay, so after mounting the IC properly it was time to make the aluminum tubing.
I started with this.





I realised that I needed to remove this bracket on both sides.






Started to cut in the IC.





Then I realised that's not going to work and that I need to change the orientation of the inlet to the IC. Hopefully it doesn't restrict the airflow too much.








Mounted a steel profile, so I could get a straight weld.



First time welding with a MIG, and sadly the welder had some trubbles. The aluminum wire kind of got stuck in the hose and came out unevenly.
This is why it's not the most beautiful weld. It would also be easier if I had an AC-TIG. Anyways, the welds are water tight and should do the job.
Here is the result.



This part is what it should look like when the welder does what it's supposed to do.




And this is when there is to little aluminum being added.



Test fitting.



Recieved my two turbos.



Curious cat.







That's it for this update. I hope you have had an amazing vacation.