Right, thought I'd start this. As some of you may know my cars a bit broken at present and I have a pile of parts ready to fit that gets bigger without it making its way to the car.

 

So lets start with what's up with the engine. Myself and gaz pulled the engine about two winters ago now, as one of the turbo's had failed. Compression was tested at this time with a very even 170psi across the board. Pulling it all apart we found a multitude of issues, egr hanging off causing an exhaust leak old sockets rolling about etc etc. We took that time to replace every damn crusty water and vac pipe and delete just about anything I considered a waste of space.

Water plenum bypass,

EGR,

AIV,

PRV,

Cruise control,

Aircon,

Think that's all. The turbos were rebuild by myself and for the first 50-100 miles things were bob on and I didn't give it too much stick. The first couple of pulls it detonated, new plugs, reduced the issue but it still did it a bit. Changed to a smaller gap and great the det was gone. The car was pulling very well at this point with virtually no lag and was dyno'd at 289hp bone stock, no extra boost no chip. Not bad for an old auto engine. Sadly it had started to smoke on over run, I assumed id cocked up one of the turbos during the rebuild. So I had been putting it off for months, well actually years now to pay out for brand new turbos. Anyways as the tax ran out I thought id do some more inspecting as the symptoms just didn't fit the pattern of failed turbos. The first thing I found was that lovely even compression was no more, cyl had a rather lame 115psi. Cue further inspection to work out exactly what block I had, manual/auto etc I assumed it was auto. That's when I found this...

That head casting reads R-10Y, wtf is that I thought. It's supposed to read 40P this was one of those penny drop moments. The piston crown sealed that moment of realisation and many dots connected.

That's right its an NA, 30p pistons are NA and 30p1 are TT defiantly no 1 on that code. Turns out r-10y is the later spec NA head aswell, so yeas 100% an NA block. Now this engine was fitted by a garage 4 years ago a few months into my ownership and we wont go into that too much but it wasn't a great experience and it transpires it was worse than I first thought. Anyway whilst they refused to reimburse me for that error, a good will gesture was sent out to me in the post of a few quid.

So a replacement engine is going to be sourced and fitted this winter. More of that and what's happening to the current late spec NA block.

 

So now more about that shelf of parts. I purchased last winter a full rear subframe assembly off Jaffa, the one off his time attack car. Loads of goodies already polybushed to death etc. So I stripped it down to bare metal and started painting it all with a few coats of lovely hammerite. This is how it stands at present;

So this winters aims are.

Remove front and rear bumpers, re underseal all of that and rip out and guff.

Delete HICAS system

Reloacte PS reservoir and fusebox

Switch over all suspension to new units from the shelf

Fit 354mm diameter brembos

Change engine out and preform various mods

It sounds like a lot, but hey winter is along time. Don't expect it to be coming through thick and fast. Im lazy haha

Yeah it’s incredibly aggressive. When I first put the wheels on I was really worried about hitting the arch, on full droop I had about 25-30mm of protrusion. That pulled in and initially the rear was so low that half the tyre wall was in the arch and the mid section of the exhaust was mm from the gravel, at that stage it rubbed. I brought it up an inch where I wanted it and my maths was bang on with fag paper clearance. I know my camber is effectively zero so once I dial in just over a degree it should all come together nicely. Real world vs hard parking is the test though and I’d be quite happy to add another 10mm all around for driving quality.

 

I’ve rolled it around and other than noisey it seems ok. Gotta book it in for an MOT now.

That must rub on lock? Will I have the pleasure of seeing it at Simply Japanese?

Time will tell Joel. Once you start adding roll etc into things it changes. I’ve hacked the front arch liners and rolled the rears pretty heavily. I’ve seen lower though...

:oops:

Toight like a toiger

Did a bit of faffing about today. I didn’t want to paint myself into a corner so to speak, where I’d pull off the drive for the MOT and find it was scrub city. So I added 15mm per side to front ride height and 10mm to rear. I also added a touch of negative camber to the rear. I now have about 5mm between the flattened arch lip and the tyre wall, much better. The front can come down but that can wait. Right now it’s a ghetto alignment by eye but it will get the car to the MOT station.

I managed to squeeze in a cheeky last minute MOT this afternoon. It was a place I’ve not been before and I don’t think they were much impressed with ol’ red, the low seating position seemed to give the tester a challenge. Then the usual stuff, where’s the rear fog light etc etc.

Anyway it failed. That’s ok, this I was expecting and it gives me a base line to work with. Typically no minors, just majors.

 

Near side headlight not illuminated.

This appears to be an intermittent fault, I think it’s the HID ballast. Solution, for a car that barely sees the road let alone the dark... stock headlight bulbs.

 

Offside side light not illuminated.

It was before the test and whacking the housing it came on, looks like joint is poor.

 

Windscreen wipers both sides, unable to clear screen sufficiently.

These are old now, those areo types and tbh I’ve never thought them amazing. I’m going back to traditional Bosch ones.

 

Offside rear brake binding.

This ones a mystery. I recon I’ve over done it on the hand brake adjustment.

 

Battery insecure.

My fault.

 

In good news the run over there got to prove that. A the new springs are massive improvement in comfort and tranction over bumps. And there’s so e scrubbing from the near side rear wheel, mostly because the geo on that wheel is awful.

All easy jobs to sort mate. Won’t be long before you’ll be enjoying your Z again. Well done bud

Cheers nick. I’ve been trying to get that rear wheel somewhere near aligned it’s terrible. There’s about a 20mm drift across the face on the toe plane! And it’s leaning back!

Of all the things to sort it’s only rear that brake bind that is interesting/concerning. I doubt it’s the caliper, those brembo calipers are very rare to seize due to the material mix.

Near side headlight not illuminated.

This appears to be an intermittent fault, I think it’s the HID ballast. Solution, for a car that barely sees the road let alone the dark... stock headlight bulbs.

 

Nothing picked up on the aftermarket HID bulbs in the projector headlights by the tester?

Nothing Andrew. New regs soon though.

Nothing Andrew. New regs soon though.

 

My mistake, I thought they were already in force but is actually 20th May.

Under the new regs I would have been braking the law to drive home... not good.

Those sidelight connectors are quite poor after all these years. Same story with the rear number plate bulbs; the sprung u shape terminals in the socket become brittle and break when pushing in the wedge/T10 bulb. I bought a pair of new T10 connectors with pig-tails from eBay for a couple of quid for my front sidelights as one suffered the same fate.

 

Good to see you’re getting close though matey, nearly there!

Think your right there Joel. I relocated them to the corner lights. The cabling is there there for those in the fog housing, probably just reinstate those for now as a quick no parts required fix.

The wife went to bed early tonight so I found myself at a loose end for an hour. Time to tick a few problems off.

 

That pesky front position lamp. Turned out it was the joint on the loom, somewhere along the line I’d damaged it. Fixed.

 

Battery insecure. I have no idea where the clamps gone so I picked up a universal one yesterday to modify. With the light fading, I couldn’t find those handy caps that cover the battery terminals and me keen not be electrocuted (not a good way to start a weekend off work) I needed a solution. #countrylife

Yes that’s a spent cartridge:lol:

I also switched in the air on relay to the right hand head light. It’s been on and off pretty intermittently. With no air on in the car it was the obvious choice to exchange. This seems to have solved the issue further testing required.

I believe she’s ready to go back and be ticked off.

The relay change appears to have corrected the headlight issue.

The rear brake binding was the handbrake shoes not adjusted correctly on that side.

Battery tie down is done.

Side light is done, although it transpires that the housing for the front fogs are now very brittle.

New Bosch wipers fitted, where it had been sat the areo wipers had gone stiff and weren’t following the curvature of the windscreen anymore.

Horn (forgot this off the initial list) this gave me the biggest issue. The relay and harness was full of crud so I had to rebuild a new subharnes as wiring it straight through just didn’t have the balls.

And then... the left pod stopped working, this was an intermittent fault but obviously it meant I couldn’t activate my wipers to prove new wipers sufficiently cleared the screen. Grrr. Fuse box back out and with me now out of reliable relays I swapped the blower and accessory ones. I don’t need the blower right this immediate second. This seems to have worked and when activating the blower it just sat there clicking and clacking, supporting the idea that it’s the relay at fault. So I need at least two of those bloody blue Nissan relays. Time to go to the car graveyard and rifle the fallen. :devil:

Edited May 17, 20187 yr by Stephen

When you need electrical parts a dead Micra is the way forward. Thank you little red V plate Micra, may you rust in pieces and your parts perform in ways they could never dream, contributing to keeping a monster alive. 6 Blue relays from one micra, result!

I’m having some trouble with the passenger side on my JDM model. The geometry is currently terrible and whilst the drivers side is ok the passenger hits that bloody tab on the rear bumper, even though I’ve modified it. This is because that side the wheel is further back than the other, I assume this is because of the caster is wrong. I can’t get my head around how I can pull the wheel forward, the traction arm is the smallest it will go, same as the other side.

I have aftermarket adjustable, traction, camber and toe (in the shape of a hicas delete kit). Nothings bent and this only became an issue when I fitted all the arms.

Like I say I can’t get my head around it.

Front or rear?

The rear AliG.

I have aftermarket adjustable, traction, camber and toe (in the shape of a hicas delete kit). Nothings bent and this only became an issue when I fitted all the arms.

 

Following on from your statement there is only one conclusion to be drawn. One/some of your replacement components is wrongly adjusted/or faulty.

Find a friendly and skilled Hunter Hawkeye operator and ask him for an initial print out. That will allow you to quantify the problem. If the operator can adjust it to correct settings then good. If not then its a recently changed component that is faulty.

Cheers Pete. I was trying to see if I could figure out if indeed I had installed something wrong. It just doesn’t really add up.

Cheers Pete. I was trying to see if I could figure out if indeed I had installed something wrong. It just doesn’t really add up.

 

With complex multi adjustable systems you cant accurately adjust/measure them at home. You need laser alignment tools. You need to measure first to identify the problem.