As with most projects and rebuilds, they all start in the same place, mine was no different. However, this isn’t truely the start of my forever ongoing Z project. I’ve owned this car (my second Z) since 2008 when I purchased it from a former member. For the first 5 or 6 years I did the usual mods with suspension parts and basic bolt ons. For reasons unknown, whilst running stock boost, piston 5 cracked a ring land during a track day at Castle Coombe. A forged build and a remap later all was well until a sunny October’s day 2013 at Bruntingthorpe killed that engine with what at the time was a suspected head gasket failure at 181mph..... And this is where I shall start my journal.

 

The Z was stored off the road from Oct 2013 until March 2015. I’d had a major knee operation at the beginning of 2015 which meant I was going to be off work for 6 months. I’d saved up enough to start thinking about a parts list to rebuild her and frankly, after a couple of months of staring at the same 4 walls, I was going stir crazy! I employed the help of a good friend and decided to pull the engine and see what was what.... just a head gasket my arse!

 

March 2015

Problem 1: It turns out stainless steel, exhaust wraps and condensation don’t mix well

 

Before I’d even got the engine out, a new set of downpipes was added to this list. These AMS items were only 2 years old, so I was far from impressed! I contacted the retailer and after a bit of tooing and froing I secured myself a set of replacements for free... how long they will last, only time will tell!

Well this is a little annoying!

 

so I bought this SZ flywheel a little while back to replace my Z1 lightweight flywheel (that my old starter munched the ring gear on).

 

foolishly I just decided to send it and fitted it to the car without properly checking it.... silly boy. I went to take the car for a shakedown drive, only to find the clutch was slipping horrendously at idle manoeuvring speeds... off came the gearbox for an inspection as to what the chuff was going on

 

as you can see, the outer and inner circumference of the segments is a lighter colour.... that’s because they’re unworn high spots which my clutch decided to smoke itself upon.... doh! 
 

Second doh! moment is realising the segments for the SZ flywheel are no longer available.... balls

 

so I’ve had to buy a new flywheel, which I’ve gone for the new version of Z1’s light weight one piece flywheel, which should be here on Monday

18 minutes ago, nickz32 said:

Second doh! moment is realising the segments for the SZ flywheel are no longer available.... balls

Do you happen to know why SZ have discontinued the flywheel (and spares)?

6 minutes ago, AndrewG said:

Do you happen to know why SZ have discontinued the flywheel (and spares)?

I can’t remember who told me this, but SZ basically said since Covid, the cost of raw materials has rocketed to the point it’s not longer profitable to make the flywheels..... why they’re not continuing to make the replacement segments, I can’t answer and am incredibly frustrated by!

My flywheel prematurely wore out but thankfully they still sell the rebuild kits, which I bought. Jimmer said the cost of manufacturing the flywheels was too much, so SZ decided to stop making them. Not sure if it’s linked to COVID or not - sounded more like a long term thing and they’ve just had enough of the high costs. COVID may have been the last straw perhaps.


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Just checked the SZ website and it appears the rebuild kits are no longer available. I bought mine back in early May so I must have gotten one of the last sets!


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48 minutes ago, naz27 said:

Just checked the SZ website and it appears the rebuild kits are no longer available. I bought mine back in early May so I must have gotten one of the last sets!


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Yup, can’t find them anywhere, which is why I ended up buying a new flywheel.... a touch annoying given the biggest advantage of the SZ flywheel was its serviceability

Yeah I thought you were mistaken when you said they didn’t sell the rebuild kits anymore, hence my first post! Such a shame to lose a quality product like that from the market. Hope the Z1 flywheel is all ok when fitted.


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New flywheel turned up today, which I promptly fitted.

 

The positives, the car is now mobile again and the clutch is back to feeling how it should!

 

the negative is that I’ve rediscovered a fault that I had forgotten about.... my power steering is notchy as hell! I suspected originally it was an air lock in the system, but now I’m not so sure.... looks like some more fault finding in the immediate future

Been a busy week or so working on the Z.

 

Unfortunately she developed a fairly significant oil leak last week that took an age to track down. After lots of time trying to trace it, I found it in the most unlikely of places.

On the heads, these oilways are normally blocked up like the sludge traps on the crank. During the rebuild these were drilled out, tapped and sealed with a grub screw and sealant. Unfortunately, the sealant did not go off and set and the high oil pressure has basically pushed past it. One of those things that couldn’t have been expected.

 

so I removed, cleaned and resealed with Ering  Driko Grey high temp RTV, left it overnight to make sure it set and reassembled…. Have to admit, was nice to have a good look at my BDE pulleys again

 

Another job off the list was giving the coolant overflow a bit of a refresh as it was looking a little scabby.

I used Bilt Hamber autofoam on the inside and Surfex HD degreaser on the outside with a green scotch pad…. Not quite “new” but not far off!

Looks good that, think I put gravel in mine with soapy solution, worked as a sludge scratcher !!

All set for its first MOT in 3 years

Well done Nick, great to see the old girl back on the road again! Would love to see the car in the metal soon.

1 hour ago, AndrewG said:

Well done Nick, great to see the old girl back on the road again! Would love to see the car in the metal soon.

Thanks mate!

 

There are still a few niggles to sort through, but nothing that’ll stop me taking the tops off and enjoying it. Unfortunately I’ve got commitments this weekend so I cant make Simply Japanese, but i should be able to make any future meet and greets

Another Z back on the road ?

Well it’s been just over a week since she’s been MOT’d and all is going well so far.

 

ive had a couple of small niggles to sort out with the Haltech. The long and short of it is that the Long Term Fuel Trim feature on the haltech wasn’t working. 
This feature basically looks at your target AFR number for each cell of the map, then looks at the AFR number the map is actually generating in that cell and auto adjusts that cell in the map to make the actual AFR fall in line with the target AFR…. It’s basically an auto tune feature.

So after Haltech USA remote connecting to my ecu and having a look at what was going on, we could see that all the preconditions for LTFT were being met, yet LTFT wasn’t activating. We eventually figured out that my base map was corrupt. Haltech suspect that it’s either due to a cross compatibility issue with the basemap (that was written on an old version of the firmware, while my ecu is on the latest version) or at some point in the transfer from laptop to ecu it’s corrupted.

Rick @ Haltech USA took my map and copied all my sensor calibrations, setting, inputs etc and wrote a new map from scratch for me, which did the trick and LTFT’s are now working properly.

The advantage of LTFT  is that road conditions and traffic load load the engine in such an infinite number of ways, it means that as a whole I should have a more complete map as well as leaving my tuner more time to focus on WOT tuning.

 

She’s now idling as she should

However, she’s just too loud for my tastes now. So I’ll be revisiting the exhaust setup in the near future to add another couple of silencers and a resonator to kill off some of the drone, for a more civilised exhaust volume

Over the last few months, a friend of mine and I have been undertaking the most thorough detailing work I’ve ever undertaken.

Just over 70 hours of work have gone into my car, from 2500 and 3000grit wet and dry, compounding, polishing, refining and ceramic coating.

My back is utterly destroyed, so the pics aren’t as good as they could be, but I’m super proud of the results. I’d say I’ve achieved 99% correction (a couple of scratches couldn’t be removed), but she’s as good as I could ever hope to achieve

#nofilterneeded

Thats a lot of hard work but worth it Nick. ?

Perfection [emoji846] Well worth the back pain!


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mmmmm detail porn... you need to teach me how to detail that well!

Nick that is incredible,I do like a gloss finish on a car.Well done ?. Have you left it in the rain just to watch the water sheeting off ! I find that therapeutic for some odd reason.

What an amazing result Nick - well done! You must be bursting with pride. Gets my vote for the NEC.

11 minutes ago, jimmer said:

Nick that is incredible,I do like a gloss finish on a car.Well done ?. Have you left it in the rain just to watch the water sheeting off ! I find that therapeutic for some odd reason.

Not yet, but completely agree.

 

its going to be hard keeping it this clean with the amount of driving I want to do in it (let’s face it… I’ve got years of pent up z driving) but it’ll be a fun challenge!

9 hours ago, nickz32 said:

Not yet, but completely agree.

 

its going to be hard keeping it this clean with the amount of driving I want to do in it (let’s face it… I’ve got years of pent up z driving) but it’ll be a fun challenge!

Sounds like a road trip needs planning or a driving weekend ?