Hi All,

 

I mentioned in various previous posts that I would start a thread about my new and first 300zx. I’ve copy and pasted an introduction that I posted in the newbie section a while back (with some updates) so you can get an overview of the car;

 

Almost two months ago at the spur of the moment I went and bought a lovely Jap spec blue 300zx TT Manual LWB with 98k miles.

 

An over view of the cars spec is;

- 390bhp tuned by ProTuner

- stock turbos and internals

- 800cc injectors, selin twin maf conversion

- Kakimoto mid and rear section exhausts

- aftermarket turbo elbows, downpipes, front pipes etc.

- 98 spec fairly new manual gearbox

- K Sport big front brakes, stock rears

- Veilside Andrews racing split rim wheels in gunmetal grey

- two tone grey/black leather seats, hicas lock out, fairly new polybushed rear end and BC Racing shocks. List goes on but that's some key bits from memory.

- 98k miles

- Has been very well maintained with a lever arch of service history from the previous owners.

 

I've got plenty of plans consisting of refreshing the car including modernising where possible to create an OEM+ look (no cheap chav bits don't worry).

 

The Zed was booked into the bodyshop 23rd March but sadly due to the coronavirus lockdown, these works are now postponed. The works were to fit;

 

- 99 spec front bumper

- Respray to bonnet, both front arches to get rid of peeling lacquer, drivers door, rear bumper and getting rid of surface rust to around rear lights/boot

- Replace side indicators with genuine Nismo clear indicators as existing clears ones seals have fallen apart

- Fit new trims that were missing between boot and rear lights

 

I’ll have all this done as soon as the lockdown is over and the bodyshop is back open.

 

I’ve got on the to do list the following;

 

- Source a 2nd hand AC compressor and get it reconditioned and then installed as the previous item exploded under the last owners ownership

- Full leather retrim as existing leather is cracking up/poor quality.

- Get a double din music system trim kit so I can fit a nice double din screen unit with modern features such as bluetooth etc. and also change all speakers

- Paint the stock rear Z32 brakes in black to match the K Sport fronts

- Sills need re-doing as they have rusted in areas from where its been jacked up in the wrong location!! Paint has obviously been damaged and flaked off leaving the bare metal to rust so will get this sorted

- Fit Michellin PS4 tyres when the current tyres have worn out

- Probably go for more power in about a years time maybe but for now coming from a 2 tonne 270bhp 4x4, 390bhp is more than enough to make me giggle.

 

I’ll start a new post with what I’ve done so far with photos of course!

 

Pics of the car when I bought it;

 

 

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Oh I see, thanks for letting me know. Will definitely look into it when I’m back full time at work [emoji1417]


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After the 99 spec headlights were fitted, the driving lights/side lights were still the original halogens, which obviously looked a bit off. I liked the look of RichardS’s car driving light bulbs so picked his brains on what type he had and bought them to fit. Looks much better suited now.

After I fitted the silver wheels, the amount of silver coloured bits; exhaust, wheels, headlights were all nice but the silver pin stripe made the silver theme a bit too overpowering and deterred from the lovely blue paintwork. Today I got out my wife’s hair dryer and got to work on removing the pin stripes. I was expecting it to be messy and painful, but in the end all I had to do was pass the hair dryer over a section say 5-6 times, and it was soft enough to peel right off - happy days.

The pin stripe was hiding some crap workmanship though when the car was resprayed when it first came to the uk around 2007. On the drivers side, it was hiding some lacquer peel and also the finish was rough, when it should be smooth. In the pictures it looks like rust bubbling under the surface but it’s actually just the crap workmanship. They obviously struggled to get the differentiation between the smooth body paintwork and the lower body stone chip effect finish.

Not all bad news though as this is only the case on the drivers side. I had planned to get repainted anyway the whole front end, rear end and the drivers door, so this will be resolved then anyway. The passenger side door which wasn’t down to get repainted, is by chance in a perfect state after the pin stripe removal, so that’s a right result!


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Looking good Naz…..

I'd always wondered about that pin stripe, but just left it alone ?

5 hours ago, Dazsw said:

I'd always wondered about that pin stripe, but just left it alone ?

Satin black is nice on a blue Zed IMO..... I had mine painted on - rather than sticky vinyl

I'd always wondered about that pin stripe, but just left it alone [emoji846]

Yeah I thought long and hard about it before removing. Funny as RichardS has just said, I thought a black stripe would be ok if I was to put one back on - don’t think I will though.

I’m toying with the idea of doing a full respray rather than doing 50% of the car that I previously planned. Kind of thinking do it right once from the start and not have to go back to do paint work later on.

Not sure though as over and above the extra paint cost, you start incurring massive costs to replace all the windscreen trims etc.


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20 hours ago, naz27 said:

Yeah I thought long and hard about it before removing. Funny as RichardS has just said, I thought a black stripe would be ok if I was to put one back on - don’t think I will though.

I’m toying with the idea of doing a full respray rather than doing 50% of the car that I previously planned. Kind of thinking do it right once from the start and not have to go back to do paint work later on.

Not sure though as over and above the extra paint cost, you start incurring massive costs to replace all the windscreen trims etc.


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I think due to the fact the paint is around 14 years old it will be tricky to get a perfect match, I've seen 4 TK3 Zeds and all 4 seemed a slightly different shade.

On one the rear end had been painted again and you could clearly see the difference, even though they had blown into other panels to blend.

Maybe get one small area painted, and see how it matches ?

24 minutes ago, Dazsw said:

I think due to the fact the paint is around 14 years old it will be tricky to get a perfect match, I've seen 4 TK3 Zeds and all 4 seemed a slightly different shade.

On one the rear end had been painted again and you could clearly see the difference, even though they had blown into other panels to blend.

Maybe get one small area painted, and see how it matches ?

Metallic paint is almost impossible to match, you can get a different shade depending on how the spray gun is held.

3 hours ago, Dazsw said:

I think due to the fact the paint is around 14 years old it will be tricky to get a perfect match, I've seen 4 TK3 Zeds and all 4 seemed a slightly different shade.

On one the rear end had been painted again and you could clearly see the difference, even though they had blown into other panels to blend.

Maybe get one small area painted, and see how it matches ?

And the rest - you can typically add 10 years to that....

But dead right; although on the previous occasions I had paint work done, I was luck that the sprayer did a bloody good job in matching the surrounding panels. They used some kind of colour analyser to get the paint mixed to match.

However when I had the sills done I decided to go for a full respray - for the very reason that it would get harder and harder to match new paint to old.

Oh Darren was right about the 14 years Richard, as the first UK owner (guy before Darren) soon after importing the car had it fully resprayed. Problem is the lacquer they used was absolute crap as its started peeling in loads of areas. The paint under is actually pretty decent as after i've fully detailed it, it's come up lovely. All these lacquer peel areas were going to get sorted with the original plan of respray to front end, rear bumper and drivers door.

I'm hoping the bodyshop's now back open since the govt advice (or lack of!) on Sunday night; I'll pop down tomorrow and ask them to re-quote to do a full respray. The sills are another issue; I'll put photos up soon so you can all see. 

Both my previous cars with metallic paint; 1 black and 1 silver got pretty much perfect paint matches so I'm confident with my bodyshop, but I do get completely what all you guys mean. They must do that paint analysis you mentioned Rich, to get that great match. 

I was going to repair the sills rust myself with the rust busters kit that Jimmer recommended to Akita, on one of the big threads here, and finish with the can of supposedly colour matched paint the previous owner gave me, but now thinking 'whilst i'm there' (famous words) painting the body, I might as well replace the outer sills with the oem ones from ZCentre. Since the car is technically a daily driver for me (only do 5k-6k miles a year), I was going to get the chassis properly cleaned and fully rustproofed with Dinitrol by a professional, by the end of summer. I would do it myself and have done in the past but that was in my old house which had a big double garage. In our new house, we only got a single garage in the back garden with no way to get a car in, and there's no chance i'm splattering underseal over my lovely driveway! 

It makes sense then before I get it undersealed, and just before I get the paintwork done, to get the sills replaced, rather than me do a temporary repair only for the rust to start poking through in a couple years, then having to repaint the area again etc.  

This is what I meant by if I go for a full respray, I start adding on tonnes of work haha, but think it needs to be done and done properly from the beginning to make sure this car lasts for the long term...

Interested to see the sill rust, how bad is it?

Guess the procedure would be repair sills and any other bits that needed attention, fully undersealed then respray work.

Not cheap but future proofed.

Just took some pictures of the sills finally.

I took it to the bodyshop today
and he has opened up to trade, but he’s low on staff.

He’s quoted me more than I thought but I think it’s worth it. The bonus is he definitely doesn’t think the sills need cutting out - he will grind all sills back to bare metal, repair properly and sort in house so that’s a saving. Overall taking into account not having to buy replacements, it’s about £1k more than I thought [emoji857]. I guess I was over reacting with the sills so that’s a bonus I don’t have to buy replacements.




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Hi I would take the rear quarter trims out, you can get a phone and take pictures, the sills rust mainly from the inside out.

Hi I would take the rear quarter trims out, you can get a phone and take pictures, the sills rust mainly from the inside out.

Oh I see - thanks for the advice; I’ll do this over the next week or so, see what the state is and take it from there.


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Doesn't look too bad, but you can never tell until they strip it, shame the sills are bent though, some idiot has gone in there and jacked it wrongly or something, always hated people doing that.

When I had it up here it was only used during the summer and only then during dry weather 95% of the time, and it was clean, it's changed quite a bit on just a few years.

Doesn't look too bad, but you can never tell until they strip it, shame the sills are bent though, some idiot has gone in there and jacked it wrongly or something, always hated people doing that.
When I had it up here it was only used during the summer and only then during dry weather 95% of the time, and it was clean, it's changed quite a bit on just a few years.

Yeah luckily my regular garage respect the car so jack it properly. Although their bread and butter is modern cars, they specialise in classics anything from Jag E Types, Aston DB5’s so you know they’ll treat it well.

Summer only driving makes a world of difference to daily driving. Ollie drove it as a daily for one year then used it only as a weekend car. As well as using Jimmer who’s about an hour from him, he used quite a few local garages for minor jobs probably for convenience like I do, and they’re probably the ones who buggered the sills.

Don’t worry though mate, after I get the bodywork and undersealing done, it’ll be mint once again! Ollie spent an absolute fortune on it mechanically, which probs left him low on funds to do work to the body. He covered the sills in dinitrol though and went over with touch up paint, which helped stop it rusting worse I reckon.


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So I’ve pretty much made up my mind on the next phase of the plan for this beast, which are as follows;

- Carry out a full respray
- Replace front and rear windscreen seals
- Replace windscreen a pillar and roof mouldings
- Fit the red coloured Z badge to front of car and red badge to steering wheel. I reckon this goes well against the blue and also with the red ‘300zx’ font on the 99 spec rear centre section lights
- Replace the rubber seal that goes along the A pillar and targa opening
- Replace targa panel outer rubber seal as both passenger and drivers side targa leak during heavy rain, where the targa meets the door window. Can’t be having this in a daily driver so needs to be sorted
- Order new metal door actuators as my doors haven’t been locking for the last month. Symptoms are pretty much on point for when actuators are gone so should sort this. Need to take door cards off and check quick before ordering though.
- Take sills back to bare metal, repair rust

I’m getting a quote from a well known Jap car tuning firm who do proper undersealing. They strip everything from the underside and do a proper job, as per below pictures. This combined with me giving the chassis a clean after winter annually, should keep my underside in great condition. I also won’t drive it when they salt the roads.

Just got to wait for an update from work hopefully this week on the madness that’s going on at the moment, before pressing the button on all the above.


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12 hours ago, naz27 said:

Yeah luckily my regular garage respect the car so jack it properly. Although their bread and butter is modern cars, they specialise in classics anything from Jag E Types, Aston DB5’s so you know they’ll treat it well.

Summer only driving makes a world of difference to daily driving. Ollie drove it as a daily for one year then used it only as a weekend car. As well as using Jimmer who’s about an hour from him, he used quite a few local garages for minor jobs probably for convenience like I do, and they’re probably the ones who buggered the sills.

Don’t worry though mate, after I get the bodywork and undersealing done, it’ll be mint once again! Ollie spent an absolute fortune on it mechanically, which probs left him low on funds to do work to the body. He covered the sills in dinitrol though and went over with touch up paint, which helped stop it rusting worse I reckon.


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Yeah he did mate, brand new gearbox certainly wasn't cheap!

It's had a ton of cash spent on it, once you do you work, it should be mint.

Sadly yesterday when out for a nice drive with the roof off down the seafront, the clutch slipped when flooring it off the lights and boy did it stink of clutch for a good couple miles! Went for a quick drive at night to confirm it definitely is the clutch as I thought maybe it was the combo of constant stop start driving plus a hard launch off the lights which caused it to slip as a one off. It started smelling slightly and clutch pedal feels slightly off. I'm not surprised really and pretty impressed to be honest as the clutch is a £185 Exedy (probably knock off) item off an ebay seller with a bad reputation, fitted back in 2009 I believe when the manual conversion was done, according to the service history. Its lasted around 35-40k miles. 

So I did what any other zed nutter would do and put a £1k order down with Concept Z for a Speciality Z/RPS street max clutch, flywheel, a new red nose badge and the CZP metal door actuators to cure my failed door locks. Hopefully should come in the next 7-10 working days they say.   

1 hour ago, naz27 said:

So I did what any other zed nutter would do and put a £1k order down with Concept Z for a Speciality Z/RPS street max clutch,

You might want to include this kit with your order (if you haven't):

https://conceptzperformance.com/czp-upgraded-heavy-duty-clutch-fork-kit-nissan-300zx-z32-30531-cd000-fk-z32_p_9315.php

Edited May 20, 20205 yr by AndrewG

You might want to include this kit with your order (if you haven't):
https://conceptzperformance.com/czp-upgraded-heavy-duty-clutch-fork-kit-nissan-300zx-z32-30531-cd000-fk-z32_p_9315.php

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for keeping an eye out and checking out for us newbies! Thankfully the previous owner after fitting his 98spec gearbox had flex issues I can assume, so he had fitted the 350z uprated fork and pivot at PowerZed, so hopefully this should cover me.


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I'm surprised they never changed the clutch when the gearbox was replaced, that's bonkers as it was around 8 or 9 years old at the time, it's certainly lasted well considering it's been ran at higher bhp it's whole life.

The uprated fork was fitted to try and get rid of the famous clunk the manual Zeds making usually at low speeds in 1st and 2nd gear, especially n bumpy ground, the clutch forks on these are quite soft so wear out creating movement and the clunk.  I'm sure Ollie said the clunk was still there though after the gearbox/fork was fitted.

Are you sure they didn't replace the clutch with the box?  I still can't get my head round that ?

9 hours ago, naz27 said:

Sadly yesterday when out for a nice drive with the roof off down the seafront, the clutch slipped when flooring it off the lights and boy did it stink of clutch for a good couple miles! Went for a quick drive at night to confirm it definitely is the clutch as I thought maybe it was the combo of constant stop start driving plus a hard launch off the lights which caused it to slip as a one off. It started smelling slightly and clutch pedal feels slightly off. I'm not surprised really and pretty impressed to be honest as the clutch is a £185 Exedy (probably knock off) item off an ebay seller with a bad reputation, fitted back in 2009 I believe when the manual conversion was done, according to the service history. Its lasted around 35-40k miles. 

So I did what any other zed nutter would do and put a £1k order down with Concept Z for a Speciality Z/RPS street max clutch, flywheel, a new red nose badge and the CZP metal door actuators to cure my failed door locks. Hopefully should come in the next 7-10 working days they say.   

Watch out for the import tax, you may or may not get stung.

3 hours ago, Dazsw said:

Watch out for the import tax, you may or may not get stung.

I can let you know, I’m about 5 days ahead of you.

I'm surprised they never changed the clutch when the gearbox was replaced, that's bonkers as it was around 8 or 9 years old at the time, it's certainly lasted well considering it's been ran at higher bhp it's whole life.
The uprated fork was fitted to try and get rid of the famous clunk the manual Zeds making usually at low speeds in 1st and 2nd gear, especially n bumpy ground, the clutch forks on these are quite soft so wear out creating movement and the clunk.  I'm sure Ollie said the clunk was still there though after the gearbox/fork was fitted.
Are you sure they didn't replace the clutch with the box?  I still can't get my head round that [emoji846]

I know mate haha [emoji1787]; If you looked in the car bible, this example would pretty much be the definition of a ‘whilst you’re in there job’. I can only assume the clutch was in ok condition then at the time and if funds were tight, then it’s an option.

Yeah Ollie was like the rest of the owners and kept every single receipt, even small ones like touch up paint. Although he didn’t type out the service history in date order like the rest of the previous owners and like I’m doing, he did write down everything that was done on each receipt. Jimmer also wrote very clearly all the work he did on each invoice, and no mention of a new clutch.

Did you used to have a clutch rattle noise at low rpm around 1300-1500rpm? If so, then that’s the same clutch. I’ve sent him a text anyway so let’s see what he says.

Ah yes thanks for explaining that issue better. It’s funny cos I noticed it had the issue when I first got the car but I don’t notice it anymore. Will have to pay more attention when I’m next driving.

How’s C63 ownership treating you? Have you swapped out the head studs? Heard they’re a common issue on those. How’s the overall experience of the car then compared to the Zed? Must be a rocket ship with that 6.3.


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