nickz32

A bit of faffery today. As the OE ducts block both the entirety of the top and bottom rows and 20mm in on each side, reducing the surface area exposed to the cooling air significantly, I decided to mock up my own ducts for my @Z1Motorsports SMIC’s (normal ones not the BA version) to maximise their cooling efficiency. Fabrication has never been my forte, but SMIC duct V1.03 appears to do the trick (v1.00, 001 and 002 were rubbish :lol: ). Just need to mount the front fascia back on to check for clearance issues, tweak a couple of the dimensions then on to the first draft of the metal version Next time I’m at the car I’ll take a pic of the OE duct as a comparison. I’ve also had a bit of a play with ducting the air out of the intercoolers, through the vents I installed into the arch liners. What a PITA that turned out to be! Not sure how to be work the angles on this..... much more pondering required. But in the mean time I’ve bought a Mushimoto expansion tank for the radiator and fully deleted the carbon canister. For the driver side I’m going to down size the washer fluid reservoir, which I’m still in the process of sorting

Exhaust Gas Recirculation valve, it’s part of the emissions control system. It can be deleted but is a bit of a faff of a job

The Nickz32 fam are making the trip out for this, but in the Mrs Beemer again. We won’t make the early RVP though and will be down mid morning

I’d say that’s a coolant pipe for the water pipes that run under the Plenum rather than a vacuum pipe

I’ve had two generations of street Max now, the blue pressure plate and the most recent silver pressure plate. Brilliant clutches, but the new one is simply the best clutch on the market for the Z

Dammit..... really fancy a pair of 99 spec headlights. Looks fantastic bud

Thirded! Literally no point at looking at anything else, it’s that good

Well deserved! Congrats Ian

So as you rightly pointed out, concentricity is usually measured in thou. That measurement is, if you imagine, looking square in the face of the valve seat, how central the guide is to the seat. A concentricity dial gauge measures the run out in thou. My issue is with the guide, in that while it’s central the the seat, it’s pitch isn’t at 90 degrees to the seat (it’s 4 degrees off). This has happened either during machining of the guide and it hasn’t been detected, or during the reaming and honing of the guide during installation.

I’m guessing it’s either the pitch at which the valve guide has been honed, or the angle of the valve seat is off.... but I’ve asked for clarification

Yup, 4 degrees. And for those of you who are wondering what it means for the valve guides not to be concentric.... here’s a quick read https://www.enginebuildermag.com/2013/10/cautioning-on-valve-seat-concentricity/

A little, slightly annoying update. Yet again I’m having to redo work that I’ve already paid a pretty penny for. In the process of having the valve seats cut, Mitch has found that the Ferrea guides on the exhaust side that were installed by Roland Alsop were not machined correctly and were 4deg off concentric. Luckily there is no damage to my SuperTech valves (the joys of Inconel!)So another set of Ferrea valve guides are going in the exhaust side. I was hoping to be able to make Simply Japanese at the end of the month, but this unexpected discovery and associated delayed now makes that unlikely.

Well after getting fed up with 1st Direct Windscreens refusing to admit fault at incorrectly fitting my windscreen, I finally sorted another company to come to my workshop and reinstall my windscreen properly, with the Nissan upper windscreen moulding Annoyingly, I appear to have misplaced the little white block clips for the roof part of the side mouldings. Bloody annoying when that happens!

I wish I knew mate! So the heads are having their valve seats cut at the moment so should be with EPR beginning of next week. Then it’s machine for cam lobe clearance, debur, clean and assemble. After that, front of the engine goes on so it can be timed up. The turbine housings need porting and the hot side parts need ceramic coating. I was hoping to make Beaulieu, but I think that’s unlikely now

New Vibrant Ultra Quiet resonators turned up today... hopefully they’ll save my ears! A slightly unexpected purchase aswell. Saw these on a breaker near me and snapped them up! They need a refurb, but will add to what will eventually be a full Whiteline suspension package

Just noticed, over 5000 thread views in 18 months and over 1000 likes on the cars IG page since January! Wow! All I can say is thanks for the interest, and there’s plenty more stuff planned for the future.... but first things first, I’m looking forward to getting some seat time in the car and enjoying it!

Lower Plenum has now been ported, with the injector entry altered for better dispersion(you can see before porting on the right hand port and after on the left hand port) It's completely matched to the cylinder head ports for optimal flow. The heads have been shipped back to EPR and should be there on Monday for the valve seat cut and assembly

Time to let those 48P’s breath!

For any one who was looking to stay at the hotel but couldn’t due to availability, I’ve just cancelled my room for the night so there should be space

There’s s thought!

On the engine front, the block has had its final debur, clean and paint (not pictured) and assembly will start later today. A couple of interesting point of note: Oil Squirter: as you can see in the bottom pic, they’ve been blanked off. Why? Due to the coatings applied to the pistons, that spray of oil is not needed. That mean less parasitic drag on the internals and reduces windage and potentially less crank case vapours. Block oil restrictions: The OE press in restrictors have been removed and replaced with removable items (to assist any future cleaning should the worst happen) Freeze plugs: I was gonna smacked at how much junk was hiding behind them! Just shows how much cleaning is truly required on an engine rebuild