nickz32

August 2015 Finally got my rotating assembly back and it was time to start building the bottom end up. It was evident how much metal had been taken out of the crank during the balancing process As I had done with the block, I gave everything a thorough clean before assembly. That included a something i’d never have thought I’d have ended up doing.... drilling the crank! Now obviously the crank has oil passage ways that feed the main and big end bearings. These passageways cross through the inside of the crank and each passage services a couple of big end journals and a main crank journal. However, one end of these is blocked off with a soft metal bung (a bit like a ball bearing) after the passageways are drilled during the manufacture process. These dead ends are called sludge traps. They use the centrifugal forces of the crank spinning to trap any small oil debris or sludge and hold them away from the passageways and the oil important bearings. Over time they accumulate sludge and crap and all sorts of nasties that you don’t want fresh oil to loosen and work their way onto your shiney new bearings! How do you get to them to properly clean out the crank. Well, there’s only one way. Drill out the soft metal seals. Nervous doesn’t cover it! So I set to it and used a jig my step dad had to keep the drill straight whilst drilling and made a cradle to keep the crank in place while drilling. A couple of chugs on the vape machine to steady the hands and away I went Was it worth it.... in my eyes yes. This was the debris out of one sludge trap. The best bit of advice I got from Mitch @ EP Racing was cleanliness is EVERYTHING. This sludge would have destroyed a set of bearings if it had worked itself loose. So, onto sealing the hole back up. After speaking to Roland Alsops and Mitch @ EP Racing, I decided to cut a thread into the hole, clean the passageways again and the use a Allen head grub screw as a blanking plate to seal the hole. This would enable me, should the worst happen in the future, to easily access the sludge traps again and simply resell them with the same grub screw. End result looked like this (disclaimer, this isn’t my pic, it’s a reference pic I used during the research and I can’t find my pic). This was a Proud moment for me. I’m an amatuer at the end of the day, but I know if I was patient and methodical I could get the result I wanted. After all traps were drilled, cleaned, threaded and plugged, the crank was ready to be installed with all new bearings.

So, while I was waiting for the rotating assembly I decided to tackle some more bodywork related bits. As the sills had been stripped back of the stone guard during the repairs, I decided now was a good time to go for the smoother look and flatten back the stone guard effect on the back bumper. Out came the sander...... Also decided to fit up my Stillen front lip and TwinZ ducts

July 2015 Block was all finished and ready for me to assemble the bottom end Bores shower now signs of any of the damage caused by the failure with a fantastic plateau honed finish. The advantages of plateau honing are improved bedding in for the rings enabling reduced blow-by for cleaner emissions, reduced oil consumption in a new engine and less ring and bore wear for improved engine longevity The block was given a final preassembly clean down, getting into every single nook and granny to make sure there was no potential engine wrecking debris hiding away where the deep clean machine couldn’t reach (contents of the tray was the result of said clean) and wrapped up while I waited for the work on the rotating assembly to be finished

Not long after, the parts fairy dropped some bits off I’d bought a full rebuild gasket set, and went back to OEM head gaskets, a Stillen oil cooler, DBA5000 370Z spec front brake discs, Stillen lip, NISMO 740cc injectors, Weisco 88mm forged pistons, heavy duty Clutch fork, the latest version of the RPS Street MAX clutch, subframe locking collars, a Koyo rad to replace my blown AMS one and some TwinZ fog light ducts. Why 370Z spec brake discs? Because I’d manage to source myself a set of Evo X brembos (front and rear) for £200. I’d decided that I wanted to use a brake disc that had the same offset as the Z32 so that the disc sat in the same place on the hub as it was designed to. I know i’d need custom brackets rather than some of the ones that are currently on the market for Evo x discs and Evo calipers.... more on those later

First port of call was to see if the block was saveable. After a fair bit of research around machine shops I decided to pay Roland Alsop engineering in Chobham a visit. This is where lesson 1 became apparent, the are machine shops and then there are MACHINE shops. These guys are seriously skilled, extremely knowledgeable and do work for a vast array of Time Attack, BTCC, classic racers. If you are on FB, look up their page (Roland Alsop SMG). After inspecting all the relevant parts, a plan was formulated. The block would be deep cleaned, decked for straightness, rebored out to 88mm and plateau honed. The crank would be inspected for wear as would the journals in the block, and the whole rotating assembly (crank, rods, pistons, crank pulley, flywheel and clutch pressure plate) would be dynamically balanced using their Hines Dominator balancing machine. They would also set the ring gap on the pistons to best suit the demands I was going to place on the engine. As for the heads, again a deep clean and thorough inspection (this is where the valve damage was discovered) and the journals inspected.... I’ll get onto the heads a bit later. Parts were dropped off a few days later so work could begin. Knowing I had a few months to wait, I decided to pass the remainder of my time off giving the body of the car some TLC. I’d noticed some surface rust appearing where the old underseal had come away as well as some small bubbling at the back of both sills. In true Z fashion, hidden suprises made themselves known So, some new sills were in order and suitably fitted by a fabricator friend of mine After both sides were rebuilt, I takled the underside Before After stripped back to bare metal, zinc primed and resealed with Upol Gravitex underseal

The engine was in a bit of a sorry state when she came out The strip down began, and the true damage started to become apparent One very warped Cometic head gasket didn’t bode well as the strip down continued... Bore scoring and det damage to both cylinders 5 and 6 started to show the true story of the engine failure. Causes? Running lean and a tune that didn’t leave enough margin on the duty cycle of the injectors (calculations put Injector duty at WOT at 94%, way above the recommended 80% that is considered the limit of “safe”) Further investigation found that 12 out of 24 valve guides were heavily scored, 16 valve stems had heat damage causing the hardened surface to flake off, an unexpected amount of wear on both main and big end bearings considering the engines milage. It became very apparent that this was not going to be a 10 minute job! So more time spent saving and a real think about what I wanted from my Z, how I wanted it to perform both in the engine department and as a vehicle as a whole and how could I prevent this from happening again........ my wallet would never be the same again

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!

My experience in GTST’s is reasonably limited, I’ve been out in a few and driven a few at the power level your friend is looking at, and I’ve always found them quite peaky, all top end not much low or mid range which makes attempting to driving them quickly in damp and wet conditions a bit of a handful and ultimately slower than the Z... they seem to lack that tractability in their power delivery the the Z has in spades. There may be a ways to improve that with some of the new developments in Turbo technology with thing like the second hen GTX turbos.

Which is precisely why I had that level of balancing done when I built my engine :P

And I seem to recall that RB oil pumps seem to shit themselves with any notable increase in torque, so I’d certainly research around that and find an suitable solution. Re balancing, I’m sure there probably is a gain due to parasitic losses, but to PROPERLY balance an engine it has to be completely stripped and each part of the rotating assembly to be weighed, equalised and then dynamically balanced (including crank pulley, flywheel and clutch pressure plate)

I suppose it depends on what aspirations he has for the car. As you’ve mentioned that he is thinking of stroking it suggests that he’s thinking of chasing some serious power. If that’s the case then I’d suggest that he’lol probably end up pushing the engine as it is to the point of crapping itself..... in which case I’d say build it now while parts like the crank and cylinders are in good shape rather than waiting for it to pop and potentially causing irreprible damage to the crank and block. As for how long they last, depends entirely on who builds it and subsequently tunes it.

* pretty much maxed out my zed (poxy auto correct!)

As some of you know, I pretty much my zee out at bruntingthorpe at 181mph through the speed trap at the 1.65 mile mark. It was still pulling And with a bit more space i should have breached the 190 mark, but I don’t think it would have done much more. I seem to remember I was at about 6800rpm at that speed on 255/35 and 295/30/18’s at 570hp at the crank. Gotta day though, she was as stable as a stable thing at those speeds

Was one of the nicest on the forum for quite a while

I’ve probably got some on my PC. I’ll have a look when I get home tomorrow

Cracking stuff, both cars look fantastic. One curiousity Joel, what’s with the not for sale hashtag that I’ve seen you use here and your FB posts?

Unless you have either OE cam gears or BDE cam gears, you cannot use the VTC system. The mechanism inside the cam gears is what changes the cam overlap

Sounds like an air lock in the coolant system?

Doh, my eyes must have autopilited that tech drawing to the ones I’ve been looking at for glass seals! To be honest I always thought the inner boot seal was one long piece

Fairly sure Joely has, and I will be in the next week or so when the screen comes out. Popping to the bodyshop tomorrow to see how things are moving

Hi Dan. I did call AF and unfortunately you were £130 off the best price I had, another year with Sky Insurance for me

Fair play

Happy birthday Mike