JaiKai

Last thing needing done at this point two days ago was to swap over to a better condition tailgate and bonnet which with help from my other half we managed to do at the late hours of sunday night.

So just over two weeks ago I managed to get the engine out and dropped it off to Lee Dent for a rebuild and I continued with more of the strip down as I could before getting picked up by the body shop again.

Over the winter period I managed to damage the engine as the bonnet was off and the cover didn't protect it enough from water so with the plenum off too all the intakes filled up quickly with water. Now my engine was fooked too so I decided to crack on with now a complete engine out stripdown. Starting with the lights I worked my way round the full front end slowly dismantling everything and carefully boxing parts up to be stored in my loft.

So after all the dumb luck above it only got worse although not zed related as I shortly discovered that the company I worked for went into liquidation so I promptly got paid off. Luckily we got bought out and I managed to keep my job but due to top level management setting up a new company and rehiring everyone there was a point I would have been paid redundancy and the payout would have been for 8 years of service or so I thought. Turns out after being told we all would be due redundancy the new company decided to keep our contracts going as they were so we didn't get a penny. At that time I thought; great time to strip her down and do a respray with the redundancy cash. Which never came and I ended up with a completely stripped zed with winter approaching fast.

Within a month of the pics above with the vented wings the zed was in for its breaks to be changed and while the zed was jacked up at one side and unattended for 10 minutes the jack decided to go down and it slowly crushed the skirts and damaged the front wings. Worst part was that the wings and skirts were so well stuck to the rest of the car that I managed to destroy the other side in the process of trying to take them off leaving me with a severally damaged looking zed with no funds or heart to press on at this time. below is the damage and partial clean-up work I did before getting properly fixed and sprayed again. not wanting to cost me a fortune I did a diy job with a drill and a wire brush to scrape the shit of the sills and doors back to metal before my garage done a quick fix for me which improved it greatly As I said before I didn't want to spend too much money so I couldn't help it when I saw these 19" for sale on here so I snapped them up, spent £300 on powder coating and a further £700 on new falken tyres. Am I mad or what ! Yeh, but they do look great

At this point the next thing I wanted is a manual conversion so after sourcing one I managed to get help from a friend and his garage and done the conversion myself in just over 2 days tops. Then I took it apon myself to do the first series 4 manual to digital aircon conversion which required a full strip down to the bulkhead and it worked without issues. Next on the agenda was to get a nice set of skirts and vented wings and this is where all my problems began : Although the pic above looks great the paint job was very bad and had many streaks, drips and orange peel to go.

My old silver na had a leather and alacantra interior and some 99 spec parts so I quickly swapped them over :

So its finally happening after been off the road for well over a year the zed is on Target for its refurbishment. Last year I started with doing all the underbody suspension stuff to make the ride more stable and after that I decided I wanted to do a full strip down to the bare shell and start from scratch to create a show quality z32. After much bad luck and many thousands of pounds wasted on rotted zeds i'm cracking on with the original plan. So as a quick update i'll post some older picks followed over the next few weeks by an overall progress report. Starting off with how she was when I first purchased her 3 years ago until the state she is now then showing the strip down and all the bad luck I've had. So here she is as I bought her :

House of Kolors Burple i think, thats what the website says. The workshop has a focus thats in doing the same colour at the moment so i saw the results and workmanship.

After the work starts i'll start a progress and build thread as i gets update pics in.

After much thought since my last post, lol, i'm going with this :

Think i'm going the brandy wine colour after I've watched a few videos on youtube

great, thanks

Its an import yeh, but is a series 4 and a 1996 build. I've went through all the hardship of the weird ass parts Nissan decided to change to cut costs.

So is it worth the risk of decating the zed only to stumble at the mot when they say where's the cats. Even if it passed the emissions test would it not fail on a technicality ?

These are all fine examples, my original thoughts were a dark purple but i'm liking the wine colour too.

My zed is a 1996 series 4 which for the mot to pass needs cats as I currently understand it. I'm fairly sure my cats are fooked and having them out in the rain for the last 6 months has doomed them further. So as I direct replacement is this what I need ? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/321228906950?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

mmmm - choices. The zed is getting picked up hopefully tomorrow for sure and i'm stuck on what colours to go for. What I have decided is that I want a show finish and it will be one of the kandi variety. I'm thinking a purple or brandy wine ? Anyone seen these colours up close on a zed or anything else ?

Done some late night work on the zed and swapped over the tailgate and bonnet. Got this tailgate from the white breaker and it's like new underneath.

I've got three pipes left after I've removed mine, Two of which look like vents and the third is part of the fuel rail in the engine bay. First pipe as you can see in the pic goes into the chassis, Second pipe is part of the fuel rail, Third pipe goes down and out along the tunnel towards the rear of the zed.

We have two types of stands for the bigger flags, First is a stake which just pushes through any type of soil like grass And the other is a cross mount for using in indoor / concreted area. There's no intentions of getting rid of the old larger banners but because the old ones are a heavier construction they are very expensive to post.

Anyone removed one from a series 4 ? I've followed the standard guide but there is a few differences in the pipe work. Only removing mine as the brackets are rusty so might install one from an r32. I've read that the ecu brings up fault codes but how does it know ?

Engines already at Lee Dents for a rebuild so i'm just cleaning up the engine bay a bit and getting rid of anything I no longer want or nor need. Also got rid of the carbon canister

Fairly warm today so started to strip her down as much as I could before pickup later this week for a respray. As you can see this is a complete restore from the bare shell.

The national Banners have arrived ! As we all know the REO's recently all received new flags to cover each individual area for local meets and shows. Since the quality and feedback from these banners was so good it was decided that we should replace the larger and aging flags that barely see the light of day apart from JAE each year. What I can say is we would be absolutely crazy not to get these out in the open air as they look bloody amazing. So first off the new flags designed in-house are based on a schematic of the z32 which I must say is so detailed that you could use them to trace where pipework or cabling goes if that's ever needed. To give a scale of these I've placed my three year old at the bottom who is just shy of three foot. Here is the two new banners at the front of my house : The final banner is a 10' by 3' long PVC print with an additional motive to celebrate the upcoming 25th Anniversary ! The quality is absolutely fantastic and I can't wait to get these on display for the 25th celebrations and again for JAE.