mines twinturbo

full system is "around 700 notes" fitted at their factory off the M6. Trouble is I am still un-decided about de-catting or not. Note they have the blue flame cat back systems on ebay all the time cheaper than mongoose (which they make anyway) Chris

Would be real interesting, I can imagine removal of HICAS for : drifting, drag racing, and weight reduction for a purist racer but otherwise for most mere mortals it is probably better and safer to leave it on for if you ever need the high speed swerve.

Guys I took a visit to blue flame nice shop, cool guys and have done lots of full systems for zeds. I will be there next month getting my custom system done

Common problem on the Z take off the throttle linkage cover and start the engine from cold. Quickly scan every clip and end point of the many fuel lines, run round with a screw driver and tighten all.............99% of time problem solved Chris

So what is the function of the design then just show? If so are we to conclude that rotor discs are simple stock replacements that look (adopt britney voice) 'kinda neat';

Hey no problem its chris for that pint. The HICAS thing is real interesting I think the urethane subframe bushes will be OK for the HICAS as they are still compliant almost in a similar way to the stock ones. My human durometer puts them as about 10% harder than the stock ones we've removed. These are big ass bushes. About coke can diameter and about 2/3rds the height. I would also say that dicking around with the weight of the rear subframe, assembly as a whole i.e. (diff, axle, wheels suspension units etc) will probably throw the HICAS system into a less than ideal state given that the Nissan engineers will have factored its mass into the calculations for its dynamics. Try not to think of HICAS as rear wheel steering! The HICAS system is not that. Think of it as a 'speed-sensitive-electo-hydraulic-professional driver-technique-reproducer. It is that momentary quick flick of opposite lock to help you turn in quicker! The system has a smidgen of 4 wheel steering but it is also obviously engineered to work with the bushings in the 'floating' rear subframe. I would as a design engineer describe HICAS as more of an 'active' suspension system than 4 wheel steering. It would by its nature also help you loads in a high speed swerve manoeuver, such as diving out of a slipstream and back in....... So if you remove the HICAS you don't simply get left with an 'ordinary car' you get half the system left, (the 'floating' subframe and no HICAS activation to make it work). So IMHO If you wanted to remove the HICAS to make it like a normal car then you would have to weld up or fit solid bushes to the sub frame then you would be left with a normal car !!! And all those nissan engineering hours would be for nothing As an ex-racer when I drove the Z for the first time on the test drive I was like "Wow what was that? as the car stepped itself into my first fast turn with very fast turn-in. In my mind it was almost like the handling of a mid-engined car. The seller was like "What?" I could feel the HICAS work, he had never noticed it. He thought HICAS was 4WS to aid parking!!!! My car is making moderate power and an auto so my interest, no my fetish handling. I love sweet handling cars that can 'giant kill' the Dyno day wonders on real world roads / track days. I will be Looking closely soon for a spring and damper set up that can help me in my quest. My basic starting philosophy is those Nissan boys really knew what they were doing so its going to take a lot of science to better it. Bear in mind the Z on lauch lapped the nurburing 11secs faster than the then current 911 (in racing terms that is annililation!) Chris

I got the energy kit but it is in no way a 'full master bushing kit' loads of stuff is not covered mainly the front upper control arm bushes, and rear arm bushes - see my other post. That is why I will get the nismo bushes as well from courtesy who seem like good folks to deal with

I have opted for the EBC sport disk upgrade. It is essentially a drilled and grooved stock replacement with EDC red-stuff pads and goodridge hoses. I cannot vouch for it yet as it is still in the air getting other stuff done but it was not lots of cash and actually less than the stock parts. The hype on the box says 1999 Max power brakes of the year! - What an endorsement - not. Without being controversial IMHO I think the 'rotordiscs' are a completely bogus design as looking at them they actually significantly reduce the effective surface area of the disc that the pads can grip. I know drilling and grooving does that somewhat but to my eye it looks like you lose about 20% of disc surface with those. To me it would be a purely cosmetic upgrade and a backward step from stock.

Forgot to add........Does anyone know exactly what the HKS autobox upgrade :bow: does I know it is about £1500 so I assume there is some serious work in it

Porbably a longshot but my auto box did this once when my speed sensor was packing up. I came out of a fast bend over a humpy bridge then floored it - nothing revved up to the redline and coasted to a halt clearly in neutral even though I was in Drive. "torque converter shot" was my first clear thought. I stopped the car dipped the trans oil and it was in great condition (only recently changed) I then re-started the car and it worked faultlessly except the shifting pattern when fully floored did not shift into top unless I backed off and re-floored it. :headvswal As I then replaced the speed sensor that weekend the box has worked faultlessly since. I therefore assumed the speed sensor input is crucial to the box working and that the ECU plays a part obviously............If not the torque converter look at the electronics too.......

Sob, My Z is taking longer than I expected....... Note: pressing out the rear subframe bushes is best done before you change any other rear sub bushes !!!! I am a design engineer myself so I have taken the delay time to really study the rear end to see what its design intent was. Looking at the whole subframe as an assembly the bushes are very much more that just simple 'isolation' devices. It is actually a super sweet part of an elegant design solution. The rubber mounted rear end in conjunction with the HICAS is obviously designed to 'automatically' set the car up for fast corners. This setting up is clearly inititated by the HICAS rack rear wheel steering 1-2 degrees travel at max, and then 'set' using a certain amount of compliance inherent within the subframe bush design (silicone filled rubber mounts). I would guess this was done during development after initial testing to make the 4-wheel steer effect feel less 'mechanical'. Anyone with racing experience out there will know what I mean by 'set' the car up which is to momentarily induce a nudge of opposite lock to pre-load the suspension so that that car turns in quick and sweetly aided by its own suspension unloading itself. You can see an exagerated form of this watching rally / drift drivers set up power slides. I have also since studying it, decided that fitting a HICAS eliminator is probably a pointless exercise as the bushes will still be there 'half doing' the job they were designed for so essentially it may end up worse than you had. Talking to the Stillen guys the HICAS eliminator was originated for racers who simply could not get out of the habit of doing their own 'setting-up' of the car and so occasionally forgot and overcooked the turn-in leading to spins on a race track. So unless your in that category of hardened racer I would leave what nissan have designed in for you as a 'driver aid'. File the HICAS eliminator mentally as and unneccessary device. Of course if your HICAS is shot then you may decide just to lock it out but I would not. I would repair it. I would also 100% stay away from the Aluminium solid rear subframe bushes I have seen unless your Z is 100% for drag racing or you learned to drift over 10 years in a non-HICAS car. The Nismo Front upper control arm bearings / bushes are a good move as the only way to buy the stock ones is to replace the whole control arm (arm and bush all one part number - nismo bushes seperate part number). I will do this next time it is in the air. So back to the garage peeps

Hey andy did you do the front upper control arms too - nismo? Did you have the cold morning horrible suspension noise before? I am hoping the bushings will get rid of that horrible intermittent graunching sound..........Did you go stock springs & dampers? Sorry for the million questions but you may help me avoid things you learned

I am doing the goodrich brake pipes at the same time.........fitted quite nice. You may as well do a good reccy of the following:- Rear anti-roll bar, bushes, and drop links - My JDM one looks so puny and it is hollow not solid, of all the OEM bushes on the car these look like they have been working the hardest. That skinny thing has to go (next months funds !) for our fast euro roads. Replace all of the rear subframe bushes as with the action of the Hicas, the puny rear anti-roll bar and the sheer engineered in dynamics of this item you have gotta think that unless the bushes are tip-top it is gonna handle less than ideal. Check the Diff good all over and change the diff-oil and diff pinion oil seal while you are at it. The oil is a 60k miles item anyway. My seal was slightly leaking so for I think 12 quid (gen nissan oil seal) you may as well go ahead and do it anyway (mine has 66K miles on it). As the Diff is a fancy viscous (oil based) LSD any lack of good quality oil will affect its performance. You have to remove the exhaust anyhow so a good visual on that and yup my 13 year old back boxes will not see out the winter for sure. The Hicas system needs a good visual for leaks or damaged pipes along with the underbody brake line protectors one of mine had cracked and was dangling down ready to be snapped off. In researching other stuff I came upon alternatives to the urethane bushing route made by Nismo themselves. It seems Nismo have put quite a lot of effort into re-bushing the Z. see link http://www.courtesyparts.com/nismo/z32/index.html for details and great exploded diagrams showing bushes. (why oh why can't UK dealers have such an on-line presence?) Interestingly nismo make the upper control arm bushes that don't seem to be part of anyones urethane upgrade kit. (Luke Z-Centre do you know anyone who has changed to these? I will get some next month in the US and bring em over for testing to see if they solve the notorious front end cold day noise) Mines See rest of thread for bushings you can change

So I follow the link and stumble upon http://www.courtesyparts.com/nismo/z32/index.html And what do I see a shed load of nismo suspension bushes for the Z complete with the upper arm bushes we all need to stop that cold weather, long journey graunching sound !!!!! I will get my U.S. colleagues on it and have those bushes on my car ASAP !!!!! Need to get the 2005 catalogue to see what is still available for the Z

What up list? Hey does anyone anywhere know where there is a definitive list of nismo parts that were made for the 300zx z32. There are clearly lots of 'pirate' nismo bits but was there ever any real deal stuff like there is for the current 350Z

Thanks Dave will let everyone know if the result lives up to the hype of the US advertising blurb. It was quite funny as my missus said "guess which was the US product and which came from the UK"............. Their they sat the US box looked like my kids power-rangers stuff and was covered in great techno speak to re-gurgitate at the pub. The UK box mean time was brown and wrapped in tape.........! LOL

It is pretty much an urban myth that mis-aligned numbers = clocked cars Gear driven odometers (as in the Z) all, at some time, look mis-aligned if you have ever owned any car for more than say 30k you will have seen this. I did 70,000miles in my first car bought from new and it always had some number looking odd. Having said that my Z has been clocked. I know cause I did it ! When I converted the speedo to MPH I 'corrected' the odometer to its exact Mileage equivalent. I did this mainly to keep an accurate track of servicing which I do religously and the fact that 101,000km of its life it was a KM odometer and now it is Mileage. It is not an easy job at all and I would suggest that most rogues who wanted to do it for the wrong reasons would rather fit second hand clocks !!!!!! If you are about to buy a Z I would suggest history is as important as condition, I would only buy from an enthusiast with a fat file of receipts and a genuine reason for sale. At a pushI would go with a standard import from a reputable importer perhaps off this list......... The Z is way too much of a mechanical marvel to risk anything else. A bad car could be an absolute money pit.....

Hey Forum, As you may or may not know my car is on the ramps right now getting a full energy suspension master bushing kit fitted. I decided to diary this process to give honest feedback as to the kit itself and the results gained. Note my car is a JDM spec auto in light tune state:- (Mines 'light tune' ECU, Air filter, Stillen intercoolers, HKS ALC, Blitz Boost Controller running 13.5psi. Stock exhaust. No Dyno run as yet so maybe 330ish HP?) I am deliberately not upgrading my dampers and coils with this work as I want to assess different mods one at a time. Note also that the stock bushes are all currently in good condition (despite being 13yrs old) and there is no adverse 'play' whatsoever. I am only replacing them as part of an overall project to improve the car by returning it to its stock state or better. Obviously if this job was done with the bushes shot anything will feel better. So perhaps the results I get will be a good for a true like-for-like comparison. Ok lessons learned so far:- There are various energy suspension kits ! I bought the 'master bushing kit' whilst in the U.S. First thing to note is the U.S. Kit has just been re-designed with a new design of tension rod bushing. This may or may not be linked to some rare stories of the earlier kits and sheared tension rods but this is at the time of writing un-proven. The older kits are still being sold so I would check that if you buy. In my experience most re-designs are for a big reason as most companies hate doing re-designs. Second the 'master bushing' kit itself is not as comprehensive as one would imagine. It consists of Front Lower arm bushes, tension rod bushes, rear subframe bushes, diff carrier bushes and front & rear anti-roll bar bushes. It is not by any stretch of the imagination a complete bushings kit. :confused: After discussing things with Luke from Zcentre - (thanks mate) it was clear that at least another rear upper & lower link kit was needed to 'complete things' and even then there are some bushes that we will not change because they are in neither kit. (see later notes) Third The front And rear anti-roll bar bushes are not usable on the JDM spec as they are clearly skinnier (and hollow too!) than the US spec vehicles bushes, and the UK spec I hear. Anyway I am not sweating this right now as I intend to replace both bars and then evaluate that mod seperately in the future. The US master kit came with excellent fitting instructions and brilliantly seperately bagged mini-kits each with stand alone instructions and the appropriate amount of silicone grease (nice touch). This is great especially if you were doing the changes bit-by-bit as other jobs need doing on your car. I wouldthink that 99% of owners would not do the whole thing at once. The bags themselves were not labelled but you could just figure it out through deduction and a basic knowledge of the car. The Z centre supplied Rear link bushing kit again came with excellent instructions but no grease. Unfortunately we will not be replacing the Front upper control arm bushes at all as neither kit included them. This is a shame as they are the suspected cause of theoccasional horrible graunching noises on cold days after long journeys. There is, on inspection, no discernable play in these bushes so we have therefore elected to strip these and apply silicone grease to them anyway. Replacing the font end bushes is quite easy and I would suggest doing it when doing brakes / discs etc. You will need a press though as some bushes require the use of some of the OEM metal sleeves. The back end is quite a different story and involves removing quite a lot of stuff. If you get a chance take a look when the car is raised as the rear subframe is quite a piece of engineering. It would be 100% worthwhile fully checking the HICAS set-up and rear diff whilst doing this work as another chance to get that level of access will be rare. example: I noticed and replaced a weeping diff oil seal that probably would have got worse before it was seen and fixed. The car will be back on the road friday so heads up then for the verdict..........

Apologies for my thickness peeps :headvswal

you can get oem ones on ebay.com which have a placing guide on them to line them up 100%. I re-badged my JDM TT then having replaced the stock spoiler (which I love) with a newer non-spongy one I have decided to de-badge again (just love the "what is it mate - old nissan reply" :shock: Instead I have just populated the underside of the spoiler with colour aluminuim tuner bades. They look way cooler under the spoiler and much better than vinyl on the wings. My missus cracked a funny the other day when next to a saxo with its front wing tuning vinyl she said "trouble is its a shopping list not its spec sheet !" :D

A km to MPH speedo conversion will sort that out too..........cheaper than ECU if you plan to keep it stock.......... Mine is from Import solutions and has worked great http://www.importsolutions.co.uk

Listers, Managed to find the article re: 1991 Bonneville top speed challenge (jap tuning houses introduce themselves to america) Turbo magazine January 1992.........(note I did some editing to make different sections of the article - was about more than 300's - hang together but all the numbers and specs are bang on.) The 2 Trust cars ran stock blocks std body, std spoiler, std wheels car 1 reffered to as the dark blue car ran a stock 2.9 litre block, and completely stock bottom end, rods and pistons!!!! :bow: It had trust headers,exhaust, intercoolers and turbos. Fuelling was via a single bank of six 720cc injectors. Power was quoted as 'around 800hp' but unfortunately as the car approached 230mph it suffered a simultaneous failure of both front tyres (even though z rated 200mph+) This car is labelled as trusts high tune road car !!! spec. car 2 refered to as the light blue car ran a stock block bored out to 3.096 litre, heat treated std crank, forged crower rods and forged pistons, trust headers, exhaust,turbos,wastegates, intercoolers and fuel injection computer pumping the juice through two banks of injectors six 550cc main and six 370cc secondary. Power is quoted as 'in the range of 830hp and posted a 246.642 one way :bow: but failed to make the return due to a toasted turbo. :( Labelled as a development version of the high tune road car spec brought over to test reliability. Both cars were there to demo performance gains achievable using off-the-shelf items........... :bow: On the other hand The Jun / Blitz car :bow: :bow: :bow: Jun / Blitz was using a full nissan race engine, :bow: trick aerodynamics but stock spoiler. It posted a two way average of 260.932 mph :shock: Under the hood where some very trick items:- Special Air plenum, very large KKK turbos and a fully set up race machine pit crew complete with EPROM burner to do the maps To put all that in full perspective it was 14 years ago and a fully tuned 5.0 litre V12 ferrari testarossa owner was left feeling very sour when his Colani-Strasburg tuned exotic only managed 230mph :tongue:

Thanks Greg I am doing the gearbox cooler right now with Lukes (zcentre) neat solution (uprated engine cooler and stock engine cooler becomes autobox cooler) I will check out the uk spec diff

Yeah that horrible graunching noise describes it well, on cold mornings and after long long runs. The car is up on the ramps now getting a full master bushings kit so if it solves it I will let everyone know. The sound was so bad and obviously suspension linked that I thought it was actually structural and it was sometimes the off-side and then near side. So I have (fingers crossed) concluded it is probably the bushes........Glad in some ways to know I am not the only one with the problem..........

Hey listers my Zed makes a horrible suspension noise from the front end on cold mornings especially after a long 100mile plus run. Has anyone had this? It sounds like bushings (he hopes - that why I am getting them changed to polyurethane right now) but the sound is almost metallic. Luke from Z centre says his does it too and he has not got to th bottom of it yet, any clues? My paranoia is killing me !