PARTS ACQUIRED DURING THE MONTH OF FEBRUARY For this months parts acquisitions, i purchase a couple of items that I think will be great improvements over their factory counterparts for not just oem carbon canister setup but for a couple of other setups in the car as well. SAAS SILICONE VACUMM HOSES Starting off with my purchase of several different sizes of new aftermarket black coloured silicone vacumm hoses to replace as manay of my original oem rubber vacumm hoses as I can. These new hoses will be the perfect upgrade for hoses like the ones that I took off on the carbon cansiter where the rubber hoses basically falling apart on me due to age as I was compressing them during the removal process. For more information: https://www.shopsaas.com/performance/silicone-hose/ NEW SPRING STYLE HOSE CLAMPS The only other parts that I purchased for the month of February was a 100pc set of spring style hose clamps from ebay. I have learnt over the years that regular worm drive hose clamps are not suitable for use where a hose is connected onto a plastic hose inlet/outlet as the worm drive clamps can loosen over time and cause leaking issues. These new spring style clamps will prevent this issue from occuring and as they can expand and contract along with the hoses as they expand and contract when the temperature rises and then falls during heating and cooling cycles providing constant tension on the hose which in turn will prevent leaks. Using this knowlegde, I will be trying to replace as many of the factory worm drive hose clamps that are used to clamp down hoses to any plastic style hose inlets/outlets just to reduce the chances of having to deal with hoses leaking in the future.
After 2 massive months of working on the rebuild project, I ended up with 2 major setbacks occuring in march for the project. One being me damaging a pair of rare oil cooler hoses and the other being the devasting results of my restoration attempt on my rusty OEM power steering cooler. Even with theses setbacks occuring progress for the month of march was still made, with me finally taking at look at my used UKDM oil cooler and mounting plate parts along with starting the restoration process on my used twin turbo power steering hardline part. I also got to compare my new fancy GKTech high performance clutch fan with my OEM fan and more work was done to prepare the carbon canister bracket and front tow hooks for paint. Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@adamzx Instagram: instagram.com/adamzx_z32
OEM CARBON CANISTER RESTORATION PROJECT (PART 3) For the third monthly update on the carbon canister's mini restoration project, I wanted to begin the stripping process on the canisters mounting bracket so it can be restored back to new again. The mounting bracket was placed into a large container and left to soak in my paint stripping solution for a full 2 weeks expecting the old paint to just flake off the metal when I removed it from the container but that was not what happened at all unfortunately. As you can see the solution has not been very successful at lifting the old factory black paint off of the metal bracket and I think I why. The biggest problem with this bracket for me at the moment is the size of the entire area the bracket takes up and so the container it is submerged in wont fit inside my ultrasonic cleaning machine where I can heat the solution up which seems to be the key element to making this paint stripping solution work as effective as it has done so far for me on of all of the smaller sized brackets I've stripped previously. With the disappointing results from the chemical stripping process, I decided to try and use an abrasive type of stripping method going forward to finally get this bracket stripped clean. I connected a nylon wire wheel onto my electric drill and began aggressively stripping the surface of the metal down as much as I could. Initially the wire wheel was making quick work of the paint and I was glad to see progress finally being made, but thats when I realised that using this method might work well on flat smoove areas of the bracket but it wouldn't be able to get into all of the norks and crannies that I would also need to strip down as well. So here is where I'm currently at with the bracket which is only about half way stripped down and I'll need to find another way to finish stripping off the rest of the hard to reach areas before I can progress with the restoration.
OEM FRONT TOW HOOK RESTORATION (PART 2) Like the carbon canister's mounting bracket, I left the tows hooks inside a container with my paint stripping solution and left to soak for a good week or so. Even though the hooks did get a bake time in the ultrasonic cleaner, it didn't really soften all of the paint and the paint that was left over had a pinkish stainning to it. With my second failure using the chemical solution on 2 different parts, I was quite fustrated to say the least and so I pulled out the electric drill and a 60grit flap wheel attachement and basically went to town on the surface of the hooks. After about an hour of hard work, I was very happy with how both of the tows hooks came out, where most of the paint had been stripped away. But it wasn't 100% stripped as I couldn't get into the mounting holes and hook opening with the flap disc wheel, but it was good to see some progress being made none the less.
WATER PUMP CLUTCH FAN UPGRADES (PART 1) One of the awesome new aftermarket cooling products I have chosen to go with on the rebuild, is with a GKTech High Performance Engine Fan which I did in an effort to try and improve the cooling efficiency of my OEM cooling system without having to go with an expensive thicker core radiator. I discovered this prodcut a couple of years ago and it has been on my wishlist for the Z ever since I saw but like all things before the accident, I never had the funds to be able to go through with getting one of this units until now. According to GKTech's website, the new high performance fan has been designed to be more capable of pulling more air through the front of the car and then through the radiator to improve cooling performance then that of the OEM clutch fan and when tested on a dyno, the new fan can apparantly pull 40% more air through the radiator then that of the factory VG30 clutch fan and though the GKTech fan has designed to fit SR engines it can easily be fitted onto a VG engine when paired with the RB/VG billet adaptor plate. More Information: https://au.gktech.com/products/sr-k...-60-more-air-flow?_pos=1&_sid=06b1d71be&_ss=r With all of this information I had to get one of these fans as it ticked all of the boxes for me and my setup. It required no modifications to be fitted to the engine, it looked cool and it will improve cooling performance in the engine bay which will lower temperatures, its a win win situation the way I see it. During the Easter long weekend I got a chance to compare the GKtech fan with my OEM clutch fan as part of my photo archieving work for the project and it was cool to see what the differences were between the two fans side by side and I thought you guys might like to see the comparison as well. All in all I cant wait to install this new fan design onto my car and hopefully see slightly lower temperatures in the engine bay.
UKDM OIL COOLER & MOUNTING BRACKET RESTORATION (PART 1) After several years of being in storage, its finally time to pull out one of the rarest mechanical OEM parts I will be installing onto my Z, and that is the UKDM Oil Cooler. I picked this unit up about 2 or so years ago off of Ebay and as you can see its in pretty average condition but its intact, it doesnt have any visible holes in the unit that i can see and it doesnt leak any fluids from my initial flushing of the old engine oil inside the cooler. Now your probably wondering why I have this cooler when my car is a NA model and doesnt require the use of an oil cooler especially one this large. Well its kinda a long story but basically it has been a pipe dream of mine for years now to create the worlds first factory style extrenal transmission cooler for a 300ZX Z32 and so this oil cooler is actually going to be part of my new transmission cooler setup for the car and should provide more then enough cooling performance for my factory 4 speed automatic transmission when compared to the tiny factory intank cooler inside the radiator. As for the long version of the story it goes as follows, over the 18 years or so that ive owned my Z, I have been through 2 OEM transmission's and I am now very pro active when it comes to taking care of my current 2nd replacement transmission which I had installed about back in 2017. When I had the first replacement transmission installed I was told that it was advised by the shop who installed the trans, that they needed to install an extrenal trans cooler into the system to provide better cooling for the transmission and so an universal aftermarket cooler was installed by the shop onto the front of the car. During my 2kspec replica build in 2012, I decided to remove this aftermaket cooler as it didn't fit with my project goals and because I had plans to install the PWR alloy radiator, I thought the cooler that was included in that unit would be sufficient enough to keep my transmission cool for the forseable future. When my 1st replacement transmission randomly died on me 9 years after it was installed and a month after I had serviced it for the first ever, I learned that because I hadnt serviced my transmission in such a long time, the none friction enviroment that the transmission had be operating in after 8+ years or so had turned into a friction enviroment causing the transmission blow. Fast forward to today and I have now ditched the PWR radiator in favor of a more OEM style cooling setup and I now have the skills and know how to service my transmission myself which I intend to do every 40,000 km. Anyways since getting this new transmission which I was about to service after it had reached its first 40,000 km service interval, I wanted to go with the recommendation by the shop about installing a external trans cooler to help protect the transmission from overheating and failing on me, and this is where the UKDM oil cooler comes in. I can fit it to the car in its factory location infront of the aux fan on the front cross member and use the factory oil cooler hardlines to route the coolers hoses around the condenser and then run hoses to the factory transmission cooler hardlines. Hose sizes will need to be reduced from 10mm down to 8mm and vice versa going from the oil cooler hardlines to the transmission cooler hardlines but it should all fit up fine from my research. Being a delicate part I decided I'd first try and soak the cooler in a 1 to 1 mix of water and simple green all purpose concentrate cleaner and regularly scrub the cooler over time. So I placed the cooler into a suitable sized box and left it to soak. OIL COOLER MOUNTING PLATE RESORATION (Part 1) The UKDM specific mounting plate for the UKDM oil cooler was another used part I had sourced a long time ago and as you can see it needs some serious restoration work done to it as you can see. I first wanted to strip the bracket down to bare metal and so I placed the bracket into my paint stripping solution and let it sit for more then 2 weeks but like the carbon canister bracket, the paint barely came off at all mainly because I hadnt figured out a way to heat the solution to soften the paint at this point. So this is where I brought out my hand held sand blasting gun, to try and abrashively strip the paint off in no time but that was far from what happened. After 30 mins or so and 5 refills of soda media for my tiny blasting gun, I just couldnt get the unit to work properly and I believe the issue lied in my compressor not being setup correctly and so I would only get 10-15 seconds of blasting before nothing would happen and I would have to reset the compressor and refill the gun and I had to give up on using sand blasting as an effective stripping method for now. OIL COOLER HOSES ACCIDENTLY DESTRUCTION So out of all of the issues I was having cleaning up the oil cooler mounting bracket, I got hit with a major setback which unfortauntely was entirely fault, sigh. So what happen? Well I put the used UKDM oil cooler hoses in my paint stripping solution to remove some overspray paint that was on the hoses, just to restore them a little bit and I only intended to leave them in for a few hours but I got caught with other things and I ended up leaving them in the soultion for almost a week before I finally went to check on them and as soon as I pulled the hoses out of the solution both of the hoses began melting in my hands, it was a disater. I tried to rinse the hoses off with water but it was too little to late. Turns out that the solution that the hoses were submerged in was a costic form of degreaser which is great for stripping paint when heated but very bad for rubber parts and so I basically had just destoryed the factory oil cooler hoses in a moment of stupidity i guess, sigh. Not all is lost though, as I did have a spare of the longer hose but the shorter hose, no such luck unfortunately and since then I have found out that both of the hoses are now discontinued from nissan and no longer avaliable. I even tried contacting a few UK breakers online to see if I could source a used pair again but, the only breaker who got back to me so far stated that he doesnt have any of those hoses for sale, so yeah not very happy but I differently learnt a valuable lesson after putting rubber parts in a costic solution thats for sure.
POWER STEERING TT HARDLINE RESTORATION (PART 1) In order for me to consider putting the UKDM Oil Cooler onto my car, another important part that I needed to acquire was the twin turbo version of the power steering hardline that runs from the reservoir and along the front cross member. The None turbo version of this hardline runs along the top of the cross member as shown below. The twin turbo version however has a section in the hardline where it dips down and along the front of the cross member so that the oil cooler mounting bracket can be fitted to the cross member. So it was vital for me to get one of these twin turbo varients of the power steering hardline as the NA hardline would block my ability to mount the oil cooler mounting plate onto the top of the front cross member. But buying one brand new is of course a no go as they are discontinued and a used unit would have to be sourced to progress any further. I did try several wreckers for a while but noone really knew or had what i was looking for. But in 2022 I was lucky enough to find a gentlemen advertising 300zx parts for sell here where I live in victoria and after meeting up with him at his yard, I had a plentyful supply of Z parts to collect along with one of these TT hardlines. After being in storage for over a year, I was finally ready to pull this part out and try and restore as best I could. I first had to disassemble all of the hardware attached to the hardline leaving me with more rusty Z parts to deal with. A soaking in evaporust overnight fixed all of that though. The plans are to strip down the paint and rust on the hardline itself so it can be repainted in either a silver or factory green paint. The mounting hardware for the hardline I was hoping to paint them in a gold paint and maybe add some new fasteners in either titanium or stainless steel. UKDM POWER STEERING COOLER RESTORATION (PART 1) This has to be one of the hardest and rarest parts I've ever tried to source for my Z project and it took me nearly 10 years of research and being in the right place at the right time to finally get my hands on one of these very rare OEM 300zx p/s coolers. The UKDM power steering cooler was only avaliable on the UKDM models due to the fact that the higher speed highways over there like on the autobarn could cause overheating issues for these region specific models, which is why the UKDM models got a larger oil cooler, twin automatic trans coolers in the radiator, a differential cooler and a power steering cooler. The power steering cooler is mounted in front of the factory oil cooler on the UKDM specific oil cooler mounting plate which is mounted to the front cross member. There were 2 versions of the P/S cooler released during the production run of the UKDM & euro based 300ZX's. The series 1 p/s cooler (90-93) was routed to the HICAS pump inside the engine bay. The series 2 p/s cooler (93-96) was re-routed to be part of the loop for the power steering hardline as the hicas system went from hydraulic to electric and I believe the series 2 cooler had a slight redisign making it have a better cooling efficiency over the series 1 varient. This is the setup I will be trying to replicate on my Z. More Information: https://z32enjoytheride.wordpress.com/2015/05/19/post-39-euro-spec-power-steering-cooler/ I attempted to dismantle my p/s cooler back in 2022 but I was unable to remove the rusted hose clamps at the time. Months later I asked my Dad for some assistances and he was was able to help me get the hose clamps removed which then allowed me to remove the old p/s hoses off of the coolers inlet and outlet pipes which allowed me to separate all of the attach parts from the cooler. As you can see everything is in an extremely rusted and crusty state, the amount of metal flakes coming off of this thing was crazy but I was hopeful that after a bath in evaporust the cooler might not be as bad as it looks. And to my surprise it came out looking heaps better then it did before the treatment. Even the hardware didn't look to bad after the treatment and I was over the moon to say the least Though the cooler and its hardware looked more like car parts again and not all rusty looking. I then began the pain staking process of gently scrapping off all of the remaining old factory black paint or coating that was still on the coolers piping and what was left of the cooling fins, my plan was to repaint the cooler to protect it from rusting in the future. This is where things took a turn for the worst, after chipping away at it for a couple of weeks I noticed one morning before heading off to work, that the cooler which had been stored in a sealed container after its derusting treatment had began to flash rust while inside the container which was not a big deal at first but when I inspected the cooler more closer, I found the one thing that I never wanted to see and that was several pin holes in two of the inner cooling pipes. Needles to say I was devasted and I knew straight away that this cooler was now toast and unusable going forward. I did a quick leak test of the cooler which was found to be leaking at the pin holes I had found. Unfortunately the weakened thined out metal can not be welded close and I will have to source another cooler to keep this mini project alive. I did contact a couple of 300ZX breakers in the UK hoping I might get lucky twice but the only one that got back to me stated that they didn't have one of these coolers avaliable to purchase, bringing me back to square one again. All is not lost though as it has always been in the back of my mind that this cooler was not usable and that it would be just as valuable as a working unit is as would a template would be for me to get another cooler fabricated. Or use it to find an aftermarket cooler that i could then purchase to replace the oem cooler with. I am currently looking into my options but who knows how long it will take for me to find a solution.
Looks good. For what it's worth I would stick with the OEM fan. I've had the chance to test both with an anenometer and did not find any evidence that the GK tech fan outflows the factory fan. Speaking in round numbers, based on what I observed, the factory fan outflows the GK tech fan by about 14% at idle. When you look at your side by side picture this shouldn't be surprising at all. I'm not bashing GK tech and it's probably worth noting that nowhere in their marketing material do GK tech claim that their fan outflows a VG fan at all. I think people just see the 60% improvement on SR fans, and 40% on RB fans, and assume that it's the same for VG when the manufacturer has never actually made that claim. Anyway I'm not telling you what to do with your car, just that seems incorrect.
Wow no kidding that really sucks to be honest but thank you for the info rob, I might need to rethink the gktech fan upgrade now as my OEM fan is only got a few minor marks on it from the accident and perfectly usable so I can still use it no problems. I was more worried about higher noise problems with the gktech fan but I haven't really found any first hand feedback from a z32 owner using this fan and thanks to your comment I now know it might work out worse then the OEM fan. I do appreciate the advice rob you could have saved me a big headache down the road.
