WINDSCREEN WASHER SYSTEM JULY UPDATES Another section that i was able to tick off the list of completed sections this month was for the windscreen washer system which I was able to collect all of the required parts to be able to assemble the system back onto the car. I managed to find most of my spare washer system parts which I stripped down and put through a cleaning cycling in my ultrasonic cleaning machine making them as good as new again. BEFORE AFTER SILICONE HOSE LINE UPGRADES (SAAS P/N: SSVH34MM) After the cleaning process was completed on all of the spare parts, I then went about upgrading some of the water hose lines for the washer system using the same silicone hoses I used for the carbon canisters upgraded hoses, just because I know I have plenty of spare silicone hoses left over, so why not use what I have. I first cut to length the pair of short length hoses that connect to each of the front washer nozzles. I then cut to length the longer hoses that connects the LH washer nozzle to the RH washer nozzle and then connected all 3 hoses together. I was hoping to cut to length the hose that goes from the plastic y piece shown above which connects the washer nozzles to the washer pump on the reservoir but I was unable to remove it from my car in its current condition and I'll have to wait until after the car is back on the road before I can make a replacement hose for it.
PARTS ACQUIRED DURING THE MONTH OF JULY A late addition to add to this months part acquisitions which I only decided to purchase on the second last day of the month but I am excited to see how this new aftermarket part will help to improve my car's look overall in the future. STEDI H3 CONVERSION LED GLOBES FOR MY NEW FOG LIGHTS (STEDI P/N: LEDCONV-H3-SOLID) Much like the Narva LED globe upgrades I did on the front indicator assemblies last month, I thought I would do the same upgrade on the fog light assemblies and so I will be replacing the factory halogen H3 fog light globes with a new set of Stedi H3 conversion LED globes which have a raw lumens count of 1,100lm along with a 5700K true white light colour output which I am very interested to see in action when I get my car all back together again. Initially I was worried about the possibility of clearance issues with the LED globes fitting inside the fog light assemblies due to the fact that these new LED globes were obliviously much longer then the standard H3 globes are in size. But after a couple of quick measurements I did using the dimensions listed on the Stedi website, I was confident that the globes would fit without any issues. During my test fit of the Stedi LED globes into the fog light assembly, I discovered that because of the alluminum casing at the end of the LED globe, the retaining clip that normnally would lock and hold the globe in place was unable to able to fully lock down into its seated position and instead I was only able to get the retaining clip to go about 2/3 of the way and there is no way to get the retaining clip to go into a fully locked position with this LED globe inplace. However even with this situation, I found that both the globe and that retaining clip which are now wedged together, appear to be locked into place and I have found signs no movement or dislodging of the globe with the retaining clip in this position shown above. So I'm going to roll with this setup and see how things go I guess. All that is left to do now is purchase an special adaptor connector from online stores like CZP or Z1 motorsports, which will allow me to connect the new LED H3 globes into the factory wiring connector inside the fog light assembly.
Finally I am nearing the end of this rebuild project and the progress I have made and the parts I have purchased and received this month have put me on track to hopefully have my Z back together again and driving in the next few months time. This month I also completed the modifications for the Koyo aftermarket radiator and 2000 model Version R factory side skirts as well as preparing my Stillen SMZ nose panel and several other parts that I've been stripping down for the last few months for their final restoration paint process to be done next month.
RADIATOR, TRANS COOLER, COOLANT OVERFLOW AND AUX FAN UPDATE (PART 5) For this month's 5th update on the cooling system developments, I finally got onto modifying my Koyo aftermarket radiator to allow for the installation of the OEM 300ZX NA radiator fan shroud to be possible. While I was at it I also swapped over the basic drain cock that came on the Koyo radiator with the 300ZX specific version I purchased several months ago to complete the modifications to the Koyo radiator. Koyo NA Radiator Modifications One of the last remaining tasked left to do for the cooling system, was to modify the Koyo radiator to include all of the mounting point along the outer aluminum frame of the radiator to allow for me to be able to install the factory NA 300ZX fan shroud onto the Koyo radiator. We started by first marking out the locations of each of the 4 mounting holes using both my original NA radiator and my new fan shroud as reference guides using a marker and a punch. Once we were happy with all of the locations of the markings we had made for each of the mounting points, my Dad began the process of drilling out each mounting holes. Once all of the holes had be drilled out, I then did a test fit of the OEM fan shroud onto the Koyo radiator using a full set of new factory mounting fasteners I purchased to complete the installation. As you can see everything lines up perfectly and I am very happy with the results. OEM 300ZX Drain Cock Replacement (Nissan P/N: 21440-01E00) Another item that I wanted to add to the Koyo radiator which I felt was necessary, was to replace the basic drain cock that came on the Koyo radiator with the one off of the 300zx radiator as it included a drain hose feature which would make draining the coolant from the radiator alot less messy in the future. Before After The installation was straight forward and I am very happy with the replacement drain cock on the koyo radiator.
BATTERY AND BATTERY MOUNTING UPDATE (PART 3) Another small update for the battery section which is now 100% complete with all of parts required now accounted for. Battery Rod Hold-Down Replacement & Comparison (Nissan P/N: 24425-89907) If you all remember back in June, I posted about a strange occurrence where one of my battery's hold-down rods had mysteristly formed corrosion on a small section at the bottom end of the rod. Well I am grateful I finally decided to replace it with a brand new one as you can see not only is there a large amount of metal missing from the rod but it also appears to have weakened the metal to the point where the lower hook on the end of the rod is now bent out of shape. I will be very interested to see if anything happens to this new battery rod going forward especially since I'll be adding to the battery hold-down part the new rubber insulator grommets to hopefully prevent a electrical circuit from occurring and causing corrosion to form on the metal.
NOSE PANEL UPDATE (PART 5) Moving onto the nose panel & bonnet section now, where I am trying to tie up a few loose ends that I have yet to tackle for the nose panel which has been basically untouched since my Dad had painted it back in October last year. First there is a mounting bracket for the nose panel which needs to be stripped down and prepared for some new paint as well as some work on the nose panel itself removing unnecessary wire mesh from the underside of the panel and I also masked off the areas where the cutouts for the louvers are which will also be getting a touch of paint applied to the exposed wire mesh to finish off the final look that I'm going for with the nose panel. Nose Panel Bracket Paint Stripping Process (Nissan OEM P/N: 62340-30P00) Funny enough out of all of the paint stripping work I've been doing over the last 6 months or so, I forgot to remember to strip down the metal support bracket that attaches to the front lower section of the nose panel which holds a rubber seal in place to help with installing and mounting the nose panel into position on the core support and up against the front bumper bar without damaging the paintwork on both panels. Now over the years I've collected several of these metal brackets with 4 sets along coming from all of the used nose panels I purchased during the early stages of the rebuild project. Nose panel bracket collection showcase. As you can see pretty much all of brackets I have here, have all seen better days which is no surprise as Nissan only applied a single coat of paint onto these brackets and after 30 years of being subjected to the environment the protective coating has deteriorated and allowed rust to form under the paint. So after carefully inspecting all of the spare brackets I have, I picked the best condition one out of the bunch and got to work mounting the bracket up into my new vacuum stand bench vice and after a little bit of work with the wire wheel and impact drill I was making some progress. After a few days more of work using my impact drill and my new 250watt bench grinder, I was very happy to see the bracket stripped down and ready for a few coats of KBS rust seal and chassis topcoat paint. Stillen SMZ Nose Panel Modifications & Paint Prepping (Stillen P/N: 108820) With the mounting bracket now sorted, I turned my attention to something I have been wanting to do ever since I got my hands on my very rare Stillen SMZ nose panel which is to remove as much of the useless chicken wire mesh the previous owner had installed onto the underside of the panel. For a long time now I have felt that the wire mesh covering the center section of the underside of the nose panel to be unnecessary and covers up some of the rare features this SMZ nose panel has for its history, so I have decided to cut out as much of the wire mesh as I could from the center section of the nose panel and hopefully revealing more of what is hidden underneath. Taking a closer look, you can see that the wire mesh has been glued down onto the panel and sectioned off where the cutouts for the 3 louvers on each side of the panel are located. Using a small side cutting tool, I began snipping away the edges of the wire mesh material along the outer perimeter as close to the adhesive material as possible. After a short amount of time I had cut out all of the loose wire mesh material that wasn't bonded to any glue traces on the outer edges or in the center of the panel. As one last step I decided to try and pry off the glue blob that was still present in the center of the panel and to my surprise the blob of glue came off without causing any damage to the fiberglass material on the underside of the nose panel. Finally after months of waiting I can finally reveal to you all with actual clear photo evidence this time around that this nose panel I purchased from Japan is an original fiberglass Stillen SMZ nose panel with the included Stillen business card present and a hand written Stillen part number now clearly visible for you all to see and I am very happy that I decided to do this job. Now the last item to work on was to begin preparing the topside of the nose panel so that I could apply some paint over the exposed wire mesh sections located between each of the 3 cutouts for the louvers on either ends of the topside of the nose panel. The plan is to apply some gloss black KBS chassis topcoat to the wire mesh so it will look more natural then it current does with the wire mesh currently painted in a silver body colour which doesn't look right to me at all. So I pulled out some painters masking tape and began applying layers of tape over the painted areas of the panel I don't want to get the gloss black chassis paint on. After about half and hour or so of work, the panel was all masked up on both ends ready for the next big step. But I will admit it wasn't the easiest job to do and trying to mask up the areas deep down in each of the cutouts for the louvers was a pain to get the tape in there let alone having the tape stick down where I wanted with no real easy access which was frustrating and time consuming. I just hope I've masked up enough to prevent any of the gloss black chassis paint from making its way onto the silver body painted areas of the nose panel. Nose Panel (Taping up louvers for paint 3)
2000 MODEL VERSION R SIDE SKIRTS RETORATION PROCESS UPDATE (PART 2) After a year of sitting in storage at my Dad's place, its finally time to continue with the restoration process on my pair of factory 2000 model version r side skirts which were removed and painted mid last year. For this update my Dad and I will be going over the steps we needed to take in order to reattach all of the side skirts factory mounting hardware that unfortunately came off during the removal process. With both of the side skirts placed upside down on a table, I began sorting out and mocked up the location for each of the 22 mounting tabs which are stamped with either L or R for left and right and number from 1 to 11 which made sorting out the mounting tabs very straight froward. Next we needed to prepare the polyurethane underside of both side skirts where each of the 22 mounting tabs were located, using a Dremel and wire wheel as well as a chisel we scuffed up the surface of the polyurethane material before cleaning the entire area down to prevent contamination of the surface during the bonding process. Then the mating surfaces for each of the 22 mounting tabs were also scuffed up as well, all in an effort to help with bonding the mounts to the side skirts and prevent the chance of the mounts detaching again in the future. With all of the grinding work completed, it was time to apply some adhesive to finally bond the mounting tabs to the side skirts and I decided to go with a Sikaflex 527 bonding glue which I have known for years now is a really strong bonding agent for this type of situation and would be ideal for this time of application. Working on one mounting tab at a time, we slowly worked our way along each of the side skirts applying a sufficient amount of glue to the mating surfaces of each of the 22 mounting tabs which were then placed into their correct positions on the underside of each side skirt and pressed firmly until the glue had set in place. The process was quiet effective and with all of the mounts now back in place, I will be putting both of the side skirts back into storage to allow the glue to fully dry for as long as possible. Next step is to mount both of the side skirts back onto the car which I hope wont be too difficult to do but I'm not sure if the factory mounting setup I added to the car back in 2012 will hold the skirts fully or if more glue will be required.
PARTS ACQUIRED DURING THE MONTH OF AUGUST A huge month of part acquisitions has arrived for the project and boy I can not wait to show you all what I purchased for the Z this month. First up I managed to get my hands on a very rare optional automatic shifter after a year of searching and it has been a long time coming but I can finally say that I have received 'THE LAST" parts order for this rebuild project and with it comes the boost of motivation I desperately needed so I can finally start actually pre assembling various parts from several sections ahead of the final stages of the re-assembly process for the project which I hope will happen within the next month or 2. So without further delay lets have a look at what I parts I received for the month of August. Optional Navan Automatic Shifter Purchase (Z32 Version) (Nissan P/N: C491V-40P00) Back in 2022 I purchased my first optional Navan automatic shifter from a seller on eBay in Amsterdam. Overall the unit was in ok condition and I paid roughly $400 AUD delivered for the shifter which I intended to install after the Z was back on the road. I was excited to finally have one of these rare shifters in my collection after not really wanting one for the longest of time. A year later while browsing through yahoo auctions, I found an auction for the sale of a another Navan shifter and in a moment of curiosity I looked over the listing and what I found amongst the list of photos in the auction was something I hadn't expected to see. There was a photo of the original Nissan/Navan Parts label which indicated that this specific Navan shifter being sold was a Z32 specific version. Now this was something I didn't know about at the time and I initially assumed that all of the Navan Auto shifters were the same but after comparing the Navan shifter I had in my hands with the one in the photos on yahoo auctions, I realised that I was wrong and that there are specific Navan shifters for different cars. With this new knowledge I was able to determine that the Navan shifter I purchased in 2022, was probably to suit an Nissan Silvia S14 model and I could spot differences between the two Navan shifters from what I had and from what I could see in the photos from the yahoo auctions listing. This prompted me to then restart my search for another optional Navan automatic shifter and this time I would make sure to buy one that will suit a 300ZX Z32 model and for the past year or so I have seen several go up for sale on yahoo auctions at a price range of between $400+ to $600+ AUD which were a little too high for me to bite the bullet on when I needed to focus my funding on buying parts that I actually needed to get to be able to put the Z back on the road and so my initial plan was to just wait until after I had the money to make the purchase and or wait until after the Z was finally back together again. Luckily for me in July of this year, I found the one that I eventually purchased and I brought it for amazing low price of $300 AUD delivered, which is half of what I was willing to spend on one several months earlier and it came complete with the shifter indicator trim piece and even the entire shifting mechanism which I don't really need but its always good to have a spare I guess. When I received the part midway through August, I was of course wrapped with the purchase and the condition of the shifter is excellent to say the least. I even compared the S14 Navan shifter with the Z32 version and you can clearly see the length differences between the 2 shifters so I'm glad I never decided to modify the S14 shifter and instead it is currently up for sale on eBay. The Final Parts Order for the Rebuild Project The final parts order I made through Concept Z Performance contained every last minute and remaining 300zx part I needed to finally say I have all of the parts required to put the front end of my Z back together again. Trying to be as prepared as possible I spent a good month double checking all of my parts inventory at home so that I didn't miss anything in this order. I initially budgeted the order with about $400 AUD in parts and roughly $100 AUD guesstimate in freight charges but that price it turns out to be on the very optimistic side of things and the final total cost I ended up paying for the entire order turned out to be closer to $1000 AUD including freight which was over double what I had estimated and my wife wasn't very happy about to say the least. But this is the price we pay for purchasing items from overseas and I only wish I had access to shops like CZP here in Australia and not have to pay nearly $300 in freight charges just to ship my order over from the USA to Australia. Thankfully online stores like RGS performance who in my opinion is the best 300zx parts vendor we have here in Australia will continue to release and provide new and existing aftermarket and OEM parts for us Aussie 300zx owners to purchase from and with very low and even free shipping options its hard not to consider purchasing from Rob for your local 300zx parts in the future. Still as much as it cost me almost a fortnights pay and a cosey bed to sleep in for a night. I am just happy I can stop spending so much money on the Z at least for a little while and instead I can now focus on just putting the Z back together and enjoy driving it once again after nearly 3 years of it sitting in my Dad's front yard. Powertrix Carbon Fiber Air Guide Full NA Set (Powertrix P/N: CF3PRAGNISZ32) Starting off with the big purchase that came in my final parts order from CZP, was the full set of carbon fiber air guides made by Powertrix which I purchased as a way of helping me to cover over the repaired but poorly looking radiator core support. Ever since I started this rebuild project I have been going crazy for carbon fiber add on parts and this is just another one that I wanted to have and they look fantastic out of the box. I will need to make a few modifications to each of the 3 air guides in order for me to be able to not just mount the air guides to the core support but to also install a feature that I've never seen anyone else so far do before with these types of aftermarket air guides and that is to add in holes for the ability for me to clip in the factory VIN chassis plate onto the top of center air guide instead of having the guide cover over the plate and keep it hidden underneath as well as add all of the factory engine labels that are located along the core support. 2010 Nissan Murano Universal Optional Sports Horns (Nissan P/N: 25070-30P01) The other big part that I guess is worth mentioning, is the set of optional sports horns off of the 2010 Nissan Murano that I purchase to replace my original factory Z32 horns with and give my Z a bit more of a modern sounding horn. Funny enough I had been against doing this for a long time as I felt that upgrading the factory horns was 300ZX blasphemy and also a waste of money but my mind has come around to the fact that I have been putting in a lot of time and money into upgrading several parts on the car during the rebuild, so why not upgrade my factory Z32 horns setup while I'm at it and the fact that these new horns can be easily installed onto the 300ZX with no modifications needed was a no brainer for me and the fact that these horns are original OEM Nissan parts also made the purchase worth going for in my opinion. However this late change could have complications associated with it as the new horns are much larger in size and my planned factory Z32 horn covers setup might experience some sort of clearance issue with these new bigger horns but I was hopeful that would not be the case. Unfortunately when I attempted to test fit the new sports horns and the factory Z32 horn covers, I did indeed come across clearance issues that made it impossible for the sports horns to be able to fit under the factory Z32 horn covers. More testing is required to know for sure but I may need to look into changing the mounting setup for the new sports horns and or modify the plastic horn covers to allow for both of them to be able to fit onto the Z as I am intending.