Engine is on a stand in the garage, diff is pulled from the rear suspension, car is plated ($15 for registration and $92/6months on insurance), and I'm cleaning and listing individually the parts I think will sell.
Pulled some of the smelly stuff out too - seat covers and carpet/padding are all out. I found a good bit of water in the spare tire well, so I'm guessing my hatch seals are no good - probably not shocking, even without the damage. Looks half decent with the wool covers gone..
Nothing massively exciting, but I have a new clutch/motor mounts/rad hoses on the way. The real exciting part and crowning jewel is a Fidanza lightweight flywheel. 11lbs to the factory 22. I kept factory style clutch as I'm not looking for anything crazy, I just think it sounds nice to have free-er revving and now is the easiest time to do it.
So, major life updates to start this post. First, my wife is now 4 months pregnant with our 2nd child! As with the first, we're not finding out girl or boy. November 2 due date. Current kid is asking to play in the Camaro every day, which is fun.
Next, we've both also started new roles that are taking up a lot of time, including nights. Will calm down, but been a fun start. Definitely lots of learning and making a difference in keeping parts getting to the assembly lines.
On the Z front: clutch and flywheel have arrived, ARP flywheel bolts will hopefully be here soon. I pulled the electrical off the ZX engine last night and the valve cover tonight for a quick look. Not perfect but I'm happy, and I can hear some compression when I roll the engine over to TDC.
And I think I found the source of the massive amount of oil stains on the engine, there's a few spots around the bolts that are wet all the way across the gasket.
My hope is to be able to reuse the 280Z engine harness, so I'll likely pull/swap the distributor and the alternator off the Z engine to add to the ZX engine, and block some EGR stuff off.
Been a slow few weeks with family visits, time up north, and this week an unexpected ~3 day hospital stay. I'm moving slow but okay and happy to be home.
Dug back in a little last night and was able to pull the radiator and the electrical. I will need to replace the injector connectors as well as a few others, but I had fortunately pre-ordered 10 of them as I thought this may happen.
I'll probably take the radiator to the same shop I had taken the fuel tank to and see if they can check it/clean it up some.
Regardless, this is progress and that has to happen to get back on the road!
Anyone else have a love/hate with summers and how busy they feel?
Got a good few hours in tonight, pulled my "new" engine off the stand and got the flywheel off, and pilot bearing/rear main seal replaced. Glad for that, as it looks like the rear main was a leak point!
Probably tomorrow or the next day I'll need to put the engine back on the stand to do oil Pan and valve cover gaskets (idiot) and free up the hoist to try to pull the seized engine. We'll see how this goes.
You gonna paint the block or anything? I always loved that Nissan teal color all the L series motors came in
I don't think I will. I also love the Teal color and think it's a great standout- but I don't have a good sense of containment on scope creep when it comes to aesthetics lol. Since I want to try to get this back together relatively quickly I'm just going to pass on most non-functional updates.
So here's some fun, this was in the oil pickup screen - feels pretty plasticy, haven't tried to put a magnet on it though. I think I'm still going to just send it.
I'm glad I'm replacing both the rear main and the oil pan, though. It was pretty wet around both of them, lots of goop. I'm a little worried there's still going to be timing cover leaks, maybe I need to investigate those gaskets too..
Edit: looks like my oil pan has some of the dimpling around the bolt holes that is fairly common, will spend a few extra minutes hammering that back out!
Got the engine torn down a little more today!
I'm picking up front timing cover gasket set and a water pump from my FLAPS this afternoon, so I got the distributor, oil pump, water pump, and crank bolt out. I'll need to borrow a pulley-puller, hopefully from FLAPS, and then I can get the crank pulley/damper off and pull the timing cover. I'm not 100% sure the "right" order of events for this, but I feel like this will allow me to get everything sealed back up well. It'll also allow me to clean and keep an eye out for leaks in the future.
Not a massive update, but good progress. Borrowed a pulley puller, and got the damper and then the timing cover off. Cleaned the ever living crap out of it, replaced the front crank seal, and reinstalled the timing cover today so far. I'll try to knock some more out tonight.
I'm mostly posting to keep myself in track here, but I got the engine buttoned up tonight. I swapped the distributor from the engine in the car over so that it'll match up with my harness, new water pump, oil pump installed, and crank pulley installed (not torqued yet) before adding the oil pan.
I tried to clean everything up mainly so I'd be able to identify any new leaks that start once I get driving. I'm half expecting the oil pan to leak, but we'll see!
Not sure if you're wanting to spend more money but on the oil pan if I were to have mine out I'd be putting in a moroso pan or azc one with better baffling if you plan on ever doing any hard cornering. My L28 consumes quite a bit of oil so the level fluctuates a lot but I've noticed that even the level being at halfway on the dipstick is low enough to cause a drop in oil pressure on some hard turns (right handers in particular).
In reply to papamilad :
I can't even find the AZC ones for sale haha, but those Moroso ones are pretty pricey. I'm open to it in the future, but I haven't even heard this engine run - I'm a little hesitant to do too much more before I get that confirmation, at least. Re-sealing will at least show me my problem areas before I dump any more/real money into the engine.
In reply to classicJackets (FS) :
I hear that lol, I definitely dont think its worth the money on my tired, likely unopened motor and I'm religiously checking the oil now anyways. but if the motor is ever out on this thing that means I'm doing some serious work to it so definitely worth the investment then. Get her running whatever it takes!
Looong time no update!
Massive amount of life stuff been going on, and I chose to spend my spare time sleeping/preparing for the next day instead of working on the Datsun. I'm less than a month away from baby2 arriving, and hopefully the Camaro will be sold around the same time.
I had to push the Datsun to the street for some tree work to get done, haven't gotten it back into the driveway yet. So tonight I pulled the head in the street!
That marvel mystery oil is at least as 15 years old, and the coolant passages sure look nicely blocked up. Head seems to be intact, but not sure. I think I'll try to salvage the block (potential high compression build down the road??) and sell the head.
I have had a lot of fun though. Many of my neighbors are in their 60s, and everyone knows someone who has one, so they're excited to talk about it. I do love that side of it and hope to give out rides when I can.
You know, LS1/T56 260Z has a nice ring to it.
If you haven't done anything with that oil pan, an old truck to straighten the flange around the holes is to brace it on the back (piece of wood perhaps) and hit each hole with the ball end of a ball peen hammer.
In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :
I am having LS dreams for sure - but it *should* net me money if I sell Camaro, get free LQ9, and use ICTBillet accessory drives + random T56. Should. Not in this car anyway :) I'm excited for >100hp in a small car.
Jfryjfry - I did do a fair bit of that before reassembling the engine, but I didn't have a warm fuzzy feeling so I may check the pan/think about doing some more before getting the engine into the car.
Other updates for new parts on hand
Silver mine motors coilovers
Upgraded top differential mount
Poly bushings for suspension + trans crossmember
Rubber tension rod bushings
And I spent some time in our last warm weather getting the differential cleaned up and painted.
Rust reformer + rusty metal primer under 3 coats of Rust-Oleum Enamel. Should be set.. and look decent with the new differential mount.
Glad to see some updates! That engine of yours doesn't look very happy... haha
Got the car back in the driveway and managed to get the hood off alone so I could pull the engine. Success! 4 speed is on the bench and the useful stuff is almost all off the block so it can go to scrap.
6 days until baby 2 arrives.
I may see if I can get the clutch hard-line and MC replaced now, and do brakes sometime after the baby gets here, and before dropping the engine/5 speed in.
Edit to add: I have continued to get rid of spare ZX parts, was able to get some sent to Florida for a future challenge car. Several eBay sales as well, which has been nice to have trickle in!
Baby comes tomorrow morning. No shock, but enjoying our remaining time with current family and getting work to a good place means no clutch line.
Old engine is going away today.
The cylinders were definitely beyond saving. Check it out..
I assume the pistons are also trash?
I saved the 3 that moved, haha. The crank looks ok as well, on first glance. There is/was some wear to the bearings but to my extremely untrained eye they didn't look destroyed
Long time no update. Over the winter we had our second child and I spent a lot of time working in the evenings as well. I bent a few brake lines but didn't do much else.
With the warmer weather this last week I've been beautifying a bunch of crusty parts, and prepping to actually install all my replacement brake/clutch parts so I can drop the engine back in. Old brake master was nasty!
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