Dragonbreaths Z build (pic heavy)
 

Chapter 1: Enter Z34


Alright. Its about time I made a thread of my journey with my Z. Im a little late on this, as I always have been with build threads. Ill have a lot of random pictures. Everyone likes pictures. Unfortunately, my pictures are of the same plain old Z lol. Nothing real special about the outside. Anyway, Im glad to be on this forum. I have learned a lot about the car. I have helped like 3 people, and I have found lots of entertainment. So Ill start on how I ended up with the 370z. My 350z got totaled. The original thread is old so Ill repost some pictures.

Here is my old 350z. Nothing real special. It had a good amount of suspension work done to it though. Just an exhaust and JWT pop charger for "go fast" goodies.

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Then I got rear ended by a drunk driver on a Sunday afternoon otw to work. Bye bye 350z :shakes head:

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So after looking for another 350z and being unable to find one, I decided to grab my 370z. Here she is the first day I got her :tup:

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My first impression wasn't that great to be honest. One thing that really bothered me from the start was the latency of the throttle. The 350z throttle felt instant and the 370z felt slightly delayed and inconsistent. My 350z was also modded to where I loved the way that it drove. I could hear the exhaust. The 370z not so much. It felt so tame. Shortly after I got the 370, I decided to throw some Swift springs and SPL camber arms on it. I also got the lockout bolt kit. I ended up not using my SPC toe bolts. My toe was fine from the alignment. My camber was a little more than I wanted though. I actually never got to that and that was 2 years ago :rofl2: I also tried my old Work wheels from the 350z. I ended up selling them because I needed money though. I also had some Powered By Max wheel spacers. They weren't hub centric so they had a lot of vibrations. I ended up taking them off and going with Z1 spacers and ARP studs (not pictured)

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Up to this point it was about March/April of 2012. Then life happened. Most of 2012 I was buying parts for an old s13 that I was building. I spent a lot of money trying to completely rebuild that car for a fun daily. Lots and lots of time was also spent to eliminate dirt and rust all over the car (and under). I messed with that thing for quite a while. Then starting 2013, I had to save for the wife mod. Weddings are expensive so that put a large damper on my car mods. So much that I ended up selling the 240 in July for waaaaay less money than I had in it. I needed it gone. Still the Z sat mostly unmodded sadly. I was driving it daily. Sept of 2013 I got married. Best woman ever. She doesn't understand my passion for cars, but she supports it mostly. Few pictures of her. I made sure to be in them so if you guys fap to her, Ill be watching you.

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Chapter 2: Turbo Goodies

Not much went on in that time. My CSC went out, of course. Luckily it was covered under warranty:

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And I picked me up a real daily so I could begin some real mods for the Z:

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My original plan for the 350z was to get a Boosted Performance turbo kit. But since it got totaled, and I had a 370z, I had to find an alternate route. Luckily for me, Sasha started making them for the 370z shortly after I got mine :yum: I have been following Sashas work for quite a while. Since his "BoostedProbe" days on my350z. I was impressed with his work from day 1, so its only natural that I became a customer :nutswinger: After a brief fiasco with GTM and a $475 loss to me, I switched from their group buy to the BP kit. I got the kit in March and was like :happydance: .

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I bought the tuner kit because I already had the Uprev "Tuner" version from my 350z. For fuel I went with the CJM RRP. I have never tracked my car, but if I ever wanted to, I didn't want to be limited by fuel starvation. Ill say this..... that install sucked. Connecting those 3 hoses to the barb fittings was the biggest pain in the :icon23:

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I also decided to go ahead and get a clutch and install it. Of course I got the zspeed CSC. I chose the Z1 6 puck clutch and steel flywheel. The install was just your average clutch install.

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After breaking the clutch in, I dove into the turbo install. I was so excited about working on it, I didn't take many pictures :ughdance: I ended up getting some DEFI gauges and an Innovate AFR to put in the dash. That was terrible. If I had to do it again, I wouldn't. Im not good with electrical anyway, so doing this was already intimidating. It worked out fine for the most part. The gauges work nice.

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Continued:

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And the first drive:

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I went with a single exhaust because I loved it so much on my 350z. I even went with the same brand, AAM. The exhaust fit pretty good aside from the section with the resonator in it. I actually cut that out and shortened it by around 4 inches since the exhaust was too long for the car lol.

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I used that adaptor for my oil temp probe. It works pretty well. I put it on the line just before entering the oil cooler.

After that I set my tune up with Jon at Z1, and me and a friend went to get tuned. I don't remember my numbers unfortunately. I want to say I was just shy of 500hp. The car drove great, and sounded awesome! I would suggest the BP kit to anyone looking for FI.

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I drove the car like I stole it. I had my CMC crap out on me like a week before ZDayZ. Got that fixed. Went to ZDayZ and beat the crap out of the car. Beat the crap out of the car for a good while. Loved every second of it. The power it made was awesome. The car feels like its a rocket ship to me lol.

Congrats on the car and the build

Thats a hell of a sleeper right there.. Nice work!

Chapter 3: More power and boo boos

So another friend of mine decided that he was going to twin turbo charge his Nismo 350z. In the course of doing so, he purchased CJM's fuel return system. I helped him with the install, and of course I was impressed. If anyone has any fuel needs, I would strongly recommend CJM. Charles is a stand up guy and is as legit as MC Hammer in 1991 :nutswinger: After seeing the fuel system and talking with my buddy, he convinced me to buy it and shoot for a little more power. I bought the return system, and also some 750cc injectors from someone here on the forums. When I pulled the fuel canister back out for the install, I accidentally snapped off one of the metal arms that hold it together :icon14: after a brief moment of death, I heated the rod up and shoved it into the remaining amount of hole in the top. Luckily it has held just fine so far. After slapping everything together, made a trip back to Z1 for a tune from Mr. Parham.

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Ended up making some pretty nice power at 10-11 psi. 532hp and 497tq.

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Once again I beat the crap out of the car. The cooler air started to arrive, which meant more power for the Z. With great power comes great responsibility. Apparently something on the Z wasn't being responsible enough and decided to give out. I noticed after starting the car up, that I had a ticking noise come up. I thought it was in the head at first, but then I jacked the car up and got underneath it. The sound was coming from the bottom end :eek: but as I got closer to the transmission, the sound got louder. In hopes it was the clutch or flywheel, the transmission came back off and this is what I find:

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That clutch has around 7k miles on it :mad: oh well. Im really hoping that the ticking noise is due to that. The flywheel looks the same as the pressure plate. Only time will tell. I also ordered the v1.5 upgrade for my BP kit. I just got that in the mail on Friday. I will probably begin removing the old stuff sometime this week to install the new oil lines and intercooler piping. I ordered my clutch today as well. I ordered a OS Giken twin disk. Hopefully that will hold the power I have and any additional power in the future should I decide to build my motor down the road.

http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/m...3BB64F4A80.jpg

And thats where Im at right now. Ill update this thread often now that its been made lol.

And now for a greatest hits for my Z. These are some of my favorite pics of it.

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Welcome back and I hope that you recovered from your surgery...:tup:

-Clifford

Great build :tup: Cant wait to see some new results and hopefully some videos with that single exit goodness :icon17:

What!!!!! it happened! ! I sense the force I'd strong in this one!

I just noticed I have the same exact HF jack!!!! Orange and all!! WHAT!!!

YzGyz

Yeah, ive recovered pretty well. It still works :tup: Im suffering from ED because I feel neutered from not having my Z :ugh2:

I do have a video! I think thats it. Ill probably have more eventually. Just for informational purposes, I never exceeded 43mph in the video. The footage looks deceptively fast :eek:

I think I may have too many pictures in this thread lol. Sorry for the pic dump guys. It would have been more informative if I would have done this thread whilst modding.

Anyway, so Ill be replacing my clutch obviously. Im worried about my 9 month old CMC since the fluid will be drained again. So my question is, has anyone rebuilt their CMC? Zspeed has a rebuild kit. It seems pretty straight forward. Pop the snap ring out and the assembly comes out. I havent heard of anyone mentioning it here on the forums. I would rather do that and have a peace of mind. $20 rather than $110.

Nissan OEM 370Z G37 Clutch Master Cylinder Rebuild Kit

I would do the rebuild kit. I mean they are not that complicated.

YzGyz

Still a better love story than Twilight

She looks great. Both the car and then wifey! No fapping here, im too respectful.

Crazy thing bro...I think I saw you on 14/Austin Peay that day you got hit! Good looking mods!

Thanks! And my accident happened on Houston Levee. I do drive down Austin Peay now everyday for work though.

Just noticed your contraption for the oil temp probe. If I'm seeing what I think I'm seeing then you put a threaded NPT fitting into the AN hose fitting, followed by a collar nut and then inserted the probe into that. I assume that was to make up the length difference in the probe compared to the oil line fitting.

If so, that's brilliant!!! How did it work out for you? I tried something much more complicated and am not happy with the out come. My next step was to tap the oil pan spacer but if this worked for you it's much easier than pulling the pan.

Yep that's exactly what I did lol. I ordered the AN fitting from a local shop with a 1/8 NPT thread (I think). Then I went to Home Depot and pieced the rest together. It works pretty good. There is a little lag in the reading because the probe is somewhat recessed and not fully immersed in the oil current. But it has worked pretty well for me.

Awesome!

I order that AN fitting off summit racing but didn't use it because of the depth of the probe. I'm going to try your setup before I pull the pan

Awesome! I originally ordered a small spacer but it still wasn't long enough. So I went to Home Depot with my probe and messed around with some of their fittings and made it work.

Got this in yesterday! Im excited. Its a shame that this has to be hidden. Im pretty sure this is singlehandedly the most expensive part on my car aside from the motor :ughdance:

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Im hoping I can have it all put back together by next week. We will see I guess.

Oh you mean you get a "free" shirt with your 2000$ clutch purchase!?? Haha sick clutch man! Been steady contemplating getting a triple disk through these guys as I don't know how much longer my 5puck single is gonna hold up. Excited to see more of your build man keep Em coming! :tup:

VERY NICE!

400ft/tq at 3,750rpm is very impressive.

On a side note, my wife and I just had a good laugh watching the in cabin video...two men giggling out of control is very entertaining :tup:.

Very Nice

I have been lazy because of the cold. Im just being a sissy, its only about 25. Which isn't as cold as most places, especially since I'm in a garage. But you can rest assured this will be kept up.

Haha yeah. Thats how it usually is when I'm driving the car. Since I drive it sparingly, when I do, I get too happy lol.

Your Z is Over 9000!

correction, Your Z is over POWER 9000!

YzGyz

Completed my ghetto HD gimmick fitting oil temp sensor install today. Seemed to work reasonably enough. Close enough that I doubt I'll bother tapping the oil pan.

Thanks for the idea:tup:

Great build, Nate! Can't wait to get a ride in the beast.

I'm glad it worked for you. I can't take all the credit though, I saw it somewhere else. I don't remember where though.

Me neither lol! I've been lazy because it's been cold and I was sick last week.

Wishing you get to felling better that nasty flu has been a bad one this year.

following the progress of your build and wishing you the best....

-Clifford :tup:

Small update:

The car is driving! I had some minor setbacks that were due to my own stupidity. I was really excited about getting things done and having not driven it for almost 3 and a half months, I made a mistake. With the OS Giken clutches, you have to have that sleeve on the throw out bearing. Well I forgot to put it on there. When you do that, it will ruin your slave cylinder.... I contacted Z Speed and they said that they could rebuild it for $150. That would have required too much down time since I wanted to drive it on the pretty days (Sun+Mon). I was able to find out that the actual slave cylinder part is an OE part for another car and picked it up at my local auto parts store :tup:

Got the car back together and the ticking noise is still there :shakes head: Im certain its from something internal in the transmission, so I'm just going to continue to drive it until it breaks.

Now the OS Giken Grand Touring twin disk clutch is a dream compared to my old 6 puck setup. It is so much easier to drive! Even the wife immediately noticed. She wanted to drive it too lol.

Still having some issues. The first thing is sometimes its hard to get the transmission in gear. Mostly in 1st from a stop. Even while driving, the gear box is very very clunky. Im thinking either A) whatever the noise is in the transmission is causing this, or B) My slave cylinder needs to be bled again. Ill try plan b first as it will be the easiest and free fix.

My second issue is my tune. Because I changed up some of the routing on the intercooler piping, specifically the pipes from the turbo to the intercooler, the drivability has become somewhat loopy. Im getting lean codes and misfire codes. When stopping after first starting to drive the car, the car will die. Sometimes after I drive the car and try to start it again shortly after, the car will start and die immediately. Ill have to give it a little throttle to keep it alive enough to act right.

Anyway, after doing some thinking, I'm pretty sure that I won't drive this car on a track. Lots of reasons (excuses) why, but I'm sure it won't happen. I would much rather get another car to track. With that being said, I'm debating on selling my CJM RRP and buying an Aeromotive 340lph to replace it. It would simplify the fuel system a bit and I won't feel like I'm wasting the RRP. Any input on that? The hardest driving that I will do will be the dragon at ZDayZ. Anyone have any issues driving that?

Man you don't waste no time, nor on quality:tup:
Me likey a lot:tiphat:

I highly recommend a return after upgrading to the V1.5 piping. I didn't even get mine into boost when I made the swap. Drove it straight to my tuner.

Man you are everywhere on this forum :tiphat:

Dragonbreaths Z build
 

Well my boy is a fellow BP owner so you know his build thread is subscribed to :tup: