Oil project is in limbo, should get finished today sometime. Waiting on some instructional clarifications from Stillen, and I had to run to the auto parts store this morning on foot for a single M6 bolt :p

Engine is running on the full new oil system, and seems to be doing great. No oil leaks that I can see so far. Haven't driven the car yet, just ran it in the driveway so far with the bumper still off. Lots of semi-scary work involved, so I'm taking my time and triple-checking everything a lot right now. But the good news is the engine is purring along fine through the Stillen cooler and with the spaced out oil pan.

From a super-drained state (oil pan was off for hours, and btw there is a considerable amount left in that pan after a normal oil drain through the drain hole on a level surface...) I ended up pouring back in a total of roughly 8.5 quarts of Motul 300V during the refill process. I think I may be a little overfilled at this point (by half a quart or less), going to let it fully cool now and recheck whether I need to drain a slight amount to get it back to right on the full mark cold.

I know, 8 quarts sounds insane, but if you figure a normal 5 quart oil change, +1 for the cooler system, +1 for the spacer, and +1 for being super-drained with the pan off, it kinda makes sense. I can't wait to get to the test driving for temps.

Oh and it may be a while before I can get any pics, which makes documenting DIY stuff here kinda hard. Apparently using your phone to take pics of a car work in progress has more downsides than shitty images. I think I may have contaminated the touchscreen with some fluid or other, and killed it. And I need to use the touchscreen to unlock the phone, but the hard buttons otherwise work and I can receive calls :). So my phone is kinda half dead with my pics of the earlier parts of the process on it :/

Bummer about the phone!

When you refilled the 8.5 quarts, did it stop filling at one point, requiring you to wait for it to fill the cooler, to then continue, or was it in one shot?

so?

I had to do it in steps, yes. I initially poured 6.5 quarts into the cold engine for the first startup. Started the car, let it run about 5-10 seconds, shut it off, dipstick was low again. Added another quart, ran it a *little* bit longer, shut it down again, added another quart and warmed the engine up fully. Right after shutoff I checked the dipstick again and it was slightly over the full mark, so I knew that meant it would be overfull once the engine drained to the pan as it cooled off.

Just now I drained it back to the correct "cold" level, ended up taking slightly over half a quart back out (did this by loosening the oil drain bolt, letting a little pour, then screwing it back in and checking level, took a few tries, but eventually nailed it without going too far).

Car is definitely healthy. I've checked and rechecked and rechecked everything a bazillion times, done lots of testing in the driveway. Bumper is still off the car and no test drive because I'm lazy and tired now :)

I learned *lots* of interesting stuff I'm going to have to post about doing DIY installs of the oil pan spacer and the oil cooler kit. Was hoping to put some photos up with them, but the damn camera/phone :P. I'll make a DIY thread about this project regardless sometime tonight, with or without any good pics.

First test drive done (without the plastic undertray, so that I could inspect things easier). It was a relatively tame drive, with stops about once every two blocks to pop the hood, check fluid levels, stare under the car with a flashlight, etc. I'm paranoid :)

Anyways, nothing leaked, everything worked fine. I got in some harder acceleration runs a few times near the end of the drive, all was smooth. Oil temps are definitely going to be way better. It warms up a lot slower, and stays a lot lower. Seems to stabilize at around 195 when cruising around at night now (which is about what our coolant stabilizes at isn't it? doubt that's a coincidence), although it takes its sweet time getting up to that.

No serious oil-temp-stress testing tonight though. I want to go through testing the car at this point in stages so that I can hopefully catch any small problems without them turning into catastrophes :) It's worth it to avoid a $10K engine bill or whatever it is if I blew out a line during a hard driving stretch.

That's great, congrats on successful install... sounds like all is well so far.

Pic-less DIY thead on the pan install for now:

http://www.the370z.com/diy-section-d...an-spacer.html

The oil cooler install really needs pics even more than that one does, and needs me to organize my thoughts about all the little gotchas along the way. Coming soon :)

Phone screen is alive again this morning, seems to have sorted itself out once whatever chemical evaporated away or something.

http://www.the370z.com/diy-section-d...an-spacer.html <- updated with pics now

Actually I'm not going to do a DIY on the oil cooler. For one, I didn't get enough pics since my camera screen died early in that process. But also, RCZ already has plenty of pics, and the Stillen instructions do a decent job of telling you what to do. I'm just going to make some notes and addendums, some of which might only make sense when you've got the parts in front of you and you've read the instructions already:

First, here's the pics in RCZ's thread of his install. Note that he moved the power steering cooler off to the side, whereas the Stillen instructions leave it behind the oil cooler, which is what I did (because I may install other cooler kits from them on the other side later, like the 7AT one):

RCZ's oil cooler install pics

As far as oil hose routing goes, my path (after consulting with Stillen for clarification, as the instructions give only vague details from another car that don't work for us) is very similar to RCZ's. Like his, I used the 45 degree connectors at the sandwich plate and the 90 degree connectors at the cooler, facing "backwards". The only difference at the oil filter side is that I rotated the sandwich plate so that the hose connections are more towards the front of the car instead of directly below the filter, to make filter access easier. At the cooler side, with the power steering cooler relocated behind the oil cooler per the standard Stillen setup, the far line needs to go in front of the vertical bar that runs down the center of this area, rather than behind it. This keeps it from hitting the PS cooler.

Re: relocating the PS cooler (one of the first things you do once the bumper is off), be sure to buy a quart or two of replacement fluid before you start, as you will lose a ton of PS fluid while you're extending the lines. The Service Manual indicates either a Nissan-branded PS fluid, or Dexron VI ATF (auto trans fluid), which is what I used.

And in case it isn't obvious (eventually) from the parts provided and the instructions, you want to re-use the little black rubber grommets from the factory PS cooler mounts inside of the padded clamps provided by Stillen. You need to use the self-tapping screw (with a spacer) for the bottom/left mounting point, and you need to drill a hole in that vertical peice of metal and use the long M6 screw + nut from the kit for the other mountpoint. Be sure to put some wood in front of the radiator when you drill this hole, as the drill is likely to jump through and try to drill your radiator too :)

Also, it helps to buy a bunch of extra rubber hose (and slit it), or something of the sort, and lots of extra zipties, and use these supplies to insulate the oil cooler lines anywhere they come near a peice of metal, or even might under vibration and G-forces. Be especially sure to shield them where they come near the metal power steering lines, as the braided lines can eat through those power steering lines if they rub on them.

The final and most perplexing thing I ran into: When I first started the car after refilling the oil (you do this in stages btw, as descibed a few posts above, as the lines/cooler fill up), there was a chattering noise coming from the engine.

I initially thought this was some valvetrain chatter from lack of oil while the cooler filled up, which would go away quickly. It didn't go away quickly, even after the oil system was fully filled and pressurized and seemed to be working ok otherwise, and even after letting the engine warm up fully. I was really scared that I had done something dumb, like somehow managed to cause an oiling problem up top (who knows, like, maybe some small something fell into an oil hose while I was working, then shot up into the oil system and blocked an oil passage? Your mind thinks of all kinds of horrible scenarios at this point).

Turns out the noise wasn't coming from the engine at all. It was coming from the power steering pump. When you relocate the PS cooler and thus drain and refill most of the PS fluid, it leaves air in the system, which causes the PS pump to make awful chattering noises. There's a procedure in the Service Manual for this.

What it basically boils down to: with the engine off (but key "ON" to unlock steering wheel), turn the wheel all the way to the left and hold 3 seconds, then all the way right and hold 3 seconds, then back to the center. Top off fluid if necessary. Start engine, and redo the above procedure with the engine on. Now the chattering is gone and you're very relieved :)

Got a better test drive in this morning by the way, with a little more confidence and more aggressive driving. It's really hot out, but it was only a short drive so nothing definitive on oil temps yet. I will say it takes for-freaking-ever to warm up the oil from overnight cold now. I waited till it got to 150 before pulling out of the garage. It got to about 160 in the mile to the gas station. left it running, was 165 when I came back out 5 minutes later. Then I went ahead and went all out for the two miles on the way home. It peaked at 190, and took its sweet time getting there. I suspect on a longer and harder drive it will get considerably higher than that, but it's a good sign and a good start :)

More mini-updates:

Did some more driving today, in the just-after-noon super-heat. Ambient temp was 104 rolling (not parked). Got some good aggressive driving in, although not to the level of the torture tests I did pre-cooler to hit 260. Oil temp peaked at 220, and was generally very "stable" as predicted. It moves up very slowly, unlike before where running through 1-2 gears at WOT would cause visible fast movement of the needle. Given the deadly heat today, I think it performed admirably.

I'm noticing my 7AT overheating more now too. Usually the engine would get up in the 240-250 range first, causing me to back off of the hard shifting, and then I wouldn't notice the 7AT so much. After the engine sat at 220 for a while with me still driving aggressive, the 7AT started getting soft on downshifts, which I've taken to be an indicator of very hot fluid. I guess a transmission cooler is in order next :)

Also, I forgot to turn my radar detector back on from when I was working in the garage the past few days. As a result, I got an insultingly low 80 in a 65 ticket from a motorcycle cop on the way home when I was just cruising lazily in freeway traffic. I had no idea he was there until it was too late with the V1 off. He was pretty nice about it though, just wanted to churn out that ticket and move on, no big hassles. So now I have my first Z ticket, probably the first of many :) I should be good to wipe this one out with defensive driving anyways.

Congrats on getting your first Z ticket? :ugh2: Just kidding. Hope it isn't too expensive.

Thanks, I think. It'll probably be $40 in court costs and then whatever it costs to take some cheesy online defensive driving course. It's more of a pain in the *** than anything.

Just more tiny status updates, another long-ish drive, another 220 peak, which quickly went back down to 200 cruising in 7th in traffic on the highway. God I love having a cooler on this car now.

Back to brakes stuff: I identified my leak, it's the flare connection where the hard line interfaces the braided cable for the right front brake. Like I said, I hate those things (brake line flare connections), I seem to have a habit of over-torquing them and ruining them, my record is 2 ruined out of 8 tightened on two cars :)

I'm actually going to skip the ******** of trying to remake the flare on the existing line with the special tools. Instead a local Nissan dealer is overnighting me a replacement hard line to pick up tomorrow for $35 shipped. Can't beat that.

wstar, how are the sways after some more travel time?

The sways are still doing great, my (good) opinion of them hasn't changed, but I'm not driving many miles the past week or so, and taking it real easy in the car. Real testing of everything else lately (oil temps, brakes) is still held up because that brake line the dealer was getting "overnighted" for me on Thursday last week still isn't here :mad:. Supposedly it's really going to arrive today, then I can fix the brake leak, rebleed everything, trust my brakes again, and then drive aggressively enough to test the oil temps for real :)

The replacement hard line is finally in my garage now, and I picked up some M10x1.0 hardware to temporarily plug the brake system while I'm replacing the line so I don't lose more fluid than necessary and make a total mess. Should all come together tonight. It's going to be a bit of a pain in the ***, since the hard line runs from the passenger wheel well (where it hooks up to the braided line) all the way back over by the brake reservoir in front of the driver, requiring the removal of the strut tower brace and all of the hardware under the edge of the windshield to access it at the very least.

Good luck wstar, sounds like a lot of work!

Ugh, it is. They clearly never meant for these brake lines to replaced without first draining and removing the refrigerant lines for the A/C that run above them behind the engine. Keep in mind this is like 6 feet of hard brake line in a very weird twisted shape. I managed to get it in there anyways, but it took a lot of very careful finagling and very slight bending of the tube to get it into place. The other easier stuff that I did take off to get access was the windshield wipers, the strut tower brace, all of the upper plastic crap (battery/brake/lower windshield area), and the right upper intake tube.

Anyways, it appears I've fixed my leak, and so therefore the cause most likely was that I over-torqued that one flare connection. At the very least, I can't induce the new connections to leak cramming my foot down on the pedal as hard as I can repeatedly with the car off. Obviously I need to recheck w/ the ABS and power assist up and running later. I bled this one wheel a bunch to try to remove the bulk of the added air from replacing the hard line. Tomorrow I'll reassemble all the little stuff I had to remove today to put the line in, and do a proper 4-wheel bleed in the right order (I have enough speed bleeders for the whole car now), and then hopefully all this brake stuff will be behind me :)

Brakes: Yes, the leak appears to be gone. I've done about a hundred miles of driving or so now on the new brake setup, starting to trust them again now. With all of the brake line work that happened (especially replacing that right front hard line), one bleed/flush wasn't enough though. It's going to be one of those things where you bleed as good as you can, drive it and use the brakes a bunch to knock the air bubbles around, bleed again a day or two later, etc. Right now I can tell there's still air in the system but it's getting better, the pedal feel is basically back close to stock now. Will order more Motul and bleed again next week.

Oil cooler: The oil cooling from the Stillen cooler kit + the AAM spacer is really pretty phenomenal. Oil temps now change very slowly. Cruising on the highway in 7th gear (regardless of wheel speed, because the revs from more speed are offset by the increased airflow) brings the oil to about 190-195 and stays there, even if you started out higher from aggressive small street stuff.

I still haven't managed to break 220 yet at all, and I've done some reasonably aggressive sprinting and cornering stuff now. I bet I could get it to perhaps 235 if I tried pretty hard, but I don't generally sustain aggressive driving on the street long enough to go any higher I don't think. Maybe at a track in the future we'll see how it does under really sustained hard driving.

My only complaint now is the warm-up time. My routine now for my first drive of the day is basically to start the car, get back out and have a cigarette, maybe clean up some things around the garage, etc. It takes about 12 minutes sitting there if I wait until the oil temp gauge bumps up to 150. I usually don't wait quite that long. But either way I wait until 160 to start getting on it a little, and 180 before any WOT and/or high rpm driving. On a short trip it may not even get there. I'll be swapping out the sandwich plate for a thermostatic one at my next oil change to help remedy this.

Where are you getting the thermostatic sandwich plate from? I haven't installed my oil cooler yet, but I'm also concerned about warm-up time. I figure I may as well install it with the thermo plate from the get-go. Got a link or anything?

Well Stillen may be offering one with their supposedly upcoming upgraded oil cooler stuff, in which case I may order whatever they're using from them. If you search for "sandwich" here: BAT - MOCAL Oil Control Systems there's a link to a PDF with Mocal's thermo plates too, but I'd need to figure out the AN connector thing for that (either move over the 45's from the exist Stillen one assuming the same threads on the other side, or get some new 45's). I'm kinda waiting to see what Stillen does mostly.

Yeah, I'm waiting for Stillen too. Luckily I don't drive very far, so it's still a month or two before my next oil change (which is when I'll put the cooler on). I was giving Josh a hard time, telling him that it took less time for them to develop a CBE than it's taking them to finalize their upgraded oil cooler. lol

What about the one that Modshack used?

http://images50.fotki.com/v1514/phot...MG_1684-vi.jpg

Racer Parts Wholesale sells it here for $86.95. You will need these adapters to go from -10 AN to the 1/2" these sandwich plates use. If Stillen uses -8AN, there are ORB fittings for that too.

Yeah at this point I am inclined to order a Mocal plate and be done with it. I just need to get off my lazy *** and ask Stillen which AN size I need the fittings to be.

wstar, you should be able to measure it, AN measurements mean how many 1/16 of an inch, and measure the inner diameter of a hose, so

#2 =1/8”
#3 = 3/16”
#4 = ¼”
#6 = 3/8”
#8 = ½”
#10 = 5/8”
#12 = ¾”
#16 = 1”
#20 = 1 ¼”
#24 = 1 ½”
#32 = 2”
#40 = 2 ½”
#48 = 3”
#64 = 4”

I got my first Motul analysis back today. It leaves me with a lot of question marks (not about the oil, but about how my break-in is going and the dreaded oil temps topic):

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...k-7k-miles.png

I'm not surprised that the engine is still breaking in and showing wear metals, but I am concerned about this increase in Aluminum. They claim this is coming from the pistons, and could be the result of some piston scuffing going on.

Piston scuffing basically has three big causes AFAIK: A mfg defect with the piston/bore, an insufficient lubrication issue (as in, oil isn't getting there, like a pump or filter failure of some kind), or overheating the cylinder area of the engine block in general.

I think I can rule out mfg defect, as the number was lower (even on a per-mile basis) in my previous report, so this is something new. The oiling system was bone-stock for the oil analyzed above (this was before adding the pan spacer and cooler), so I don't suspect there's any oiling issue for this report either, at least not from my screwing anything up. That leaves overheating, and I did have a few hard runs up around the 250-260 oil temp range on hot days, experimenting with oil temps. I wouldn't think 260 would be enough, but perhaps the temp we get on the display only tells part of the story. Cylinder wall temps would obviously be considerably higher than reported oil temps, although I wasn't expecting this kind of reaction. But in any case that's one change from the previous report, where I was still (relatively) babying the engine for breakin reasons.

I suppose I have to consider that it could be that Motul 300V just doesn't do a good job lubricating in that spot on our engines, but I don't think that's likely to be the answer. Any good quality synthetic shouldn't have an issue here, and it is a good quality synthetic.

So I guess I'll take their recommendation and do a 2K interval this time, and see how the numbers look. If it was heat-related, hopefully the added oil cooling will stop it from getting any worse.

Other random comments I thought of re: the analysis above:

The TBN is good, even better than the TBN on my (shorter interval) Nissan Ester before it. I guess that means, at least for my driving conditions and habits, there is no issue with the 300V becoming acidic too quickly for a daily driver. Flashpoint stayed higher too, but of course we should expect both of these numbers to go up with a quality synthetic, as opposed to the dino-based Nissan Ester I guess.

The other numbers that jumped wildly (like magnesium and zinc) are, I assume, due to the change in oil formulation rather than anything to do with wear (IOW, there was more of this stuff in the 300V in the bottle than there was in the Nissan Ester).

Thats really strange about the Al. Id agree that the Mag and Zinc are from the Motul's addpac. Im inclined now to start UOA's earlier than I had planned. Have you thought about sending your UOA somewhere else also for redundancies sake? Like OAI maybe just to see how they compare.

interesting results to say the least. are you going to stick with their recommendation and change after 2000 miles?

Yeah. I don't think that really affects any problem much honestly, other than perhaps getting any coarser wear particles out of circulation quicker. But at least it will let me see how things are progressing sooner rather than later.

wstar, if Al is still high on your next analysis, you might want to consider trying a different oil, just for troubleshooting/variable elimination's sake.

Installed the sensors for my Blinder M25 laser jammer today. Semtex already did a writeup with pics on this so I won't bother (over here). The Gearwrench Microdriver is pretty much invaluable for the Blinder install, as the mounting screws would be a bitch to reach with anything else inside the grill.

I cut the two lower peices of plastic on the grill itself like Semtex did and mounted in roughly the same place, but I didn't shorten the mounting brackets, so mine are slightly more to the inside than his. Ran the wiring through the tiny hole just below the passenger-side Gen 3 intake tube (it's a little square hole that the telephone jacks happen to barely fit through), then ran the wiring up the passenger side of the engine bay near some factory wiring, and popped it through the big rubber grommet for the ECU wiring harness (and sealed my hole with black RTV).

So the sensors and sensor wiring is all done, but I haven't done the interior part yet. I just plugged it all up laying in the passenger seat to test it with a bench power supply so far. Interior might happen tomorrow AM, I haven't quite decided where and how to mount the switch/LED.

Got the interior part of the M25 Blinder done today. Sorry for the crappy pic, it's dark, I used a flashlight to help illuminate the switch area. Basically I removed the panel that's under the steering wheel (there's one screw near the hood release, then it snaps off, then you undo the hood release wire and various other attached things), and then drilled holes in it (3/4" hole saw for the switch, and roughly around 5/16" for the LED holder). This was really the only easy place to put them, and I kinda like it being out of the way like this anyways:

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...switch-led.jpg

And here's the front all done up:

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...-m25-front.jpg

When I went back to fine-tune the alignment in the front and tighten the screws, I found it damn near impossible, even with the aforementioned gearwrench, to apply appropriate torque to those screw heads sideways, and also keep the heads aligned perfectly while trying to torque down. I gave up, got them situated correctly with the screws not fully torqued, and superglued the joints into position :)

have you tested the blinders yet?

i have seen video's proving they are very effective and video's proving they suck.

No, I haven't tested them yet. Not having access to a real laser speed gun makes that hard :). Apparently it's either much more discriminating against falses than my V1, or just plain broken, one of the two. I pointed an IR remote control at the car and it set off the V1 but not the blinder. The IR remote operates at 980nm and police laser guns are at 904nm though, so my gut feeling is that the Blinder is just rejecting false signals better. Sometime this week I'm going to hunt down a cheap 904nm testing source, there must be some random crappy product at Fry's that happens to emit that wavelength or something (or worst case, I'll just buy a 904nm laser diode and build one myself).

And as far as existing product tests, these guys seem pretty reliable, and the Blinder does well there: Radar Detector Tests and Laser Jammer Tests by Guys of LIDAR

Went ahead and ordered a laser test unit off the web, it's easier that way: Hand Held Laser Tester - Laser Jammers at Radar Busters

Also, got my order in to add a Mocal thermo plate to my Stillen kit to get my warmup times down at the next oil change. Parts list from racerpartswholesale.com if anyone's looking for the same:

Qty Item # Description Price
1 MOC-SP1FT Mocal Sandwich Plate- 20mm Thread $86.95
2 MOC-2BM808A Mocal 1/2" x -8 ORB fitting $31.98

Edited much later to remove an unnecessary and incorrect part from this list above.