Welp, today I ordered a couple things..

1) Fast Intentions CBE non-resonated with customized post-muffler treatment (rather than blingy tips I'll have straight pipe I can wrap)

2) Kirkey 47 series Intermediate Road Race seat. Kirkey Racing - Browse Products

Interesting. I've gone back and forth on whether to use metal seats like that before, I still haven't ordered one way or the other and won't for a couple more months probably. What's the mounting plan?

Dropping the seat off with the car @ the cage builder. He's to make a mounting platform for the seat and brace it to the cage.

It's going to take 3 f'ing weeks to get the seat (supposedly) so I'm going to have to delay delivering to the builder, unless he thinks he can get started with the work before the seat gets in and just leave the areas around the driver until the end.

Oh, and the seat weighs like 14 pounds and is a full tilt road racing seat. I don't care for the overpriced and overweight 'composite' seats that usually get put in Z's. The real superlight seats (carbon backed) are way, way outside my price range, so this is a good compromise I think.

Alternatively, you can get a planted or that other brand of seat bracket (I can't remember, it's a small mom & pop that supposedly makes a superior product) and just drill and mount the aluminum seat to it yourself. Just gotta be sure you brace to the cage.

Looking good. Looking gooood.

Thanks man. Nowhere near the level of awesome as yours...yet? :P

I have SO much work to do and SO little time to do it in. :(

Supposed to go to the cage guy in 2 weeks. Still have to pull dash and delete A/C as well as clean up the wiring harness situation so he has room to work.

I really don't want to cut the harnesses, so I'm going to have to get creative...

Once you start cutting out the factory wiring, it's very liberating :)

I don't know why I have such a mental block for it.

I've already done stuff that is irreversible without spending thousands... what's one more thing? Sigh...

I do too. I just have my loose ends coiled and tucked away. I'm just afraid if I cut something off, there is going to be a wire that is looped in a circuit with something important that will be cut.

Exactly.

Mike, can you snap some detailed photos of your interior? I'd like to see it for comparison's sake.

It's hard to make the inside of mine look particularly neat and tidy, much less pretty, because everything contrasts so starkly with the damned yellow.

The approach I took was to work from the rear of the car forward, and identify everything I was messing with as I went, only cutting out the circuits I don't care about.

So basically, with the rear interior gone, I first went after the obvious rear targets I don't care about: the locker on the gas door, all of the lines to the hatch for everything but the top brake light (radio antenna, defroster), and all of the stereo equipment (sub, amp, XM radio module, etc that's all in the "center" of the car behind the seats).

I unplugged / cut out all of those at their terminal points, which are more or less at the end of their branches of the wiring looms, and/or are the whole terminal end of a branch of the wiring loom. Then I unwrapped the factory looms (lots of shrouding/conduit/tape around them), and pulled only those cut wires out of everything, working my way slowly forward on the car. Every few feet of progress, I'd go back and re-tape what was left of the loom (running to e.g. the taillight assemblies, the keyfob sensors that are still in the rear for now, etc).

I haven't finished mine, I stopped just behind the seats, where the main looms are in two giant bundles running down each side of the car on the outside. At that point it's a pretty thick bundle on each side, and the majority of it I've cut off at that point, as they all traced to stuff I didn't care about (they were the loose wires I've been following from the rear). The ones that remain still follow roughly their original bundles and paths. I taped up the cut-off ends behind the seats to ensure they didn't short against each other or the frame and left them there. To be completed when I start tearing out all the front interior and removing the dash :)

It's hours of brutal work, but IMHO it's worth it and it's not as risky as it seems.

sure, when I get home this week I'll do it.

Thanks man!

Cutting the harness is real simple. I'm sure you have seen my pics in my journal. I did my hole car all the way to the connecting points to the main bulk of the harness behind the dash. Only took me about 4 hours max. No issues at all.

Nice build! Love the yellow Z's!

So cage builder broke his hand about 6 weeks ago, and his PT isn't going as well as hoped, so we're delaying the cage build until the first week of March.

This also means we'll have more time for the seat to come in.

In the meantime, I'm going next weekend to buy a new workbench, shelving, tool storage etc for my garage so that I can get some real work done on the thing.

Here's what I am thinking in the meantime:

1) HVAC Delete
2) Remove condenser from radiator
3) Custom NST 20% UD crank pulley
4) Catch cans so I'll stop having so much oil blow into the engine
5) Custom intake setup based off of the current Nismo system
6) Do something about the wiring
7) Wrap the headers finally (hopefully without having to remove them, looks like it might be doable with the front of the car taken apart)

1) HVAC - my only concern here is removing the heater core. Spohn went ahead and did it, but I've seen conflicting opinions on this in general for a racecar. It's kinda nice to have as a defroster option on some track days, esp. early AM or in weird weather. I'm so excited about ripping so many things out of my car too, though, that I'm likely to do it as well and hope that rain-x / fog-x and paper towels and rolled down windows suffice!

7) Wrapping the headers in-place sounds like a real bitch, even with the radiator, etc out of the way. Also, donno about PPE's coating/metal, but FI recommended against me wrapping mine. Said the wrap would trap condensation against the pipes, eventually drawing out nickel and/or causing corrosion, etc, and you'd just end up having to replace headers faster (this was comparing ceramic coat, uncoated/wrapped, coated/wrapped, and he recommended coated+unwrapped).

Two months now with no heater core. No issues yet with cold weather. But have not been in the rain. I've read noting but horror stories with anti fog solutions. But funny thing is on the BMW and Porsche forums those guys have been using shampoo on the inside of the windshield to stop fog. Apparently a old racer thing. Apply and wipe off.

look at my PPE picture , they had the best coating offered by PPE almost 2 years ago.
They had the DEI titanium exhaust wrap on them since the installation.

this is the result of about 35 000km and about 1000kms of track

they arent too bad and still good for a few years
btw they are Stainless steel, the orange color seem to be the wrap deposit stuck on the pipe.


http://www.the370z.com/members/megan...7-img-1883.jpg


http://www.the370z.com/members/megan...8-img-1884.jpg

What do you guys suggest for disposing of my airbags I've pulled?

Sell them, or... Apply voltage to them in a controlled environment. Be safe.

Just concerned about the legality of reselling them I guess.

Oh, I wasn't away of any legal issues when selling them. I have seen them on eBay before.

After a quick google search I don't see anything that says you cannot sell a used airbag. I did read differing opinions on the handling and shipping of them, though. If you choose to sell them you might want to opt for a local sale.

I offered them to my body shop and they said it was illegal for them to buy them, unless they were for a car that there were no new ones available. I sold one on here, and gave the rest to Z1. I just packed it really, really carefully before shipping.

Latest News, I've got my garage completely cleared out, the Z is in the driveway.

Why? You ask?

Decided on Wednesday that I'm going to epoxy coat my garage floor before I move in new furniture next week (Work benches, storage etc).

So yeah, I pick up the floor sander tomorrow to clean up the surface, then I wash and dry it, hoping to lay down the coating Sunday afternoon.

Pics or it didn't happen. Lol

Ha!

So as you can see from the photo, it looks very dirty. All of that is staining on the concrete. To get rid of that layer of ick, I'm going to take to it with a floor sander and take off a thin layer, then just wash it with the hose, suck up the water with the vac and put a blower and those halogen lights on it to dry it out over 24 hours or so.

Should be a piece of cake.

I used U-coatit. It was expensive, but has held up great for 10 years now. 1st coat of epoxy is greatly diluted with water so it seeps into the concrete, and then a full strength coat after that, followed with urethane topcoat.

If whatever coating you buy is water based, might be a good idea to do the watered down coat first.

I was able to get a two-part epoxy coating for the floor, no water base.

I found a home for the airbags, so that minor headache is out of the way.. tomorrow morning early is GO TIME.

Woo. Z looks so sad outside lmao.

Some photos of the finished product.

Quick and dirty method, so you can still see the big cracks and all that. Don't really care, it's a rental house.

So the seat showed up about a week and a half early!

Check it out. It's the most comfortable chair I've ever sat in.

Tucked back in to the garage after 5 long days... Where it rained no less than 3 times. Ugh. lol

Some random photos, got a workbench, shelving and a tool box today.

Ignore the random power cords hanging lol.

Also a shot of the bad *** jack I got for Christmas.

Got my nismo exhaust off and sold. Put a stock Y pipe on it to protect sensors from backfire on the odd occasion I need to start it between now and when my FI exhaust system arrives.

My steering lock unit failed yesterday in the middle of a Z get together. (had 4 Z's total at one point lol)

I have engineered a solution to it:

http://www.the370z.com/attachment.ph...1&d=1361755417

I'd like to offer a conversion service to people on the forums here.. I imagine all of us track guys would be interested, since it gets rid of the possibility of lockout occurring and drops almost 2 pounds of weight from the front of the car.

Just don't wanna cause problems with not being a 'sponsor'...


More pics here: http://www.the370z.com/nissan-370z-g...ml#post2182326

pretty cool. I went with cutting the brown wire.

Mine failed, so cutting the wire wasn't really an option.

Besides I love removing crap that isn't needed for driving lol.

So the idea with your unit is to fake out the ECU, because it would freak out if we just removed the stock unit and left it out?