I hate wiring.

Maybe that isn’t exactly what I mean.  Allow me to explain.  If I could be 100% sure that electricity would behave as intended, I’d love wiring.  Unfortunately, cold solders don’t give any indication that they’re causing a problem until you put power through them.  Incorrectly grounded circuits mysteriously fail, only giving feedback when you dig the multimeter out of the bottom of your toolbox, find a new battery (because the old one died since I last used it), and start poking around for the problem.

A better way to rephrase my initial statement is:

I hate trying to diagnose electrical issues that I didn’t cause even more than those that I caused by my own hand.

The main circuit powers my switch panel, and nothing more.  Each power switch controls the power to a circuit.  Each control switch operates the controls for that circuit.  After every switch is an LED indicator light (so I don’t have to go around with a test light after something fails, and because lights are pretty).  From there, a fused relay will be triggered and the circuit component will receive power.

The most difficult part of rewiring was figuring out what actually needed to be re-engineered and what could stay as-is.

My power circuits are:

1. Master (switch panel)
2. Fuel pump
3. Ignition coil
4. Starter
5. Radiator fan
6. Accessories (alternator trigger, running lights, gauges, etc)

My control circuits are:

1. night-time lights (high/low)
2. directionals (l/r)
3. horn
4. wipers (high/low)

The relays will be constant-hot, but the switches are shut off when the master switch is flipped.  The relays I purchased were a kit of 10 for $25 and are standard Bosch-style, and I’m using the 87/86/85/30 setup for these.  In my configuration, they will be wired as:

• 87 — component to receive power
• 86 — ground
• 85 — signal
• 30 — power input

Bosch relays are amazing in the number of ways they can be wired up.  Here’s a great writeup on how they work, and how you can make them work for you: http://www.bcae1.com/relays.htm

Theory you can live by

A proper-sized 6-sided closed wrench, a can of penetrating lubricant, and a healthy dose of soak-time can solve most ‘old car’ problems.  Having the right tools and spending time to prepare will always save time in the long run.  Nearly any bolt that’s stuck can be wrenched free and replaced, no matter how bad the corrosion has become.  I expected all the bolts that hold the front suspension to be stuck, seized, or otherwise problematic.  I let all the nuts on top of the strut towers soak in penetrating lubricant overnight, and came back in the morning.

The problem

My car presented me with a completely new problem.  All the nuts spun freely, but only some of them came off.  The top of the bolt sticks up through the strut tower with a nut on top, but the bottom is implanted inside a rubber cushion on top of the suspension’s coil spring.  Without removing those nuts, there is no way to remove the spring.  A few minutes later, the tired old Sears compressor was firing on all… cylinder, filling its tank.  On the end of its air hose, the die grinder spun up to life, and chewed away a chunk of the bolt and nut.  At this point, I was still hoping to separate the bolt and nut.

Standard method of removing a bolt

Most mechanics know that to remove a seized nut from a stud, you simply secure the stud while the nut is twisted free.  Because of the rubber stop, I couldn’t get at the other end of the stud to hold it in place, so I cut a slot in the rubber to wedge a screwdriver into the stud and hold it in place while turning the nut with a wrench.  What felt like the next few hours of toil turned out to be less than 10 minutes, and I was left with a pair of broken screwdrivers and frustration boiling up inside me.

However, there’s no way I’ll let a simple nut prove to be more persistent than I am.

Modified method of removing a (modified) bolt

The compressor and die grinder went back into full service, and I split the nut down the middle.  I didn’t have to cut into the stud, though. Picture, if you will, the following: A rubber band is wrapped around a roll of paper, and is securing the paper.  If you cut that rubber band, it no longer has enough force to stay in place and all the paper unrolls, free to go where physics asks it to.  If I cut the nut, I’d be able to simply take its two halves off the stud, and may even be able to re-use the stud.

Small gains are big rewards by themselves

Although this doesn’t seem like a lot of work, it did take an hour just to remove that one bolt, and I haven’t even removed the suspension yet.  Old cars can have hundreds of small issues like this, causing restoration and modernization efforts to take weeks longer than they were meant to.  The only way to get through it is dedication and making sure that every moment spent leads to a result.  Every step I take, and every turn of the wrench has a point and I know that in the not-too-distant future I’ll get to drive this car.  I’m one step closer to that end goal, with my new springs installed on the front and replaced shock bumpers on top of them (with new nuts on the tops of the shock towers).

That’s what continues to drive me every day.

It doesn’t feel like I’ve accomplished much these past few weeks, but apparently I got quite a lot done.  More in-depth posts are scheduled for this month on the changes I’ve made.

Engine

The new injectors are installed (except the one that has a broken bolt-hole on the intake manifold) and the wiring connectors are all soldered in and ready to be hooked up.  I’ve decided that I’m going to put the ECU in the driver’s footwell, along the left-hand side.  Other than that, the engine hasn’t seen much work.  I have yet to install the turbo and intercooler and ductwork to connect them, then attach all the wiring and cross my fingers while I start it.

Transmission

I installed the 5speed transmission I finally sourced (that wasn’t easy), but I have to pull it off the engine and reinstall it.  I apparently installed the clutch throwout bearing (the part your clutch pedal actually moves to engage/disengage the clutch) incorrectly, and I’m going to have to reinstall it.  I may have even used an incorrect throwout bearing, since I had a few lying around when I installed the transmission.  For now I’m happy to have the transmission mounted because it holds the engine upright and makes pushing the car around much easier.

Suspension

I found a good deal on some springs at our last meet and started installing them.  However, one of the nuts on the front-driver’s strut is stuck to the stud and still spins freely.  It seems that the rubber bump stop that the studs are connected to is falling apart enough that this one has nothing to grab.  I’ll have to just cut the nut off entirely.

I also picked up some new front brake calipers.  The main advantage of these calipers is going to be consistency and response.  They use two small piston to squeeze the rotor instead of just one large piston.  They were a snap to mount up, using the stock rotors and brake lines.  I did take the opportunity to replace the brake lines with the stainless lines I ordered awhile back, though.  Stainless lines offer increased brake response as well, so the car should theoretically feel pretty snappy when the brake pedal is depressed.  I have not taken the rear brakes off yet, since I’m quite sure that’ll be an adventure all on its own, and I don’t need to open that can of worms just yet.

The front wheel lugs that I installed don’t fit the lug nuts I have lying around, and apparently no local auto parts stores stock the correct 12×1.25 threads.  I’ll order a new set this weekend, and should be able to wheel the car around again after that.

Body

I finally broke down and started fixing some of the body work on the s30.  The plan is to give it a proper paint job when it’s back on the road.  If anybody’s interested, I could write up how to perform paint prep correctly, but there’s already a lot of documentation that covers it all over the internet.  No reason for me to reinvent the wheel, unless I can do it better.  I’m not putting down any money saying that I can.

I picked up some new doors so I’ll be able to open them from both the inside and outside, I picked up a set of floors, and I got ahold of a hatch tray that was completely rotted.  Once I weld those in, the only remaining rust spots will be the stock battery tray and the passenger’s dogleg.  Neither of those are structurally problematic so I’ll most likely leave them as-is until they get under my skin enough to force me to change them.

Ideally, I’d like to finish my roll cage by the time I have this on the road.  I have a lot of work left to do for that, so it’s unlikely but I’m setting my sights high and I’ll do my best to get there.

Late last night I finished rewiring the injectors I bought from odistiger, replacing the cracked old connectors with fresh new ones, soldering them in, and heat-shrinking the connections.  I also took a closer look at the wiring harness, and have to wonder what the hell Nissan was thinking.  There are butt-connected wires for the + side of all the injectors, and it’s just a messy hack-job that’s a sorry excuse for wiring under the factory heatshrink.  I’m going to have to clean it up a bit, but there’s really only so much that I can actually fix in there.  The wiring harness is simple and straightforward though, so I may just rewire it from scratch using the stock end connectors.

I excitedly started attaching my injectors to the intake manifold, hopeful that I’d get to hear the engine turn on its own power.  Each injector has a mounting adapter and two screws that hold it onto the intake manifold, and ensure a tight connection.  You can clearly see properly mounted fuel injectors on my intake manifold in the picture to the right.  On my intake manifold, one of the screws had been torn out of the intake manifold at some point, ripping the threads out with it.  I filled the hole with jbweld and will re-tap it as soon as I get my hands on a tap kit.  Until then, I only have 5 injectors and can’t hear the engine fire.

I’ll be sure to get some more pictures of the final setup once the jbweld hardens.

Quite a bit has happened since my last post on the s30.  There’s a new engine in there, a seat rail, the suspension is all attached, the paint is cleaned up, and some miscellaneous other parts have been added as well.  My plan involves getting the car worthy to drive cross-country by the end of September, which may end up becoming a tall order with the amount of work remaining.

You have my apologies for not updating the project in awhile, I wanted to wait until I had it running, and that kept getting put off more and more (feature creep).  This is a big mother of an update and I’m sorry for the length, but expect shorter, more regular posts in the next few weeks.

Engine

The turbocharged 6 cylinder has made its way from the 280zx into the engine bay of my 240z, and is awaiting some wires and fuel lines to be hooked up.  Since I’m converting the fuel system from carburetted to fuel injected, I need to install a stronger fuel pump to keep the fuel properly pressurized.  I’ve taken the fuel pump off the 280zx that the l28et engine came out of to install in my fuel line running from the gas tank to the engine.

I have two sets new, larger fuel injectors headed this way.  They’re from a Mitsubishi Eclipse, which is a 4cylinder, so I had to order two sets and will have two left over.  They’re rated at 450cc/min @ 43psi, which means that as long as they’re in working order, they can fill a 450cc container in one minute if the fuel pressure leading to them is 43psi.  A fuel pressure regulator offers primitive tuning for that part of the system, since I can adjust the pressure and therefore the amount of fuel they spit into the engine.

I also received a Turbonetics .68ar t3/t4 hybrid turbocharger.  I won’t go into all the nitty gritt details, but that basically means it can compress air more efficiently than the stock turbo, and squeezes more air into the engine (which requires more fuel to be supplied so it doesn’t run rich or lean).  Since it has a t3 ‘hot side’ (turbine that mates to the exhaust) and a t4 ‘cold side’ (turbine powered by the ’hot side’), it spools up quickly and doesn’t waste any time generating power.  Unfortunately, the hot side doesn’t mate up to my stock downpipe flange (the exhaust piece that connects the turbocharger to the pipes that lead out the back of the car) so I may have to have a new one made or modify the flange that the stock turbocharger used.  The ’cold side’ is also large enough that it actually bumps against the exhaust manifold, which means I’ll need to make a spacer to put it a little farther out.  Otherwise, it’s in great working order with no shaft play.

A blowoff valve is a turbocharger accessory that protects the cold side of the turbo from itself.  When the driver lets up on the throttle, the butterfly valve in the throttle body closes.  The turbocharger doesn’t know to stop spinning yet, and continues to squeeze air into the ductwork that connects the turbocharger to the intake manifold.  That puts extra strain on the turbocharger, and builds up excess air pressure in the ductwork.  Once the throttle is opened again, all that air rushes into the engine, but extra fuel is not injected for it to mix with.  This creates a temporary ‘lean’ condition and can overheat the engine pretty quickly.  A blowoff valve allows that extra air to recirculate into the turbocharger again or vent to the atmosphere.  There are heated discussions as to which method is ‘best’ but I plan to put in a little extra work and route my blowoff valve into the turbocharger inlet.

Since this turbocharger did not come with a built-in wastegate, I ordered a 60mm wastegate to control how much power is assigned to spinning the turbine.  A wastegate is essentially an air valve that is activated when enough pressure is generated to compress a spring inside it.  This particular spring allows the wastegate to open at 4 pounds of boost, which is low even by stock standards (the l28et allows 7 pounds of boost from the factory, still considered conservative).

To work with the wastegate, I ordered a simple manual boost controller.  A boost controller allows fine control of the wastegate, and therefore the amount of air is compressed.  Once the wastegate opens, it allows exhaust gases to bypass the turbine, capping off how much your air is compressed.  The boost controller simply allows you to procrastinate the activation of the wastegate until more air is compressed.

Also, I now have an intake manifold with a slightly larger throttle body (60mm).  On l-series engines, the intake manifold is often the biggest limiting factor for performance but having a larger inlet to the plenum is a good idea.  This particular manifold is beautifully simple, with no EGR controls or excess vacuum plugs attached to it, and it leaves me with a spare to mess up when I machine it for the new fuel injectors.

Since the s30 is not equipped with power steering, I needed to find a way to block off the power steering pump mounting space.  It’s entirely exposed to the engine and would spew my oil all over the fender well if I didn’t work something out.  After purchasing a pile of tools (most of which didn’t even get used), I made a small steel plate and fitted it with a rubber gasket.  Rubber isn’t the best material for sealing something like this, so I may end up making a new gasket from RTV sealant and some non-corrugated cardboard (the stuff cereal boxes are made of).  We’ll see how this holds up first, though.

Transmission

After looking around for quite a bit, I finally found a 5speed transmission.  It came out of a Datsun truck, which means that it’s a very short transmission, designed for hauling rather than speeding and cruising.  The big difference between the 4speed transmissions I have and the 5speed I purchased is that all manual 4speeds have no overdrive (cog that is less than a 1:1 ratio).  The 5speed will have overdrive, but it will most likely be a short overdrive.  To offset that, I’m keeping my stock r180 rear differential, which is a 3.364:1 ratio.  Using the Transmission Calculator (that site is no longer there, so I’ve removed it) and assuming the 5th gear in this is somewhere near the factory 5speed (0.864), I can determine that my cruising rpm will be somewhere near 3300rpm @ 80mph.  If this has a higher 5th gear (such as 0.9, which is very rare to see), I may be closer to 3500 but cannot be higher than 3700rpm @ 80mph (since that is what 4th gear is, and 4th gear is 1.0:1).

This is all theoretical, and we’ll see how the transmission actually fits in a car it’s not designed for.  I’ll put some time into mounting it tonight, but that will definitely depend on the time I have available to me since I’m on call at work this week.

The three 4speed transmissions are going up for sale, and will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis.  If you’re interested in one or all three, leave a comment!

Cosmetic

A front air dam and front bumper, along with some paint in the interior and engine bay have cleaned up the look of the car a fair amount.  The seat rail I ordered for a 260z apparently has a different bolt pattern than for a 240z, so I’m going to have to fabricate something new to get my seats mounted up.

To activate the electronic fuel pump and electric fan, I made a switch panel out of some sheet metal I had lying around.  It’s just a simple square design with holes in 4 corners to screw it in where the stock radio was.  I haven’t decided what switch to put in the right-most hole, but for now I think I’ll just add a dummy switch so it doesn’t look like there’s just a hole there.

Coming Soon!

Finally, it’s starting to come together and look like a car.  I shouldn’t need to order too many more parts, but I expect to replace the bushings and brake pads (possibly rotors) before leaving for the cross-country trip.

By the end of the weekend, I plan to have the transmission and seats installed, and hope to be able to fire the engine up.  Once the 280zx is out of my garage, I can lift the car, overhaul the brakes, and see what the suspension looks like.  Until next time!

When I purchased my Datsun 240z, it didn’t come with any keys.  The ignition had been hacked and was stuck in the ”on” position, meaning that the only way to start the car was to hot-wire the starter, and the only way to turn it off was to unplug the keyed ignition switch.  Since that’s not exactly ideal for a daily driven car, I picked up a ’new’ ignition off a 280zx.  Unfortunately for my plan of simply swapping them out, the 280zx has a narrower steering column and the key switch didn’t bolt into the stock location.

Step 1: Shopping

I got a little creative, and went shopping for a new solution. Since I hate screwdrivers and consider allen heads to be a much better solution in pretty much every situation, I picked up some allen bolts that were the right pitch for the SIDES of the ignition key switch.  The bolts I purchased are a little bit too long, so I added a nut as a spacer/washer so I could get a nice tight fit to whatever I decided to attach it to.

For tools, all I needed was the allen key that went with that bolt, a wrench to tighten down the nut, a Ryobi 18v Impact driver (love that thing!), and a carbide stepper bit.

Step 2: Decisionmaking

Next, I had to figure out where this key would go.  That was definitely the difficult part.  Since the plan is to make this my daily driver, the key hole had to be hidden but accessible.  I’d rather not have thieves be able to just punch a screwdriver in there and fire up the car, but I also need to be able to jump in and drive without much messing around.

I finally decided to install it under the dash on the left-hand side somewhere, and was ready to fabricate a new bracket when I realized that I didn’t need the hood latch.  I use hood pins for simplicity, and don’t have the stock hood latch assembly attached.  This was a perfect way to repurpose it.

Step 3:  Modifications

I used the stepper bit in my drill to hog out one of the bolt-holes for the hood latch lever.  It’s a pretty simple process that only takes a few minutes, but make sure you keep re-checking the hole size to your bolt size.  There’s nothing worse than hogging out a hole too big so it’s unusable!

After drilling the hole, I held the ignition switch up against it and threaded the allen bolt into the side of the switch.  This was by far the most difficult part of the whole process, and took about 10 minutes, including a test-fit.  I did eventually get it threaded and tightened down, though.  Just stay persistent.

Step 4: Final Assembly and hookup

Mounting the key and hooking up the wires was a pretty simple affair.  Both ignition switches use the same wires in the same place, so it was pretty much just a matter of cutting back a little bit of the wiring cover so everything fit nicely.

I did need to rewire my horn wiring, since it simply won’t reach.  The stalk controls haven’t been tested yet, but I believe the ignition and stalk use a different positive lead and ground, so there shouldn’t be any troubles other than the horn issue.

The s130 with my donor motor rolled off the trailer on Monday, and we grunted and groaned until it was safely in my garage.  It’s in the process of being torn down, piece by piece, and will be parted out and scrapped.

I get an l28et out of this deal as well as rear disk brakes for the s30 project so it worked out nicely for me.

Nearly every vehicle I’ve ever purchased came to me because the previous owner ran out of money/time/inertia and could not finish their project.  A 90% project sells for significantly less than a 100% project.  Non-running cars that include nice parts needed to make it run are not worth a running car.  Here are a few guidelines to keep yourself from letting one of your projects to be swept under the rug.

Save money first

Paying for a car project while living paycheck-to-paycheck is an easy way for a project to hit a major roadblock and get stuck.  It’s also easy to do things wrong because of lack of funds to do them properly.

SmartyPig is a great free online service that helps organize your finances.  It creates an online savings account that automatically deducts money from any bank account you set up and notifies you when you’ve reached your Goal.  It makes saving completely automatic, and I don’t even notice the decrease in general spending money.  I like to figure out what I’ll need for all the parts, fluids, pieces, and do-dads, add 10% to that cost for unforseeable issues, and set up a SmartyPig goal with that amount in mind.  As I’m saving, I’ll keep an eye open for killer deals that I can snatch up.  When I receive the email that my goal is complete and my online piggy bank is full, I make a bulk order of everything I’ve come up with that I need.  I also arrange to borrow, rent, or buy any tools that I’ll need that I don’t already own.  Then I call in whatever favors owed to me for friends I’ve helped while I was saving, and spend some time wrenching.  If I break a stud, shear some threads, rip a hose, or do any of the idiotic things that often happen when working on old cars, I tap into the extra 10% I had set aside and send someone to the store for me (I don’t want to lose my momentum, and my car is probably up on jackstands so it’s not driveable).

Fight ‘Feature Creep’

Feature Creep is a software development term used to describe the addition of new features that weren’t in the original plan for a finished product.  Also known as ‘While I’m at it’ syndrome, this has been the death of many many projects.  Everybody wants their project to be the best that it possibly can, but Feature Creep shows a lack of focus with a project.  Stick to the original plan, it was a good one.  If you find that you absolutely MUST have a new feature, add it to the next ‘phase’ of your project and don’t worry about it until you’re finished with what you’re working on.

Budget for help

Somehow, I’m still surprised when I find myself squinting under the flourescent lights in my garage at 3am and realize that what I’m trying to do requires another set of hands.  Plan to have a friend around for a day of work, and make sure your budget allows to make the experience pleasant.  Buy them lunch, have some music playing while you work, and offer your time in exchange for theirs.  They’ll be much more willing to help next time if they have fun memories of the epic project weekend they had last month, rather than the hellish time the transmission wouldn’t come off and nobody ate lunch that day.

Plan your purchases

It’s not hard to figure out what you’ll need ahead of time.  Buying parts/supplies in local stores costs more than ordering parts online.  When ordering parts online, combined shipping further reduces the price.  Following that logic, it pays to plan ahead.  Figure out what bolts, washers, gaskets, sealants, lubricants, priming fluids, and everything else you’ll need in advance.  Put them aside in a pile, and make sure you have everything you’ll need to actually complete the project before you even begin.

Common example:

A few months ago, a friend of mine came to me to ask why his brakes were squealing and if I could help him perform a brake job.  I explained that I had nothing in my garage but a jack, a set of jackstands, and a set of brake wrenches.  I made the mistake of assuming he would plan ahead, but he showed up a week later with a bag from Autozone.  I pulled his wheels, took the calipers off, and replaced the pads.  One of the rotors had deep grooves in it and was mildly warped, so I sent him out to get another (in the spare car).  He returned and I replaced that rotor for him.  I asked him for the brake fluid, so we could bleed the air out of his lines and get the spongy feel out of the brake pedal.  Again, he had to go to the local shop and buy something else.

At the end of the day, he spent just over $275 for a brake job.  Admittedly, it was a pretty thorough job, with both rear drums rebuilt, all the lines bled, a new e-brake cable, pads, and a new rotor, but I decided I’d price it out online for him afterward.  Summit Racing had higher-quality parts available for $180 after shipping.  He could have bought TWO rotors (just in case) for less money than it cost him to fund our day-long project, it would have saved me hours of waiting for him to run to/from the store, and he wouldn’t have had to go to a single store.  The parts would have been delivered to his front door or mine (whichever was more convenient).

When purchasing new parts, it’s much more financially sound to order them online.  The downside is that you need to have your purchases planned out in advance, and need to be willing to wait until everything arrives to begin.

Plan the broad strokes of your project

Have a solid plan in place for what you’re going to do, how you’re going to do it, and when you’ll be acting on it.  The more time you have before you begin, the more you can bargain hunt, watching eBay and Craigslist and Amazon for the killer deals on used/aftermarket parts that will get you to the end goal.  I use a free online service called Pivotal Tracker for my cars.  It’s officially designed to be used for software development, but I’ve found that all projects are similar in that there are tasks to do and requirements to get them done.

A little extra effort in the planning process can cut down the stress and cost to complete it, and makes it more likely to finish.

Update: recent engine bay picture added below.

My old engine bay was looking pretty pathetic, so I decided to spend some time to cleanup this weekend.

I finished painting the valve cover, and it came out just great!  Here’s a before/after comparison so you can see what a difference $5 in paint made.

In fact, I was so happy with the results that I decided to tear off the intake manifold and carbs to paint them.  That turned out to be a lot more work than was expected, and I ended up with a lot more sheared bolts than was expected.  Along the way I removed the EGR (exhaust gas recirculation) and Air Pump from the setup.  This is a controvertial move, but I feel that the benefits of simplicity and a slight performance increase outweigh the negligible cleanup of air (just having a well-tuned carburettor does more for emissions than EGR.

The parts are still drying, since high-temp paint either requires baking or a long chemical dry period, so I’ll post updates next weekend.  In case there’s any confusion, everything I paint ends up matte black.  Here’s the current state of things, after a couple cans of degreaser and some serious cleaning.  I suppose I’ll paint the head+block while I have everything exposed, at the very least it’ll keep it from rusting.

Directly after the engine gets reassembled, I’ll be cleaning up the wiring, possibly tucking it between the engine bay walls and fender (above the fender well).  That’ll require removing the fenders, which means more headless bolts.  I’m not sure I’m ready to dive into another bolt-shearing project so soon after wrenching studs in half on the engine, though.

This project is going through three phases.  First, I’m cleaning up the rust, getting it running, and tearing through all the regular maintenance that it’s been missing for the past five years of not running.  Get it registered and insured, and slap my new tires on it, and it should be driveable.

Specifically, I need to replace the seats, both clutch cylinders, the exhaust, headlights, and the ignition wiring to have this Z running.  See the rest of this project here:

http://www.drivendaily.org/category/projects/s30-projects