Next Steps

Once my wilwood parts come in I'll be saving up enough to move forward on the front suspension. Here's what I'm planning:

• 280zx strut housings
• Z31 300zx hubs/rotors
• Wilwood Calipers and pads
• Adjustable front control arms
• Ground Control coilovers and camber plates

After that's done it won't be too long before I swap in the VG30e, but that has it's own set of prerequisites:

• Fuel Cell
• Fuel Pump
  
• Custom Drive Shaft
• Transmission/Wiring harness/ECU
• Radiator and Fan(s)
• Roll Cage

So I guess all in all I'm only about 25-35% "done" with the project. More to come when I get it back on the road and can test and tune the new rear suspension.

It's Alive!

It's finally finally finally alive. I finally ran it around the block. Since my last post I ran the battery relocation kit and re-did all the front brake lines. Don't mind the mis-matched wheels :)

When I pulled back in the brake pedal felt a bit soft, so I started messing with my bias adjuster and that seemed to free up some air bubbles that must have been trapped in the line lock/bias adjuster lines. When I worked my way over to the driver's side rear caliper the Speed Bleeder bleeder value I had installed simply sheared off. Super lame! I have a spare, but I'll need to get a new bleeder set for the caliper since half of the thing is still stuck in there.

Almost there...

So after the last post I picked up a set of Z31 300ZX wheels for very little money. What I didn't realize is that they require a very proprietary Nissan lug nut. My dealer quoted me $22 per nut. After asking around on the bluebird forums, I discovered that there is an alternate nut that works perfectly. The part is 40224-R4670 and is apparently slightly shorter than the 300zx part. They are also available in an open head design (that was previously used on Nissan trucks). That part number is 40224-S2771.

I also discovered why the control arm "pins" (bolts) were my least favorite bolt. Three of them were either slightly worn on the threads or slightly warped, causing the bolt to be stick within the bushing's sleeve. The bolts are still available through Nissan parts as the rear control arm "pins".

Once I figured all that out I bolted up the 300zx wheels before installing the calipers. Looks good! I got the calipers installed and realized that the wheel tapers in and does not fit over the big wilwood calipers. The older design I mentioned in the last post may very well have worked since it's smaller, but this one did not. I ordered two 15mm spacers from this site and the wheels fit very flush, especially with the 215/60/15 300zx tires:
So this basically wraps up the rear suspension rebuild, which consists of the following:

• New diff gasket/fluid
• Poly diff/mustache bar bushings
• Poly crossmember bushigns
• Poly spring isolators/bump stops
  
• Suspension Techniques rear sway bar
• Rear disc brakes with 300zx rotors and wilwood calipers.

Here are a couple more Pictures of how the build came together.

The mustache bar has no internal sleeve and shortened Z car mustache bar bushings

You will absolutely need 15" wheels for this combo.

Last steps are to finish plumbing the front brakes (removing the stock proportioning valve and running new hard lines for the front brakes) and then it should nearly be road worthy. I've also got a set of used Toyo R888 205/50R15 tires on the way for the autocross season. It'll be 13s on the front and 15s on the back for a while...

2.5 Months Later...

So two and a half months later I've been working on the car in little bursts. Unfortunately work has been quite busy lately so I haven't had the chance to make as much progress as I'd like. Here's what's happened so far:

• Discovered the DAMB penultimate crossmember is the way to go unless you want to ship your crossmember to Australia to have Datsport install their kit on your crossmember.
  
• Discovered that my mustache bar has an odd size bushing, so I've purchased and will have to modify the 240/280z mustache bar poly bushing kit in order to make it fit. I'm thinking there will be a write up on this later
• The Engineered Datsun Products Wilwood caliper/300ZX disc combo will not work with 13" wheels, though it seems that it might work (tightly) with some 14" wheels.
• Wilwood's new 120-9689 two piston caliper has superseded the older 120-4060 caliper. I think it looks better to boot:
  

I also picked up a VG30E on the cheap, so I'll be pulling that apart to see if it seems like it'll still run.

Hopefully things will start to calm down for the holiday season so I can put some more time towards this project.

I love my air hammer

I've been busy with lots of things, but a lot of it has been waiting on the new rear poly bushings to come in for the mustache bar and crossmember. The air hammer has been pretty valuable in getting the old bushings out, but it's still one of my least favorite things to do.

Rear End Disassembled!

There it is, off of the car and mocked up on the floor with 40 years of dirt on it. I've ordered the Datsport DIY adjustable rear crossmember kit. I thought about the DAMB crossmember, but I'm working to keep costs down. The dime quarterly DIY method was a contender as well, but the datsport kit seems to be very well engineered and easy to adjust.

Next steps are drum brake removal, cleanup and paint for the control arms. The crossmember will get cleaned up, but not painted until the adjustable kit is mounted up.

Rear End Disassembly Night #4

Pulled out more rear end stuff. Had to cut the exhaust out in three pieces because of how the exhaust shop that did the current exhaust put it all together. Tomorrow evening I should be able to charge the compressor back up and use the impact wrench to get the remaining control arm off. I thought about taking the crossmember off as is, but decided against it since it'd be pretty unwieldy.

The guy just welded the washer to the crossmember instead of using a properly sized washer and lock nuts. Grumble grumble grumble.