GAY The ongoing saga of my stupid car.

Jehannum

Puts the "pro" in procrastination
Jul 24, 2013
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Albuquerque, NM
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In 2005, I bought a 1992 Nissan 300ZX against my better judgement. They're a bit finicky, and came twin turbocharged from the factory.

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God was I fat.
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I drove it through 3 sets of tires and about 20000 miles, before this happened:

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So, I removed the motor

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And then I rebuilt the fucker. I went with all the goodies: big turbos, big fuel injectors, big intercoolers, forged pistons, piston coatings, the works.

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I have a tuner locally, and he tuned it up to 430HP.

There were a few intervening issues in another ~3000 miles, such as a broken clutch, and replacing the front fascia with a 1999 Japanese market one:

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I also removed and reconditioned the wiring harness:

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Then I decided it wasn't pretty enough (in the summer of 2010).
 
So, I tore it all apart again.

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Started stripping the paint.

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Did an etch primer:

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Also ditched the 4 wheel steering (by replacing the rear steering rack with this aluminum bar):

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The last step in priming was some high build urethane primer:

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Then I started painting it red again.

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Then I got cancer and had to take about a 6 month break.

But now I'm back on the wagon, and making progress again.

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After base coat:
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After clear coat:
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And now, after 4 years, I'm almost back to running again. :/
 
Didn't realize those had 4 wheel steering, an option or was it standard?
How much did it reduce the turning radius?
Standard on all turbo models.

I'm not sure how much it helped turning radius. It only went out of phase by 1.5 degrees, so it couldn't have helped much. It also turned the wheels in-phase when at speed (meaning above 5mph). Mostly what it did in my car was leak ATF.
 
I went back to the shop today to roll the car back out to the yard, and the paint is freaking gorgeous. I've still got to color sand and polish, and there's one spot high on the passenger door that has a little lint or hair particle that landed on it, but I won't have to sand anything but that one spot back down below the clear coat, and I'm elated about that fact.

I've still got one more (expensive) trip to the paint shop left, as I burned almost an entire gallon of paint on the body, and I'll need another half gallon to get through the rest, but I'm ecstatic that it went so well. Last time, when I went to the paint store, for a gallon of base coat, a gallon of clear coat, and the attendant chemicals (reducers and activators), it was something like $600.

Still have to paint the fenders, the edges of the T-tops, the rear bumper, and the door handles (oh, and redo the top of the hood, since I didn't get great coverage with the base coat).
 
You'd think that if 4WS was good for something, you'd see it on way more cars.

Seems to be something that came and went in the 80s - I remember the Subaru SVX and Honda Prelude had it also, but it vanished shortly thereafter.
 
You'd think that if 4WS was good for something, you'd see it on way more cars.

Seems to be something that came and went in the 80s - I remember the Subaru SVX and Honda Prelude had it also, but it vanished shortly thereafter.

It's on my car because the 300ZX was supposed to be Nissan's halo car in the '90s. They handed a 386 loaded with AutoCAD to some Japanese engineer in the mid 1980s and said, "go wild". As a result, the 300ZX got a twin-cam, variable cam timing, twin turbo V6 setup like two single turbo inline 3s, 4WS, 4-channel ABS, adjustable suspension, and packaging so tight that torque specs are simply recommendations to back up the crazy Jenga you have to go through to get to the part you want to change.

Why didn't you just put this in the car thread? That's the purpose of genre threads.

Because Asa has a thread for his Rustang, and I felt inadequate.
 
You'd think that if 4WS was good for something, you'd see it on way more cars.

Seems to be something that came and went in the 80s - I remember the Subaru SVX and Honda Prelude had it also, but it vanished shortly thereafter.
I could probably see more of a use with trucks, honestly.
 
It's on my car because the 300ZX was supposed to be Nissan's halo car in the '90s. They handed a 386 loaded with AutoCAD to some Japanese engineer in the mid 1980s and said, "go wild". As a result, the 300ZX got a twin-cam, variable cam timing, twin turbo V6 setup like two single turbo inline 3s, 4WS, 4-channel ABS, adjustable suspension, and packaging so tight that torque specs are simply recommendations to back up the crazy Jenga you have to go through to get to the part you want to change.
I'm surprised the car doesn't have pop-up headlights. Sure, the existing headlights are aerodynamic enough, but why not cram something else in there that's useless/unreliable but cool?
 
Shoulda done it as an article, then @fly would mail you a T-shirt for the thread.
I can see the title now, "How to repaint your own car at great expense of both time and treasure".

I have a stubborn streak about things like this about a mile wide, and I don't know why I didn't just pay someone to do this. :fly:

I guess I still haven't learned the Top Gear lesson about saying, "How hard could it be?"