Mr. G. Brettin's Slow Motion Leg Hump

gbrettin

Caliper assembly completed. I didn't get many photos while I was doing the work this time around because I was busy making DIY assembly video. The end result looks pretty great (to me). The yellow/green works with the darker engine bay and blacked out wheel well.

gbrettin

This video is longer but I think it turned out well.

gbrettin

The heads... Wow. Anything to do with the plenum has been a Greek Tragedy. If you recall, sometime last year I stripped 5 of 10 bolts in the head. The plenum is a floppy donkey and hard to align on the head which caused me to strip the head.

Rusty had a great idea of to drill out the holes and insert steel inserts. I've decided to take it one step further and put studs in as well. This will never happen again and the studs will help tremendously putting on the plenum.

The process has of getting the inserts in has been somewhat of a shi1t show. The holes had to be walked up bit sizes one at a time until I hit the final size specified for the threaded insert. After that, I tapped the hole and then put the insert in with some extra red loctite.

This whole process is a butt clincher. Don't think that I wasn't nerved up doing this. The heads have been decked and also have seat work for the valves. The intake side has oversized valves to boot.

The tap that came with the kit, 60 dollar kit..., broke off in the head due to a bad casting. That was worked out of the head and a bit of time. There is only one hole left that has a bolt broke off in it with a broken bit. I called in my machinist buddy to get that one out. I drew my line.

One head is done and on. Head studs have been torqued down. I'm hoping to have the other head on real soon.

Elmo370z

Pag

ZontheRocks

Damn man! Way to hang in there!

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Rusty

The broken tap could be a whole lot worse. You got off lucky. You never broke a #8-40 tap off in a piece of inconel.

You're making progress. Even tho it feels like you're taking 3 step backwards at time.

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"The Difficult Anytime, The Impossible By Appointment Only"
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madwi

Sure have! EDM maching to the rescue. Burned it out.

Rusty

I had to use a burr bit with a pencil grinder.

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浪人 - 殺し屋
"The Difficult Anytime, The Impossible By Appointment Only"
http://www.the370z.com/members-370z-...o-journal.html

madwi

That sucks goats. Took me about an hour to machine the electrodes and then a few hours to burn the crap out. Since I didnt care too much about finish we turned the juice and feed rates up. I had to make a couple more electrodes as they got smoked pretty fast.

gbrettin

My machinist buddy brought a special bit to the shop and had the hole cleared up in about 5min. 100% worth having him do it. Time vs Skill trade off there. So all that means that I could put the head on and torque it down.

Next move was to put in studs. I cut the head off some bolts and then found out that 30mm was not nearly long enough. I hopped on Amazon and ordered 60mm. The extra length can easily be adjusted down into the head. I can patiently wait for that vs cutting off heads on bolts. One bolt disappear because the cutting disk had a small break and then shot into my chest and rolled off somewhere. I of course was wearing gloves, face shield and safety glasses which helped. Soooooooo, that may have influenced the decision too. lol

After having the engine back together, it looks like the yellow/green on the block isn't overpowering for an accent color. More importantly, it IS an accent color not dominating the entire view. What do you guys think? Too much? Keep in mind I have one more yellow/green item going up top on the valve cover, the smart coil bracket.

My vision is to get Varis Arising 2 side skirts and have a small section of that painted Yellow Green. Only a thin section on the image below. Yeah... I think about this stuff way too much.

gbrettin

Threaded my 60mm studs in with a liberal application of Red Loctite. The intake is still a PITA but... less of one now. I ordered some 20mm threaded nuts because the little baby nuts are impossible to tighten down.

Parts have been put back on the engine. I did a quick inspection of the water pump and need to order some NPT to AN bungs for that. No biggie. Engine is looking pretty close to complete now.

I'm moving parts back into the engine bay now, starting with the Clearview filter. Brake booster will need to be put back in along with the power steering line.

gbrettin

Put the brake booster and master cylinder back in it's home. Being under the dash with broad shoulders was a real treat with having cluster phobic issues. I was wedged in upside down under the dash with the door cracked open with extremely limited arm movements. I was pretty happy being done with that...

I then moved onto simpler pastures and put my coil pack mounts back on my valve covers. Shockingly, the powder coating is almost the same. I did the shade from memory blending paints. The accent color is the perfect amount, not too much. Yeah it's a loud color... but this whole thing is ridiculous so why not.

I was about to put the engine in after I did my power steering cross over line but hit a snag. The Sikky line is not at all low profile for my needs; however, the line going to the PS pump looks top notch with AN lines and such. I reached out to the LS Z/G swap community and received a few suggestions from people. There's a guy in California that works on drift cars that is about to do a low mount option for the 370z. I told him to stop f*cking around and take my money so he is going to MAYBE have something made next week (as seen in the picture). I also talked to Bryan Settle and he said that I could have clocked my PS rack... You know, I could have used my Morosso pan if I knew that? 100% would have done that. I'm not doing that this late in the game. Pshhhh. Pshhhhhhhhh. PSHSHHHHSHS.....

lol

On a different note, I've ordered my Black Sheep Industries 45mm waste gates. They have been sold out since November. The owner reached out to me and told me they were in stock. I had to snap them up quick because I suspect they will go back out of stock in short order. The BSI. wastegates are really cool because they have a piston instead of a diaphragm and are pretty much bullet proof for my needs. I was going to use VS racing... but... that's made out of Chinesium and have had some pretty bad failures with people. I wanted the piece of mind.

Last item. This one is a pretty big bomb. I was torn on what to exactly do with my rear diff and axels. I have my answer. I am a proud owner of a Winters Quick Change rear diff. This will address any gearing issues and breaking issues with my rear end. My specific Winters has ALL the bells and whistles for hardening. I fell into it. My buddy was going to use it for his sandrail but had to go a different direction. I put a message out to MA Motorsports about the rear subframe. I'm not going to get too excited about this because I can't use it until next year. I have other commitments with my car.

gbrettin

A decision was made to put the engine in despite not having the PS crossover line. I figured it's going to work or... I have a lot more work in front of me. SO the engine went in... but the motor mounts are on backwards.

I had a few people helping me and we all agreed to comeback the next day.

gbrettin

Engine pulled... Mounts fixed... Engine placed.

lol

The accessory bracket had to come off just so I could put a 1" NPT block off on the water pump. A 1" NPT to -16 went into the top of the water pump fine but the fitting I ordered for the bottom doesn't work because the nut hits the sides of the housing. SO, Mezeire has a special 1"NPT to -16 long neck that has to be used for that. Guess I'll order that and a 90deg elbow (so that the coolant will be directed to the swirl pot)

The steel threaded inserts for the aluminum head, stainless steel 60mm studs and 20mm nuts made life a little easier putting the plenum on... But it's still a PITA.

A lot of the stuff made it back into the engine bay. Man, the colors look awesome in person.

IG video that I thought was funny:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CMx0N9Nn..._web_copy_link

https://www.instagram.com/p/CMx3MO9H..._web_copy_link

cv129

Ryobi fan club will worship you if they see the engine bay picture

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