The drive from Solvang to our hotel in the LA area was fairly uneventful except for the hour of inexplicable traffic that we sat in for no apparent reason on a Saturday afternoon.  After we checked into the hotel we went out for some dinner at a sports bar so that we could watch the San Jose Sharks game, they won in OT.  Most of us then decided to turn in so that we could be rested for the show on Sunday.

We checked out bright and early and made our way to one of the quaint little towns that speckle the LA area, if you know where to look, to get some breakfast.  With our tanks full we venture on.  When we finally arrive at the venue we are not surprised to see what seems like hundreds of cars in line waiting to get in.  Good thing we ate.  After a good forty-five minutes of inching forward (some of it just coasting down hill with the cars off) we arrived at the front gate.  Every car in sight was a Z.  All years, every possible combination of mods, mild to wild paint jobs, you name it and a Z had it.  This was like a pilgrimage that had reached its destination.

The entire event report and a ton of photos are after the “read more.”  So click and read more.

…[read more]

I’ve been away from the blog for over a week to concentrate on a few other things around the shop but do not worry, WE ARE NOT GOING ANYWHERE, in fact we are doing everything we can to make our customer cars the best they can be.    I’m going to try to get all of you back up to speed on the recent shop happenings today.

I also have a ton of new, and AMAZING, parts for the Behemoth 240z with the RB28 stroker here at the shop.  This will deserve it’s own post so look for that either late today or tomorrow.

Let’s see… where did we leave off?

We installed a Vortech supercharger on  350z last week.  The blower assembly in this project was a sealed unit from Vortech which means that all the fluid required to lubricate the supercharger is self-contained and does not use the engine oil what-so-ever.  This reduces the install hassle greatly on a Z and there seems to be no performance difference.

The only annoyance with this setup is that you now have to change the supercharger oil separately from the engine oil every 7,500 miles.  The normal Vortech kits use engine oil for lubrication so you end up servicing the supercharger every 3,000 miles when you do a standard oil change.

We also installed gauges to monitor the engine vitals and one of our custom ZCG oil cooler systems to keep things in check.  The car has a few other bolt on modifications such as an Apexi exhaust, upper intake plenum, etc. and the new power curve is right where it should be for an early VQ35DE with a Vortech.   The best part about this car was the customer’s face after he came back from the test drive.  He had an ear to ear grin and kept saying to himself that he needed to be careful while he adjusted to the new power.  Awesome.

Another car that we have been plugging away at is a VERY SPECIAL 300zx Twin Turbo.  This car is pristine inside and out and out and has enough one-off modifications to make your pocket book wince.  The engine let go awhile back due to an ignition system failure and over the past few months we have been building the power plant that this car deserves.  The old engine made over 600 wheel horsepower and the new engine should make a decent improvement over that.

This car has so many cool little (and big) things about it that I wouldn’t be doing it justice to leave them out, so there will be more pictures, info, and dyno graphs once this phase of the project nears completion.  We can’t wait!

And last but certainly not least is the Red 280zx restoration….

The interior parts that we have been waiting to get back from the dye shop were picked up last week and they came out great!!  We are planning on clearing part of our week out to focus a generous amount of our attention on finishing this car for good.  As it goes together I’ll be adding pictures right here on ZCarBlog.

Happy Monday to everyone!

Today we are putting the finishing touches on the 3.8L 350z with the GReddy twin turbo kit and I am getting very anxious to take that beast out on the road.  All that is really left is some fine tuning on the Haltech EMS.  On the initial rundown and test drive the fuel map turned out to be quite rich and needed a touch up in the mid-range.  Even with the rich condition, the car is very powerful and has immense amounts of low-end torque.  I don’t have any dyno figures yet because we are updating our Dynojet hardware to make sure that everything is as new as it can be to give our customers the best and most reliable results.  We’ll have to settle for street tuning until the new dyno tower arrives.

Also on the war path for today is the red 280ZX restoration car.  I’ll be picking up the newly dyed interior pieces a little later today and the car should really start flying together.  This project has been with us for a very long time and it’s going to be a little strange once it all comes together.  I washed it this morning and ended up standing there admiring all the work and time that we’ve put into it.  It’s really a special car and we can’t wait to deliver it to the owners.

I have a few more things to fill you in on so check back a bit later in the day!