Okay, here is the basics of the build. Bought the car with the intentions of stripping it down as far as I could go all the while staying street. The Z's plan was to become the lightest 300ZX that I could put together for weekend track usage.

Here is the original pics of the car bought out of Galveston, Texas.

So after getting the Z back to San Antonio, I drove it around for a while before fully hatching my plan of total tear down. Then.....we started the fun.

All the interior went first. Then on to sound deadening removal.

Tools of the trade. Dry ice, chisel and a hammer.

Coming....

Coming....

Getting there.

Finally done with that. Now onto gutting the engine out and a few other things.

We get the NA motor out to prep the engine bay for deletion of all the following throughout the car - AC condensor, AC plumbing, all emission systems, power antenna, rear wiper, rear water tank, heater core and tubing, stereo and all speakers, non needed interior and begin to cut out all the brackets in the engine bay we will not need any longer.

For example, bye bye battery box tray.

We opted to run thru panels for the battery terminals to both mount our lightweight battery inside and also to be able to move weight out from the front and more towards the rear over the wheels for better weight distribution which will lead to traction....hopefully.

 

This is the first I've seen of this project Mike. Oh the day we debut the NA build.

They just let anybody in here, huh?

Good to see you've come over to this board, Mitch. Yes, the 300hp NA will be amazing. I gotta get this project back from paint and then we start putting the hammer down on that project. Already stock piling parts for that build.

Keep us posted on your great build!

i should be down in your neck of the weeks in 2-3 weeks. I'll stop by and pick up some more parts for the project. I just did a new set of TQ plates for the VG...I have to make an index plate to center the bores for Jays O-ringing. We are going copper my friend. I will most likely make a post here in a few days with a lot of images on this build. But I'm eager to see your TT build and extremely eager to begin working on Project NA.

LOWFAT is coming along. But you better believe I am ready to get started on the NA build.

Shoot me a call when you get this way south, buddy.

Have some more head cores and other cores for you as well. By the way, you done cleaning my block (aka, table)????

Good deal. Yep table is done. Looks nice and clean now.

Thanks for posting. I'm looking forward to seeing more pictures and learning a few things along the way.

Definitely in for more updates, photos of this build.

I didn't see the article about the filler foam. What is it's use/purpose in this case?

Kojima had an article that was called "Tales of Mystery Foam" or something like that within the SCC Project 300ZX build. I took a note from it and tried it for myself in the lasts 3 projects that I've had and I've been nothing but impressed. A very inexpensive way to stiffen a chassis while not adding in much weight at all. The original company ITW Foamseal is no longer around, a company called FOMO emerged selling their same line of products. I got in touch with their consultant some years ago for a magazine article that I put together for ZSPORT Magazine which never saw the light of day due to the switch over from ZSPORT to what is now Nissan Sport Magazine.

Since then Grainger is now the sole distributor for FOMO. I've been impressed with all their kits and the evolution of the product even from the days of Mike Kojima using them in the SCC days. I was planning on putting together another article but locally me and the local San Antonio club are busy putting together ZCON09. I think once I get through this I will be doing How-to article and product reviews full time again for the magazines once again.

I'll see if I can dig up some pics of the foam instillation on LOWFATZ for you.

Hello fellow texan my question to you is how do you get so good at working on cars? Im a decent mechanic i work at a shop but i wanna do this stuff.

My only advice is don't be afraid of anything. If someone else out there can do it...then with enough practice and/or training you can too or come close. Everyone has a starting point, it's how far you get from that starting point that determines your level of skill.

Other than that just always be willing to help out with new aspects of a project. That has helped me the most. Hands on training.

Good luck and keep trying.

So from here I plan to simplify the engine bay, deleting as many brackets as I can and plugging holes for systems that are either simplified down/relocated/deleted entirely. All the while prepping for paint.

Sorry for the bad pics, crappy camera.

Finally it is stripped down and I am laying paint. Low Gloss Black from Hot Hues. Easy paint to work with and very forgiving.

The area around the tray we cut out with the new terminals.

Overall shots.

Now that I had finished up with the engine bay deletes I wanted to get started on the structure foam before I shipped the car out for paint and body work.

I ordered the foam from Fomo (yes, they bought out ITW Foamseal for those that know something about this product) via Grainger. Grainger now stocks the foam and is a great choice to add to any Z32 for a little bit of extra rigidity at almost no weight additions to the vehicle.

Here are some of the prep and mid way shots.

Here is another in the process shot. The foam has a good expansion rate of nearly 3 times it's spray rate so it rises up quickly. Not fun stuff to get in your hair, so protection is HIGHLY recommended. I'll put together a HOW-TO post on this later on.

Finished product.

Don't mind the pink lines, those are just the seam welding line layouts that I had in mind.

And our quest for weight savings ventures on.

We got so crazy with saving weight we began to play with different parts from different year Z's to shave even more weight.

Here we took the cross bar (under dash) and weighed the two to see how much we actually saved by going to a NA 2+2 coupe bar.

Here you the difference in pounds....not ounces!!! We did this with a lot of parts on the car, throughout the whole build.

An odyssey battery will now be our work horse for the kick on duties from now on. It's lighweight and packs a punch. It also has a lightweight tray that also came with it. Picked this up from Summit Racing for a good price. Plan to lighten up that try by punching holes through it and dimply dying it. Crazy....maybe....but we gotta go there.

Stock mirros are power and way too heavy. The plan was Craft Square but damn those mirrors are expensive. Ordered a set of Bomex mirrors, should be here soon. Lightweight and should shave us a few pounds over the stock mirrors and their heavy metallic bases.

Here you see how heavy these truly are.

We opted to kill the hood latch, hardware, cable, connections and even cut the bracket out under the dash to shave as much weight as possible. Aerocatch hood pins will be our hood unlock/lock system. We shaved nearly 10lbs collectively here.

As we went through the entire car, I sent some of the brackets that I opted to keep off to powdercoat to pretty them up a bit. These were about all the only brackets that we will have left when everything is said and done other than a few others. These brackets tend to rust and I had a minute to send em off....came out good.

At this point Charles Parks from Powertrix stepped in and offered up a Carbon Fiber Hatch that he'd been sitting on. Charles makes a lot of trick parts and is a track enthusiasts to boot so he knows what it takes to make speed. I received the hatch in a piano sized box and quickly opened up to find this amazing part.

Fit was pretty damn good considering it's a race only part. Props again to Cparks for stepping up on helping me shed even more poundage.

Now that we had all of our panels in, it was time to detrim and prep to send it off to body work. By prepping a lot of the car, I saved a lot of change myself.

The body was good but in no way perfect. I wanted the body stream lined and free of all the dents and dings from years of abuse. If you look closely, you can see a lot of circled damage area. I also opted to delete both lines and things as I may try to fashion a custom side skirt/rear bumper air guide later to help stream line aerodynamics.

From here I shipped the car off to paint to have it started on. Little did I know I would primarily be the one doing all the body work anyways. Anyhow, there it went.

At this time ZCON in San Antonio was about 6 months away. Luis and myself, along with all the local San Antonio club guys were going out of our minds setting up ZCON and getting all the details loaded down as well as all the other BS that I don't even want to mention. Needless to say it was crazy. I turn the car in and it just sat at the paint shop till I got around to getting over there and putting in some of the wrench time to it.

I get around to making it out to the shop just after ZCON finished up.

After much labor and many many hours prepping, blocking, re-blocking and long blocking the body we get an extremely straight body. It came out cleaner than I thought it would.

From here, it was time for the last of the body panels to be fit and prepped onto the body.

Charles Parks at Powertrix again came through for me and hooked me up with a stock Kuruma fiberglass wing to aid in some down force. I installed it onto the CF hatch he supplied me earlier in the year. Took some massage but all in all a good fit.

From this point we got a lot of our body panels straight and the car for the most part was layed out how I wanted it now it was time to start the last of the tear down to get ready for ..... THE ROLLCAGE.

From here I pulled off the doors to pull the glass assemblies. Everything from glass, scissor lift, motors wiring was all taken out to both shave weight and get the doors prepped for the NASCAR bars that were going to part of the custom cage we were going to have installed soon.

This for the record....sucked. I had black tar all over me by the end of the day. The wiring was complicated and stupid. I had never taken a door apart  and it seemed to go on for hours.

Here is when we started. Just removed the trim and hadn't even started really.

Getting there.

Getting there.

Getting there.

Yahtzee!!!! Finally get the door back in with everything removed. But we will go deeper into this and take it a step further later. But good enough to get out to rollcage for now.

From here I called for the help of my fellow Z brother, Aidenverse (Isaac) who was nice enough to come over and help me on one lazy sunday afternoon.

A shot I like from that day. My new slicktop on the left, Aidenverse on the right.

Okay, back to the story.

So we start to break out a windshield. We prep by pulling out what little interior is loosely installed in the Z still.

Working the trim with a heat gun.

Clean up after removal. Safety first kids.

We get treated with a suprise. New racing seat shows up. I quickly put it to good use.

The Kirkey Road Race seat weighs in at around 15lbs and is sturdy and comfortable. Not to mention lightweight. An amazing buy for the money. Picked it up from Jegs at a steal.

Us mocking it up....sort of.

From here Andris Laivins Race Cars (the same gentleman who built all the cages for the SPL race cars) was nice enough to come down and pickup my Z to take back to Austin for the rollcage work to be done. We opted for NASCAR bars, a high hoop, gussets on the A pillars (for cool points) and to have the cage tied in to as many spots in the car as possible to help aid in body rigidity. Let's see what we get..

Okay from here my time for the car suffers a lot.

In a 3 month period my mother passes away and I get a whole lot of things change in my life from moving into a new home, handling insurance settlements for my mother's estate, I had a real estate deal change on me when I was trying to buy a house, making sure I had enough money to cover the expensive rollcage and then trying to scrape some cash together for getting started on the 300HP motor with Mitch over at EPR Racing. Mitch was cool with putting off the motor since he was moving into a new location to further his business.

Eventually, Andris Laivins gets the cage all settled up and done to perfection. Again, appreciate the referral to him from Mike Kojima and the guys on here. He truly was amazing to work with. And this is what I get.

Kirkey seat mounted and note the A pillar gussets. I don't know how a simple piece of scrape metal welded in between the rollcage and body could be soo cool looking.

Note the span out of the NASCAR bars in the back. Very well done. BTW, that's my pops in the background.

Another shot of the NASCAR bars.

Note the gutted doors now. This was the reasoning to why we gutted the doors originally. Lexan will replace this door glass in the future. The handle will be on a smooth little cable system in the future (got the idea from Steve Millen's GTR, after riding in it with him at ZCON09). Simple and sexy...you'll see.

We kept the stock side beam as this car will be "DRIVEN" to track events and I figure I could care less about 20lbs added to car if I can walk away from a crash. So, tough....keeping them. Sorry.

Note the way the bar hugs the hinge pillar of the door opening. Very good attention to detail. The mark of a good cage maker.

Another far away shot.

Before the rollcage I estimated that we cut nearly 900lbs out of the Z before glass removal. After the cage, which I figure added close to 130lbs easy (rough guess), we are still looking good. I am currently in the process of prepping the interior for paint and all the while cutting out the last of the brackets that won't be needed.

Lexan will replace our quarter glass windows as well as the drivers doors to save a few pounds. I will also try to institute a clear NACA duct to the drivers quarter to draw fresh oxygen into the cockpit for the driver in case of either fire or smoke filling the cabin. (old pic, but just for reference.)

From here I have just been up to prepping the doors and hatch for the interior paint which will be a simple Rustoleum Dark Gray that I can just touch up later if it gets scratched (which happens).

The rollcage is a raw metal right now so I had to opt to order a special Zinc Chromate Aviation Bond Primer that had to be shipped so I am waiting on that. But that didn't stop me from knocking out the doors.

This particular version of Rustoleum is great. I normally never use a spray can for painting, as I always mix my own paint but this stuff (when prepped right) goes on so damn well. I highly recommend it for these uses.

I shot the interior of the door first. Came out amazing. Note the finish. Impressive for a single shot paint.

From here, I finished off the rest of the door.

This color will basically be the interior of the Z other than a few minor pieces of interior (dash, center console and half cut door panels). Other than that, there will be no other interior. The outside of the car is still a toss up between a few colors. Haven't committed to anything yet but these are my choices. A is the way I am leaning.

A) Professional Flat Black (a real job, thinking Hot Hues or House of Kolor, not rattle can)

B) The new Laguna Seca looking blue that's on the new 370Z

C) Military Green

D) The original CRP (cherry red pearl color the car was)

Anyways, that's all for now. More updates to come.

Spent the day cutting out the last of the brackets in the car that I no longer needed in an attempt to shave more weight and clean up the interior.  I ended up cutting out all the non essential brackets in the rear and cleaning up a lot of that area. Also, I began swiss cheesing/dimple dying the rear sections to save a little weight as well there. 

Here's the starting point.

I started labeling all the connections on the main body harness and began to remove it as well. I plan to simplify this harness as well to shave some weight here as well.

The entire body harness removed and layed out how it goes in the vehicle for reference. I suggest labeling all the connections as you remove it from the car so you keep your sanity later when installing.


 
From here I began to cut out all the brackets, studs, welded in clips and clasps as well as anything else that we wouldn't need in the future.

This may not seem like a lot of brackets and stuff but it is. This small amount of metal etc, weighed in at 2lbs and 6 ounces. We had 3 of these piles. Total we cut out another 8lbs and 2 ounces for the day. This is even over all the deletes we did over 6 months ago. This goes to show that you can always still find ways to shave a little more here and there. But I think this was about the furthest we could without cutting section of sheet metal out completely, which has crossed my mind. Rear trunk....I'm looking at you.

From here we began to swiss cheese a couple of panels while also being followed by a dimple die to give strength to the hole we just made in a perfectly good piece of metal. This process is very popular in cup car series race cars that are looking to shave any and every ounce possible.

After that, I spent the rest of the day prepping the Powertrix Carbon Fiber hatch for paint on the underside to match out interior paint that is soon to come.

Before paint and prep.

After scuffing, prep and final prep and paint.

I was also cleaning out the extra parts bin and remembered that I had all my glass and assemblies from the doors. I wanted everyone to see what taken out of the doors. Keep in mind this does not even include the door catch system, wiring and gunk in those doors. Like i said in recent posts the doors were by far the worst part of this entire build for me.

Lastly, recieved a package from Japan today that I've been expecting.

The stock mirrors come in at 7lbs and some changes as a full assembly (see previous posts) so I wanted to find a substitute that both lightweight, functional and cool looking.  I had been looking for these Bomex mirrors for an infinity and finally found a set. Had them shipped from Japan as I finally found a set.

While being aero dynamic and function they are above all else. SSSSuper light weight. Both mirrors came in at 5.5 ounces which is ridiculously light weight, even lighter than the CF mirrors that I thought about picking up. I was very happy to pick them up and happy to shave nearly 7lbs by dropping the stock ones over these.

Next update will be all the interior prep for the rollcage, some sand blasting work we need to do to clean up all the hinges/assemblies to get ready for paint and lastly the rollcage and interior painted

Spent today cutting what last bit of weight I could out of the chassis while prepping for paint. This took a lot of time today but gave me an opportunity to really simplify the interior as I pushed on with prep. Since I am stuck waiting for my aviation primer to come in, I decided to take the whole day and dedicate it to being innovative to cut the last of the last pieces out of the car.

Examples like this bracket. It mounts up an interior body panel to the car. We will obviously never run interior in this Z again so we trimmed it. Believe it or not, I managed to cut another 4lbs out of the car just using this thought process throughout the car today.

This is a bracket in the center of the car behind the armrest up high. Normally there would be a bracket here that would allow us to run a harness through it to the fuel pump and then onto the ABS system (located behind the passenger seat).  Eventually I plan to simplify the ABS with a brake bias system after talking to Kuah at SPL and figure out how he did it for the SPL track car. For now we will simplify and ziptie it to the rollcage or fab a bracket to get us through paint/cure and the car up and running.

Previously I mentioned that I cut out all the brackets in the rear. This is a better pic to demonstrate how it should look in the end. This is the final look before paint. Notice I started to paint the panel interiors, as it makes it easier to pass over the simplest face panels first on passes with the paint.

Some how during the prep, I took a good cut to the hand. Just a reminder out there to wear protection at all times.

Here is a shot of the cavity with some paint on it. The entire interior will be this color. This dark grey made sense as it's easy to refinish later. White gets way to dirty quickly. Black would have us baking in the summer days. And the regular gray was just to simple. This color looks great when done right.

I finally wanted to clean up that whole area under and around the ABS to prep and paint it today as it's the biggest pain in the ass to paint around later. I didn't want to mask around it later and it look like crap so I simply lifted it and painted it now. Later we will mask inside the body lines to cover our old paint and new blend lines (an old body shop trick).

With the unit raised as a whole I finally had some time to get the last bit of sound deadener out of there and clean up that whole area really well. I noticed a lot of track Z32 that still kept the ABS system never get in there fully. I wanted to take the time to get this done right.

Working a little more at that sound deadener. After I got the sound deadener out with a chisel and a heat gun. I still needed to clean it up. Some paint thinner and a red rag work amazingly great to clean up the tar residue. Saturate the goo leftover and run over it, slowly it goes away.

Final prep and paint done. Same area.

Here it is done. We will give it a 48hour cure time before we get near it for anything but looks good. I am really happy with the way it came out.

From here, I wanted to really take some time and simplify as much as I could under the dash. Even though it will all be covered by stock dash (which we will need to alter to fit of course), I wanted to take the time to cut out all the useless brackets that I missed here as well.

I know it doesn't seem like we cut anything out but we did. Cut studs and smoothed them out, cut brackets under the dash that were no longer going to support anything and found a small amount of deadener mat hiding in the corner. For the record, an 80grit flap wheel does wonders on working down studs. I also took the time to clean up the floors with thinner to get the last of that sound deadening leftover goo off. The floors look amazing. Too bad they will probably be the first victim of an eventual need for a respray once we put some usage on this car.

After some cutting, elbow grease and love.

 

This is everything that we took out of the car today. Basically, it's the last of anything we are going to cut out of the vehicle. This was the last of the weight that I could see cutting out of the vehicle from here on. I wanted to keep going but I think I am just going too overboard at this point. I'll see if I can find a few more opportunities to shave a few more pounds here and there for you guys. But we are getting scarce at this point.

Hopefully tomorrow, I will have the interior fully DA'd, sanded and scuffed. Some of the local Z guys will hopefully come through tomorrow to lend a hand as my shoulder if on fire at this point. More pics to come though.

Since my shoulders are pretty much blown out now I did what I could to prep all the little holes around the interior to lay some paint in them.

From here I didn't want to throw the towel on a full weekend without doing a bit more, so I turned my attention to mod-ing the dash and door panels. The dash and door panels will be modified to fit and eventually covered in alcantara (a form of nova-suede) along with the arm rest. These will be the only panels left in the entire car when it all said and done.

My first attempt at installing the dash prior to hacking it up. Not gonna work.

 

The stock dash before cutting it up.

 

I start by trimming off the panels that no longer will mount up to the body or stock under dash bar.

After about 6 more test fits and alterations we finally got it to fit like a charm. I still utilizes 7 connecting bolts out of the original 11. Not bad. Fits like a glove. Also this really doesn't count as a weight reduction because everything we cut off the dash only came in at a mere 2 ounces.

From this point I took the time to trim up the original stock door panels to basically just have glorified arm rests. Due to Texas sun the interior of a car on the track can get over 120 degrees. I can't see myself resting my precious arms on a hot bar or even a hot black pad so we opted to keep these. At a collective .5 of a pound with hardware, I think I can spare it.

I am pretty much done for this weekend. I have no feeling in my arms any more and I am running on now sleep but for the most part she is almost nearly ready for paint. Next time should be primer on the rollcage and maybe paint. Till next update

Spent the whole weekend in Myrtle Beach/Pawley's Island in South Carolina with the family so I didn't have a lot of time on the car the last two weekends but had a little time to get on it.

Spent the day prepping the bars for primer. This involved sanding down all the rust converter sprayed on the bars some time back. Isaac (Aidenverse) was nice enough to come over yet again to help me with this part of the project. We hit it all with 150 grit.

Me prepping the bars and area under the roof for the bar primer.

And yes, I wear a respirator for all of this. Safety first.

The bars sanded all down and pretty. Isaac is in the car sanding down more of the roof.

As for the primer we used. It's called Zinc Chromate and it's the BEST adhering primer for raw metal. The only note I want to stress is the safety needed here. We used a full, no joke, respirator for this operation. The primer lays on as an ugly green which makes no difference as we will lay our Rustoleum paint over it later once we do one last scuff pad session on the interior before final paint.

Here are a few pics of the Zinc Chromate Primer layed down.

The primer on the A pillar gussets.

Yes, I know there is spots missing on the bars on the underside. This makes no difference as we really just need it on the top to give the paint something to grab and prevent runs when laying down the paint later on.

Ordered the last of the supplies this weekend. Hopefully should have it all painted  by this weekend or next weekend. More updates to come.  I am not doing any real heavy magazine freelance work right now so hopefully I can move quickly through the next month or so.