The Z Owners of Northern California are hosting the Z Car Corral tomorrow at Laguna Seca for the Rolex Monterey Historic Automobile Races.  That was a mouthful.  We will be meeting at Z Car Garage tomorrow morning at 8:00am sharp to form up the caravan and we will be leaving shortly afterwards.

We ask you all to show up as close to 8:00am as possible so that we can leave on time.

You can email me here at ZCarBlog@gmail.com if you have any questions.

Thanks!!  See you tomorrow!!

Link: ZONC Website

Link: Official Monterey Historics Website

And just to get you all a little more hyped up about tomorrow, here are a few more pictures from last year.  These are just a few of the vintage Trans-Am cars that attended last year, this race group was great to watch.  Enjoy the pictures.  (more after the ‘read more’)

…[read more]

Check out the most recent addition to the For Sale Page!!  Click on the picture below for the information.

We make Zs better.  It’s what we do.  In this case the customer brought us a fairly low mileage Z32 300ZX Twin Turbo that was in need of some more power.  At first we were headed down the normal road of simple exhaust mods consisting of new downpipes and mid pipes with high-flow cats when things got a little hairy.

We also had plans to place all four shocks, switch to braided steel brake lines for improved pedal feel, and install a set of Stillen sway bars for more stability in the corners.

As you can see from the baseline dyno (bottom of post) this car had serious issues when it came in.  The owner had reported hesitation and overall poor driveability and it was up to us to figure it out.  After the suspension and brakes were handled we dove head first into the quest for power.

The computer was shipped out to Jim Wolf Technologies for a reflash to accept the bigger NISMO 550cc injectors and added boost, we also picked up  a new clutch from JWT to handle the new power.  After all the modifications we completed the car was reassembled and test driven to make sure everything was copacetic.  Unfortunately it wasn’t.  All we could get out of it was seven pounds of boost.  Not good.

We suspected a turbo issue so the car was taken back apart for inspection.  The turbo had failed and was grinding the compressor wheel into the housing.  (see above photo, and for comparison see the other good stock turbo above)  There were metal shavings everywhere, really not good.  Now we had to get new turbos as well, and we were going to go bigger.

Jim Wolf once again came to the rescue with a set of their Sport 500 turbos.  They are the perfect combination for the power levels that we were looking for.  Now with no further complications everything was re-assembled and we proceeded to cycle countless quarts of oil through the engine to make sure we had all of the debris cleaned out.  Then it was back to the streets to do some test driving.  After another oil change we loaded the car onto the dyno to see what it could do.

You see from the graph above that the car has made a complete u-turn in both driveability and performance.  I’m happy to report that the customer was overjoyed when he drove the car for the first time after the upgrades.  That’s just the way we like it.

Long Live the Z

There have been a few changes to the schedule of events on the 22nd.  Below is the most recent agenda for the gathering.  There are already sixty or so people signed up which is awesome.  We hope to see you all out there!

Follow the tread at MY350Z.com HERE

Point A
We will be meeting at Z Car Garage @ 9am. This is the Official start of our drive.

Z Car Garage
140 Archer Street
San Jose, CA 95112

->Google Map To Z Car Garage<-

We will start staging @ approximately 9:45am to depart to Red Robin.

Point B
Plans are to reach Red Robin @ 10:30am. If you are not planning on Caravanning with the Z Car Garage crew this is the place you will want to meet up with us to have Brunch.

Red Robin
2204 Bridgepointe Pkwy
Foster City, CA 94404

->Google Map To Red Robin<-

Point C
After we Eat (No Set Time, No Rush) we will stage and head out to T.I. We will only be doing a pit stop here to hang out and take some pix. Due to lack of permits we will only stop for 1.5-2 hours and then move on.

Sorry, we don’t have ETA available for T.I.

Point D
Final destination will be Alameda where we will be able to hangout with no restrictions. At this point we hang out until whenever.

Time for another awesome get together!!  This Treasure Island meet is usually an annual deal and this year we are going to try to make it as legitimate as possible.  The meet will be starting at 11:00am and ending somewhere around 6:00pm, or whenever we decide to leave.  There is also going to be a photo shoot scheduled so we ask that everyone arrive by 1:30 so that things can run as smoothly as possible.

A thread has been started by the event organizer over at MY350Z.com so make sure you sign up over there or at least check out who will be attending the show.  I will have more updates here as the day approaches so stay tuned.

Link:  MY350Z.com Treasure Island Event

We will be meeting at Z Car Garage at 9:00am on Saturday the 22nd to make a group drive up to Treasure Island.  A group from Monterey will be joining up as well so we should have a decently large caravan to the show.  DON’T MISS IT!!!

Z Car Garage
140 Archer St
San Jose, CA 95112

(The map below of the meeting point at Treasure Island is a little vague so I will try to find an actual address for everyone, outlined in WHITE)