Here are the latest happenings with the Behemoth RB28 monster. As most of you know the car came back from paint a few weeks ago and now we have all of the suspension removed and being prepped for powder coating. Every single part has been removed from the body and will be restored or customized as needed. The struts will soon be shortened and the coil-overs installed. The struts will then be sent out along with the rest of the suspension and bracketry to be powder coated high-gloss black.
Besides powder coating, all of the hardware for THE ENTIRE CAR has been labeled and sorted and will soon be going out to be freshly zinc plated. All hardware that is too corroded to be restored into perfect condition is set to be replaced.
While these parts are out getting fixed up, we at ZCG will be organizing and setting up our final game plan for the installation of the interior. We will also be preparing the underbody for the final undercoating which we will be doing at the shop. The undercoating that we use is topnotch and will definitely stand up to the abuse this car will surely see on and off the track.
The more we plan ahead the quicker the amazing project will be finished, and that is the ultimate goal. We want this car in the hands of it’s loving owner as soon as possible
REMEMBER: These are the BEFORE pictures. You won’t believe how different the underside of the this care is going to look in a few short weeks. Enjoy the pictures here of the dissassembly of the car, and I will have more photos of the freshly restored parts in a few weeks.
Filed under: Events,Racing
by Forbes @ 4:09 pm on July 24, 2009
That’s right!! Roughly three weeks from now on August 14-16th are the Rolex Monterey Historic Automobile Races at Laguna Seca. The best part of this weekend is the Z Car Corral, hosted by the Z Owners of Northern California (ZONC), where all our fellow Nissan/Datsun friends get to park together right along the track in a VIP parking area.
ZONC is currently offering tickets for the Saturday the 15th Corral event on their website. I know that the flyer below says that the deadline has passed to purchase tickets but trust me there are still plenty of spaces available.
Cars from every time period and every marque are represented during the Historics weekend but this year promises to be extra special because Porsche is the featured marque of this year’s event. Porsche cars are already set to represent one third of the race cars on the track and Porsche factory will be bringing out a few rare cars as well. The new four-door Panamera will also be on hand for the the public to view.
If you are busy this weekend cancel your plans. The Historics are well worth it. We would love to have you join Z Car Garage and ZONC for this amazing event!!!
G35 engine swaps galore with happy GT-R ending!! (read the entire story)
Z Car Garage is a special place for a lot of us because that is where we get to fulfill our automotive fantasies. In some cases we get to knock our two birds with one stone, I’ll explain…
When the customer who owns the Athens Blue G35 you see here came to us a few years ago in a quest for more power we were happy to help. The first phase included an APS twin turbo kit along with a host of other suspension and cosmetic changes. It made good power and he was happy for awhile. Then he wanted more.
This upscale event took place back on June 28th and once again it did not disappoint. This year we were invited to participate in a ‘Then and Now” display. We brought a friends 240z to be positioned across from a new 370z. One of the most amazing cars of the show though was right next to our Z.
In front of our friend Glen’s new R35 GT-R there was an 1973 Skyline GT-R (also known as the “Ken and Mary” Skyline) in near original condition with 40K miles on it. According to the importer of the car, it has not undergone any form of restoration and has been in climate controlled storage for most of it’s life. The reason that this second generation GT-R is so special is that they made only 197 of them, total in the world. They are rare and extremely expensive. GT-R Wikipedia (2nd Gen. skip)
A few other highlights of the show included a one of the most original and un-restored Mazda Cozmos known to exist, vast vintage police vehicle display, as well as a plethora of vintage and historic race cars. I was also pleased to see beautiful examples of almost every model of Porsche ever produced, there were some beautiful cars with great racing heritage.
I encourage all of you to join us at next years show. The people are nice and the cars are even better. I hope you like the few pictures I have included here.
Filed under: 350z,Performance
by Forbes @ 3:32 pm on July 6, 2009
On the 23rd of last month I put up a the most recent track video featuring our good friend Scott and his 350z. The car had received the new MotorDyne Shockwave single exhaust the day before the track event so here are the dyno results, videos, and my impressions.
I normally shy away from favoring any sort of single exhaust on the 350z but this may be the system that has changes my mind. From the moment it was unwrapped it was easy to notice that the quality was there, and then we came to the exhaust tip. MEGAPHONE!! Here at Z Car Garage we have a special place in our hearts for the megaphone tip, as they are currently installed on Rob’s 240z and 510 as well as Alvin’s Roadster. The MotorDyne system comes with one from the factory, sweet.
The exhaust was installed without hassle thanks to the simplicity of the included V-band clamps. As soon as the car fired up we were all impressed. Rasp was virtually non-existent (this car still runs stock cats) and the sound was extremely crisp. While it’s not overly-loud, and passed the decibel meter at Thunderhill, there may be a sound limit issue at some of the super-strict tracks like Laguna Seca.
On to the dyno!!
We made a few baseline runs just prior to the install and came out with a hair under 252 rear-wheel horsepower (rwhp.) After the exhaust switch we made two more runs while carefully monitoring all critical temps as well as the air/fuel ration with an Innovate wide-band 02 sensor. The number we came out with was sort of a let down: 251rwhp, a one hp loss. Before simply marking it up as a loss we pulled out the laptop to check the timing in the U-tech piggyback computer. After pulling a couple degrees of timing we were happy to see the number climb to 259rwhp, a very nice gain for a normally aspirated car.
Unfortunately this isn’t a true comparison because we can’t be sure of how the NISMO system would have performed with the reduced timing, on the sound alone I would recommend this exhaust. Make sure you check out all the videos and photos after the ‘read more.’
