Here is a pic of John's engine bay with the motor removed.

The picture below are some of the parts removed.

Here John gets his 1st carbon fibre bonnet.

Hopefully now his car is light enough to go that little bit faster with better cooling.

John's new motor in the build.

We are using an electric water pump and electric fan instead of the original system.
 

 
The 3 pictures to the right show what we have removed to reduce weight. The weight reduction included the removal of many unecessary brackets, air conditioning and HICAS etc. We have also changed lots of bolts to alloy, and removed close to 70kg from the vehicle so far.

Front suspension shot showing the  ARC hollow sway bar and Tein adjustable coil overs.
Another angle from the front suspension showing the Tein adjustable coil overs and the adjustable Tein rose jointed tension rods .

Zed under construction

 

The second hand Trust extractors required some tig welding to repair cracks and re-enforce to prevent from happening again.  We also added some  braces that bolt up to head which we drilled and tapped for added support of the larger 400HP custom Trust exhaust housing and Garret Compressor with Trust external wastegates dumping through screamer pipes.

We also tidyed up the inside with extra long die grinding bit and then flapper wheel and polishing mop to increase flow. We had to send out to get the flanges trued as they were warped from heat, now we get them HPC treated to keep heat from compressor housing and for flow.

Also showing is a picture of the triple plate OS Giken clutch and flywheel assembly,which only weighs 15kg to handle the 700 plus HP on the way.

We dynoed our car at Silverwater Automotive Services and at 6000 rpm it produced 330kw  (420hp) at the rear wheels.At 6000 rpm it ran out of fuel with standard injectors.Obviously we will have larger injectors for our next motor in which we expect to acheive over 400kw at the wheels.

Click here for current Dyno reading

UAS intercooler, custom radiator and oil cooler.  
Custom top control arms, ball bearing for zero movement with adjustable rose jointed
lower front control arms and upper rear.
Project Zed on display in the UAS Showroom

Custom made muffler with twin 3 inch inlet and flattened 4 inch outlet.

Comes out drivers side in front of rear wheel.Suport hi flow and designed for track use.

Johns car now sporting new 18 by 8.5' front rims with 265/35's and 18 by 9.5 rears
with 295/30 Pirrelli P-Zero rubber

New motor fitted as test to see what power levels the standard turbos will make.The motor is also internally standard with small match porting and ported exhaust manifolds and extrusion honed plenum chamber. We also added 53mm throttle bodies, UAS underdrive alloy crank pulley with harmonic ballancer for resonance dampening, UAS adjsutable exhaust cam spockets, GTR water pump pulley,engine lightened and water heating of throttle bodies and hoses removed, twin ram pods, Autronic SMC engine management with CDI on premium unleaded fuel and Iridium Plugs using heat range 4mm eleoctrodes and .8mm gap resulting 263 kw at wheels.25 C Air temp

Click the dyno image to the right for details --->

 

Johns Zed in action at the Eastern Creek Trackday on April 3rd 2003.

Click the images to the right to enlarge.

Project Zed engine bay with the new UAS Master Cylinder Support and UAS Strut brace (lightweight)
Here we are replacing the factory R230 viscous coupling 3.7 with R200 R32 GTR 4.3 Nismo mechanical lock clutch pack diff with a modified 300ZX non turbo cradle
(no hicas to worry about!) with alloy spacers for drive shafts and tailshft to suit Nismo diff mounting bushes and urethane cradle bushes. As a bonus the 300ZX diff weighs 52kg whilst the new GTR diff weighs 36 kg.

-10 braided oil lines and 19 row oil cooler offset to the passenger side as per everything in the car to throw any weight over the passenger side as even without driver the zed is heavier on drivers side. This helps improve handling and balance. Also Turbo XS Racing Blow off valves located where factory BOV's normally sit.

UAS Big alloy radiator and Monster front mount intercooler. Also two UAS 02 Rush Race pods. Nice cold fresh air flowing straight into turbo's.

The quest for weight reduction continues. Here we see John removing even more unessesary weight from the Zed which he found in the tailgate.
Here we see the initial construction of a new heavy duty carbon fibre rear wing designed to improve downforce around the track

UAS staff checking and adjusting camber and caster as well as toe with our toe
plates in our fully equipped workshop

Addition of lower front rubber chin spoiler for ground effects giving improved aerodynamics and better lap times. 50mm clearance to ground but flexible rubber used so should be ok.

Also pic shows addition of brake ducts for improved cooling of front brakes.
Replaced Tein Coil Over’s tested at 570 pounds springs which too heavy especially for Aussie race tracks which are not so smooth.

Changed to Eibach 440 pound main springs with tender springs to make them squat on power to help with traction and not skip around so much on bumps, being progressive rate when cornering they stiffen up. Also had the shocks dyno tested and measured the wheel motion ( travel of wheel compared to springs movement with equation) also with equation of the weight of the car to select the best spring rate and shock setting.) also 200 grams lighter compared to the Tein springs on right in pic. In practice this made a huge difference of over a second a lap at Oran Park.
Rose jointed in car adjustable upper rear arm for camber adjustment and leading upper control arm for toe angle adjustment, slotted rear rotors, braided lines with banjo bolt mod so braided lines go from steel hose straight into the caliper so less weight and more responsive braking as does away with some heavy brackets and pipe as well as spongy factory rubber lines. Lower picture shows car being setup on wheel alignment machine

Johns latest power run on our new Dyno Dynamics Dyno with more tuning and altering of the boost map.
John powering around the track

The UAS boys removing the sound deadening tar in floor and metal brackets
that are no longer required
Johns race engine fitted with new brass sealing ring head gasket.

HPC coating to help prevent heat soak in the head and increase the flow.

Also HPC coated plenum to reduce heat soak from the block and keep inlet temperatures down.
Johns race engine being assembled in the
UAS engine building room.
Setting the camshafts.

Engine Specs on Johns new motor

  • Twin S15 GT28 Ball Bearing 320HP Turbos with 5 bolt HPC treated, non-turbulence engine and dump pipes in one
  • Bored 20 thou oversized Arias forged pistons with molly coated skins and HPC coated tops
  • Argo forged conrods (625 grams each compared with factory 716 grams)
  • King bearings
  • Lightened and balanced crank
  • UAS head gasket with sealing rings
  • Tomei solid lifters
  • Custom valve springs
  • Ported heads with HPC treated exhaust ports
  • 4 x Custom regrind exhaust camshafts
  • 4 x Adjustable cam sprockets
  • Custom idler and cam belt tensioner
  • UAS underdrive crank pulley with vulcanized rubber and stainless sleeve harmonic balancer
  • Custom top fuel rail with top feed Nismo 555cc injectors
  • 25 row oil cooler with -10 braided hoses and billet alloy inline thermostat and remote oil filter relocation kit
  • 40mm thick alloy radiator with swirl pot and -6 push lock fittings bleeding any air from the back of the head, radiator and swirl pot back to the header tank
  • Simplified and lightened motor with all extra water pipes and hoses for throttle body heating removed. No oxygen sensor or fuel temp sensor is used, but an air temp sensor has been added.
  • UAS extra clamp load 6 button 1350kg single plate clutch
  • UAS super light flywheel

345Kw At the rear wheels

Johns new 345kw Engine
UAS Carbon Fibre Race Wing now fitted

Project Zed complete with its new custom alloy fuel tank with twin Bosch 044 externally mounted fuel pumps.

Lower picture shows fuel lines and fuel cooler that has been fitted.

Johns 300zx being finished for the Drift Nationals at Oran Park. Here you see Johns newly aquired set of R34 GTR wheels being fitted to the Zed
The AP front calipers on the Zed have been replaced by a pair of Porsche 6 piston monoblock calipers and heat treated, 2 peice 365mm rotors.
This shows the match porting performed and we found the intake system can be opened up quite a lot to increase volume and match ported for smoother flow. Also converted to top feed injectors Nismo 555cc with custom top fuel rail that sits above the plenum. Also Bosch knock sensor bolted permanently to the valley of the block for tuning and checking at the track with our Pro Tuner device.
This picture shows the oversized lightened and balanced idler pulley with bracket for support and hydraulic tensioner removed for stronger and lighter billet alloy base with offset camber adjusting bolt. The larger pulley slows down the bearings and increases wrap over the crank sprocket which picks up another 3 teeth to prevent belt jumping or slipping under high load, high and fast revving. Alloy pullies are interference fit and grub screwed to secure. Water pump welded up as we now use an electric water pump and thermo fan. Remote mount oil filter located where air con compressor was located.

Heavy factory harmonic balancer pulley with custom stainless sleeve insert with vulcanized rubber similar to factory to remove resonance from the crank. Weight of this pulley is 1340 grams compared to around 6kg for factory pulley.
Here we see the S15 turbo’s HPC coated exhaust housings and exhaust manifolds. The factory pipes and hoses are replaced with push lock hoses with heat protection covers, with billet alloy annodised fittings.

A VQ 30 alloy power steering pump is used with custom oversized light alloy pulley which slows down the pump. The factory Twin turbo power steering pump for HICAS is a twin pump. We were using a non turbo single pump as HICAS was removed and the weight of the pump alone is 2135 grams compared to the VQ 1417 grams. We also modified the braket remove a large steel braket not needed which was 319 grams and cut down the support braket again to make lighter. No cam belt covers for less weight and also more for cooling.
This shows custom the billet alloy bracket
(630 grams) we used, replacing the factory cast iron unit which weighs 1930 grams.
The UAS workshop team finishing off the installation of Johns new engine just in time for the Drift Nationals
Here you see the engine bay of the Zed showing the new engine in place - Many parts including the plenum have been polished.

Here we see the Zed's rear brakes comprising of 4 Piston AP Racing calipers with 330mm two piece heat treated & slotted rotors, with new hydraulic handbrake.

We removed all complex factory brake line plumbing, as well as heavy brass junction boxes, as no ABS is used.

Download the short video of Project Zed in action at Oran Park (Right click - Save as)

Download here

 

Here we are fitting the new rear diffuser and new brake ducting.

The Zed on the dyno at the UAS 300zx dyno day on October 16th 2004