So after buying the Z in February I’ve finally decided to get started on my l28et swap. My current goals at the moment are to simply get the swap running mostly stock and converting to Megasquirt after. Today I began taking the front end apart and removed the cowl and the fenders just to see what rust was hiding under them.
Car before
After (camera phone + me moving = fail, I know)
Driver side
Passenger side
As you can see there’s tons of surface rust along with rot in the bottom corner beside the doors.
Also discovered the previous owner decided to hide these beauties in the wheel wells by screwing on some sheet metal and covering it with undercoating
Driver side
Passenger side
Thankfully thats just about the worst of it. The rails under the floors are mostly solid but I still plan on welding on some baddog units. Also managed to get most of the harness disconnected and removed the radiator as well. Going to try and get the engine and tranny out by tomorrow and begin stripping the engine bay so I can spray it with rustoleum. Surprisingly there’s zero rust in the bay including the battery tray and I’d like to keep it that way.
The l28et is probably the only real progress I’ve manged to make so far. Spent most of the summer tearing it down and even though it seemed it was rebuilt at some point because of the .5mm oversized pistons and crosshatch on the cylinder walls, I decided to throw in new rod and main bearings, rings, gaskets, timing components, and a kameari 1mm metal headgasket to bump up the compression. All that’s left is to make some block off plates for the egr and aac valve and finding a large enough bolt to fit in the hole left behind the emergency release valve.
Some goodies that came in the mail recently
Fidanza aluminum flywheel, Centerforce 240mm dual friction clutch, and a Treadstone TRV25S intercooler. Also planning on picking up a Hobart Handler 140 to replace my Harbor Freight special 90 amp flux core welder so I can actually do some decent welding.
Don’t know how accurate the information is but from what the previous owner told me the he purchased it from the original owner about 6 years back. The original owner did some restoration at some point in time which is evidenced by the weld on frame rails, shitty patching on the drivers side floor and random sand I’m finding in nooks and crannies. The guy I purchased it from daily drove it through winter for the past 6 years so that accounts for a lot of the surface rust on the rails and the rot in the wheel wells and rear quarter panels.
Didn’t really get much done since I have exams coming up but the engine and tranny are out.
Battery tray area is a bit rusty but thankfully its all surface rust and should come off with a little bit of sanding. Hopefully I’ll have some time tomorrow to remove all the wiring, brake and fuel lines, and begin applying the stripper.
Stopped raining for a few hours today so I decided to get to stripping the engine bay.
After applying the stripper I was able to take off all of the paint and most of the undercoating with a power washer but there’s still a decent amount of undercoating left. Probably gonna apply the stripper again tomorrow and try taking it off with some steel wool or grab a torch and scrape it off while its warm.
Yeah its currently for sale. Trying to make some room for a new daily. If it doesn’t sell before it gets remotely warm out I’ll be getting right back to where I left off though.
So, since the weather’s been pretty awesome recently and I was pretty bored this week I decided to make some more progress with the engine bay.
Finished stripping it last week and this week I ended up priming and shooting it with flat black rustoleum.
Since I got hardcore lowballed trying to sell the car I’m going to try and hopefully get it on the road sometime before June. Probably would have had the engine and tranny in today but after torquing one flywheel bolt my torque wrench shit the bed, so I’ll have to head to sears and have them recalibrate it for me or just get a new one.
Got up early today and I finally finished getting the flywheel and clutch installed and getting the transmission bolted up. Also was able to to find an n42 intake in my pile of manifolds to replace my stock turbo intake. This way I don’t have to deal with tons of holes from useless vacuum lines as well as not having an egr.
n42 intake
turbo intake
After a lot of messing around and swearing this is the result.
Even though everything eventually worked out this is probably the last time I’m putting in an engine alone. Definitely easier and more pain free with an extra set of eyes and hands.
