Mid-Life CriZis

...And there I was. I was in my mid 40's and was waxing nostalgic about my past glory days behind the wheel of various cars. I've been gear head all my life but after my kids were born I had to make do with my Dad ride toting two kid seats and all the CostCo I could fit in the trunk. 

Some history here, I built a turbo Miata a few years back. It was a great ride and the minute I was done it was totalled out while I was driving it to a doctor's appointment for my then pregnant wife. A foot closer to the driver's door and I would've never known my son. After that I had a few false starts namely with a 1999 Miata I bought with a no start condition. A crank sensor sorted that. I purchased a very ratty but completely original and loaded E30 325i. Great ride but way too much work to do what I wanted to do. That was to get back into HPDE's. I did a few in the various Miata's I owned and even tracked the turbo Miata quite a few times. I missed it. 

I had a stint where I was Lemons's-ing and Chump Car-ing with a great team but I bailed on those guys going to Daytona due to a home sale that went south and ate up my racing budget.  After that the invites to come race dried up sadly. I had to get my hand back in the game. That meant a few things.

1. I needed a car
2. It would have to be reliable enough to drive to the track, get beaten on all weekend, and drive home.
3. It had to be fast
4. It had to be cool
5. It had to double as a date car. That required some level of comfort and luxury for my beautiful and understanding wife. 

The Craig's list search started. I can always find a deal on good ol'Craig's. The question is, what amount of work was I interested in taking on. The E30 taught me that no matter how cool the car I wasn't down for a full rebuild. Having two kids under 5 eats up your time. The turbo Miata taught me I wanted it to be as close to stock as possible so as to avoid maintenance issues and reliability issues. I could also drop it off at the garage to get work done if time and talent was running short. 

I was surfing Craig's and walking my way up in price. At the time I was looking at lower cost rides. Then, tax returns arrived. I had a few more resources to deal with. That increased a number of cars under my search umbrella. I increased my search range once I ran down all the leads in my hometown. Then, a 2003 350z came on the radar. It was a couple of towns over. I marked it down and kept an eye on it.....for a few months. The price was high when it first popped up. No surprise. It was the orange color with the tannish orange interior. A pretty hot combo in this area. It had BBS wheels and some aftermarket coil overs installed. Less than 120k miles and a 6 speed, of course. I was looking for a track car so an auto-tragic was out of the picture. It was more than I wanted to spend but I kept that car in mind. 

Then, it fell off of Craig's. The ad had expired. I'd had enough waiting at that point. I called the seller by pulling his number off of a screenshot I took of the ad, just in case. We had a great chat. The car was still available. The seller stated it was as advertised. He sounded honest which meant something. All accessories worked including the 2003 vintage navigation unit. I decided I had to see it. We set a time to meet in a town between the two of us near a local theme park. I figured I could drive the family out while getting a ride from the wife, buy the car, and then take the family to the theme park. 

20 minutes down the road I was so excited I realized I forgot to pull a plate off my other ride to get the thing home if I pulled the trigger. I told my wife who gave me the look of "Really?" We then switched seats and I drove while she used her phone to get a temp tag from the DMV. By the time we were there I had decided that if it was as described I was buying the car. This is what I saw once I got there.

It looked better than I had hoped. The interior was worn but in otherwise great shape with perforated tan/orange leather seats. Everything worked except for the power seat switch on the passenger side. I took it for a test drive and really enjoyed it. It had plenty of power, brakes were solid, suspension felt good except for the rear which had a blown rear diff bushing. This was to be expected as a lot of these cars suffer that once they have some miles or age on them. It's a liquid filled bushing that loses it's liquid which then means your diff is located by a very flexible rubber doughnut. It makes the car feel like the front half is a Porsche while the rear is a 70's cadillac. The coil overs rode like E36 M3. The shocks that had been installed in the rear were not up to lowered suspension work. All in all, it was a solid ride that needed some maintenance. 

I pulled in from the test drive and said I wanted the car. I offered the seller $2500 under asking. He said "Aw man. You're going to do me like that?" I said "Hey, it's just an offer. Let me know what you're thinking." Reading this it comes off like I was completely cool about it. I wasn't. I hate negotiations. Inside my head I was expecting the guy to look at me, snort in disgust, hop in the car, and drive off. He came back with $500 below. I countered with $2000 and he bit. He went for it. Inside, I was tap dancing. We signed the papers, I gave him the cash in the parking lot of the McD's, and that was that. After the cash traded hands he said "Oh yeah, I forgot. I've got these H&R sport springs that I took off. You can have them. They rode too rough for me." I checked the springs out and they're the progressive sports. I can only imagine he put them on with stock shocks and beat his kidney's to death. The reviews on the springs from other Z owners said they were marginally harsher than stock. 

I took the family to the theme park and had a great day. I then got in my new to me Z and drove it home with zero drama except for the spinal punishment from the craptacular rear suspension. 

Next installment - I have to fix this suspension otherwise I'll end up on crutches.  

I wondered why you had been so quiet of late.

Love the story. Very cool car. There is one the same color that autocrosses with us. I love the sounds that engine makes. 

Thanks for the compliments Toyman01. It has been awhile since I've posted here. Life has been busy. Also I wanted to internet detox for awhile. 

I'm digging this car which is odd because I never considered myself a "Z" guy. This car has the torque I'm looking for and a very sporty feel to it that I'm enjoying. It's quite a bit different to drive than the car I cart my kids around in as well. 

Awesome!  Feels like more people should track these than do...

I have a thing for 350's in that color and they're great, minus some rear visibility problems, even in stock form. My understanding is that they didn't sell real well so there's only a small supply of them out there.

I keep telling the wife I want one to do a Long Nose (Type-E) conversion on, she thinks I don't need another project which is probably fair.

Enjoy.

In reply to turtl631 :

We'll see right? I've really enjoyed tracking it....the one time I did for those sessions at Dominion Raceway. I did a quick two sessions at an intro event with Track Daze at the beginning of the summer. 

It went around the track really well. Speed was good. The sound was wondrous. That Maxima v6 sounds pretty damned good somewhere around 7 on the tach. The suspension was adequate which surprised me as I'd already rebuilt it with parts I'll detail in my next post. One particularly fast turn I heard the tire contact the edge of the fender on the front right. The car has wheel spacers which I'm still debating on keeping or ditching so that might've put the tire in harm's way regarding the fender. It was a rock solid ride except for the brakes I already mentioned.

The brakes worked and did not fade as I'd flushed the brake fluid and replaced it with Motul RBF600. It also had new rotors and pads I'd installed from Rock Auto. The only issue was that both front and rear brakes became super hot and smelly after a moderately fast session of 15-20 minutes long. Dominion is a tighter track. My next track days would be at VIR. I want GREAT brakes for the long straights at VIR. A bit of a teaser...I'm fixing the brakes now which is why I haven't been posting. More to come...  

In reply to The0retical :

I wanted this color too. I talked to a seller about a blue one but the "Sunset lemans" was always my first pic. 

I haven't seen or heard of this long nose conversion. Got any pics? 

I am hearing from the salvage guys that they don't get a lot of these in. I see them on car-parts.com so I think I'll be ok regarding used spares for now. Maybe once they're as old as the first 300z I'll be singing a different tune. 

Suspension. 

The car felt pretty damned good at purchase. No odd noises from the suspension. Steering was tight and precise. The only issue I noticed at first was the rear end was wallowing around. I had read online that the rear diff bushing in the rear subframe could fail leaking it's magic sauce out and causing all sorts of rear-end trouble. I was familiar with that dynamic since I'm married with two kids. The proper fix for this, in regards to the Z, was for the rear differential bushings to be replaced. It could be done in a garage but I was pressed for time and decided to let the local hot rod garage handle it. Delta V Motorsports to be precise. Guys are top notch. I asked them for quote on the work but I also wanted a quote on a four wheel aligment and installation of the H&R sport springs along with Bilstein shocks/struts. The pathetic and worn out coil over kit had to go. 

The estimate came back, and while reasonable, was more than I wanted to spend. I decided to let them handle the diff bushing install and the alignment. I'd tackle the spring, shock, and strut install in my garage. This was a fateful decision. 

..Fateful in that it took me HOURS. I'm a fair wrench and I found a great tutorial on youtube on replacing the suspension parts. Here it is! I was thinking "This can't be too hard. I mean it's a 5 minute youtube video." I was wrong. While it wasn't as hard as say chiseling out Michelangelo's David it was miles harder than replacing brake pads. The rear went well. The fronts involved a lot more cursing and kicking of springs to get them to fall into place. Luckily, I didn't need or have to mess with spring compressors as I was able to use my jack to compress the bottom A-arm enough to bolt up the strut.

With that done I wheeled it up to Delta V. They performed the agreed upon work and found my lower rear control arms were toast and one of the rims had taken a nasty hit and was out of round. I authorized them to fix both issues after clutching my wallet and my testicles. Totally not  their fault, just more cash than I was hoping to spend. The final bill was much closer to their initial estimate than I would've liked. But hey! I saved major bucks on doing the spring, shock, and strut install myself. 

This sorted the suspension completely. The car was an inch plus lower. It rode on stiffer more responsive springs without a noticeable affect on ride quality. Body sway was much reduced. For you stance guys - the wheel well gap to tire was decreased and uniform around the car. 

Next up - Brakes. 

The long nose cars are more of a historical footnote. They were developed for Japan's Super GT series and needed better aero to compete so a few were made (Wikipedia says 5) to satisfy the homologation rules with the reworked bodies. 

CALSONIC and Motul both campaigned one.

I've only ever seen the Nissan press images of the homologation car years ago, pictures of the actual cars seem to be exceedingly rare.

These make great track cars- I'm also surprised not more people run them.  My Dad had a 2003 Track model modded a little bit, did 20 or so track days and never had any issues.

You will want brakes before going on track (Pads & fluid at a minimum, we also cut holes in the bumper and ran ducting to the fronts).