A lot of you had been asking me what happened to my car and why car was down for such a long time. Here's the full story without any covering up for any shops and alterations. Hope this won't bore the rest of you that "don't care".

The full story:
Back in July 2008 on a sunny day(It rained really hard the night before), my girlfriend and I hopped in my 350z and was getting ready to drive to Ocean City for the weekend. Started driving out of my apartment community and the car started to "choke". It felt like it was cutting fuel on me. So I pulled over and let the car sit for a while. I tried to crank up the car again but the car would not crank at all!!! I've had this "choking" issue before and David Shiroma from Function:Tuned had driven all the way to my apartment complex to fix the issue. It was a weird A/F ratio issue. But it's different this time. It would not crank at all. So the car was towed to Function:Tuned for further diagnosis.

After going through a couple things, Dave found out my car was filled with water. The intercooler, the piping, the exhaust, etc, etc. Now the main concerned was if the water got into the motor. And it sure did! After taking the motor apart, water was everywhere and it also caused a rod to bent. Dave and I thought through a lot of ways to fix this(note that I was on tight budget). Finally we went with swapping out the short block from another motor and did some clean up of my motor. While we were at it, I got a set of new ACT Street flywheel and clutch, ARC oil catch can, and added a AAM brace to the Procharger to eliminate belt slip issue. The car was fixed and running again by around mid September!

The car then went to a neighbor shop DTM for some body work that I've been wanted to get done. A lot of you might know Jason Jett who used to do fiberglass work for Revision and Car Toyz 2. He partnered up with DTM and started up his own body shop called DTM Bodywork. He took my car over and I gave him a long list of tasks to work on. My front bumper was in absolutely horrible shape(spider cracks everywhere, horrible paint, chips, etc, etc) and rear bumper was dented and has cracks due to some old man hitting my car in front of Giants. A lot of you had asked me, "Why did it take so long?" Trust me I was personally frustrated too but I finally came to an understanding. Jason himself went through hell in the past few months due to injury, argument between partners, death in his family, etc, etc. I'm not covering up anything here, I literally called Jason every couple days to complain about the wait time and had sent some friends over to check up on the progress due to the fact that I moved back to Maryland and the drive was quite hectic. So the work itself consists of fixing all the imperfections the front bumper, shave the nostril vents on the front bumper, mold the JP Type-A side skirts into the stock side skirts since the Type-A is an add-on instead of full replacement, mold the JP Type-A rear bumper lip to the stock bumper, repaint the entire body kit.

Issues and Props?
Function:Tuned - Dave wouldn't give me a discount! Dammit! I'm Asian and I'm cheap! And he farted on my seat for sure since I can still smell that half JDM odor. Besides that the car'd running great. I'd expect to have little issues here and there since so much was done to it. But so far I've found nothing! Again Shiroma San FTW.

DTM Bodywork - The wait time was long. Owner of DTM Nick came through and admitted that they have a 2.5 months lead time on all of their cars and the situation was unacceptable. I appreciated the honesty but wished that they could've been more straight forward from the beginning. Jason's fiberglass/molding work was PERFECT as you guys had seen in some of the pictures. The paint job on the side skirts and rear bumper are really good but the front bumper is slightly lighter. The shop did forget a few small things such as plugging the headlight harnesses in and installing fender liners. But I'm overall satisfied with the job. I'd recommend anyone that is looking for top notch fiberglass/molding work done to visit Jason.

Cliff Note:
-Engine sucked up a bunch of water
-Engine was fixed at Function:Tuned
-Car runs fine again
-Car was sent to DTM Bodywork
-Front bumper was fixed, nostrils shaved, side skirts molded, rear bumper lip molded
-Wait time at DTM Bodywork was very long
-The work was fantastic besides paint the front bumper being slightly lighter and they forgot a few small things

Thank you for reading through this! Now stop asking me what happened to my car. I'll just tell you to come read this thread.

 

Now the next question is how did the car suck up a bunch of water? It's still a mystery up to today... My car has a procharger kit. Anyone has an explanation?

 

Dude...seriously...I have NEVER seen so much water in a motor beore.... It was crazy and definitely baffling.

The only way I could ever see that is if it was taking in direct water somewhere somehow. Due to the amount in there I could only think that would happen if the fiter cone and intake had been COMPLETELY submerged.

Glad to hear it's running great and you have it back.

 

haha I remember Dave texted me and was like, "Dude your car created a pool in my shop".

 

phreaks hose

ijuskidn

glad everything is good for you again

 

It did man. Dave was like...dude...you gotta check this out. Seriously...I've only ever seen something like that if someone drove through standing water. It was literally full of water. You'd scope the cylinders and it looked like you were looking into a lake.

 

damn... thats crazy how much water you had in your car. some things with this car we'll never figure out! like how my g acted retarded in the rain

 

good story ethan! i cried...i sighed...i laughed...and i cheered

oscar for you! lol

 

haha.. thanks bro. You have no idea how many times I had thought about just stop fixing the car and part out everything. The Zero Gravity crew kept me in check!

 

the explanation is simple... one of your many enemies sabotaged your car!

 

Why'd ANYONE hate me?

 

ETAN FTW!
welcome back bro.... still running 11psi WG or did you lower it a bit? 9psi?

I bet water got into your intercooler through the hood then once you cranked it up...slurp slurp...

cars are like a crap game... you can hit for weeks, then crap out in one roll!

LOL

 

Did you steal your car from Johny Tran?

 

LOL Thanks Corey. The car's still running 15psi pulley and 11psi WG. Hmmm that's pretty scary if it really went in through the intercooler. If so, I might need to custom make something to create a runway for the water to run it through the side instead of hitting my intercooler. I can't afford to have water in the engine again... Now it's time for me to learn some drifto skill from you! I'm reaaddddy!

 

the next time it rains... we will do a night run to a Top Secret location....lol

yeah but you would get air leaks if there was a hole I guess (dunno). Maybe the hood aimed right into the intake filter somehow

do you have a cold air intake set up with your SC....if so, might want to shorten that sucker. I hate the APS TT intake set up....those things are asking for water.

 

If you had an oil cooler, this wouldn't have happened. Now I can officially say, "I told u so!"

 

johnny tran had the "honda 2000"
so
dont u mean DK? Ethan is Dk...i am the OTHER asian with the orange haired mullet...Moritmoto!!!!

 

COme on you out of all people should know this. I pieced my car together junkyards.

 

I don't have cold intake setup. But talking to Dave, the Procharger intake aims down. I remember having water issue after the fender liner off my driver side(which is where the intake is) felt off. Also I don't have any under tray under the front bumper. I think those might be the cause or at least contribute to the issue. I'm definitely not going to drive the car in the rain until I have fender liners put on. I'm planning on having Dave custom make some kind of under tray with sheet metal. Hopefully those will prevent the same thing from happening. But yea I have a DD now. Chance for me driving the Z in the rain is very very slim unless it's "on purpose"

 

Man, I'm glad you were on a "tight" budget, otherwise, you could have just left her where she sat and bought a Ferrari. LOL. (Satire just doesn't work well in print - the point is a "tight budget" for me would have been to do the absolute minimum to get the car running again, forget the extra body work, etc.)

Nice Z - glad she's back to work.