dexter989

Just a few days ago, I purchased a 2003 350Z Touring edition (guessing based on options).


I bought it from a guy I know who buys a lot of auction cars and this one was a repo. The price was right, but it needs some work.

Mechanically it is in good shape. It has some bolt-on's. K&N intake kit, Kinetix velocity intake manifold, aluminum accessory pullies (whoopty-doo), shorty headers, and a Borla cat-back.

The interior is a little dirty and the paint and bumpers are rough. Also figured out that those sunken battleship rollers are from a Maxima. The low beams don't work and the passenger window works sporadically. The cruise and air work, and those are welcome improvements from the other car I'm replacing with this zed.

Anyway, I'm a pretty experienced wrench and Nissan enthusiast. Started with DSMs in the really early 2000's and bought my first 240sx in 2005. There's currently two S13 convertibles in my shop, a 93 Q45 next to it, a B13 coupe I bomb around in for work, a 2nd gen Xterra adventure rig, and an S14 that's getting caged in October.

I'm mostly here to buy and sell parts. I'm sure I'll learn a few things while lurking. I don't have any experience with the Z33 chassis whatsoever, so I'm not entirely sure what I've gotten myself into.

If you're really interested, you can follow my Instagram @Dexters_Autolab

Thanks for having me.

Unicus

iTrader: (3)

Good luck, looking forward to the updates.

mr. sparco

iTrader: (13)

Looks like you have a couple other Nissans in the barnyard.

dexter989

The Q is in the corner here. In the background, you can see all that remains of my Diamond Star days - a couple 1G DSMs.

dboyzalter

iTrader: (3)

Nice those wheels make mine look not so bad, welcome to the freak show.

rizeld

iTrader: (2)

Welcome to the money pit and congrats

jhc

Welcome and congratz!

dkmura

iTrader: (64)

Welcome and congrats on that Redline coupe (AX6 is the factory color code BTW).

Flakedsvt

Good luck with the rehab!

dexter989

I've made some progress.


Apparently some people don't think a Bose sound system is sufficient. The previous owner was one of those people. I can only suspect that shortly before his bank came and took their car back that he hastily yanked the stereo from the car. I deduced this from the gaping hole in the dash and cables strewn about the car. One of the first things I did was to eliminate the remnants of the "better" system.



Then I reinstalled an "inferior" head unit. I need to find a set of brackets as it's just tucked into the dash for now.



Next on the docket was to address the wheels. As previously mentioned, the Z came to me on Maxima wheels (late 5th gen I believe). I'm going to hazard a guess that there's a 5th gen Maxima rolling around somewhere on some sweet XXRs or something. What I can't figure out though, is the lug nut situation. There were several "Rays" aluminum lug nuts scattered amongst the wheel studs. Of course, I had to spend a few minutes forcefully removing aluminum threads from one of the rear wheel studs; but the big headache was when I got to the front wheels and each one had a 7-sided lug nut. That guy... Well, I ended up persuading 12-point 3/4" sockets onto those 7-sided nuts with a BFH and then zipped them off.



Finally, I took the base model Z33 wheels I had on my S14 and moved them over to the Z. I won't be needing them anymore on my S14 anyway pretty soon.



Most recently, I swapped out the cloudy greenhouses that were posing as headlights. I purchased a set of Taiwanese headlights off ebay. They exceeded expectations in everyway. We'll see how they hold up long term, but I'm very happy with them so far. With the amount of time and effort I would've needed to put into the original headlights, I couldn't think of a good reason, not to spend $180 on them. As a bonus, all the lights came preinstalled with the exception of the HID bulbs.



The guy I bought the car from told me that he couldn't get the HID's to work despite swapping bulbs. A quick search found that the ballasts are sensitive to water on the Z especially when people remove/lose the fender lines. Since mine was missing the fender lines, I just assumed the ballasts were bad. I picked up a used set on ebay with igniters for $40. So $220 and a couple hours later, the Z looks about 25x better and I can drive it in the dark now.


There's more in store. Stay tuned.

NiLL

Well there is one less trashed Z on the road being restored to its former glory!

35th4me

Is the Wheel setup square?

dexter989

Working on it.


The Z33 wheels I put back on? No - it's a staggered set.



I neglected to mention that I removed the gaudy grill cover when I had the bumper off to replace the headlights. It looks goofy with the lip painted black, but this bumper is getting replaced anyway. I prefer goofy floppy bumper to the blinged-out version it was before.




The passenger seat in this car is in pretty bad shape. There's a large tear in the top and the powered slider doesn't work. My wife also noticed that there might be a spring sticking out... I didn't notice anything when I sat in it by, I don't fit inside the bolstering like she does. Anyway, replacement seats were one of the first priorities, but I really didn't want to spend $500 on used seats...



I found a local yard on car-part.com that had cloth seats for $57 each, so I went and checked them out. I had to remove the fuel tank to get to them and there were no doors on the car. Who knows how many times they've been rained on and how long they've baked in the sun. No matter, they were better than what I had.


Old and busted:



"New" old and less busted:



These are manual seats without the heaters. That's fine by me because I'm not a fan of heated seats anyway. That makes the heater switches obsolete, so I grabbed the switch cover from the center console from the junk car as well. While I was at it, I grabbed the coin catcher too since I didn't have one.


Before:



After:



There were a couple goopy spots on the cloth driver seat that were likely from the fuel tank or some other part of the car that was haphazardly tossed inside at the junkyard. Overall they were pretty dirty and the foam had some dents left in their memory. My wife and I spent some time cleaning them up before installing them.



The car is scheduled to get an interior detail on Tuesday. I also need to set up an appointment to get an alignment done as it seems to be pulling to the right. Still a lot of work left to do.