The Zenki KA-T build thread!

[TrackStarGT]

I just bought this car yesterday and have already put 10-15 hours into it..and it Fleeeeew by. This current post is to show my starting point. I will be documenting as much of the modifications as I can remember, I get a little excited..I practically install parts in the front of the store where I get them, lol, not really. Anyway, this is what I am starting with. Bought it for $2400.
did a little cleaning up on the suspension. 3" stainless steel catback exhaust system.

[TrackStarGT]

started refurbishing the wheels. I will be painting them a titanium color and car will be a dark charcoal metallic grey. lots of curb rash all around, I was going to buy new wheels but these quickly grew on me. So ill put that money into the rest of the car for now. Dont know what color to paint the lips/dish part of the rim, they will have to be painted considering the sanding and filler work that will be done to them to get rid of the curb rash.

Im doing these one at a time considering how labor intensive this process is. I started out cleaning them very well and sanding/scuffing them with a very course scouring pad, cleaned with wax and grease remover, cleaned again, then taped off and laid down two coats of high build primer and sand smooth with 800-1000 grit, will paint tomorrow.

I went to my local paint shop and got a custom color mixed up and put into aerosols for me $20 bucks a can, got 2. Let me know what you think about painting the lip/dish portion of the rim...



update: finished painting, wheels done and on the car!

[S14wayz]

Looks like a wicked start for that $$. Lots of previous body damage? What are you planning to do to it in the long run

[TrackStarGT]

A Full build on KA motor with a mild turbo setup, looking for around 300hp. This is a project that I am going to turn into a track car that I can drive on the street or to work occasionally. The rear left quarter panel was backed into and professionally repaired. The R side front fender is a cheap aftermarket that I will be replacing. The rest of the car is straight. All the body lines look good except for that front fender region. I am going to leave the body as is at the moment. And I will be focusing on the drive train and suspension. It will be a "sleeper" before it will be a "looker". I have lots of plans for this car. I am into road racing, ever heard of iRacing? Im on that like crazy, I have some top ten world record times on there. Motorsports is a passion of mine, and it will show when this build is completed.

[signals13]

Nice build, What u paid is pretty cheap considering what's already on the car, Good luck

[TrackStarGT]

Well picked me up some used parts lastnight: A turbo and a manifold. One problem though is that the turbo has a t3 flange and the manifold is a t25/28 flange. Got them both for 200 bucks not a steal but a good deal. Now trying to decide whether to buy an adapter to mate them or have a new flange welded on, I know the later is the ideal route but I dont have welding skills and would not want to mess the manifold up...I know there might be clearance issues with adapter.

[TrackStarGT]

Here is a shot of the manifold

[TrackStarGT]

Here is a shot of the turbo its an oem nissan garrett t28 with a t3 flange, head scratcher!
I have a couple questions about this turbo. By the code I have found that it is a t28 off of a 300zx but the flange measures out to be a t3, it seems to be water and oil cooled. The shaft play is almost non existant.
1. What should I do about the flange working with what I have?
2. will this help me hit the 300hp mark im shooting for?
3. how do I set the boost on this internal wastegate turbo?
4. does the oil and water run through it by gravity? So I need to orient the oil and water IN port on the top?

more questions to come

[TrackStarGT]

Never mind about the gravity thing, as I read the question over, I Realized duh! Pressure lol..

[TrackStarGT]

well kind of a bummer update.. After some extensive research, I have found that this is not the turbo I was looking for. All I heard was nissan and garrett and I was like 200 bucks! hell yeah! I did get a t25/28 manifold too in that deal.

Anyway, the turbo would work if I wanted to put the work into it, ie, external wastegate, block-flange/custom down pipe flange (because it has some weird proprietary 7 bolt flange pattern) OR new garrett turbine housing 300-500 dollars. The turbo is in great condition, and I know it would make the power I was looking for but just too much work to make it work. Here are some reference pics to see what I am talking about, this turbo is off of a 1990 300zx, .60 compressor and .63 turbine, oil and water cooled.

I would sell it if anyone wants it.

[mewantkouki]

Sell that grenade and source a sr t28 or a gti-r turbo and use a t25 exhaust housing if you're crafty.

[TrackStarGT]

Picked up a couple more parts to the puzzle today: an N62 flow sensor with pigtail $40, walbro 255 $40, t/28 to t3 flange adapter(ordered when I was planning on using the 300zx turbo)

[TrackStarGT]

Minor update. A few more pieces: steering rack energy poly bushings, 20 bucks, and a bad ass Turbo240 polished aluminum fuel rail: fittings included. Nabbed it for 60 bucks off of ebay.

Hopefully the bass boat sells tomorrow: which means an immediate dumping of at least $3500 into the project.

[TrackStarGT]

Also discovered that this model is one of the many that did not come with the VLSD, and whomever started this project did a lot. One of which is the full 5 stud and VLSD swap, freakin awesome. Also, this chassis has 234K miles on it. The motor is hot, and by that I mean it gets up and goes, it has 180 +- psi on each cylinder. It cant be the original motor or original factory build, can it? It just seems to be too good for its age. My guess since all of the other major mods to this car, it is at least rebuilt. Also, since I know that the rear end has been swapped, the rear end gear is pretty tall because im doin 3000 RPM at cruising speeds(70) its borderline un-daily-drivable.

[kpjo4]

if it's the 4 bolt exhaust side bolt pattern with 2 bolts on one side and the other 2 a bit wider it's technically the t22 from the 300zx tt, ceramic wheel is jdm spec and steel wheel is usdm. I had one for my drift 318is.

It could also be a rb turbo, since they did use pretty much a t25/t28 with a t3 flange, which also i had for my 318is.

BTW GL with ur project, since I bought mine a week ago and have a thread on this forum too =].

[TrackStarGT]

I know these are unexciting updates but I do what I can, when the boat sells, thats when it'll get really fun. Speaking of boat, it didnt sell today as I thought it would, bummer dude! Anyway, I painted the new passenger fender, replaced the front brake pads for the R32 calipers, which by the way uses the z32 pads, and in went the walbro 255. Everything went seamlessly

[TrackStarGT]

boat sold today, wooohooooo, now for some shopping.

buying today: turbo, manifold and down pipe kit by OBX any thoughts? wastegate, BOV, MSPNP latest version, IC kit, injectors, fuel line kit, turbo feed/drain line kit, intake flange and filter for N62, AEM Wide band, oil catch can....sweeeeeet!

[kacam24det]

I would steer clear of obx products had a 44mm wastegate that was responsible for my motor blowing awhile back and wouldn't trust anything else they sell thats my opinion.

[signals13]

their are a couple guys on here running t2 obx exhaust manifold and downpipe no problems.

[TrackStarGT]

Well I dont really want to spend $350 on a tial wastegate, so I hope that the overboost protection on the ECU I will be running will cover most mechanical failures that would cause lean/overboost situation: am I wrong in assuming this. I mean if a wastegate fails it either opens too much which would be rather harmless or it closes completely causing an over-boost event, which the MegaSquirtPnP ver 2 would cut fuel and or spark in the event of overpressurized system?

while you guys are here: I am having trouble with finding the right injectors, i just bought some injectors that were the wrong size(bosch 680cc top feed 11mm inlet 14mm outlet rather short and plugs very close to the inlet side of the injector), apparently the turbo240 rail is a 14mm inlet size and I guess that the KA mani is 14mm outlet size, does anyone know the specific length injector I need, or just point me to the exact injector and where I can buy them, Im looking for over 600cc for now I dont want to have to upgrade for a while.

Thanks in advanced.

[hpipro4]

get injector dynamics they are worth the money! i have their ID1000cc they also 725 or 800cc. mine are 60mm lenght ill be using the aem rail and xcessive intake mani. but noticed the standoff aem provides arent the correct lenght so i had to buy standoff frm mcmastercarr
what their id1000 looks like specs: 60mm lenght 11mm top adapters 14mm bottoms
http://www.injectordynamics.com/injectors.html

[TrackStarGT]

thanks for that post, that is exactly what I was looking for. I was thinking about grabbing these. I have talked to a couple of the vendors on some of the performance sites and they all have what I am looking for. I guess the 14mm inlet is not a popular option so they dont advertise about them as aggressively as they do the 11mm inlet injectors.

[supakat]

14mm is popular but not for imports. Majority is 11mm. I have Bosch 1600cc which are 14mm.

[TrackStarGT]

A little bit of christmas today. some more parts showed up. Gotta love it!!

Dont make fun of my cheap parts. Im just trying to learn and have some fun. Injectors and the MSpnp gen 2 is waiting for me at the post office wont be able to pick those up til monday

picked up this 63 trim T3 turbo for super cheap, going to rebuild it, its probably not necessary, there is the tiniest bit of shaft play next to none, but there is a thin coat of oil in both housings so my guess is bearings are good and seals are bad so, y not rebuild. Anyone have a source for a quality rebuild kit?

cant wait to start bolting this thing together.

[TrackStarGT]

Had someone pick up my goodies from the post office so I could play with them when I got home 550cc injectors, and the star of the whole show the MSPnP2 this thing is sick! it has so many options to play with....


got the options cable put together and labeled for later use: for hooking up things such as: electronic boost control, COPs, relay controls for anything such as fans which can be kicked on by ECU based on coolant temp, CANBus connections, table switcher, external tach, multistage launch control, knock sensing, wide band...etc,.

[hpipro4]

ohhhh nice!!!!!

[TrackStarGT]

got the turbo broken down in about 45 min or so. It was very easy, all bolts came loose no problems there. This turbo had a severe oil leak probably more than one, lol. I will be doing a very detailed write up on it and post it in the Tech forum. I found a few right ups but not as detailed as I would have liked. I had to read about 4 before I found ALL necessary info to properly and safely rebuild a wet float T3 Turbo. Here are a few pics of the tear down, I dont have the rebuild kit yet because I wanted to visualize the parts first so I order the right kit the first time.

loc-tite on the compressor wheel threads, thats a good sign I guess..

compressor wheel off and somewhat cleaned. All parts will get a good bath before they get put back together.


compressor wheel indexed to shaft before it came off. I dont know if this assembly was balanced as a whole, probably not, but I will treat it like it was.

this is just to show how dirty and oily the compressor housing was, this is after it was mostly cleaned

compressor wheel and housing back plate cleaned and set aside.

Shaft and CHRA looking healthy so far!

Turbo nearly completely apart, besides the wet float bearings, my circlip pliers were not small enough. I will extract them later..

Shaft and turbine look healthy, as far as I can tell there is no material transfer on the bearing surfaces of the shaft, not do I feel or see any witness marks or grooves. GOOD to go on the rebuild. Will update when the kit arrives and is installed.

Got to get this broken bolt out! Sucks, I guess thats why I got it so cheap, lol!

[supakat]

You will love the ecu. Best investment I made. GL

[TrackStarGT]

yeah cant wait to start playing with it. I have been considering plugging it in right now as an NA motor and just learning how to tweak it and get all the sensors and harness worked out, then when I put the turbo in, it should make the tuning stage a little easier.

[supakat]

Definitely do. You will get comfortable with it and make it easier down the road.