Embrace the Inevitable

After two weeks of being down, I finally got my car running again.  During the downtime, I managed to accomplish:

1. Hard inter cooler pipes.
2. Somewhat replace both o2 sensors.
3. Delete all non-critical water and vacuum lines.
4. Relocate fuel pressure regulator next to the fuel filter
5. Delete fuel dampener
6. Bypass EGR (exhaust gas recirculation)
7. Replace brake booster

 Just as a bit of a preface, my car is a 1993 Twin Turbo 300zx.  Its old and parts are starting to give out.  I cannot touch a hose without it cracking a breaking.  I really need to do a full rebuild, but do not have time nor energy at the moment.

The inter cooler pipes were ordered from eBay, they are shiny cheap chinese pipe.  But hey, its a pipe, it doesn’t need to be manufactured by NASA.  I will say that even tough they are shiny, their luster could not ease my dissatisfaction for the cheap clamps (4 of which were unusable).  Luckily I had several good clamps laying around to replace them.  Chinese quality control at its finest.

I say somewhat replace the o2 sensors, because I broke a cheap advanceauto o2 sensor socket on the driver side turbo o2 sensor, which managed to partially strip the sensor in the process.  Broken willed (and socketed heh), I attempted to try my luck on the passenger side, same result… :[  o2 (oxygen) sensors are used to measure the amount of oxygen in the exhaust (after the chemical reaction) so the ECU can modify the amount of fuel injected into the motor to try to achieve the stoichiometric ratio for gasoline.  Its a closed loop feedback system, that is (on my car anyways) used only to get good gas milage.  When you floor the gas pedal, the ecu ignores the o2 sensors so they have no affect on performance.  So I just cut the wires and left them stuck in my factory downpipes.  This will give me incentive to upgrade to 3″ downpipes later :]

As asinine as it sounds, I had to remove the upper portion of the engine to replace the brake booster (what initiated this repair session).  There was not enough clearance between the shock down and the intake manifold for the brake booster to snake through.  Removing the intake manifold is a chore in and of itself.  It had obviouslly never been pulled before, and there was an abundance of unknown crap attached to it.  And if I dont know what it is, I probably dont need it.  So i strapped my cherry picker to intake manifold, and lifted until shit started breaking.  I tore 2 fuel lines, 2 egr ports, countless water lines, and a few vacuum lines.  I replaced the fuel lines (they needed to be replaced anyways, they were 15 years old), deleted / blocked off the water and vacuum ports as they went to stupid emissions crap (think of me when your kids get asthma).

I removed the fuel dampener since it cluttered my engine bay and made it harder to work on the car.  Most cars do not have them anyways, I am sure there is a super special reason why Nissan decided to install one, however its not critical for the car to run so I do not care.  I moved the fuel pressure regular besides the fuel filter for the same reason: simplicity.  I suspect the elasticity of the extra rubber fuel line will act as fuel dampener by expanding / contracting and absorbing the pressure waves in the fuel rail caused by the opening and closing of the fuel injectors at low fuel flow conditions (such as when im idling or “racing” corollas).

I bought a 48×2″ aluminum strip from Home Depot, and cut it down into 1 inch pieces and then bolted it down over the EGR ports.  Not the most elegant solution, however it should work and save me $50.

Brake booster was straight forward once I removed the intake manifold.  After 1 year of having no power brakes, I can finally stop.  There is a really good reason my right thigh is larger than my left :]