Thanksgiving Break

Hello everyone!

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! I had a little extra time off of school and work for Thanksgiving so I decided to work on my engine for a bit. So when I was removing the oil pan to look inside my engine around May, 3 out of the 32 bolts holding it in place snapped (3 in a row at that)and I have put off removing them for the longest time. I tried using a nut to get the remainder of the bolts out but there wasn't enough threads to hold onto, so the only solution I thought of was to drill them out. I had the engine on the engine stand and being able to rotate it to the side made drilling easier. I covered the inside with paper towels to prevent the shavings from getting inside.

Bolt 1

In this picture, the left hole is what it looks like normally and the right side

you can see that I started drilling out the first bolt and it's about halfway through

(sorry no before pictures haha I was focused on getting it done)

Bolt 2 & 3

The first bolt was easy to drill out but the other two were really difficult

to start since the bolts broke uneven. I broke off the bolts to make it 

nearly flushed with the bottom of the block to reduce the amount of

material I will need to drill. The drill bit I was using kept slipping and

going to a smaller drill bit helped me get it going. As you can see in this

pic, I drilled all the way through on the second bolt and the third bolt broken.

And here they are drilled out all the way!

 Bolts 1, 2, and 3

Since I drilled out the bolts, I have to rethread the holes for 

the bolts. My brother let me borrow his tap to rethread them. 

Have to make sure it's going straight and not going at an angle.

Success!

 

I'm glad it went smoothly for the most part and I didn't struggle too much haha. 

Finishing this Semester

As this semester is getting closer to the end (last week's two presentations and essay wasn't fun), I'm starting to get more free time. Which means I can finally start working on my car again! Also, I created a Vimeo to post videos about my car adventures and to share them with everyone. Here's a timelapse of me sanding the peeling clear coat on my 260z. Wish I recorded all of it but my phone battery died on me.

 

Sanding from Andrew Sorensen on Vimeo.

This ended up happening the same day as well :/

Early in November my brother finally got a car after his Civic Si (em1) was stolen early January. I made a video of his first car wash just for fun haha.

 

First Wash from Andrew Sorensen on Vimeo.
That's it for now. I need a few hose replacements, a battery, fluids, wheels, the MSA sway bar kit and I think we should be running soon! I also need tires but I have a friend who works for Yokohama so she said she can get me better prices for me which will be awesome!

More Parts!

So I found time to visit Motorsport Auto (MSA aka The Z Store online) in Orange on Tuesday after I got off work to pick up some parts! When I pulled up, there was a beautiful 260z in the parking lot. Owner seemed pretty cool and I wish I could have stayed to chat about his car, but I was trying to beat traffic on the way back (which I didn't anyway haha).

Anyways, I got there and the employees were very helpful and I got my parts pretty fast. I ended getting my 6 to 1 header and MSA exhaust. I wanted to get their sway bar kit also but it was out of stock and will be for a few weeks!

6-1 header and MSA exhaust pipes

Should sound really good when I get the car running which is hopefully by the end of the year! My next update might take a while because of work and as this school semester is getting closer toward the end, more stuff is coming up! The next two weeks I have two presentations and a 10 page paper (yikes!). Wish I can just throw all the parts on now, but school comes first.