Testimonial

Banzai - Nissan 350Z Competition Giveaway

Right, the gearbox, diff and engine oil have been changed, we’ve steam cleaned just about everything possible to steam clean and uprgraded the brakes to rather nice set of EBC discs and pads. To be fair, I think there’s not a true petrolhead on the planet who wouldn’t be pretty damn happy to drive home in this one already, but there’s still a long way to go 
before it’ll be ready to give away at TRAX.

Anyway, with that in mind, this month I thought I’d get on to one of the most important, if not THE most important, mods on the whole car. I’m talking of course, about the suspension.

Now, I’m not saying the 350Z is comically ‘clown-car’ high as standard, but it’s certainly getting towards some sort of minor circus status. I guess that can be forgiven because it’s more of a GT cruiser than nimble sportscar, but even so, we want to beef up the handling on ours… oh and make it look cooler than a Penguin’s pink bits for the new owner. Our weapon of choice for is a spanky new set of PB Coilovers, and I’ve chosen this particular brand of bouncy bit for a few simple reasons. First, and once again, I’ve used these on a few cars over the years (can you see a theme emerging here? – Sam), and I’ve always found them to perform exceptionally well, much better than many in the same sort of price range. They also offer all the bells and whistles like monotube dampers, multiple spring rates and 30-stage adjustable damping, and the only reason they’re such a bargain is they cut out the middle-man by delivering them straight from their factory. Secondly, they also come ready built-up with alloy top mounts, which means there’s no need to risk life and limb by breaking out the spring compressors. This makes them super-quick to fit if you know what your doing and, even if you’re a bit of a spanner-swinging numpty like myself, you should have no trouble getting these on with basic tools and a jack.

Anyway, I ordered a full kit last month, and they landed in less than a week. They’ve been sitting around in the workshop, waiting until I had a free day, although for once it took substantially less time than I thought to get the job done. It’s actually easier to fit coilovers to a 350Z than you might imagine. I’d been having nightmares for weeks about having to strip out the acres of plastic trim in the boot for the rear dampers but, thanks to the forethought of the kind people at Nissan, they mount under the wheel arches. Installing both the front and rear kit is just a case of dropping the bottom arms, undoing the top mounts, pulling the standard gear off and 
bolting up the new stuff. Lovely!

The only real problem I had along the way was that the front drop links were knocking more violently than an LAPD SWAT team and needed replacing. The big problem for me was that they absolutely refused to come off. Still, after a lot of swearing and scraped knuckles, out came the grinder and short work was made of those too.

All in all, we got that and a few other bits and pieces (that I’ll get on to in the next issue), done for in time Japfest Donington. Quite obviously, the crowd went wild for it too, but we’re not even remotely finished yet. There’s plenty more to do before I’ll be happy to give it away… well, I say happy, I’ll actually be crying into my cornflakes when I have to hand over the keys to this one!

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