The only magazine project that you could be driving this October…
Right, the gearbox, diff and engine oil have been changed to premium Redline stuff, we’ve steam cleaned just about everything humanly possible to steam clean and upgraded the brakes to rather nice set of EBC performance discs and pads. To be fair, I think there’s not a true petrolhead on the planet who wouldn’t be damn happy to drive home in this one already… but there’s a long way to go before it’ll be ready to give away at TRAX Silverstone on October 7th.
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 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. Our weapon of choice for this? A spanky set of PB Coilovers, and we’ve chosen this particular brand of bouncy bit for a few simple reasons.
First, we’ve used these on loads of FC projects over the years and we’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.
I also like the fact that they 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 you’re doing and, even if you’re a bit of a spanner-swinging numpty (like you, you mean – Jules) 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. Sure, we’ve been here before, we fitted air ride on our Time Attack 350Z just four or five years ago. But the truth is, I’m getting old and I forgot what was involved.
On the bright side though, it was a rather pleasant surprise when I realised all the plastics and guff in the boot doesn’t have to be stripped out to fit the rear shocks because they mount from the bottom, underneath the wheel arches. The front shocks were dead easy to fit too, it’s 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 our Jules’ headboard when the new Victoria’s Secret catalogue comes in. The little bastards also absolutely refused to come off! Still, after a lot of temper tantrums and scraped knuckles, out came the grinder and short work was made of those too.
That’s one big job done but there’s plenty more to do before I’ll be happy to give the car away… well, I say happy, I’ll actually be crying into my cornflakes when they make me hand over the keys…
SPENT:
PB coilovers £599
New drop links £35
TOTAL £634
CONTACTS:
PB Brakes & Coilovers
See more of the FAST CAR BANZAI NISSAN 350Z
