The first month or so really showed me what kind of pockets owning a Z would require. I should have known from there on out it wouldn't get any easier. Over the course on the next year I did the typical maintenance and modifications. Well, I did more of the latter as I didn't understand how important maintenance was to these cars. Plus I was young and quite ignorant.
First thing I did was drive! Drove the car everywhere. And why not, it was a joy! I have never had a car that handled and drove so well but was comfortable enough to make a few hour trip out of town. Since it was my daily driver, it got a lot of attention.
I changed out the headlights and foglights for some snazzy Silverstar bulbs. This is before HIDs were affordable. Put in a Sony headunit and got a awesome carbon fiber hood. HAH! It was awesome looking then. I remember how much crap I got on 300ZXClub.com for showing off the hood. I was hounded to paint it on a regular basis.
Did the typical maintenance (oil changes, differential and transmission fluid). I always ran Redline (at the time) in the engine. I thought Race Oil was the coolest thing ever until I realized I was wasting my money!
One day when making a huge ($$$) trip to Meyers Auto to buy more stuff for the car (cases of oil and filters, etc); I see a really nice, shiney all aluminum radiator from CSF. At the time, CSF made a GREAT 2-Row radiator (vs our OEM 1-Row). I knew the Z had a tough time keeping cool in the summer. So I saved up to snag this beauty.
For some reason all my heard earned money got sucked up into maintenance. Some of the maintenance is my own fault, most of it was the Z being cranky.
Countless hours days and nights were spent in my apartment complex parking lot fixing the car. As I have no formal training or knowledge on auto repair. It was a very painful learning experience. I randomly bounce between fixing runability and idling issues like a tennis match. In the process I somehow feel it would be fun to mod more.
In the midst of changing out spark plugs and wiring in new injector clips I send out an upper intake plenum to have it extrude honed. I get the nice, new smooth manifold back in my hands. Before I can even install it I get a dead injector. Being ignorant, I replace just the bad injector with a used one. I then install my upper intake plenum after fixing the injector problem.
Being the fact the plenum was extrude honed, it got a little warped in the process. I had to stand on two corners of the plenum to get it to flatten while my buddy bolts the plenum down.
All this love and attention (though some of it was used parts kind of love) and the Z began to behave....for a while!
