New Z Proto Unveil!

YouTube Z Unveil

Tonight Nissan went on livestream to unveil what we have all been looking forward to, the next generation Z car. A few questions had been officially answered;

“Will there be a manual transmission?” The answer is yes. With all the racing heritage the Z has, I believe the entire Z community would be an uproar if there wasn’t. (Remember the time Nissan unveiled the second gen 370 Nismo… without a manual transmission option? I do. Nissan fixed that by the following year).

“What engine? Turbos?” V6 Twin Turbo! I’m pumped about this. The amount of tune-ability we will have will be awesome. Turbos is what the Z car has been missing for the last 15 (plus or minus) years.

Questions I still have; *Price point *Trim levels *Type of differential and/or if an LSD will be in all trims *Power-HP/Torque *Weight Distribution

It seems that a lot of the new Z came from us the enthusiasts. I know that Nissan can’t please everyone but overall I believe they did a great job listening to us. As this is still the ‘Z Proto’ and I’m sure there will be a couple little tweaks, I’m extremely proud to own three different generation Z cars currently and continue my dads Z car legacy with another generation Z soon.

Social Distancing

During Covid Quarantine it was super important to keep busy. Trying to take on some work at the house to keep myself creative, obtained a puppy, went to ‘the drift spot’ in Dallas, and did a little road trip.

Meet Shiro (She-row). She is a Great Pyrenees who’s named after the ‘Shiro edition’ 300zx (Z31 chassis). Shiro also means ‘white’ which is fitting!

My friends Craig and Kimberly have a Great Pyrenees who ran away for a couple days and got knocked up by another Great Pyrenees and had 9 puppies. (Craig restores older Z cars under the name Simtec Motorsports; IG @simtecmotorsports). When I brought Shiro home that day, my neighbor saw her and they went to go pick up Shiros sister… now the sisters get to grow up together!

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The first order of work at the house was to complete brakes, hard wiring in a dash cam and radar detector on our friend Zahids GTR.

While we had it, Zahid started thinking about making the car his, and doing some customizing to it to make it pop. We started with new Nismo orange lugs and powder coating the wheels gold.

This looked great, but we needed something that really makes it stand out. I prefer to draw out ideas than build them on the computer… (I know the computer way is better and more accurate, but I really enjoy using my hands to draw it out!) So to the drawing board I went! I drew out three different ideas for graphics and texted Zahid to see what direction he wanted to go. (pictured below is the office, taking a break from the vinyl and looking at new couches)

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The final design reflected the Fast and Furious GTR, but with a little twist. Matte black vinyl over a sliver of gold to match the wheels. It came out really nice!

Some fun still had to be had out of the house and in my Z, so we went to the drift spot and showed Hayley (Silver GTR pictured below IG @stig_gtr) what that spot was all about! It was a freaking blast, it always is.

The 370Z also got a make over during this ‘down’ time. We had been sitting on a full new style nismo kit for it, a Seibon carbon fiber hood, sweet wing, and some little side skirt inserts.

Car cruises still existed during this time, and in my opinion that was the best part of social distancing! Thanks to Maly and George for getting a few sweet shots out there! (George IG @_alphalyfe)

Ending ‘Quarantine’ we took the dogs to San diego, and Tucson, visited family and made a planter for some herbs! Very productive.

Vroom Vroom Vroom

New video is up! We went out for a Sunday drive and decided to make a little video.

We had Kristy and Rigo set up on either sides of the road, I had earbuds in with our spotters on the phone to let me know if a car was coming. As you can see, its country.

There was an older guy that came up in his truck that was a little agitated we were there, I explained what we were up to and he left us alone. There was also a couple people on golf karts that came up that I introduced myself with and let them know what we were doing and they were very nice about it… none of the locals wanted to see any street racing around their properties. Since we wern’t racing and I explained we were trying to be as safe as possible about it they all left us to our devices.

 

 

 

Written by Melissa Miller

Just a ‘Smoke’ Break

Everyone is entitled to a 10 minute break/Smoke break. My buddy Josh at work and I decided to take the term ‘Smoke Break’ into another form…a bit healthier.

Both of us are Supercharged now, we initially came out to take photos of our cars, but then I sweet talked him into letting me do some fancy driving around his car…took more coaxing than you would think!

Thanks Josh!

 

-Melissa Miller

Video taken by Billy Buzbee

Man in video running and owner of supercharged 370Z; Josh Gains

 

Ten Week OverHaul

 

Saying we were going to change the complete paint job/livery AND install a GTM Supercharger and all that goes with it in less than 10 weeks was going to be extremely challenging. I wanted it to be ready to drift at the DriftKitchen event in Memphis. We all set goals, some are easier than others to obtain, I got laughed at when I set this one. All in all, we did it. We completed everything but the final color sand and buff on the car. I still cant Thank Chris Waters, Tom Sippel, Kristy Sippel, Daulton Cockerell, Russ Rana, Country-ass Jon, and Z1 Motorsports enough for getting this done!

 

The Drift Kitchen Event was really fun, smaller track, more technical than fast, and the girls were all super supportive of everyone else. There was even a little gift bag and snail mailed thank you for coming!

Thanks girls for getting this event together and making my ‘break in’ event so much fun!

 

Every time we go to Memphis we have to hang with our Memphis Z club friends. Really great group of people I’d like to think of as an extended family. Thank You Burch and Erin for letting us stay with you guys! Your house/Garage set up is inspiring!

 

 

Photos and Video taken by Melissa Miller and Chris Waters.

Drone footage in the beginning of video by Tom Sippel

Favorites

A lot of people ask which model Z is my favorite. This is a really hard question to answer honestly. They are all great but all for completely different ways.

After driving the 300zx (Z32) for so many years and drifting it, road racing it, and drag racing-(very minimal), this would be my go to car for that raw feeling of road racing. Where there are no computers controlling what your doing whatsoever, no traction control, just your skills and the car. If you mess up, your car messes up. You do a clean run, it reflects and the car does a clean run. On the down side, in order to own one of these you need to expect to spend 10k minimum to get one up to speed with all new bushings, suspension, and general maintenance. It’s incredibly hard to diagnose with OBD1, you really need to find someone who knows the car and knows the common issues with them to repair. And expect engine pulls as a part of life.

Having the 350z (z33) for a while now this car as the base model has no traction control or any version of it and is wonderfully predictable for a drift car. It’s near perfect weight distribution of 53-47 is just biased enough to make this the ‘funnest’ of the Z’s in my opinion. You don’t need a lot of power in this model to have a good time. Base 350z, weld the diff, get some good suspension and boom-fantastic drift car, better yet-reliable drift car. With the car not really being ‘too old’ it doesn’t generally need a crazy amount of ‘out of the ordinary’ maintenance. It’s just old enough to have a strong aftermarket backing for upgrades and not be too expensive.

With the 370z (Z34) while beautiful, this car has too many electronics controlling everything. Even when turning the traction control off with the button on the dash, it still has the ipdm controlling and trying to fix what your doing while driving, disconnect the ipdm at the track and the steering gets stiffer, the gauge cluster becomes inoperable, and you gain maybe 50% more control but then you have to have a code reader after the event or go to a dealer to get all those lights off your dash, get the gauge cluster to work, and reset the module. With the electronic steering it feels like it takes an extra second when attempting to counter steer before it does which makes the difference of spinning out on track or being able to hold a drift. The unfortunate thing about adding anything to the 370, is the aftermarket backing for modifications is still priced pretty high since Nissan has been making it for 10 years now (09 models through 2019 models) its still like purchasing parts at pricing for brand new car. I would put the 370z on my list of the perfect fun daily driver with light track use. It has just the right amount of computer control that would help any newer driver on track to make up for mistakes the driver would make without having to do too many modifications to it.

All in all, without having to do many modifications I would have to give the 350z my vote for the favorite-as much as I love my Z32’s and Z34’s one is very high maintenance and one has too many computers controlling the drive.

I don’t have much experience with the older models yet, but if your reading this and do, please put your opinions in the comments below.

Grassroots of Texas

 

These very grassroots evens at Mineral Wells Airport put on by UpShift Videos are a blast. No pressure, low entry fee (drivers 25.00 and spectators 5.00-includes ride alongs), and your almost guaranteed to burn through all your tires before the day is done.

Weather your learning figure 8’s or wanna give a third gear entry a try this event is for you.

Upcoming;

This season will include mainly the 350Z. Getting it prepped with a super angle kit and some other suspension modifications, new seats, roll cage, etc. stay tuned-we’ll have a build thread soon!

For now, come on out to next weekend for some drifting fun!

Z Things And Stuff