(engine revving)
- The 300ZX was an incredible car during its day
packed with a lot of tech heavy features
that put it ahead of its time.
Even by today's standards, it's a great car.
But unfortunately, it was because of all those
early 90s gadgets that gave the Fairlady Z
a mixed reputation.
It's called character and it's what makes the 300ZX
one of the greats.
So today, we're gonna look at some of those tech heavy
character features slash flaws, starting with its infamous
twin turbo engine.
Then we're gonna move on to its four wheel steering
and then we're gonna finish up with it's
surprisingly sophisticated, iconic headlights that one
Italian supercar builder borrowed for their own car.
Let's get after it.
(upbeat music)
I wanna thank our sponsor for this week's episode,
a Bumper 2 Bumper Raycon Earbuds.
Now I've had my set of Raycons for a few months now
and they are the only earbuds I use.
Seriously, these things are great.
They fit good, the battery lasts forever,
their sound quality is amazing.
And what's even better, they start off at about
half the price of those other premium earbuds.
Times are crazy right now.
You're in close quarters with your loud ass family members,
Zip it Catherine, I'm trying to sell some earbuds!
Anyways, you can just take them out, pop them in,
and they just drown them out.
(vocalizes song)
♪ I can't hear anything. ♪
♪ I can't, I can't hear anything. ♪
♪ I can't hear Katherine screaming at me. ♪
Now, their everyday E25 Earbuds are the best model yet.
They got six hours of play time, seamless Bluetooth pairing,
more bass and a more compact design that gives you
a nice noise isolating fit.
It also comes in some cool new colors.
Go to buyraycon.com/bumper or click the link
in the description below to get 15% off your order.
Thank you guys for supporting the companies
that support us here at Donut, we love you very much.
Now for any non 300ZX fanboys or fangirls out there,
there are two versions of the 300ZX, the 1983 to 1989 model
which is called the Z31 and from 1990 to 2000,
which is called the Z32.
And that is the one we're gonna be talking about today.
And the first thing I wanna talk about with the Z32
is the motor.
The VG30DETT.
If your brain goes numb when you see or hear
engine model numbers like that, join the club.
I've always been one to kind of glaze over
those engine model numbers, but it is surprisingly
insightful when you break down what all those letters
and numbers mean.
So first off, the VG is the engine code that Nissan used
for their series of V6 motors.
Did they name it VG, because g is the closest letter
to resemble a six?
Sure, let's go with that, let's start the conspiracy.
Next, is the number 30, and that number represents
the engine's displacement of 3.0 liters.
Now, engine displacement is just the total
swept volume of all the cylinders.
It tells you how much air can be pumped through the engine,
and we can calculate that swept volume as long as we have
the bore which is the diameter of the cylinder,
that's this measurement as long as we have the stroke,
the distance at which the piston travels
and the total number of cylinders.
Now displacement is usually listed in liters like it is here
with the 300ZX, sometimes displayed as cubic centimeters,
which is used in motorcycles or cubic inches
if it's an American muscle car.
Next is the D, which stands for Dual Overhead Cams,
meaning one cam is used to operate the exhaust valves
and the other is used to operate the intake valves
and because this is the V6, there's actually
four total camshafts in this motor making it a quad cam.
We're gonna get to that in a second so hold tight.
Now the E stands for Electronic Fuel Injection and finally,
the TT stands for Twin Turbo #boostcreeps.
We started the game when we were filming our series,
"High Low", if you haven't seen it after you watch this,
go check it out and then go to donutmedia.com
and get your own Boost Creeps T-Shirt,
they're freaking cool.
So now that we know what this engine is, one of the features
that made it such a unique motor was called NVTC,
or Nissan Variable Timing Control.
Before I can even explain what variable timing control is,
we need to one, explain the basics of a four stroke engine
and two how timing is controlled in an engine without VTC.
It'll help us appreciate what VTC does.
Now, a quick way I like to remember the order of operations
on a four stroke motor is SS BB, suck, squeeze, bang, blow.
It's the sexiest way to remember it,
and if you can remember that, you'll never forget
how a four stroke engine works.
Now if we start with the piston at top dead center,
or at the highest point in the cylinder,
as it moves down, it sucks air into the cylinder
through the intake valve above.
And the piston then travels back up to squeeze all that air.
Fuel gets squirted in and that compressed air fuel mixture
is then sparked and bang!
A power stroke pushes the piston back down.
Now in the final stroke we have to get rid of all that
exhaust gas we just made by igniting that fuel and air
and the piston begins to travel back up to the top
of the cylinder which blows all that gas
out the exhaust valve and the process starts all over again.
So when we talk about timing we're talking about
when those intake and exhaust valves open and close.
So how is that achieved?
That is the job of the camshaft.
So the camshaft has lobes at various spots
along the length of it and as the cam rotates,
so do those lobes, and those lobes then push against
the valve to open them up.
Now the location and the profile or shape of those lobes
on the cam, they control three things in regards
to the valve.
They control the timing, that's when the valves get open,
they control the duration, which is how long the valve
stays open and they control the amount of lift
or how far the valve gets lifted off its seat.
By changing the shape of those lobes or their position
on the camshaft we can alter how much air the piston pulls
into the cylinder and when.
If we go back to our favorite Donut equation of more air,
plus more fuel equals more power, we can increase
the amount of power we make by allowing the piston
to draw in more air through the intake valve.
Now of those three variables, we're going to discuss
the timing of the valve.
See, when those valves open and close
is extremely important, it can affect the efficiency
of your engine, it can affect the amount of power it makes,
and at a very, very basic fundamental level,
it even determines if your motor will even run or not.
Now in most engines, the timing on when the intake
and exhaust valves open is consistent throughout
the entire rev range of your engine.
And that is not always a good thing.
For instance, when your engine is at idle, you don't need
a ton of air going into the cylinders.
Not necessary, right?
You're just sitting there, idling.
But, when you're ripping down the track and wringing out
the motor you want as much air in as fast as possible.
So cam design is basically a compromise between those two.
But what Nissan did with VTC is develop a way to get
the best of both worlds.
So, how did they do it?
(upbeat music)
On a standard engine, the camshaft has a fixed gear
on the end of it.
Like I mentioned before, that's the part that our belt
or chain hooks up to which is driven by the crank.
The engineers over at Nissan did something very clever
with that gear.
Instead of using a solid gear, they designed
a multi piece gear with a couple basic components.
Now you have the main gear, which the timing belt
mates up to and on the inside of this gear housing
is a cam phaser that's directly connected to the camshaft
and that cam phaser that is the part that allows
for variable timing.
That entire setup has passages for oil to go through it
and it's pressurized oil that makes
Nissan's VTC system work.
Now when VTC is activated, a solenoid valve mounted
on the back of the head presses on a check valve
at the rear of the cam and normally oil can flow
through here but now that the solenoid is blocking
that flow of oil, this forces oil into the cam gear
which then pushes the cam phaser.
And remember, the camshaft is directly connected
to the cam phaser.
So when this happens, it causes the camshaft to rotate
just a few degrees, effectively advancing the timing
of the intake valves.
And when I say advance, I mean the intake valves
open up sooner.
So at the tail end of our blow stroke, right?
WWhile the exhaust gases are being pushed out,
the intake valve is getting a head start by opening it up
just a smidgen sooner.
So why would you want that, right?
What does it mean?
It means you get improved low end power
and throttle response, which is great.
That load is just a calculation done by the ECU
so it takes all of that data from the crank angle sensor,
from the engine temperature sensor from the throttle sensor,
and from the neutral switch.
My point being is that all of this is pretty
sophisticated stuff, especially when it was developed
in the late 80s.
I mean, that is pretty incredible.
And on the flip side, again, this was done in the late 80s,
meaning if you have a 300ZX, you better have a lot of time
and patience to troubleshoot any problems that may arise
if any of those systems fail.
Obviously, it's not impossible.
Cars today are more digital than analog, but finding parts
or people to know how to work on your 30 year old Z,
are getting harder and harder to find.
But hopefully by the end of this video, you'll build
some appreciation for the Z and you'll go out and buy one,
you'll keep all that knowledge alive, which by the way,
if you have a 300ZX, put a comment down in the video below.
Tell me is it as much of a pain in the butt to work on
or do you still love it for all its character that it has?
Now, aside from this neat little trick to optimize timing,
the main thing that gets people all charged up
about the 300ZX is its twin turbo setup.
(upbeat music)
The Z uses Twin Garrett T25 turbos putting out
nine and a half pounds of boost.
That made the Z good for 300 horsepower
and 283 foot pounds of torque, getting it to the end
of the quarter in 13.7 seconds.
It topped out at 155 miles per hour but that was
electronically limited.
So, take that off, you go faster.
Don't do it though, I don't, do it if you want,
what do I care? (laughs)
To give you an idea how good that motor was in this car,
it made Car & Driver's top 10 lists
for seven years in a row.
And they compared this car in magazines to everything,
the C4, beat out the RX7, beat out the 911 even,
it beat out the 3000GT VR4.
Any import car that was tested against the 300 ZX,
the ZX came out on top.
It's a great car.
And the next cool tech feature on the 300ZX
that I wanna talk about is Nissan's four wheel steering
called Super HICAS.
It's not called high cass, It's called HICAS.
It's like, Hi kiss, (blows kiss) and it stands for
High Capacity Actively Controlled Steering
and it is Nissan's way of steering the rear wheels.
Now, you may have heard of this before, Nissan used it
in their R31 Skyline.
But it came standard on all the twin turbo models
of the Z32.
Now maybe the most dramatic example of rear wheel steering
is in the monster truck world.
We did a Bumper 2 Bumper on Grave Digger and James
talked about it then.
Go watch that after you finished this.
Now, they use rear wheel steering so those
big (bleep) trucks can make tight turns in small arenas
like this.
(engine revving)
Now, the four wheel steering on the 300ZX is quite different
in how it works as well as why Nissan installed it
in the first place.
So first off, why would you even need four wheel steering?
Well at low speeds, if you have the ability to turn
the rear wheels in the opposite direction
of the front wheels, you effectively decrease
the turning radius of the car,
hence why monster trucks use it.
Now, for the 300ZX, this isn't very helpful as the system
is inactive under 30 miles an hour.
So what is the reason the Z uses it?
Well, they use it in high speed situations.
So the HICAS system on the 300ZX only steers the rear wheels
just a few degrees.
Your front wheels on the other hand,
they can turn up to 50 degrees.
So, it may sound like a few degrees in the rear
is pretty insignificant, but it actually helps out
quite a bit.
When you turn all four wheels in the same direction
going around a corner for instance,
it improves high speed stability, and with all four wheels
turning the same way, you're less likely to have
the rear end (clicks teeth) kind of kick out.
Also, at high speeds, your front wheels aren't rotated
as much, you're not really doing a lot of this
when you're going fast.
So how does it work?
Well, the Z uses the super version of the HICAS system.
The Super version switched from hydraulics
to electronically controlled system using an electric motor.
The ECU gets information from a few different sensors,
it looks at the speed of the car, the steering angle
and the speed at which the steering wheel is being turned.
So it'll detect this versus this.
From this information, it works out how much steering input
to apply to the rear wheels.
It sends a signal to that electric motor.
Now the system can also monitor your intentions
before a corner, it can read your mind.
So using data from all those sensors I mentioned before,
this is then looked up against a table
of pre programmed values that tells the ECU
how far to move the back wheels.
This is continuously monitored throughout the entire turn.
And all of this happens in a fraction of a second
by the way, and all of this happened in the 90s.
This isn't Tesla we're talking about.
We're talking about Nissan in the 90s.
Nissan, what happened to you?
Where did you go? (laughs)
Now let's talk about the front of the car.
(upbeat music)
So to achieve that iconic front end of the 300ZX,
they had to figure out a way to produce
an entirely new headlight design.
Looking at a 300ZX headlight today and you think,
no big deal, but back in 1990 designing a headlight
with such a sleek profile was a challenge.
Generally speaking, a lot of the times the design process
of a new car starts out with form over function.
And as the build begins, designers go back and forth
with engineers and the two work out some sort of compromise
so that it keeps true to the designer's vision
but it still falls within the limits of what can actually
be built by the engineers.
In the case of the 300ZX, the looks were a main
driving force behind some of the technology
incorporated into the car.
Now when the designer Toshio Yamashita sketched out the car,
he wanted to make it look sleek, but still aggressive.
He even traveled to the US to figure out what people loved
about the previous Z's and why they were such a success
in the States.
American cars at the time were getting rounder
and more aerodynamic, so he designed a smooth edge Nissan
and in his design, he shaped the headlight
so they mated up with the hood and the fenders
clean and flush.
And the angle of the headlights for 60 degrees,
and at the time, if you wanted to maintain that angle,
the only way you could accomplish that
was the use of pop up headlights.
But at the time, we were getting away
from pop up headlights.
So when he brought his design to the engineers,
they were like, "We can't really do that,
"we can make them like 45 degrees, is that good?"
And Yamashita was like, "No, no, no."
Nissan engineers that nicknamed him Mr. Yadashida
because Yada loosely translates to No, no, no, in Japanese.
You see, Yamashita was seeking perfection
and he wasn't going to allow a bunch of whiny engineers
to stop him,
And as an engineer, myself, I can call us whiny.
So he went out and he found very small projectors
and gave them to the engineering team to use.
Now Projector Headlights had been around
before they were put on the Z.
But to maintain that low profile of the Z,
remember, it was 60 degrees, they had to have smaller
projectors and lamps and bulbs and all that stuff
so that they can maintain that sleek profile.
Now the lights were a huge success, so much so
that Lamborghini used them in their Diablo.
During the later years of the Diablo's production,
they went away from pop up headlights and instead of
designing, manufacturing and getting all the regulatory
tests done on their own headlight, Lamborghini used,
under license, the headlight of the Nissan 300ZX.
Fun little fact, Lamborghini actually tried to hide the fact
that they used Nissan's headlights by covering
the top portion with a strip of carbon fiber,
but if you have a Diablo, pop off that carbon fiber piece
and you'll see the Nissan logo right there,
that's pretty cool.
Thank you guys so much for watching.
If you didn't know, Donut has a show coming out
every day of the week now.
We have a new Versha show, we have The D List,
we got Money Pit with Zach Jobe, which is just a beauty.
Follow Donut at Donut Media, click that like button,
click the subscribe hit the notification button.
Do you have a 300ZX?
Let me know about it, put a comment down below.
Hit me up on Instagram, show me some pictures
@JeremiahBurton.
I love that car, Is it as much of a pain in the butt
to work on as I, as I hear it is?
I don't know, I don't have one, but you can tell me.
I'll see you next week.
Bye for now.
(car engine rumbles)
- What's going on guys Jeremy Miller
from Springfield Massachusetts, also with
the Zebras drift team.
I have here my two Nissan 300ZX's.
- Hey guys, my name is Bethany Putney
and today I will be showing you
my 1990 Nissan 300ZX twin turbo.
- [Brent] How are you Donut Media?
My name is Brent and this is Blaster Z.
(car engine roars)
- I'm a little biased, but I think
this is a timeless design.
- [Kevin] What's up James, Nolan all the other guys
at Donut Media, my name's Kevin from New Jersey.
This is my 1990 Nissan 300ZX.
- [Long] My name is long and I'm from El Monte California.
Here's my 1991 300ZX slick top with a twin turbo conversion.
- Oh, I got something, hold on.
Oh dude, do I got something for you dude.
Look what I got.
I got a little calculator.
So while Nissan engineers in the 90s were programming
all this cool technology into a 300Z,
you know what I was doing in the 90s?
Texas instrument.
Where my TI-89 fans at?
I was doing this, eight, zero, zero, eight, s,
friggin (bleep) (laughs)
So dumb, so dumb.
I am embarrassed that I just did that,
and I know you're gonna use it and I wish I didn't
but whatever.
All right, we good?
(engine revving)