It's no secret that the 300ZX twin-turbo engine bay can be a nightmare to work on. The V-6 configuration, Nissan's placement of the turbos and its extensive piping and vacuum hoses make it tighter than a middle-row coach seat on a flight full of sumo wrestlers. Andy Turpin, however, has found the best way to remedy these underhood issues-swap in a RB-series Skyline engine. But he endured a long, harsh road to pull it all off and in the process has created a supremely serious sleeper.
Like many enthusiasts, Turpin started behind the wheel of a Civic, in his case a '93 DX. This pearl white Z's road to glory started roughly seven years ago. One month after Turpin graduated from high school, he sold his Civic in order to buy the Z off his older brother, Chad.
Turpin reports the first year of ownership was like playing hopscotch in a minefield. About three months after buying the Nissan, a few of the stock injectors died. And like many enthusiasts before him, this would be the moment of enlightenment that transforms an idle-on-the-sidelines enthusiast into a proper wrench-turning enthusiast. "Not knowing anything about cars," says Turpin, "I took it to the dealership for a diagnosis and $75 later they told me I had an injector going out, and handed me an estimate for over $1,000! Extremely scared of that large of a bill, and only being 18, I decided it was best if I learned how to start wrenching. After all, my father was an old gearhead, and obviously my brother was into the whole car thing. I learned how to do the injector replacement off of a Z website and jumped in."
In further stereotypical fashion this truly needed fix led to less urgent modifying. As always, it was baby steps at first. Turpin upgraded to "Stage 3" status. This first round consisted of a reprogrammed ECU, a GReddy SP exhaust and a mild boost up to 14 psi. The car ran great for about a month and then the stock clutch blew out, so he swapped it out.
After several trouble-free months, Turpin figured he had beaten back the curse so he decided it was time to make his first-ever dragstrip appearance. He made two mid-13-second runs, but he had failed to reverse the curse as the V-6 started showing some signs of rod-knock at the end of the second pass.
Again what seemed like a setback was pure opportunity for Turpin and after some serious wrenching the Z returned to road-going status with a built block, bigger injectors, bigger turbos and piggyback engine management. After break-in the car was making 475 whp and in 2005 it blasted an 11.5 at 118 mph at O'Reilly Raceway Park in Indianapolis.
In late 2005 he added a set of Jim Wolf Technology cams, aftermarket manifolds and home-ported heads. The Nissan went back on the dyno where it pumped 540 whp on 93-octane pump gas. In mid-June of 2006 it ran a best of 11.2 at 124 mph at Route 66 Raceway in Joliet, Illinois-and the two rode triumphantly off into the sunset, right? No. "Shortly after the quarter-mile hot laps another clutch took a crap and I was tired of pulling engines, transmissions and the like so I decided to halt the proceedings entirely for a few months," Turpin says. "I was debating on going to even bigger turbos and around January 2007, I finally decided I wanted to go RB26."
At the time there was no information about RB26/Z32 swaps. Plenty of guys had done it to older-generation Zs, as well as 240s, but not to the Z32. Undaunted, Turpin pressed on and ordered an RB26DETT and that's when his luck changed. "It was spotless," Turpin says, "and I even found a new OS Giken Triple Plate clutch behind the motor-all for free!"
By Evan Griffey
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