seattlejester

Looks real good! Are you planning on keeping the outside all patina'd?

Wizard is right, the choice in engine really has to be up to you. It will be your money and your time that you spend on it, at the end if you want it to mean something to you, then you should be the one making choices. If you want the choice to make sense, make a list for both engines and see which you will be happier with down the road. It also depends on your bank roll. An RB swap is not cheap. Granted a high horsepower L28et will need similar supporting mods, but a similar RB motor swap will cost more when you get into motor specific parts, especially in the US. I want to say one of the local guys who swapped in an RB26dett spent upwards of 15k getting the swap all settled in. L28et swaps tend to be a lot cheaper, but as mentioned it nearly a decade of difference between the motors. The newest L28 you can get would be 80's, newest RB25 would be 2000's.

Well, I guess it would be informative and directly applicable to the situation. The process will be long if the shop decides to fight. Supposedly an 18k build, I want to say the shop did eventually make right on some things. http://jalopnik.com/owner-says-18k-engine-build-ruined-nissan-gt-r-with-tw-1029580432

Best of luck, glad you aren't taking it too personally and crying bloody murder or anything. I genuinely like the fact you are trying to tackle this straight on. NewZed: If you look around, there are a few of those situations happening (high dollar builds/shops, poor build quality/workmanship), I think jalopnik did a top 10 at one point, but let's not clutter the thread .

Kind of interesting stuff. So mandrel bends essentially just stretch out the material. I have always known that, but when I cut my U I saw it for the first time. You can notice the outer edge (bottom) is a lot thinner then the smaller radius (top). Also made an intercooler pipe bead rolling tool via vice grips and pipe clamp. Pretty difficult to roll pipes with bends at the end, but still better then nothing. (Don't worry the outside and edges just have marks on them, it is smooth) And now onto the fun stuff. Really it wasn't all that bad. I think I have plenty of wiring to route wherever I would like it to go. For now I just wanted to connect everything is on and play with some of the sensors. The cable from efi analytic unfortunately had receiving nuts so it couldn't be used to connect to the computer, and my macbook couldn't connect to megasquirt via bluetooth due to insufficient something or another. But I am really starting to dig into megasquirt so it is quite a bit of fun. Wish me luck .

I always found it a intriguing that you can run the 280zx and the early 300zx without any o2 signal. If it was any other engine and car, that would be the cause of your problem right there. Make sure to cap that o2 sensor with a bung, or better yet get a wide band o2 sensor and plug it in and get some feedback. Guessing will only take you so far. Looks like you are moving right along .

Does sound like it is running quite rich. Not sure about the fumes coming straight from an engine swap like that unless you have a leaky exhaust manifold that was swapped over. The exhaust should still exit the same place. It might be a good time to grab a wideband o2 sensor, since you will need one for megasquirt any ways to see if you are indeed running rich. I bought the 12 foot harness just so I have more room to move it around in the cabin. It depends on if you want to match up the megasquirt harness in the engine bay to the sensors, or make pig tails on all the sensors and run them into the cabin and match them there. If you have a ton of wiring the 12 foot may be a waste. If you can find the resistance curves for the sensors then yes you would need to supply megasquirt with coolant temp and intake air temp (if the l28et has it stock) from the stock sensors. It may be advisable at this time to grab a ka24de throttle body to upgrade the intake diameter as well as adding a TPS sensor, although this isn't strictly required. I would just buy the suggested GM sensors just in case, or source them locally from a junk yard. Always nice to have a back up. You should also have a wideband o2 sensor. You can actually even install the wideband o2 right now to tell if you are actually running rich or have an exhaust leak. I know when I had an exhaust leak, the smell was horrible and the AFR was reading in the 20's which seemed ludicrous, after I changed out the gasket, it dropped right down to 11-12. Regarding the selection of megasquirt, it depends on what you want out of the car. If you plan on running batch injection, with a distributor, then megasquirt 2 will be sufficient. If you plan on running sequential injection, COPS, electric fans, shift lights, nitrous, dual stage injection, intercooler mister, or want to control a few things with megasquirt, then megasquirt 3 starts to make sense. I bought mine and added two additional spark drivers (to run COPS with wasted spark) and a boost control driver, pushing my cost to about 500. I didn't plan on using sequential injection, sequential spark, nitrous, or any of the other features quite yet. And I already had a fan controller and relay/fuse board all lined up, and I figured if the time came where I wanted those features, I would upgrade to the MS3 pro. If you plan on having a shop install it, I would ask the shop what they recommend. The installer is going to have a preference and his reasonings if he is familiar with the ecu (which he should be if he is installing it).

Hmm, I really haven't seen bubbly sound deadening. Not exactly sure what to make of that. At some point, yes it is indeed better to start over. I think there is a restoration of a Porsche where they pulled off 15 pounds or something ludicrous from a small panel just because it had been a race car that had different livery every few years or so. Layers of paint do add weight, but if the paint isn't bad it can serve as a workable surface that you can sand down to make smooth curves etc. If you take it down to bare metal, you have to fix all the dents and dings with hammers, dollies, and repair panels, or else add workable material (body filler). Depending on your final color it may be advisable to remove the black if you want something bright. As long as the paint isn't bubbling, sinking in, or flaking off. It means it has a good connection with the material underneath. Even if the paint is flaking off, that could just be due to cheap paint, not necessarily rust. Take a rubberized magnet, and run it over the car, you can find any sizable filler spots that way without taking the paint off. If you are searching for rust, it usually hides in very common places, if those places are in good shape, that means the chassis has been cared for somewhat. If it is still a concern, you take a look from the other side of the panel, under the painted surface. Taking the car takes up a lot of space, and I do mean a lot. If your workspace is small, you may run into problems with storage. Socorob is on the money. The weldable primer is neat, but it still does burn (which can contaminate welds). Best to save that for spots that you know you have to weld, but won't be able to access to protect right after the welding is complete. If your garage is dry, and you plan on working quickly, you can just leave the car blasted. The finish it leaves protects it from rust to a fair extent as long as there is no direct water contact.

I defer to you both, since your experience in the matter is much greater.

Picture would be nice. Or more precise terminology will help quite a bit. If you are indeed talking about the hub, you would have to use a slide hammer once you released the staked axle nut. They rent them at your local auto parts store. Just make sure you do early in the day. If your hub is stuck, it will make quite the racket.

The people on this site, at least all the people I am familiar who have S13 coilovers have camber tops that are welded either to the underside or on top of the existing location (with the inside slightly removed) with the pillow ball mount. Or have pillow ball camber plates that are bolt in, but still to the factory strut top. For your install, it looks like they cut out the top of the datsun tower and lowered the whole mounting point by a few inches (the strut tower is tapered, so they lowered it to gain the extra width for the wider bolt pattern as well as maybe make room for the adjustment knob, and then made a new piece of metal to install the factory s13 coilover top (3 wide bolt pattern). As Jmortenson and johnc have pointed out, they cut out the reinforced top (if you look at the stock tower, it is at the minimum double layered in that area), and then proceeded to weld fairly poorly (porous looking welds) the pieces together. Here are the main points. 1. Really glad nothing catastrophic happened. Glad it was found while you were putting around instead of on the free way or somewhere else. 2. Those are really bad looking welds. Either flux, or non shielded mig with some evidence of grinding and maybe seam sealer involved. The fact they thought it was ok to do is a bit scary, I agree either shoddy or careless workmanship. 3. Yes by having the modification fail there was indeed a risk to yourself. And yes, the right thing to do would be to have them pay for a suitable repair, as long as you paid full market value (as in you did not get a discount or a hookup etc etc). However...other members are raising some good counter points. 1. If you track the car, you are pushing it quite hard. Even factory parts break when you push it, let alone aftermarket parts shoddily grafted onto non factory locations. Where have you tracked the car, any off track excursions? 2. What is the ride height that you run the car at, or the spring rate. A picture would really help us out. If you ride the car low and have stiff springs with the dampeners turned up, then they could also say that you used them not as intended. An easy counter argument would be, what spring rate are you running. 10k? That is nearly 10 times more then stock, of course it would break! 3. I know it is hard to swallow, but it is a custom install. It really isn't the traditional way that modification is done. Thus, they also have the defense that you were a pioneer/test bed and had taken responsibility for the possible failure. Now if you gave them instructions to do it one way, and they did it their own way without permission, there is something there. 4. Possibly the most important, it doesn't look like their weld failed, it is the factory sheet metal that tore out. Their design was bad and may have caused that to happen, but that would take an engineer to prove, their weld that holds the coilover to the strut is intact. Without a prior picture or a during install picture where it shows they cut into the origin of the crack, they can argue that the piece that they worked on is problem free and that the chassis given it's age is the culprit. 5. If you had problems with the workmanship, you shouldn't have been pushing the car at track days etc. I agree that you should see if you can find the other individuals and see if the shop did indeed do the same modification in the same manner to their cars. It would be evidence for you, and a very needed warning for them. I am just playing devil's advocate here. If you do plan to litigate, I would rather you do so and get this resolved rather then having them raise any of the counter points and having your case dismissed right away. It is your burden to prove that they were negligent without a doubt and caused unreasonable risk to limb and life. All they have to provide is a waiver, the lack of a receipt (if you got a discount or paid in cash), or any of another million things since nothing actually happened to you physically.

Welcome to the forums! You may want to change the title if possible, got a typo up there. Just for your reference, your description of the vehicle and plan are a bit contradicting. If the car has minimal rust, then it would be advisable to NOT strip the car and have it sand blasted. It would be financially more viable to sand back the paint a bit, address any spots that need patches, re primer the car and paint it. You would want to media blast if you had serious reservations as to the integrity of the car, or suspect that rust is hiding somewhere unseen, or wanted to do a bare metal respray. If you are planning on having the car media blasted, then there is no need to try and detect rust. The media will find it all for you (if it is a thurough blasting job). If you plan on having it blasted, then wait for that to be done. The benefit of having a car blasted is that it will find all the rust, take off the paint, and it will even leave a type of finish that more resistant to flash rusting then bare metal. From your desire to blast the whole car, it sounds like you want to have a full resto for at least the chassis. Basic outline is... Strip car of all components Take it to be media blasted Cut out all the areas that have pitted from the blasting Order repair panels, replacement parts, or steel to fabricate your own repair panels Fit repair panels/patches, etc (this would a great time to tweak the alignment of the chassis to make it straight if there are any concerns Weld in new panels Blend panel to car Finish any modifications that will require welding to the chassis, camber plates, bracing, floor panels, frame rails, radiator support, spare tire well etc Wipe down and primer If you need help making your decision, you can use a magnet to look for any bondo patches, and you can use a pointed dowel to tap against areas that you suspect of structural infidelity. If you tap the metal lightly and the paint flies off or the panel dents excessively the metal in the area is quite weak and will need replacement, if there are a lot of areas with bondo it is kind of a split decision, either bite the bullet, have it blasted, and plan on extensive metal repair, or turn the other cheek if that is opening up a can of worms you are not ready for. And I hope you have a budget set out. The local blaster quoted me 1000 just for blasting the shell, panels, and such (I think 1$ a minute was the rate, plus a basic fee etc), if the floor and rails have to be replaced, the replacement parts alone are ~500, plus the labor to fit and install will be quite a substantial amount. Blasting will be kind of moot, unless you have a repair shop or a welder lined up to repair anything that is found that needs repair. Good luck mate, read lots of threads, and look at the dates, there are quite a few members on here that have spent an extensive amount of time on their cars. Setting realistic budget and realistic goals will also help us help you.

Tech 2 is very much alive and kicking.

By "don't have a battery" do you mean at all, or you don't have a new battery? As long as you are feeding the starter motor directly with the jumping battery you should be able to get it to crank, you would essentially be using the jumping battery as the donor battery. Although you may cause problems if you are jumping from a running car, as trying to crank the starter will put the full amp usage of the starter on top of whatever the jumping vehicle is using. If it is a FWD and the electric fans are on and the headlights running etc, you can not be generating enough to run the starter at full steam. Although most modern cars should output excess of 100 amps. Attaching the jumpers to a dead battery and trying to start the car from the dead battery may not work. When I put a volt meter on a dead battery that I had jumped and charged, the volt dropped visibly at maybe 0.1 volt a second. In a minute it went from 14 volts down to 8 volts. Starter would just stutter a bit and then do nothing. I would wait until you can afford a battery. If you are anxious, head over to the nearest junkyard and grab one of their tested batteries and take it to be charged at your local auto parts store. I want to say with a core, they were like 10$ or something of that nature. If you have a bad battery even if the car cranked over, your alternator may have a bit of trouble if it is trying to dump all the power it's generating into a depleted battery. Having the alternator tested, the water pump replaced, and flushing the engine oil would be a pretty good idea in the meantime. If the engine had been sitting for a while that it needed atf to be unstuck, I am a little concerned about the condition under the head.

Hmm did you test the continuity from the pigtails to the megasquirt injector input? Unless your tune has a point where you are nearing max duty cycle, it shouldn't be flooding the motor. Unless your spark is failing for some reason. High or low impedence injectors?

Avernier, that turned out really nice! I may have to revisit mine. I really don't like how low my cover hangs. If money isn't an object look at the Pro Alloy cell. It is shaped like the stock tank, made out of aluminum with baffles and bolts to the stock location. I want to say you can even use the stock filler location with the remote filler. I have no fuel fumes in the cabin from my cell, I have a vent venting in the stock fill location. And the cell itself is boxed in and covered separated from the cabin. I must admit, I have been approached more then once when I fill gas, usually the gas attendant is worries that I am filling spare gas tanks in the car. Once they see I am filling a grounded cell, they usually turn around before they get to me.

How high of a spring rate are you running? To be honest I am not sure you have much of a case. It is custom fabrication using non original parts, and unless they have a warranty policy you can be kind of out of luck. It does look like some pretty shoddy workmanship. Looks like it ripped out whatever material they added.

Skip the chip. If it does what is advertised, it still only gives you one map. For what it's worth, the megasquirt 2 is around 460$ and it is programmable. It may indeed be closer to 800 with the sensors and the wiring harness, but it is infinitely more adjustable. And I don't think there is anything much more reliable then a carb'd, distributor driven car. Other than the parts being old, there is far less to go wrong. A car will only be as reliable as the parts that are installed on it, don't skimp out and make sure to review your wiring and looks like it will be a great car!

Car looks great! I remember your build thread and the quite impressive method you used to build the head. Glad to see you haven't left the Z community .

Somethings are a bit concerning... Change the fuel pump because it wasn't delivering enough gas, what does that mean? The stock mechanical should keep up with the SU's. Did you get a replacement for the mechanical pump? What do you mean by autozone? My fear is that you are referring to an off the wall electric pump, if you used the high pressure model, you can be flooding the carb with way too much pressure. Adjusting the jet would not adjust the pressure of the pump, it would just dictate the air fuel ratio. The two turns in the manual refers to the starting point for tuning the carbs for lean or rich, not to regulate fuel pressure. Fuel pooled up in the air cleaner, do you have the stock air cleaner? That would mean the fuel came from the fuel overflow vents and pooled up in the air cleaner. Be very careful, you almost had an engine fire! I would highly recommend finding someone who is familiar with the carbs to take a look, or take the carbs off and take it to a professional. Pete is right on the money, either your needle and seat were sticking, (which could be as easy to fix as a few whacks on the housing with a blunt instrument), you are overfilling your carbs with too much pressure from your fuel pump (if it is an OE replacement that is highly unlikely, if it is an electric fuel pump it is possible), or your floats are no longer floating (they have a crack and are acting like sinks as Pete says). Please be careful. If you have not worked with these carbs before, consult someone who has. And have someone with a fire extinguisher standing by when you decide to try and start it again to be your spotter and your safety worker.

Undercoat or bedliner seems to be the choice for the budget DIYers.

Careful man, you are suggesting infringing on someone's livelyhood and intellectual property. Making your own is one thing, blatantly copying the design of someone else with plans to sell is another. It seems you have the capabilities, put the engine up on a crane and take the measurements and pop out your own.

Hmm 240z has an external fuel pump, the pickups are prone to being rusty, the output and return lines are on the small side, not baffled, and the rubber bits are only rated for low pressure. With your requirements, sounds like cleaning the stock tank, using the feed line as the return and using the drain port as the feed (exact details are foggy, but it is floating around somewhere on here), and using an intank pump in a surge tank is your best bet to fit minimal work, maximum reliability, and some what of a soundproofing. If money is not really a limiting factor, I think Pro Alloy or something like that make a tank that fits in the factory location with baffling and an internal pump with AN outputs. Plumb that with 1/2inch hardline/-8an lines to the fuel rail and that should meet your requirements. If you would rather not deal with any of the stock system at all in terms of finding J-bolts and straps...cutting out the spare tire well and putting in a flat floor and throwing in an aluminum fuel cell with a baffled intank pickup and fuel pump should be on the quicker side of things. Routing the lines would be really easy while the driveline is out of the car and everything would be new, so no worries. I can say even the supposedly quiet inline bosch pump that I have is fairly audible. Although I don't know if that will be a problem when it is being drowned out by exhaust. I know my low pressure fuel pumps could be heard over even my slightly muffled straight pipe exhaust.

I have 15x7+0's and I rub on my rolled fender with 225/50/15's on big dips on the rear (stock style suspension). I agree, the tire selection is pretty limited. If I wanted to go to a 9 inch with the 15 inch rim, I think the consensus was to run a wider then listed size, like a Toyo 888 and even that would be a stretch. I think I will be stepping up in the near future once I'm through my current sets. I kind of agree with the whole never too much tire statement, as even my modest L28 can break the tires loose in second, but I think there really is a balance. Too much tire, and the engine can feel a bit boggy. If a lightened flywheel makes a difference, just imagine what a thin, light wheel with thinner lighter tires would do for ya. And if you have a lot of power and a lot of tire, I think the halfshafts and stub axles may need to be looked at as the weak point in the assembly.

Yea, it sounds like you are familiar with everything so it is hard to help out. I guess to answer your question, yes I have heard of sticky injectors flooding motors, it could very well be the return spring or some fluctuating voltage or something of that nature. Even when injectors are remanufactured, they still don't inspect the internals, just a flow test and a rebuild with o-rings, maybe the filter screen is replaced to my understanding. A bench test should be pretty revealing when it warms up enough to try it.